Music for the Tenth Sunday
after Pentecost

Proper 13, Year C, August 1, 2010

Cantor and Soloist:
Walter Smith

Mass Setting:
Missa de Sancta Maria Magdalena, Healey Willan

Voluntary

Opening Hymn 533:
How wondrous and great thy works, Lyons

Psalm 107:1-9, 43
The congregation chants each half-verse of the psalm beginning at the asterisk *

At the Offertory—
Cantata 82, Ich habe genug (mvt. 3), J.S. Bach

Schlummert ein, ihr matten Augen,
Fallet sanft und selig zu!
Welt, ich bleibe nicht mehr hier,
Hab ich doch kein Teil an dir,
Das der Seele könnte taugen.
Hier muß ich das Elend bauen,
Aber dort, dort werd ich schauen
Süßen Friede, stille Ruh.

Fall asleep, you weary eyes,
close softly and pleasantly!
World, I will not remain here any longer,
I own no part of you
that could matter to my soul.
Here I must build up misery,
but there, there I will see
sweet peace, quiet rest.
Text: anon.

Offertory Hymn 574:
Before thy throne, O God, we kneel, St. Petersburg

During Communion—
Cantata 82, Ich habe genug (mvt.5), J.S. Bach

Ich freue mich auf meinen Tod,
Ach, hätt’ er sich schon eingefunden.
Da entkomm ich aller Not,
Die mich noch auf der Welt gebunden.

I delight in my death,
ah, if it were only present already!
Then I will emerge from all the suffering
that still binds me to the world.
Text: anon.

Communion Hymn 701:
Jesus, all my gladness, Jesu, meine Freude

Closing Hymn 594:
God of grace and God of glory, Cum Rhondda

Voluntary

Music Notes:

Composed for the Feast of the Purification of Mary, which fell on February 2, 1727, Johann Sebastian Bach’s (1685-1750) Cantata BWV 82, Ich habe genug (It is enough) sets an anonymous text on the Gospel of Luke 2, 22-32. Like Christ lag in Todesbanden (BWV 4) and Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen (BWV 56), it is not a chorale cantata, but a cantata for bass soloist, solo oboe, strings, and basso continuo.

Severely dark in tone and extremely restrained in execution, Ich habe genug is one of the bleakest of Bach’s cantatas. The text of its closing aria sums up its message: “I delight in my death, ah, if it were only present already! Then I will emerge from all the suffering that still binds me to the world.”

Ich habe genug is resolutely in C minor with its first, fourth, and fifth movements in the tonic and its second movement ending in the dominant of the third movement's relative major of E flat major. The organizational plan of the work is an alternation of aria and recitative with the first, third, and fifth movements being arias and the second and fourth movement's being recitatives. Both recitatives begin secco and end with more lyrical lines, a very brief Andante in the first and only a slightly longer Adagio arioso in the second.

The central aria, Schlummert ein, ihr matten Augen, (heard today at the offertory) is in a gentle tempo with a tender melody in the strings to comfort the sighing, disconsolate bass. Viewed in the most superficial of manners, this aria could be said to be a simple lullaby. Tired eyes are enjoined to close and sleep for they no longer have any purpose. The welcome escape from worldly misery, a repeated theme of this cantata, is briefly alluded to in the sixth line of text; it is not the main thrust of the meaning but is significant enough to cause Bach to design the structure of the aria so as to encompass it.

The closing aria, Ich freue mich auf meinen Tod, (heard today during communion) is marked Vivace in triple time with an elaborately embellished bass melody, is nearly a dance of death as befits the text. This aria has the quality of a wake, a bizarre waltz, shaded in tone but nevertheless a celebration of the death itself and its Christian significance. The vocal entry on the long and almost persistently aggressive melisma on freude—joy—is in itself an echo of the acceptance of that glad event, first heard in the opening aria. The text falls neatly into two sections, the first emphasizing the joy of anticipation of death and the desire for it to happen imminently. The second stresses yet again the conviction that death will release us from the misery of the world to which we have been chained

Perhaps this is the reason why Bach dispensed with the usual final chorale. Clearly he sought a movement which was not too “low key” in mood and which left the congregation feeling satisfied and uplifted, albeit about the usually less than cheerful subject of death.

-- Owen Burdick

Music for the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

Music Notes:

Music for the Tenth Sunday
after Pentecost