Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich, BWV 150

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{{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (For Thee, O Lord, I long),<ref name="Dellal">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Template:Nowrap,Template:Efn is an early church cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach composed for an unknown occasion. It is unique among Bach's cantatas in its sparse orchestration and in the independence and prominence of the chorus, which is featured in four out of seven movements. The text alternates verses from Psalm 25 and poetry by an unknown librettist. Bach scored the work for four vocal parts and a small Baroque instrumental ensemble of two violins, bassoon and basso continuo.

Many scholars think that it may be the earliest extant cantata by Bach, possibly composed in Arnstadt in 1707.

History and text

Bach's original score is lost. The music survives in a copy made by C F Penzel, one of Bach's last pupils, after the composer's death.<ref name="Isoyama">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The date of composition is not known, and sources differ as to when and where Bach composed the work. However, the balance of opinion has moved towards a date at the beginning of Bach's career. It is not currently in dispute that it is one of Bach's earliest surviving cantatas. Suggestions for the place of composition have been:

  • Weimar, where Bach worked from 1708. The conductor and academic Jonathan Green dates the work c. 1708–1710; the Bach scholar William G. Whittaker dates it c. 1712.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn
  • Mühlhausen, where Bach worked in 1707/1708. The Zwang catalogue (which attempts to list the cantatas chronologically) dated it as the sixth of the surviving cantatas by Bach, and placed Aus der Tiefen rufe ich, Herr, zu dir, BWV 131, as the earliest. Aus der Tiefen rufe ich, Herr, zu dir is known to have been composed in Mühlhausen in 1707/1708.Template:Sfn
  • Arnstadt, where Bach worked until his move to Mühlhausen in the summer of 1707. Late 20th-century scholarship suggests Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich could have been composed at Arnstadt.<ref name="Isoyama" />
The Wender organ, which Bach inspected, in the Neue Kirche, Arnstadt, for which the cantata was probably composed

The Bach scholar Andreas Glöckner argued in 1988 that the cantata may have been composed in Arnstadt.<ref name="Dürr">Template:Cite book</ref>

The scholar Hans-Joachim Schulze identified in 2010 a remarkable acrostic in movements 3, 5 and 7 (which he described in the 2010 Bach-Jahrbuch, the journal of the Neue Bachgesellschaft).<ref name="Schulze">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Adjusting for transposition errors by the copyist, the initial letters should spell DOKTOR CONRAD MECKBACH and plausibly therefore the work was composed to mark this Mühlhausen councillor's 70th birthday in April 1707. On this basis the cantata may date from Bach's time in Arnstadt. Possibly the cantata was heard a few weeks later after the end of Lent, and thus it may have formed a test-piece for the Mühlhausen appointment, composed in Arnstadt with Bach's supporter Meckbach in mind.<ref name="Grob">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

The cantata is, as John Eliot Gardiner notes, "generally accepted to be Bach's very first church cantata."<ref name="Gardiner">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Gardiner conducted in 2000 the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage and performed the cantata in the church for which it was then probably composed, at Bach's time called Neue Kirche (new church), now the Johann-Sebastian-Bach-Kirche.<ref name="Gardiner" />

The libretto alternates between biblical verses and free contemporary poetry, which is common in Bach's later cantatas, but rare among his early cantatas. The text of movements 2, 4, and 6 are selected psalm verses, Template:Sourcetext. The author of the poetry is unknown. On the basis of the text, it has been suggested that the work was written for a penitential service.<ref name="Oron">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

The cantata was first published in 1884 in the Bach-Gesellschaft-Ausgabe, the first edition of Bach's complete works. The composer Johannes Brahms, who served on the editorial board of the Bach-Gesellschaft-Ausgabe, took an interest in the cantata as it was being published. He used an adapted version of the bass line of the closing chaconne for a work he completed in 1885, his Symphony No. 4.<ref name="Smith">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Structure and scoring

Bach structured the cantata in seven movements, an opening instrumental sinfonia and four choral movements interspersed by only two arias. He scored it for four soloists (soprano, alto, tenor and bass), a four-part choir, and a small Baroque instrumental ensemble of two violins (Vl), bassoon (obbligato) (Fg) and basso continuo.<ref name="Bischof">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The duration of the cantata is about 17 minutes.<ref name="Dürr" />

In the following table of the movements, the scoring follows the Neue Bach-Ausgabe.<ref name="Bischof" /> The keys and time signatures are taken from Alfred Dürr, using the symbol for common time (4/4). The continuo, playing throughout, is not shown.<ref name="Dürr" />

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Music

The work begins with a sinfonia and then alternates choral movements and arias. There are no recitatives, no da capo repeats, and there is no chorale tune, unusually for Bach's cantatas. Bach makes extensive use of choral fugues and imitative polyphony, often shifting the tempo and character of the music within movements very quickly to accommodate a new musical idea with each successive phrase of text.

Template:Anchor The sinfonia and the opening choral movement are both based on the motive of an octave leap followed by five descending half steps. This chromatic figure, sometimes dubbed the "lamento bass" or passus duriusculus, has been utilized by composers as early as Monteverdi as a musical representation of anguish, pain, and longing.Template:Sfn The sinfonia also introduces thematic material developed later in the work, uses asymmetric phrasing, and "a seamless flow of unstoppable melody".<ref name=min>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Template:Anchor The first chorus on the beginning of Psalm 25, "{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}" (Lord, I long for you. My God, I hope in you.),<ref name="Dellal" /> is "waywardly constructed despite its relative brevity". It is episodic, emphasizing a descending chromatic scale motif. The musicologist Tadashi Isoyama notes "the graphically chromatic phrases of the opening sinfonia and the following chorus; these are evocative of the suffering of the world".<ref name="Isoyama" />

Template:Anchor The following soprano aria, "{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}" (Yet I am and remain content),<ref name="Dellal" /> is also brief but includes significant word painting.<ref name=min />

Template:Anchor The fourth movement, "{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}" (Lead me in your Truth and teach me),<ref name="Dellal" /> is another short and episodic chorus, divided into four sections.<ref name=min />

Template:Anchor Movement five, "{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}" (Cedars must, before the winds, often feel much hardship),<ref name="Dellal" /> is one of only a handful of vocal trios to be found in Bach's oeuvre, as well as the only movement in the cantata in all major. Isoyama writes: "the continuo part drives the music forward with its phrase describing the trials of the stormwinds".<ref name="Isoyama" />

Template:Anchor The penultimate movement, "{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}", features a "celestial haze" of instruments as part of a complex texture.<ref name=min /> It is in binary form and modulates from D major through B minor to B major.<ref name="Kuerti">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Template:Anchor The final movement, "{{#invoke:Lang|lang}}", is a chaconne, a form which is typically constructed over a repeated ground bass. Bach uses a ground bass which is possibly a borrowing from Pachelbel. It is the inversion of the chromatic fourth ostinato from the opening movement.<ref name="Bötticher">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Bach's orchestration includes strumming effects which could be seen as recalling the origin of the chaconne in Spanish guitar music.<ref name="Silbiger">Template:Cite journal</ref> From a theological point of view, both the inversion of the lamento bass and the series of modulations in this movement express in baroque musical affect how Christ leads from sorrow to joy.<ref name="Bötticher" />

Selected recordings

Notes

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References

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Sources

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