Bachkantaten BWV 12, 19, 20 & 21

Note: ​Peter Wollny (Director of the Bach Archive), Michael Maul (Director of BachFest), and Sir Eliot Gardiner (President of the Bach Archive) have selected the most famous sacred cantatas composed by J.S. Bach in December 2018. I shall highlight all 33 of them by their consecutive BWV numbering in the following months. The second series of four cantatas are listed today. 
 
BWV 12: Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen
Johann Sebastian Bach composed Weeping, Lamenting, Worrying, Fearing, a church cantata, in Weimar for Jubilate, the third Sunday after Easter. The first performance on 22 April 1714 in the Schlosskirche, the court chapel of the Schloss in Weimar. 
 
The work is structured in seven movements, an instrumental Sinfonia, a choral passacaglia, a recitative on a Bible quotation, three arias and, as the closing chorale, the last stanza from Samuel Rodigast's hymn "Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan" (1674). The cantata is scored for three vocal soloists, a four-part choir, trumpet, oboe, bassoon, two violins, two violas, and basso continuo. 
 
The prescribed readings for that Sunday were from the First Epistle of Peter, "Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man" (1 Peter 2:11–20), and from the Gospel of John, Jesus announcing his second coming in the Farewell Discourse, saying "your sorrow shall be turned into joy" (John 16:16–23). The text, depicting the affliction that Christians have to pass, is assumed to have been written by Salomon Franck, the Weimar court poet who wrote most texts for Bach cantatas of the Weimar period. It follows details of the Gospel and the idea from the epistle reading: "For this is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully." (verse 19). The text of the opening chorus corresponds to John 16:20, the text of the first recitative is taken from Acts 14:22, "we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God." Movement 4 sees the suffering of Jesus as a consolation for the afflicted Christian, movement 5 voices a decision to follow Jesus even in suffering, movement 6 offers the consolation that it will be only a short time until all sadness is overcome, alluding to (as in movement 4) Revelation 2:10. The cantata is closed by the sixth and final stanza of the hymn "Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan" (1674) by Samuel Rodigast. The theme of the first part of the text is a situation of God's temporary absence.
 
BWV 19: Es erhub sich ein Streit 
There arose a war was composed in Leipzig in 1726 for the Feast of Saint Michael, and first performed on 29 September 1726. It is the second of his three extant cantatas for this feast. 
 
The prescribed readings for the day were from the Book of Revelation, Michael fighting the dragon (Revelation 12:7–12), and from the Gospel of Matthew, heaven belongs to the children, the angels see the face of God (Matthew 18:1–11). The text of the cantata was written by Christian Henrici, better known as Picander, by now a regular collaborator of the composer. The chorale theme is Freu dich sehr, o meine Seele, which was codified by Louis Bourgeois when setting the Geneva Psalm 42 in his collection Pseaumes octante trios de David (Geneva, 1551). 
 
The two arias – which, like the intervening recitative, go back to an earlier devotional text by Bach’s ‘poet in residence,’ Picander – strike a gentler note. Despite its partly warlike content, the soprano aria ‘Gott schickt uns Mahanaim zu’ (‘God sends us Mahanaim [=two camps]’) acquires a certain charm from its accompaniment with two oboi d’amore, and in another way this applies also to the tenor aria ‘Bleibt ihr Engel, bleibt bei mir’ (‘Stay, ye angels, stay with me!’), which is set as a siciliano in the rocking rhythm familiar from the Sinfonia from the Christmas Oratorio, a metre that Albert Schweitzer once referred to as the ‘Engelsrhythmus’ (‘angelic rhythm’). A special feature of a kind that could have occurred only to Bach is the cantus firmus that the trumpet introduces into the aria: Bach’s listeners would have been aware that this was the chorale melody Herz- lich lieb hab ich dich, o Herr (From my heart I hold you dear, o Lord), and that the instrumental quotation was an allusion to the third strophe: ‘Ach Herr, lass dein lieb Engelein / am letzten End die Seele mein / in Abrahams Schoß tragen...’ (‘Oh Lord, may your dear little angels / carry at the end my soul / to Abraham’s bosom’). The final chorale (Freiberg 1620) takes up this idea. Trum- pets and timpani conclude the cantata with festive splen- dour. 
 
The piece is scored for three vocal soloists (soprano, tenor, and bass), four-part choir, and a Baroque instrumental ensemble of three trumpets, timpani, two oboes, oboe da caccia, two oboes d'amore, two violins, viola, and basso continuo. 
 
BWV 20: Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort 
Bach composed the church cantata O eternity, you word of thunder, in Leipzig for the first Sunday after Trinity, which fell on 11 June in 1724. Bach began exclusively composing chorale cantatas for his second annual cantata cycle, beginning with this cantata and totalling some 40 chorale cantatas by the end of the cycle. Each cantata was based on the main Lutheran hymn for the respective occasion. Leipzig had a tradition of focusing on the hymns. In 1690, the pastor of the Thomaskirche, Johann Benedikt Carpzov, announced that he would preach also on songs and that Johann Schelle, then the director of music, would play the song before the sermon. It is the first cantata he composed for his second annual cycle which was planned to contain chorale cantatas, each based on a Lutheran hymn. The cantata is focused on Johann Rist's 1642 hymn "O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort," with a chorale melody by Johann Schop. The topic of death and eternity matches the Gospel for the Sunday, the parable of the Rich man and Lazarus.
 
Bach scored the cantata for three vocal soloists, a four-part choir and a Baroque instrumental ensemble of two tromba da tirarsi, three oboes, two violins, viola and basso continuo. Schop's chorale melody appears in the movements with the original text, the opening chorale fantasia and the (identical) four-part harmonisation closing the cantata's two parts. All instruments play in the opening chorale fantasia, in which the soprano sings the hymn tune as a cantus firmus.
 
The prescribed readings for the Sunday were from the First Epistle of John, "God is Love" (1 John 4:16–21), and from the Gospel of Luke, the parable of the Rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19–31). The text is based on Johann Rist's hymn "O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort", which was published in the collection Himlische Lieder(Heavenly songs) in Lüneburg in 1642. The text is based on 12 of the hymn's 16 stanzas. The hymn, reflecting death and eternity, corresponds well to the parable of the rich man who has to face death and hell. It is subtitled "Ernstliche Betrachtung der unendlichen Ewigkeit" (A serious consideration of endless eternity). The text of three stanzas (stanzas 1, 8 and 12, used for movements 1, 7 and 11) is kept unchanged. An unknown author rephrased the other stanzas of the chorale to recitatives and arias, generally alternating and using one stanza for one cantata movement. The poet combined two stanzas, 4 and 5, to form movement 4. He used the lines "Vielleicht ist dies der letzte Tag, kein Mensch weiß, wenn er sterben mag" (Perhaps this is your last day, no one knows when he might die) from stanza 9 in movement 9 which is otherwise based on stanza 10. In movement 10, he inserted a hint at the Gospel. Overall, the poet stayed close to the hymn's text, which is characteristic for the early cantatas in Bach's second annual cycle. The poet was possibly Andreas Stübel, who died in 1725, which would explain why Bach did not complete the full cycle, but ended on Palm Sunday.
 
BWV 21: Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis
I had much grief, was composed in Weimar, possibly in 1713, partly even earlier. Bach used it in 1714 and later for the third Sunday after Trinity of the liturgical year. The work marks a transition between motet style on biblical and hymn text to operatic recitatives and arias on contemporary poetry. Bach catalogued the work as e per ogni tempo (and for all times), indicating that due to its general theme, the cantata is suited for any occasion.
 
Bach designated the cantata to the Third Sunday after Trinity of 1714. The prescribed readings for the Sunday were from the First Epistle of Peter, "Cast thy burden upon the Lord" (1 Peter 5:6–11), and from the Gospel of Luke, the parable of the Lost Sheep and the parable of the Lost Coin (Luke 15:1–10). The librettist was probably the court poet Salomon Franck. The text shows little connection to the prescribed gospel, but is related to the epistle reading. The poet included biblical texts for four movements: for movement 2 Psalms 94:19, for movement 6 Psalms 42:11, translated in the King James Version (KJV) to "Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance" for movement 9 Psalms 116:7 (KJV: "Return unto thy rest, O my soul; for the Lord hath dealt bountifully with thee"), and for movement 11 Revelation 5:12–13, "Worthy is the Lamb," the text also chosen to conclude Handel's Messiah. Similar to other cantatas of that time, ideas are expressed in dialogue: in movements 7 and 8 the soprano portrays the Seele (Soul), while the part of Jesus is sung by the bass as the vox Christi (voice of Christ). Only movement 9 uses text from a hymn, juxtaposing the biblical text with stanzas 2 and 5 of "Wer nur den lieben Gott lässt walten" by Georg Neumark, who published it with his own melody in Jena in 1657 in the collection Fortgepflantzter Musikalisch-Poetischer Lustwald. It is divided in two parts to be performed before and after the sermon, and scored for three vocal soloists (soprano, tenor, and bass), a four-part choir, and a Baroque instrumental ensemble of three trumpets, timpani, oboe, strings and continuo.

Bach led a performance in the court chapel of Schloss Weimar on 17 June 1714, known as the Weimar version. He revised the work for performances, possibly in Hamburg and several revivals in Leipzig, adding for the first Leipzig version four trombones playing colla parte.
 
Here are four albums:
 
Johann Sebastian Bach: Cantatas Volume 3 – Cantatas 12, 54, 162, 182. Masaaki Suzuki with Yumiko Kurisu (soprano), Yoshikazu Mera (counter-tenor), Makoto Sakurada (tenor), Peter Kooij (bass), and Bach Collegium Japan. Release Date: 1 Jul 1996. Label: BIS. Catalogue No: BISCD791. FLAC (CD Quality, 44.1 kHz, 16 bit).
 
Johann Sebastian Bach: Herr, deine Augen sehen Volume 46 – Cantatas 17, 19, 45, 102. Masaaki Suzuki with Hana Blažíkova (soprano), Robin Blaze (counter-tenor), Gerd Türk (tenor) & Peter Kooij (bass), and Bach Collegium Japan. Release Date: 28 Jun 2010. Label: BIS. Catalogue No: BISSACD1851. Hi-Res FLAC (Lossless, 44.1 kHz, 24 bit).
Award:
Gramophone Magazine, October 2010, Editor’s Choice.
 
Johan Sebastian Bach: Cantatas from Leipzig 1724 Volume 22 – Cantatas 7, 20, 94. Masaaki Suzuki with Yukari Nonoshita (soprano), Robin Blaze (counter-tenor), Jan Kobow (tenor), Peter Kooij (bass), and Bach Collegium Japan. Release Date: 3 Nov 2003. Label: BIS. Catalogue No: BISCD1321. Hi – Res FLAC (Lossless, 44.1 kHz, 24 bit).
 
Johann Sebastian Bach: Cantatas Volume 6 – Cantatas 21, 31, Alternative Versions from 21. Masaaki Suzuki with Monika Frimmer (soprano), Gerd Türk (tenor), Peter Kooij (bass), and Bach Collegium Japan. Release Date: 1 Feb 1998. Label: BIS. Catalogue No: BISCD851. FLAC (CD Quality, 44.1.kHz, 16 bit). 

References:
Es erhub sich ein Streit, BWV 19. (2024, September 26). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Es_erhub_sich_ein_Streit,_BWV_19

Hofmann, K. (2009). Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach Collegium Japan. Maasaki Suzuki. Herr, deine Augen sehen, Cantatas 17, 19, 45, 102. BIS Records AB. 
 
Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis, BWV 21. (2024, June 25). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ich_hatte_viel_Bekümmernis,_BWV_21
 
O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort, BWV 20. (2024, June 11). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_Ewigkeit,_du_Donnerwort,_BWV_20
 
Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen, BWV 12. (2024, August 21). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weinen,_Klagen,_Sorgen,_Zagen,_BWV_12