Cantata BWV 21, Ich hatte viel Bekümmerniss

I don’t pretend to know all–or even most–of Bach’s cantatas. In many cases, I’m learning about them as I’m preparing information for this website. But in college, I had the chance to sing one movement of Bach’s Cantata 21 (the final movement), and I’ve always thought it was fantastic. And my research has shown that many scholars who know Bach’s music better than I think that the entire cantata is fantastic–in fact, many scholars say this may be the best of Bach’s entire cantata output.

Cantata 21 was the last of Bach’s pre-Weimar cantatas, and may have been written in 1713 as his audition for a position in Halle. Portions of the cantata (movements. 2-6 and 9) may have been written for the funeral of Aemilie Marie Harress in October 1713. Bach likely used the work for an audition in Hamburg in 1720. The autograph score, however, contains the date 1714, and we know that Bach used Cantata 21 for the Third Sunday after Trinity that year in Weimar, although Bach wrote "per ogni tempo" (for any time) on the score, and it’s clear from the text that this cantata is indeed appropriate for any number of feasts in the church calendar. Bach also reworked the orchestration for a performance on the work in Leipzig (1723), though none of these changes affected the structure or form of the work.

Scholar Eric Chafe has written a detailed analysis of the entirety of Cantata 21 (Chafe, Ch. 3 of Analyzing Bach Cantatas [New York: Oxford University Press, 2000]). Many of the items below are taken from Chafe’s analysis (and credit is given appropriately), which, both for the sake of brevity and academic honesty, is not repeated here. For those interested in more detail, I direct you to the Chafe’s complete analysis.

The librettist is anonymous, although several scholars think Salomon Franck is the author of the text. Franck and Bach collaborated on a number of other cantatas, beginning in 1714. The text contains few actual Biblical quotes (most come in the final chorus), although there are numerous biblical allusions, referencing all four Gospels, numerous books from the Old Testament (including at least twenty different psalms), and the book of Revelation.

This cantata features one of the largest orchestras of Bach’s cantatas prior to Easter 1715: oboe, 3 trumpets, timpani, bassoon, strings, continuo, and SATB choir. Cantata 21 is a two-part cantata composed of nine movements, summarized below. For those who might be studying the score, please note that in virtually every movement, Bach employs a partial signature.

I. Sinfonia

• Oboe, bassoon, strings, continuo
• Adagio assai
• C minor, 4/4 meter

Part I

II. Chorus

• SATB choir, oboe, bassoon (independent of continuo), strings, continuo
• Two tempos, with the second marked vivace (first tempo is slower, but Bach did not mark a specific tempo)
• C minor, 4/4 meter
• Text based on Psalm 19

III. Aria

• Soprano solo, oboe, continuo
• C minor, 12/8 meter
• Text based on

IV. Recitative

• Solo tenor, strings, continuo
• C minor, 4/4 meter

V. Aria

• Solo tenor, strings, continuo
• F minor, 4/4
• Largo-allegro-largo
• Da capo aria (actually, dal segno)

VI. Chorus

• SATB choir, oboe, bassoon (independent of continuo), strings, continuo
• Adagio-spiritoso-adagio
• Begins in f minor, moves to c minor (where it stays), 4/4 meter
• Text based on Psalm 5

Part II

VII. Recitative

• Solo soprano, solo bass, strings, continuo
• E-flat major, 4/4

VIII. Duetto

• Solo soprano, solo bass, continuo
• E-flat major, 4/4 to 3/8 to 4/4
• Includes a tempo change (tempo expressions not included by Bach, but the middle is clearly intended to be quicker)

IX. Chorus

• SATB solo, SATB choir, oboe, 4 trombones, bassoon (doubled by trombone 4 and independent of the continuo), strings, continuo
• G minor, 3/4
• Sectional form: 2 sections, each repeated and containing 1^st and 2^nd endings.

X. Aria

• Solo tenor, continuo
• F major, 3/8
• Lively tempo (unspecified by Bach)

• Da capo aria

XI. Chorus

• SATB soloists, SATB choir, oboe, 3 trumpets, bassoon (independent of continuo), strings, continuo
• C major, 4/4
• Grave, then allegro
• Introduction with fugue
• Text from Revelations v. 12 (similar to "Worthy is the Lamb" from Handel’s Messiah)

There are numerous musical moments worth exploring in Cantata 21, but I will detail only a few. Cantata 21 begins with an instrumental prelude, which stands completely independently (both in musical and formal terms). This kind of prelude is common among Bach’s earliest cantatas (Christoph Wolff, The World of the Bach Cantatas: Early Sacred Cantatas (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997]). With the sinfonia’s slow tempo, interwoven somber melodic lines (first violin and oboe), slow walking bass line, c minor key, and frequent suspensions in the inner string parts, Bach establishes an appropriate mood for the opening chorus–"Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis" (I have greatly suffered). Further suffering is portrayed in the use of fully-diminished seventh chords on consecutive downbeats just a few measures from the end. The first is not all that surprising, as we heard the same chord just two beats earlier, and because it inflects the dominant key area. The second one, which instead points towards f minor (the subdominant area), is unexpected. Bach writes a fermata on each of these two chords, drawing our attention to them more closely, and as the motion stops moving forward temporarily, we sense the composer searching for musical direction…or is this an attempt to end our suffering (that suffering we know of, from the title and from the mood of the sinfonia). It is a ruse, however, as Bach draws the music back to C minor for the cadence shortly thereafter.

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