Cantata BWV 80, "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott" continued

Why do I find this interesting? Though both texts contain strong imagery (struggling, might, battlefield), the first is far more positive. It speaks of triumphing through Christ. The soprano text, too, gets to that point, but with more questioning. The combination shows that those who are born in Christ are the "right man," the ones whom God himself has chosen. This gets to the heart of Christian theology. Finally, the mention of the battlefield can be seen both as a reminder of the "battle" of the Reformation, which this chorale and this cantata celebrate, and as anticipating Luther's "call to battle" in the fifth movement of the cantata (the tenor recitative).

Here is a sample of this movement, with its complex polyphonic texture. Click on the score to hear what it sounds like.

For the third movement, Bach writes a recitative and arioso for solo bass voice. There is no trace of the chorale tune here. This movement and the soprano aria which follows were retained unchanged from the earlier Weimar cantata (BWV 80a) mentioned above. In the fourth movement, Bach uses unison voices on the chorale tune, around which the orchestra weaves an elaborate texture. This is similar to the middle movement of Cantata BWV 140, "Wachet auf." The chorale melody here is transformed into 6/8 meter, but otherwise remains true to the original. Click the score to hear it.

The subsequent movements include:

• a recitative for tenor, which has occasional furious melismas in both the solo voice and the continuo line (indicating the overall joy expressed in the text);
• a duet for solo alto and solo tenor, set in da capo form and accompanied by oboe da caccia and violin; and
• a traditional four-part setting of the final verse of the chorale, in which the congregation would be expected to sing along. This is a typical ending for a chorale cantata by Bach.

Johann Christian Till (1762-1844), the organist at Central Moravian Church in Bethlehem, apparently copied this score by hand and arranged a performance of it in Bethlehem in 1824 (the score is dated 1823). Although no record of the actual performance can be found, the assumption is that the Moravians would not have copied all the parts if they did not in fact use them. If this is true, then the 1824 Bethlehem performance of Cantata BWV 80 is the first performance of this work in the New World -- predating Mendelssohn's rediscovery of the works of Bach and the renewed interest in Bach's works in the 1830s and 1840s.