BWV 8 - Liebster Gott, wenn werd ich sterben

Week 8 (19 February - 24 February 2013)

Recording: Philippe Herreweghe, Collegium Vocale Ghent; Deborah York, soprano; Ingeborg Danz, alto; Mark Padmore, tenor; Peter Kooy, baritone

The question “when will I die” coalesces in our early youth, as soon as our conscious mind begins to grasp the concept of mortality, and persists with more or less psychological distance throughout our lives. We all know we must die: only the time and circumstances are in question.

The question of when we will die also interests, among others, insurance companies that base payouts for life annuity policies on actuarial tables estimating probable life spans based on an individual’s age at time of purchase. Actuarial science begins to assume modern form with the empirically-based work of polymath Briton Edmund Halley (1656-1742) – he of comet fame – and a 1693 article for the Royal Society which created a primitive actuarial table with the goal of allowing the British government to sell life annuities as a way to raise money. Halley realized that any meaningful mathematical model required actual birth/death data for verification, but he had no data for either London or England as a whole. However, he was able to obtain a set of birth and death statistics for the German town of Breslau, compiled by a preacher-academician-poet whose interest in demographics had led him to collect a significant amount of mortality data. This accidental statistician was Caspar Neumann (1648-1715), whose more philosophical ruminations on this topic are reflected in his hymn text Liebster Gott, wenn werd ich sterben. And so we arrive at the cantata of the same name, by Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750).

Halley’s actuarial table

The title might lead you to expect a morbid exposition on death and dying, but Bach’s interpretation walks the question through a series of responses, also in the form of questions, that answer the original in the most positive and hopeful manner, arriving at the conclusion that dying is the best thing that will ever happen to you. The first movement coro is dominated by winds, with an insistent, proto-Verdian figuration in the flute. The repeated sixteenth notes, hammering at a given pitch and sometimes discordant with the accompaniment, seem to indicate the ticking of a clock, or a rapid heartbeat, perhaps caused by the underlying anxiety of not knowing which day will be our last. Hubert Parry compares it to “shuddering at the thought of death”; I’m not sure I agree with that, but it’s a good thought. The strings play pizzicato throughout the movement, adding another layer of unrest. The short choral phrases are interjections without much development but with a nice modulation into minor on the word sterben (4^th beat of M. 15). The movement ends with the last rappings of the flute leading into a final staccato eighth note chord – and just like that, it will all be over.

Herreweghe approaches this movement with a contemplative attitude; the chorus is immaculate and self-reflective, as if the question is here posed by an individual. For a different approach, since it’s becoming evident I’m partial to Helmuth Rilling’s Bach interpretations, I listened to his version, and his faster tempo makes it all come together very gracefully with a chorus just as immaculate albeit with a fuller, less Baroque sound. This chorus is a congregation asking the same question as a unit, in the character of a hymn.

The A-B format tenor aria asks why we should be so anxious, given that death is the fate of mankind and so many have gone before us. In a typical genius touch, Bach takes the line “wenn mein letzte Stunde schlägt” and sets it to music that portrays exactly that: the clock striking the last hour. The “viel tausend” of souls who have gone before are represented by apparently thousands of notes – in the tenor part alone, about (125) notes are utilized in the various repetitions of “tausend”.

The alto recitative has an operatic character: Furcht…Sorgen…Schmerz and the singer portrays the doubter who expresses the universal worries of mankind, such as how will those who are left behind when we pass find comfort.

The response to these concerns is given in joyous A major by the following bass aria Doch weichet, ihr tollen, vergeblichen Sorgen. Here the question posed is: at death you are called to go to Jesus – and what believer wouldn’t want to go? This is a virtuoso showpiece requiring detached, agile singing, skipping along the line and matching the articulation of the flute, which in this movement takes the role of some colorful bird flitting through a sunlit morning. Both Huttenlocher (Rilling) and Kooy (Herreweghe) are fabulous, providing lessons in how large voices can back off and allow the melisma to happen. There is also hope for the future in a live performance of this cantata recorded last October in NYC (someone in America is still programming and presenting this wonderful piece – yay! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcnihlW-y8Q), where the young American baritone David Tinervia gives an impressive reading.

At first glance this aria appears to be an A-B-A da capo form, but it is A-B-A'. Apparently Bach didn’t feel the bass had been sufficiently challenged in the first go-round and so he changed up the last part of the recapitulation! I am plotting to co-opt this aria for my own use – it’s convenient that the bass part taken up an octave lies perfectly for me; the text is not gender-specific; and the flute part can be extracted from the full score with minimal effort so the instrumentalist has a clear copy to read (interestingly, the autograph for transverse flute is almost perfectly legible as well). It will be a fun piece to work on this summer!

Bach develops the final chorale more fully than in some of the cantatas, and the text kept bringing to mind the words of the baritone solo in Deutsches Requiem: “Herr, lehre doch mich, das mein Leben ein End hat”.

The vocal score on IMSLP is derived from an old engraving where “they” have inserted a text underlay in modern typeface. This edition was sucked into one of the “CD Sheet Music” compilations that provide a cheap way to acquire music, but with no guarantee of quality. There are some problems with the text, both in alignment with the notes as well as typographical errors and incorrect (in some cases non-existent) words. For an edition like this, I go with what’s on the recording if there’s a question.

What an enjoyable contemplation of the hereafter this week has been. It would be interesting to try to find out if the paths of Halley, Neumann, and/or Bach crossed during their lives, although it’s unlikely they did. For the current purpose, it’s sufficient to understand the intellectual environment at the time Bach composed this (and many other) cantatas. Major scientific discoveries were imminent, that would forever alter the interpretation of religious texts. Very soon, men would rely on numbers and analysis more than Biblical concepts. But the composer knew that in the end all scientific theories are irrelevant – there is only the inevitability of death and an individual’s personal response to it. Bach’s unequivocal response in this cantata is that when it comes time to let go of the baggage of earthly existence, eternal joy will be there waiting for us. Who would want to miss out on that?