Meine Seufzer, meine Tränen, BWV 13
Meine Seufzer, meine Tränen, 13, is a church cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach. He composed it in Leipzig for the second Sunday after Epiphany and first performed it on 20 January 1726 as part of his third cantata cycle.
Bach composed the cantata in his third year as, setting a libretto which Georg Christian Lehms, a court poet in Darmstadt, had published already in 1711. Lehms based his text on one idea from the prescribed gospel, Jesus saying: "Mine hour is not yet come". The text is divided into three movements each, first sequence of aria, recitative and chorale, then of recitative, aria and chorale. The third movement is the second stanza of Johann Heermann's hymn "", the closing chorale is the final stanza of Paul Fleming's "".
The cantata is scored for four soloists, a four-part choir only in the closing chorale, two recorders, oboe da caccia, strings and continuo.
History and words
Bach composed the cantata in his third year as Thomaskantor in Leipzig for the Second Sunday after Epiphany. The prescribed readings for the Sunday were taken from the Epistle to the Romans, we have several gifts, each is unique, as part of the body of Christ , and from the Gospel of John, the Wedding at Cana.Bach set a text written by Georg Christian Lehms, court poet in Darmstadt, who published it in 1711. Bach had set texts by Lehms already when he composed cantatas for the Weimar court from 1714 to 1717. In the 1725/26 Christmas season, he had used mostly librettos by Lehms. The poet took a single idea from the gospel, Jesus saying: "Mine hour is not yet come". The text is divided into two parts of three movements each, the first dealing with the distress of someone feeling abandoned, set as an aria and a recitative, and the second with hope for God's help, a recitative and aria. Both parts are closed by a chorale. The third movement is the second stanza of Johann Heermann's hymn "", the closing chorale is the final stanza of Paul Fleming's "". According to Alfred Dürr, it is unlikely that the work was split in performance before and after the service, considering its brevity.
Bach led the first performance at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig on 20 January 1726. The work is regarded as part of Bach's third cantata cycle.
Music
Structure and scoring
The cantata in six movements is intimately scored for four soloists, soprano, alto, tenor, and bass, a four-part choir in the chorales, two recorders, oboe da caccia, two violins, viola, and basso continuo. The continuo is playing throughout.Movements
The cantata is opened by an aria, a lamento accompanied by soft recorders and the dark sound of the oboe da caccia which leads frequently. It is a da capo form, but the middle section is again divided in two parts. In it, the voice shows the "" by several downward steps. Dürr points out that this composition "illustrates how the imagination of the Baroque musician is particularly fired by texts dealing with sighing and pain". The following short secco recitative ends as an arioso on the words "".In the chorale, the woodwinds play the cantus firmus in unison with the alto voice, while the strings play independent figuration in F major, illustrating hope, although the text says that hope is not yet in sight. John Eliot Gardiner describes the "confident diatonic harmonies" as an "optimistic, wordless answer" to the voice's "prayer for comfort".
A second expressive recitative leads to a second aria, which is accompanied by violin I and the recorders, playing in unison an octave higher. The lamenting text of the beginning "" is stressed by intervals such as augmented second, diminished fifth and diminished seventh. The ritornello has two distinctly different parts, a lamenting section and a hopeful one, full of fast runs and passages. In the middle section, the text "" is accented by an octave leap upwards in the voice and upwards runs in the instruments, contrasting the downward line in movement 1.
The closing chorale is a four-part setting of the melody of "" by Heinrich Isaac, which is featured twice in Bach's St Matthew Passion in movements 10 and 37.
\header
\layout
global =
tn = \tempo 4=84
tf = \tempo 4=42
soprano = \relative c
alto = \relative c
tenor = \relative c'
bass = \relative c'
verse = \lyricmode
\score
\score