Music for the Fifth Sunday
after Pentecost

Proper 8, Year C, June 27, 2010

Cantor and soloist:
Robin Smith as today’s cantor and soloist

Mass Setting:
Missa de Sancta Maria Magdalena, Healey Willan

Voluntary

Opening Hymn 525:
The Church’s one foundation, Aurelia

Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20
The congregation chants each half-verse of the psalm beginning at the asterisk *

At the Offertory—
Cantata 84, Ich bin vergnügt (movt. 3), J.S. Bach

Ich esse mit Freuden mein weniges Brot
Und gönne dem Nächsten von Herzen das Seine.
Ein ruhig Gewissen, ein fröhlicher Geist,
Ein dankbares Herze, das lobet und preist,
vermehret den Segen, verzuckert die Not.

I eat my little bit of bread with joy
and heartily leave to my neighbor his own.
A peaceful conscience, a happy spirit,
a thankful heart, that gives praise and thanks,
increases its blessing, sweetens its need.

Text: after Christian Friedrich Henrici (Picander) 1728/29

Offertory Hymn 550:
Jesus calls us; o’er the tumult, Restoration

During Communion—
Cantata 84, Ich bin vergnügt (movt. 1) Joh. Seb. Bach

Ich bin vergnügt mit meinem Glücke,
Das mir der liebe Gott beschert.
Soll ich nicht reiche Fülle haben,
So dank ich ihm vor kleine Gaben
Und bin auch nicht derselben wert.

I am content with the fortune
that my dear God bestows on me.
If I am not to have the comfort of riches,
then I thank Him for little gifts
and am also not worthy of these.

Text: after Christian Friedrich Henrici (Picander) 1728/29

Communion Hymn 706:
In your mercy, Lord, you called me, Halton Holgate

Closing Hymn 559:
Lead us, heavenly Father, lead us, Dulce carmen

Voluntary

Music Notes:

Johann Sebastian Bach’s (1685-1750) engaging five-movement work for solo soprano, oboe and strings, BWV 84 Ich bin vergnügt mit meinem Glücke, is actually labeled Cantata (most unusual in Bach’s sacred oeuvre). It was performed for the first time on February 9, 1727, set to an anonymous libretto but with links to an earlier one that Erdmann Neumeister provided for Telemann’s Eisenach cycle, and, still more closely, to one that Picander would go on to publish in 1728. The actual text that Bach set was anchored in the vineyard parable, though there is no mention of the disgruntled work-force, only of being “content with my good fortune that dear God bestows on me.” Matthew’s Gospel for the day concludes “So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen” (20:16), implying that the contract of employment holds good regardless of whether other parallel contracts are more favorable to the recipient. Since Bach was alert throughout his career to the danger of pricing himself below the going rate for a job before he agreed to a new contract, he might have found the homily of this cantata’s text quite hard to swallow. To be “content with my good fortune” is one thing—just one notch above obediently “accepting my calling” (as in the Calov quote he underlined in his personal Bible). But both Neumeister and Picander texts go a step further, speaking of being satisfied or happy with “the station” bestowed. Was Bach content with the “station” he found himself in Leipzig?

Everything we can glean from his troubled cantorship suggests a permanent inner struggle between the desire to do his job to the utmost of his abilities on the one hand (to the glory of God and the betterment of his neighbor, as he would have put it) and, on the other hand, the need to put up with “almost continual vexation, envy and persecution” (as he described it in a letter to a friend). Was it Bach, then, who engineered this change to the text? Hard to say. But even with this shift of emphasis, to look for an unequivocal portrayal of equanimity in the long opening E minor aria, Ich bin vergnügt mit meinem Glücke, (heard today during communion) would not just clash with everything we might glean from his situation in Leipzig, but would underestimate the ambivalence and complexity of music—especially his music—and its ability to give nuanced depictions of mood. Contentment is perhaps a rather static state of mind, whereas Bach’s music here suggests something dynamic and fluctuating. The florid intertwining of voice and oboe, the prevalent lilting dotted rhythms and expressive syncopations, the way the opening ritornello returns again and again in various guises while the soprano initiates fresh motifs: all these contribute to the enchantment of the music and to its elusive moods—wistful, resigned, even elegiac.

Due to its sheer ebullient high spirits, the second aria, Ich esse mit Freuden mein weniges Brot, (heard today as the offertory) for solo oboe, violin and continuo, is attractive in a far less sophisticated way. With its upward leap of a sixth it suggests an unconscious kinship to Galatea’s As when the dove from Handel’s masque Acis and Galatea.

-- Owen Burdick

Music for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Music Notes:

Music for the Fifth Sunday
after Pentecost