BWV 177

The Cantata BWV 177 “Ich ruf’ zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ” is one of the few cantatas with an autograph date. These dates are sometimes misleading. The Cantata BWV 97 for instance has the date of 1734 but one feels it has strong affinities with work done in the Cöthen period. Perhaps it was finished and perfected in 1734. Our cantata here, however, feels very like a work of the early 1730’s and is entirely characteristic of the best pieces of that period.

Bach had worked with the chorale melody before, most notably, the setting in the “Orgelbüchlein” is one of the most wonderful of his early chorale settings. The melody is in bar form. The Abgesang (concluding section) is long, five phrases, and does not recapitulate the Stollen (repeated first section). That fact becomes significant in the forms Bach chooses for the central verses. Like most of the later chorale cantatas, Bach takes the text verbatim from the chorale and as in many of them there are no recitatives.

The chorus is one of the longest in all of the cantatas, 285 bars. Even by Bach’s standards it is a masterful example of the tonal and structural control that he is able to muster for a long movement. The length comes not only because he is treating nine longish chorale phrases, but also he is introducing extended and harmonically adventurous interludes. The work is scored for two oboes, strings with prominent solo violin and continuo. The opening line of text, ”I call to you,” draws from Bach a texture full of echo effects and a rich and varied orchestration. The very beginning starts with an interesting color; the first oboe holds a long note while gradually the other instruments enter, staccato and mysteriously. Against this texture the solo violin, sometimes augmented by the tutti, sometimes not, plays a lively but glossy theme. This solo-tutti alternation continues throughout the movement. Interestingly when Bach provides this detailed kind of texture his harmony is often smooth, flowing and not very directional. Here it is very directed even sharply etched. Particularly notable is the circle of fifths going to the augmented sixth chord leading back to the tonic, a pattern that happens repeatedly at the cadences before the choral entrances. This is a big chorus of extraordinary detail. Each phrase is remarkably characterized.

Bach does not write nearly as many arias with only continuo accompaniment for alto as the other three voices. But the aria #2 in this cantata is one of the best. It opens with a kind of “wedge” theme in the continuo very like the E Minor ”Wedge” Fugue for Organ. After four symmetrical phrases of the “supplication” variety the wedge figure, that gradually widens the intervals from small to large, leads us into the cadence. This “wedge” never appears in the voice but is remarkably flexible in its ability to manipulate the harmony. The voice mostly uses the supplicating theme and long expressive melismas. Bach adheres to the chorale text form here, as opposed to the next two arias.

The soprano aria #3 with oboe da caccia treats the chorale text differently. Here the aria is in two large sections. The Stollen is repeated as it is in the original, but the five lines of the Abgesang are also repeated giving the aria a feeling of symmetry that is lacking in the chorale. Bach also writes very different kinds of phrases for the two halves, lyrical and malleable in the first part, a little craggy and much more sharply defined in the second. It is interesting that the strange and somewhat unsettling appoggiatura in the opening theme reappears in the final chorale harmonization.

The tenor aria is a happy surprise. The wonderful jolly obbligati for solo violin and bassoon bring back a bit of the texture of the opening chorus but the character is entirely different. This is a very happy piece. Even the mention of “sterben” at the end cannot entirely erase the sense of relief that the piece brings. Here in a virtually unknown cantata is a real “hit.” It is strange that it is not more famous. The final chorale harmonization is unusually dense, very impressive in its harmonic detail and color. In this period of sacred cantata composition Bach does not always hit the mark with the kind of miraculous regularity that he does in the 1st and 2nd Jahrgangen.” But when he does as he does here and in the previous year’s “Wachet auf!”, the works are as good as any he ever wrote.

©Craig Smith