BWV 186a

In his last season in Weimar Bach wrote three cantatas for the last three Sundays in Advent to texts of Salomo Franck. Since these three Sundays had no concerted music when he moved to Leipzig, Bach adapted these three words for other purposes. Last week we heard Cantata BWV 70 in his expansion for the twenty-sixth Sunday after Trinity. This week we perform BWV 186a in a reconstruction of the original Weimar version. All three of the Weimar cantatas have no recitatives and are of the same pattern, with a chorus followed by four arias and a chorale.

Our cantata opens with a tortured chorus instructing the soul not to be confounded by the anomaly of Christ's coming as a servant. The vexation is characterized in two ways, first by a grinding dissonance and then by an elegant, almost dancelike motif. The chorus very purposefully does not clarify the anomaly.

The bass aria asks its difficult questions in a rolling triple meter. The doubtful spirit is subtly characterized by a winding and tortured line on the word "zweifelsvoll."

The marvelous tenor aria with viola obbligato is like a slowly unfolding flower, which reveals its beauties and state of grace only gradually.

The soprano aria is more poignantly direct, with its chromatic lines illustrating the Lord's embrace of the poor. The gigue-character duet for soprano and alto is a surprising take on the text, After three slowish pieces it adds a tremendous lift to the end of the cantata. A beautiful four-voice setting of "Von Gott will ich nicht lassen" ends the cantata.

©Craig Smith