Ich hab in Gottes Herz und Sinn, BWV 92

History and words

When Bach composed the cantata, he was in his second year as Thomaskantor (director of church music) in Leipzig. During his first year, beginning with the first Sunday after Trinity 1723, he had written a cycle of cantatas for the occasions of the liturgical year. In his second year he composed a second annual cycle of cantatas, which was planned to consist exclusively of chorale cantatas, each based on one Lutheran hymn. It included Ich hab in Gottes Herz und Sinn.

Bach composed the cantata for Septuagesima, the third Sunday before Lent. The prescribed readings for the Sunday were taken from the First Epistle to the Corinthians, "race for victory" (1 Corinthians 9:24–10:5), and from the Gospel of Matthew, the parable of the Workers in the Vineyard (Matthew 20:1–16). That year, Bach composed a cycle of chorale cantatas, begun on the first Sunday after Trinity of 1724. The cantata is based on "Ich hab in Gottes Herz und Sinn", a hymn in twelve stanzas by Paul Gerhardt (1647), sung to the melody of "Was mein Gott will, das g'scheh allzeit". The theme of the hymn is faith in God and the submission to his will. An unknown poet kept five stanzas unchanged, in contrast to the usual two for opening and closing a chorale cantata. He kept stanza 1 for movement 1, stanza 2 for movement 2, stanza 5 for movement 4, stanza 10 for movement 7, and stanza 12 for the final movement 9. He paraphrased ideas from stanza 4 in movement 3, an aria, used phrases from stanzas 6 and 8 in movement 5, a recitative, ideas from stanza 9 in movement 6, and from stanza 11 in movement 8. He interpolated recitative in the chorale in movements 2 and 7, but without reference to the gospel.

Bach first performed the cantata on 28 January 1725. Bach's manuscript of the score and the parts of that performance are extant.

Scoring and structure

The cantata is scored for four vocal soloists—soprano, alto, tenor and bass—a four-part choir (SATB), two oboes d'amore, two violins, viola, and basso continuo. The cantata is in nine movements and is one of Bach's longer cantatas both in terms of form and amount of text and music, lasting around thirty minutes.

1. Chorus: Ich habe in Gottes Herz und Sinn
2. Recitative (bass) and chorale: Es kann mir fehlen nimmermehr!
3. Aria (tenor): Seht, seht! wie reißt, wie bricht, wie fällt
4. Chorale: Zudem ist Weisheit und Verstand
5. Recitative (tenor): Wir wollen uns nicht länger zagen
6. Aria (bass): Das Brausen von den rauhen Winden
7. Chorale (choir) and recitative (bass, tenor, alto, soprano): Ei nun, mein Gott, so fall ich dir – So spricht der Gott gelassne Geist
8. Aria (soprano): Meinem Hirten bleib ich treu
9. Chorale: Soll ich denn auch des Todes Weg

Music

Klaus Hofmann notes that the choice of chorale is surprising because it has the same tune as the base for the cantata of the previous week, Was mein Gott will, das g'scheh allzeit, BWV 111. In the opening chorus, the soprano sings the melody of the chorale as a cantus firmus in long notes. The melody appears in an interesting combination of phrases of different length, two measures alternating with three measures. The vocal parts are embedded in an independent orchestral concerto. their motifs are not taken from the hymn tune, but from the orchestra. The musicologist Julian Mincham notes the movement's "shimmering, translucent beauty, apparent from the very beginning".

Bach successfully tried to shape the five movements, which cite the chorale in words and music, differently. In the bass recitative, the singer switches between rendering the chorale tune and free recitative, with elements of tone painting. For example "mit grausem Knallen die Berge und die Hügel fallen" (with cracking and terrible crashing, the mountains and the hills must fall) is depicted with "very fast downward sequences into the depths – very similar to the depiction of the veil of the temple being torn asunder when Jesus dies" in the St John Passion and the St Matthew Passion. The tenor aria illustrates a dramatic text, "Seht, seht, wie reißt, wie bricht, wie fällt" (See, see, how [it] is torn, how it breaks and falls) in the "truly bizarre contour of the vocal line" and in "rhythmically disjointed orchestral writing". The next chorale stanza is sung by the alto to an independent trio of the oboes and the continuo, with the word "traurig" (sad) rendered by chromatic lines in the oboes. The message is God's wisdom, "Zeit, Ort und Stund ist ihm bekannt, zu tun und auch zu lassen" (He knows the time, the place, the hour in which to act or not to act).

The bass aria describes the "howling and raging of the rough winds", an image of the rough situation of a Christian, by "incessant movement" of both the voice and the continuo. In the following chorale, the text again is alternating chorale words and free poetry. This time Bach alternates also the voices, the chorale is sung by the choir, the recitative by the four soloists in the sequence bass, tenor, alto and soprano. The last line, "und ich kann bei gedämpften Saiten dem Friedensfürst ein neues Lied bereiten" (And, with muted strings, I can prepare a new song for the Prince of Peace) leads to the following soprano aria, which Bach graces with pizzicato of the strings and no continuo, to which oboe d'amore and soprano perform a "graceful, dance-like melody and poignant ascending sixths and sevenths". John Eliot Gardiner notes that in the "enchanting conclusion" on the words "Amen: Vater, nimm mich an!" (Amen: Father take me up!), "innocence, trust and fragility are all rolled into one". The cantata is closed by a four-part setting of the chorale.

The cantata is Bach's only chorale cantata based on a hymn by Gerhardt.

Selected recordings