History essay on Bach’s Cantata 61

Qing Li
10/26/2019

Bach, as a great Baroque musician, has composed a lot of Cantata. One of his Cantata, Cantata

61, was composed in 1714 when Bach was at Weimar. As a typical Weimar Cantata, this piece has a

strong Italian influence. I am gonna analyze this Cantata by movements to show how Bach fits the words

in his music and how different styles influenced his music.

This whole Cantata starts with the chorus. The first movement is in a fast-slow-fast structure. The

first section is a very typical French overture to my ears, the second section sounds like a fugue. The text

has four lines, the first and second lines are in the first fast section, the third line is in the slow section and

the fourth line is in the second slow section. For the first line, which is saying “Now come, Savior of the

Gentiles”, the melody is firstly present in the continuo, then Bach lets the soprano voice sings first, after

that, alto, tenor and bass sing one after another. This setting of letting the orchestra presents the idea first

has a clear influence by Buxtehude. As always, Bach not only studied this style but also took a further

step, which in this case is letting the voices also sing one after another. For me, this setting is very

effective to create an atmosphere of “coming” which emphasizes the text. The music form of this line,

which is the typical French overture dotted rhythm, also emphasizes the word “come” in the text. For the

second line of text, all voices are singing together.

The third line, which is in the fast fuge section, is saying “of which itself wonders the whole world”.

Bach’s setting is very effective in this phrase as well. Firstly, I think the fuge form emphasizes the word

“whole” in the text, because of the nature of the fuge, this line has a rich and complex sound especially

when compared to the first two lines. Also, Bach emphasized the word “whole” by using short musical

phrases that maintain more notes and times compared to other words, which suits the word “wonder” very

well.

The second movement is a tenor solo recitative with the accompaniment of the continuo which

has influence from Italian opera. The last line of the text has a more aria-like feeling. Although the

recitative is a pretty plain and straight-forward form, Bach still fits the text very well in this limited space.

For this first line which is saying “the savior has come”, he uses a bigger interval for the word “come” to

actually simulate the action of “come”. For the second line “has our lowly flesh and blood to himself

taken”, Bach used an ascending phrase to emphasize the word “slowly”.

After that, Bach emphasized the word “highest” by putting this word in the highest note in this movement.
For the last line which is saying “you come and let your light with full blessing shine”, Bach made this a

more aria-like phrase and let it repeat four times. This is a very clever setting because it lets the composer

emphasize different words in the repeat. First of all, the word “light” is always the highest note in every

phrase which is suitable. In the second repeat, Bach enlarges the word “full” with a lot of notes to

emphasize it. He then emphasizes the word “blessing” by doing the same thing in the third repeat. For the

last repeat, Bach made the word “shine” the highest note and wrote an ascending line to achieve it.
 The third movement is an aria by the tenor and it is accompanied by violin and viola in unison

and the continuo. This movement sounds very much like an Italian gige. The first phrase of the text is

saying “come, Jesus, come to your church, and give a blessed new year”. As what Bach did before, he

emphasized and stimulated the word “come” by adding more notes which gives the word action. Also, he

emphasized the word “blessed” by the same trick. One interesting fact is that Bach uses ascending phrases

every time for the word “Jesus”.

The second line of the text is saying “further of your name the honor, uphold a healthy doctrine and bless

chancel and altar”. For this phrase, Bach set high notes in the phrase when the word “uphold” appears,

which smartly stimulates the action. Also, every time “chancel and altar” appears, Bach sets high notes

for “chancel” and slow notes for “altar”.

 The fourth movement is a bass recitative. The text is from Revelation and the bass presents the

voice of God. The first line of the text is saying “see, I stand before the door and knock”, the whole

accompaniment is stimulated by the knocking action by the pizzicato chords in the strings and staccato

chords in the continuo. The voice also has staccato notes to stimulate the action when singing the word

“knock”.

Bach also stimulates the action of opening the door when the text has the word “the door will open” and

the action of coming in when the text has the word “I will come in”.

The fifth movement is a soprano aria which has an adagio section in the middle. It is the response

to the previous movement. Bach stimulated the action “open” by using ascending phrases and he enlarged

the word “whole” by adding more notes to it.

Bach stimulated the word “come” and “move in” as well in the second line.

In the adagio section, Bach set low notes for the word “dust and earth”, which is another smart

stimulation. When the text has “his” which is referring to Christ, Bach wrote another descending phrase.

The last movement is sung by the chorus. Overall it is full of excitement and energy, which is

very suitable for the text “come your lovely crown of joy, wait not longer”. As what Bach did for the

whole piece, he first set the word “amen” with ascending phrases.
Also, he used very long phrases to enlarge the word “joy” in the alto voice. There is also an extremely

long phrase in the tenor for the word “wait” and “long”.

Overall, this piece has strong influences from Buxtehude, Italian opera and french dance suites.

Bach cleverly sets the text to the music as always and makes this whole piece interesting and fun to

explore.