But only one movement, the tenor aria, really plumbs the depths of deep misery which utter alienation engenders. This thought pervades every verse with three of them (first, third and sixth) ending with the statement ‘I will not leave my Jesus’. The one is not a copy or a reworking of the other, but they have a similar stark, bleak and austere feeling of alienation from Jesus, a textual theme which also unites them.Ĭ 124 is not a pessimistic work, however, since it develops the idea of a positive and enduring relationship with Jesus. Both are highly chromatic, utilizing similar ‘weeping’ melodic shapes and accompaniment patterns. This could explain the extraordinary similarities between the two tenor arias, no 1 from C 154 and no 3 from C 124. Perhaps he found the perusal of cantatas written in previous years for the same events equally inspiring. It is believed that before settling to his composing desk he would frequently go to the harpsichord and play through a piece of his own or some other composer’s as a way of stimulating his creative processes. It is possible to conjecture that Bach looked back on the score of C 154 when setting out to compose 124. That apart, the chorale melody is not inserted into other movements such as we find in many works of this cycle, as indeed was also the case with C 122, performed just a few days previously. In C 124 it appears in E, the key of the opening fantasia, the highest pitch of all possibly the choir needed to be kept on their toes! Otherwise the harmonisations for all versions differ only in detail.Ĭ 124, however, is the only one of these three works for which Bach composed a chorale fantasia based upon the melody, so perhaps this excuses the repetition. (Cs 154 and 124 were both written for this same event, the first Sunday after Epiphany). It also concluded C 154, raised a tone to the key of D, and it is yet again to be found, in the same key in the 1727 cantata C 157. In the key of C it closed Part 2 of C 70, a large-scale work which, in November 1723, completed the church year. Boyd (p 289)claims it was originally composed by Andreas Hammerschmidt although Dürr is insistent that it was by Christian Keymann from 1658 (p 187). The first point of focus must be the chorale melody which clearly appealed to Bach since he used it three times in the first two Leipzig cycles. The thirty-third cantata of the cycle for the first Sunday after Epiphany. Download in Microsoft Word format Chapter 34 BWV 124 Meinen Jesum Lass ich nicht My Jesus, I shall not abandon you.Ĭhorus/fantasia–recit (tenor)–aria (tenor)–recit (bass)–duet (sop/alto)–chorale.
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