Johann Sebastian Bach
Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis
“My heart was deeply troubled”
(Cantata BWV 21)

Regarded as one of Bach’s most elegant and moving cantatas, Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis (BWV 21, “My heart was deeply troubled”) was first performed in 1713 when Bach was chamber and court organist in Weimar. In 1723, near the beginning of his long tenure in Leipzig, he rearranged the cantata, making some revisions in many of itss movements. He may have made further changes later, so that today’s recordings of the work reflect the evolution of a beautiful work-in-progress.

Following an introductory Sinfonia movement, the opening chorus is based on a verse from Psalm 94 which echoes the spirit of the Introit sung on the Third Sunday after Trinity: “I had much affliction in my heart, but your consolations restore my soul.” This is followed by a soprano aria, accompanied by a plaintive oboe: “Sighs, tears, grief, distress, anxious longing, fear and death gnaw at my oppressed heart. I feel misery, pain.” (The text form the entire cantata is available here).

The Epistle reading for the same Sunday exhorts believers to cast all their care upon God. Bach spends the entire first half of this cantata (his longest, as it happens), describing the intense turmoil of a troubled heart; the first half ends with a text from Psalm 42:

Why are you distressed, my soul,
and are so restless in me?
Wait on God; for I shall yet thank him
that I shall see him as my help and my God.

Not only the Epistle reading, but the passages from the Psalms in the Introit and Gradual for the Third Sunday after Trinity (the Sunday for which Bach composed this work) also portray a soul in need of comfort from God, comfort which is finally revealed in the cantata’s second half, which begins with a duet featuring the bass and soprano soloists representing a dialogue between Jesus and the soul of the believer.

The choral movement following this duet is remarkable. It features the soloists repeating the words “Sei nun wieder zufrieden, meine Seele, denn der Herr tut dir Guts” (“Be satisfied again now, my soul, for the Lord does good to you”). After several repetitions of this affirmation, the entire tenor section of the choir begins singing a stanza from a hymn by Georg Neumark (1621-1681):

What help to us are heavy sorrows
What help to us are our ‘woe’ and ‘alas’?
What does it help, that we every morning
sigh over our troubles?
We make our cross and suffering
only greater through sadness.

This is sung to a chorale melody to which we sing the hymn “If thou but trust in God to guide thee.” After the tenors finish their stanza, the soloists continue repeating that single line while the sopranos sing another stanza from Neumark’s hymn:

Do not think in the heat of your distress
that you have been abandoned by God
and that that man sits in God’s bosom
who always feeds on good fortune.
The course of time changes many things
and appoints his end to everything.

These few comments about the structure of this stirring cantata are a feeble effort to encourage you to listen to the entire work, text in hand, preferably having meditated a bit on the Biblical texts that are the backbone to this Sunday’s worship.Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis is performed below by the Netherlands Bach Society, Shunske Sato, violin and direction. The soloists are Ivan Podyomov, oboe; Stefanie True, soprano; Ulrike Malotta, alto; Guy Cutting, tenor; and Felix Schwandtke, bass.

Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis is performed below by the Netherlands Bach Society, Shunske Sato, violin and direction. The soloists are Ivan Podyomov, oboe; Stefanie True, soprano; Ulrike Malotta, alto; Guy Cutting, tenor; and Felix Schwandtke, bass.