Johann Sebastian Bach
Die Himmel erzählen die Ehre Gottes
“The heavens declare the glory of God”
(Cantata BWV 76) 

Bach composed two cantatas for use on the Second Sunday after Trinity. The earliest of the two dates to 1723, and it was only the second cantata to be sung in Leipzig’s St. Thomas Church after Bach began his productive years at Kapellmeister there.

Die Himmel erzählen die Ehre Gottes (“The heavens declare the glory of God”) opens with a joyous and confident chorus. The use of a trumpet — relatively uncommon in Bach’s cantatas — clearly conveys the proclamation of the proclamation of God’s glory in the opening text from Psalm 19. Conductor John Eliot Gardiner comments about this first movement: “We have no means of knowing how it was received at the time, but there is nothing in the surviving music of Johann Kuhnau, Bach’s predecessor, to match this in complexity or forwardly propulsive energy.”

In Bach’s day, the Epistle and Gospel readings for the Second Sunday after Trinity were the same as in ours: I St. John 3:13-24 and St. Luke 14:16-24. It is not be immediately clear what the familiar claim in Psalm 19 about God’s glory being evident in Creation has to do with either reading. But a tenor recitative following that opening chorus explains the connection between this Psalm and the parable in the Gospel reading about invitations being sent out to a great banquet:

Therefore God does not leave himself without witness! Nature and Grace speak to all men: all this God has indeed done so that the heavens move and spirit and body have motion. God himself bends down towards you and calls through countless messengers: Arise, come to my love feast!

Later a bass recitative and aria makes it clear that not everyone accepts the invitation to God’s banquet. “The oldest idol of his own pleasure controls the heart of man.” And in the second half of the cantata, a tenor aria presents echoes of the opening of the Epistle reading in which St. John warned: “Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you.” The tenor soloist recognizes the persecution that believers experience, and accepts it:

Just hate me, really hate me,
You hostile generation!
To embrace Christ in faith
I shall abandon all joys.

You may read the rest of the text to this cantata here, and listen to all of Die Himmel erzählen die Ehre Gottes (BWV 76) in the recording embedded below, which features a performance by the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir, conducted by Ton Koopman. The soloists are Ruth Ziesak, soprano; Elisabeth von Magnus, alto; Paul Agnew, tenor; and Klaus Mertens, bass.