Johann Sebastian Bach
Es ist das Heil uns kommen her
“Salvation has come to us”
(Cantata BWV 9)

This is one of two extant cantatas that Bach composed for use on the Sixth Sunday after Trinity. (The other work for hat Sunday, BWV 170, is discussed here.) Two of the movements in BWV 9 use a stanza from a Lutheran hymn — Es ist das Heil uns kommen her — by pastor and poet Paul Speratus (1489–1551). According to the Bach Cantatas Website, Speratus’s “preliminary studies were carried on at a German university. But his great desire for knowledge drew him on to Paris and Italy, where he studied philosophy and law. He received his doctor’s degree in both these branches of learning. Later he went to Vienna, where he gained the doctor’s degree in theology.” He wrote this hymn — all fourteen stanzas! — while imprisoned for his sympathy with the nascent Reformation.

The theological themes of the hymn resonate with the summary of salvation presented in the Epistle for the Sixth Sunday after Trinity, Romans 6:3-11, especially its central assertion: “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin.”

The cantata’s opening chorus is straight from the first stanza of Speratus’s hymn:

Salvation has come to us
from grace and sheer kindness.
Works never help; they cannot protect us.
Faith looks towards Jesus Christ
who has done enough for all of us.

The third movement is a tenor aria with an even more dreadful depiction of the sinful condition in which salvation comes to us.

We were sunk too deep,
the abyss had swallowed us completely,
the deep already threatened us with death
and yet in such distress
no one could give us a helping hand.

That third movement is the only movement of the seven that does not use the melody in Speratus’s hymn. That hymn still appears in many Lutheran hymnals, and is played here by pianist Andrew Remillard.

By the time Bach employed the tune for this cantata, his predecessor Dieterich Buxtehude (1637–1707) had already used the melody in a chorale prelude, which is played here by Geoff Olson.

In the nineteenth century, Johannes Brahms used the melody for a motet, sung here by the RIAS Kammerchor, conducted by Marcus Creed.

The German text to Bach’s cantata Es ist das Heil uns kommen her — with an English translation and notes — can be downloaded available here.

Below is a complete performance of the cantata sung by the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir, conducted by Ton Koopman. The soloists are Sandrine Piau, soprano; Bogna Bartosz, alto; James Gilchrist, tenor; and Klaus Mertens, bass.