Corrie and I made our first visit to the Token Creek Chamber Music Festival yesterday afternoon. What a delight! It’s a lovely setting; we were surprised to find the festival barn air-conditioned and we enjoyed the free wine and nibbles at intermission. But the music was the reason we went and we were wowed.
The Harbisons, along with some local musicians joined members of Emmanuel Bach Musicians from Boston for an all Bach concert. The main piece was the cantata “Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut” BWV #199. The text and translation is here.
The key passages are these:
6. Chorale S
Ich, dein betrübtes Kind,
Werf alle meine Sünd,
So viel ihr in mir stecken
Und mich so heftig schrecken,
In deine tiefen Wunden,
Da ich stets Heil gefunden.
(“Wo soll ich fliehen hin,” verse 3) |
6. Chorale S
I, Your troubled child,
cast all my sins,
as many as hide within me
and frighten me so greatly,
into Your deep wounds,
where I have always found salvation. |
7. Rezitativ S
Ich lege mich in diese Wunden
Als in den rechten Felsenstein;
Die sollen meine Ruhstatt sein.
In diese will ich mich im Glauben schwingen
Und drauf vergnügt und fröhlich singen: |
7. Recitative S
I lay myself on these wounds
as though upon a true rock;
they shall be my resting place.
Upon them will I soar in faith
and therefore contented and happily sing: |
8. Arie S
Wie freudig ist mein Herz,
Da Gott versöhnet ist
Und mir auf Reu und Leid
Nicht mehr die Seligkeit
Noch auch sein Herz verschließt. |
8. Aria S
How joyful is my heart,
for God is appeased
and for my regret and sorrow
no longer from bliss
nor from His heart excludes me. |
The chorale is the 3rd verse of a hymn by Johannes Hermann and it clearly provides the anchor point for the whole cantata.
The language of “throwing all of one’s sins in the deep wounds” of Jesus Christ seems stranger coming in a seventeenth-century Lutheran hymn than it would from an eighteenth-century cantata influenced by Pietism. But the imagery harkens back much further to late-Medieval piety that had as a devotional focus the wounds of Jesus Christ, especially the side wound. The translation copied above seems incorrect in the recitative, which translates the German preposition “in” as “on.” John Harbison’s notes on the piece are here. Here, as so often, Bach is able to transform a text that is rather over the top religiously into something sublime.
In any case, it was a lovely performance by soprano Kendra Colton.
I’m looking forward to next year’s series.
Preaching Grace on the Square 