Ich lasse dich nicht, BWV 1164

History and context#

Bach wrote his motets in the tradition of the Evangelienmotetten (motets on gospel texts) of the 17th century by composers such as Melchior Franck, Melchior Vulpius and Heinrich Schütz. When he composed these works, music without an independent orchestra on texts limited to biblical words and a chorale without contemporary poetry, the genre was already out of fashion, but there was evidently a demand for such works at funerals, a ceremony for which at least some of Bach’s motets were written. Ich lasse dich nicht, then known as only the first movement, was attributed in the 19th century to both Johann Sebastian Bach and Johann Christoph Bach, his father’s cousin. In the Bach-Ausgabe, the editor Franz Wüllner described the piece as “one of the most beautiful works of German church music” but not “authentic”, therefore giving Johann Christoph Bach as the composer. When Wolfgang Schmieder created the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis in 1950, he followed Wüllner, placing the motet in the appendix and assigning “presumably by Johann Christoph Bach”. When Konrad Ameln edited Bach’s motets for the Neue Bach-Ausgabe, he consequently omitted it, but it was printed in the appendix. Other authorities had doubted this attribution, for example Philipp Spitta, who in the first edition of his Bach biography mentioned Johann Christoph Bach as the composer, but in the second added that “the source evidence didn’t permit a definite attribution”. Ich lasse dich nicht in two movements was found, written partly in Bach’s hand, in the Altbachisches Archiv, a collection of music of the Bach family which the Bach scholar Christoph Wolff rediscovered in Kyiv in 1999. Bach scholars now assume that J. S. Bach composed the first movement, possibly during his Weimar period around 1712. The chorale is a transcription of one of his organ pieces and was possibly added in the 19th century. John Eliot Gardiner, who recorded Bach motets including this one in 2011, comments on the authorship: The closing chorale was not part of the score but appeared first in the first print of the motet in 1802 by Johann Gottfried Schicht, also a Thomaskantor. He found the setting in Bach’s chorales collected by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Johann Philipp Kirnberger in 1787, transposed it from A minor to F minor and adjusted the time to the motet.

Text, scoring and structure#

The text for the first movement of the motet is a verse taken from the Book of Genesis and the account of Jacob’s return to Canaan, just before he is due to meet his brother Esau from whose anger he had fled many years before, after tricking his father Isaac into blessing him with the blessing belonging to the firstborn. At night Jacob is approached by a mysterious figure who engages him in a wrestling match in which Jacob prevails, although an injury received during the fight results in a lifelong limp. Jacob insists on being blessed by the man, thought to be a theophany, before he lets go of him (). The motet for double choir is followed by the third stanza of the hymn "" by Erasmus Alberus. Bach structured the movement in F minor in two sections and scored it for double chorus, SATB – SATB and unspecified instruments playing colla parte. In the second section, the choir is no longer divided, the soprano sings the cantus firmus of the chorale, while the lower voices engage in imitative polyphony. The added chorale in the same key is the eighth stanza from “”, “, set for four parts. It is one of Bach’s chorale settings, BWV 421, and was possibly added in the 19th century.

Recordings#

Examples of complete recordings of Bach’s motets without BWV 1164 include Michel Corboz’s, recorded in 1995, and Otto Kargl’s, recorded in 2008. On the other hand, the motet is included, with a recording time of 5:08, in Wolfgang Helbich’s The Apocryphal Bach Motets, sung by the Alsfelder Vokalensemble, recorded 1993 and released in 1994 (re-issued 2014). Masaaki Suzuki’s 2009 Bach Motets recording, with the Bach Collegium Japan, includes the motet without the closing chorale (recording time: 4:01). John Eliot Gardiner, conducting the Monteverdi Choir, recorded Bach’s motets without in 1980, but included it in the 2011 live recording of the set.

External links#

• • Ich lasse dich nicht, du segnest mich denn, BWV Anh. 159 (Johann Sebastian Bach) cpdl.org