It’s been busy in the bunker this week, and so I am late with the latest cantata (something Herr Bach couldn’t say and get away with, I suspect!).

The gospel for today back in 1724 would have been Matthew 20 v. 1 – 16. That’s the parable of the workers in the vineyard, the essential gist of which is that a vineyard owner hires people at the start of the day and promises to pay them a penny; then he hires more at lunchtime and in the mid-afternoon. Finally, he hires some extra workers just one hour before works stops. Then he proceeds to pay everyone the contracted penny wages. Naturally, those who worked since early morning for the same pay as those hired just an hour before complain at their treatment. To which the vineyard owner retorts, ‘Were you not hired at a penny? And haven’t I paid you a penny? So what harm has befallen you? And why, therefore, do you complain? It’s my money and I can pay it as I like, so if I choose to pay these who came last the same as I pay you who came first, it’s not for you to question. Take what is yours and go away.’ In German, those last words translate to Nimm, was dein ist, und gehe hin -and thus gives this cantata its title.

In other words, this cantata seeks to deal with a central conundrum of religious belief: how come the bad guys always seem to get all the luck and the good ones get the shaft? The libretto for the cantata doesn’t really have much profound to say on the matter, other than ‘God knows what’s best for you’, so chin up and trust in Him. Sentiments which don’t really work for me, I’m afraid! The music is also curiously bland, with really nothing particular to commend it. There’s a weird ending to the last movement: just when you think it’s all about to resolve conventionally, the last cadence goes very peculiar. Other than that, it’s a workmanlike affair and not much else.

As a result, I’m afraid I haven’t put a lot of effort into translating this one. In fact, “not a lot” really means “zero”, so there is no Diznix translation this week. This site provides one which, on this occasion, is more than adequate, I think.

Possibly more interesting than the music this week is the fact that today marked Septuagesima in 1724: approximately seventy days before Easter (though this observance was dropped from the Roman Catholic liturgy after Vatican 2, and the Anglicans followed soon after. Lutherans still observe it). Benjamin Britten wrote an operetta (Paul Bunyan) in 1941 to a libretto by W.H. Auden, one part of which contains the perhaps memorable line, Septuagesima …ate less and less-imer. Had them rolling in the aisles, I expect, but at least it sticks in my mind! Septuagesima fell rather earlier than that this year, because Easter is a moveable feast and falls this year on 4th April. Count seventy days back from that and you find out that, this year, Septuagesima Sunday was actually last weekend. No matter: it has traditionally marked the beginning of the ‘pre_lenten period’, and thus a time for carnival and other such festivities.

Today is Candlemas -precisely 40 days after Christmas day (doesn’t time fly?!), and therefore the day on which Mary was bound to present herself for ritual purification after giving birth, according to the rules for these sorts of things laid down in Leviticus (Chapter 12 v. 2-8, if you fancy checking it!). As a result, the formal name for this feastday is usually given as ‘The feast of the purification of the virgin’, though it’s sometimes referred to as the feast of the presentation of Jesus in the Temple, because Jesus was with Mary when she went to the Temple.

The old and holy Jew Simeon was also at the Temple at this time, and recognised Jesus’ true nature. He therefore took him in his arms (so the Gospel relates) and gives voice to the words which became known as the Nunc dimitis (“Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word. For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; To be a light to lighten the Gentiles and to be the glory of thy people Israel.”). It is this part of the Gospel which Bach’s librettist used to construct today’s cantata text: there is a direct quote from it in movement 2 -which I’ve marked in bold italics below (“Herr, nun lässest du deinen Diener in Friede fahren, wie du gesaget hast.”), and the final chorale makes specific mention of Jesus being a ‘blessed light for the heathen’. More generally, Simeon was happy to have seen Jesus, at last, just before dying -and the general sense of the cantata is one of great, joyous fun and celebration.

You can tell that from the get-go because of the use of horns in the orchestration for movement 1: there’s nothing quite as raucously happy in Baroque music as the sound of hunting horns, I think! Movement 2 is much more meditative. Movement three is back to dance rhythms. The final two movements are extremely short ’suffixes’ to the main work (movements 1 to 3), and don’t really have much of a personality of their own. Indeed, it is often claimed that in preparing this work, Bach pinched the three movements from a violin concerto (now lost), and stuck on two extra bits (including the obligatory chorale) to flesh the thing out into standard cantata form. Given he only had a couple of days after his last cantata to get things ready, “borrowing” another work in this way would have made sense, I think.

Anyway: I like it. The last two movements are certainly a bit pedestrian, but movements 1 and 3 sound great, and the second movement is a wonderful mix of quasi-plainchant of the “raw” Nunc dimitis text over an elaborate weave of notes from the orchestra: lovely stuff. Samples in the usual place, password=diznix.

Incidentally, Candlemas marks the point where the Church stops counting things as happening ‘after Christmas’ or ‘after Epiphany’ and starts counting them as being ‘before Easter’. So if you haven’t taken your Christmas decorations down yet, now’s your last chance! Traditionally, too, Candlemas day was the day you predicted what the forthcoming weather was going to be like: if the day itself was bright and clear, Winter would continue long and cold. If the day were wet and cloudy, Spring wouldn’t be far away. In America, this tradition got morphed into Groundhog Day -which is why Groundhog Day is February 2nd, too. (You have the Pennsylvania Dutch immigrants in the 18th and 19th Centuries -who were actually German, of course- to thank for that). And why the name Candlemas, back in Europe? Because today was the day the Church would bless the entire stock of candles it intended to use throughout the coming year. All in all, happy candlemas!

In the Lutheran lectionary of 1724, the Gospel reading appointed for today was the one from Matthew 8, where Jesus calms the storm on the Sea of Galilee:

And when he was entered into a ship, his disciples followed him. And, behold, there arose a great tempest in the sea, insomuch that the ship was covered with the waves: but he was asleep. And his disciples came to him, and awoke him, saying, Lord, save us: we perish! And he saith unto them, Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith? Then he arose, and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a great calm.

It’s easy to see how the story can be interpreted in a purely spiritual way: when we think Jesus is not with us, “asleep on the job”, as it were, life’s storms can threaten to overwhelm us. However, if we have faith, all will be well. And that’s pretty much what Bach’s librettist has done with this week’s cantata text. The title, translated, reads “Jesus is asleep -so what hope is there for me?”, and it’s mostly downhill all the way thereafter, except that by Movement 5 (a bass aria -and Bach invariably uses the bass to speak as Christ himself), we get the message of calm: Schweig, aufgetürmtes Meer! (“Be still, tempestuous seas!”) and the concluding chorale, as ever, points the message home: when Jesus is with me, Satan can do his worst, and all will be OK. A curious feature of that fifth movement, when Jesus calms the storm, is that it’s written in da capo form (which simply means you go back to the beginning and repeat what has already been played until a certain point is reached, when you can finally stop). The curious effect is that after Jesus goes to the trouble of calming the storm, the damn thing starts up again! Not sure if there’s a subtle point being made there, or whether musical form is playing inadvertently inappropriate tricks on us! But no matter…

Cantata BWV 81 is of particular interest for a couple of reasons, I think. One is its form and structure: there’s no opening chorale. Instead, we’re plunged (pun intended!) straightaway into an alto aria, built on a gentle accompaniment that suggests (to these ears) a boat bobbing gently on water: the musical calm before the storm, perhaps. At least one commentator has called it a “lullaby”, hinting at Jesus being asleep. Either way, the music is more literally dramatic than is usual with Bach’s cantatas, so in addition to lapping waves or lullabies, we get the violence of the storm graphically depicted in the third movement, for example, with the violins racing up and down the scales and the tenor voice part doing much the same (glad I’m not singing it!). Assorted critics have claimed all this makes the cantata quasi-operatic as a result, though I think that’s taking things a bit far (the liturgical nature of these works is always most apparent to me, anyway).

Apart from that, the cantata is of interest because of the textual disputes that have arisen concerning that same third movement. The words Bach wrote and set are

Die schäumenden Wellen von Belials Bächen
Verdoppeln die Wut.
Ein Christ soll zwar wie Wellen stehn,
Wenn Trübsalswinde um ihn gehn

…and the trouble is that repeated use of the word ‘Wellen’. The word literally means ‘waves’, and Die schäumenden Wellen means ‘the foamy/stormy waves (from Belial’s brooks -and Belial is another name for Satan)’. So far, no problem. But the second use of the word raises issues. The text is literally saying, ‘A Christian should, like waves, stand fast when troublesome winds blow about him’… but how can waves of water ever be said to “stand fast”?! The second use of the word ‘Wellen’ seems out of place, therefore. And to get around this conundrum of metaphors, inventive folk have supposed that Bach mis-wrote: that he intended to use the word Felsen second time around (because Felsen means ‘rock’, and it makes sense that a Christian should stand like a rock when waves of trouble crash about him). The only trouble with this theory is that it’s not what’s in the libretto as printed at the time, nor what Bach’s son clearly wrote about 20 years later (when he was in possession of the original performing materials and would thus have been able to check his father’s original work). In desperation, therefore, other inventive folk have noticed that “Wellen” can mean a shaft or axle of a wheel (’shaft’ is, for example, what Google Translate will tell you the word “Wellen” means, relegating ‘waves’ to a mere secondary meaning). The idea, they say, is that the Christian should be the immovable axle or shaft around which troubles fly -which is all well and good, but I have a hard time working out how anyone could write a text that talks about foamy waves and raging seas… and then stick a shaft in the middle of it, meaningfully! It’s this idea of an immovable shaft, however, that has many translations of this cantata’s text talking about ‘Christians ought to be like a pillar’ -and pillars in the middle of stormy seas don’t make a lot of sense to me either.

I’m not sure there’s any particularly good way of resolving this problem, so I’m going to be loose and free in my translation! I’m running with the idea that a wind causes (‘whips up’) waves on the sea, and that Bach’s librettist therefore had in mind that the winds of trouble blown by Satan would cause a Christian “sea” to ‘rise in waves’ to the occasion. It’s not an especially original idea (see, for example, Z. Philip Ambrose’s translation), but it avoids the need to suppose Bach couldn’t write correctly or that his librettist had axles in the middle of oceans on his mind!

Anyway, after all that lexicological drama, I have to say that I don’t particularly warm to this cantata overall. It’s OK, but nothing special (not like last week’s for example, which I’ve been listening to daily since last Sunday). Samples can be found in the usual place (password = diznix).

In the beginning, Rachel begat Chandler [and Milhouse and Quincy and Theodore...]; and Chandler begat Woodrow; and one of them begat Franklin (who turned out to be more of a Franklene). And Franklin begat Jefferson. And Jefferson wasn’t very well on my birthday, as this shot shows:

You can see that there’s a lump on the left side of Jefferson’s face and his left ear is very droopy. The blighter was still tucking away the food, however, so whatever was causing these symptoms didn’t seem to be inhibiting his appetite! We couldn’t help but notice, however, how small he is:

That’s him with his mum, Franklin(e), months after he left the pouch (though he was in there an awful lot longer than any of the other joeys [of which there have been about 8 in the past three years] we’ve ever had dealings with). She’s towering over him (and eating the breadcrumbs off his coat!)

Well, we called WIRES, the Australian Wildlife Rescue Service, and they basically said it was a gum abscess, probably caused by a grass seed getting lodged in the wrong place. Their prognosis was that it would either burst and the fellow would probably then go on to make a full recovery; or it would harden into a permanent lump, in which case he might go on to make a full-ish, if somewhat disfigured, recovery; or, he might be in such pain (as the floppy ear suggested) that he would begin to starve, his mother would abandon him, and eventually he’d die. She also happened to call him, in passing, a swamp wallaby… we’d always thought they were red-necked wallabies, but looking at the various pictures of the two types on the web, we reckon the WIRES lady knows what she’s on about!

Well, the prognosis of permanent disfigurement or even more permanent death wasn’t exactly encouraging, so we wondered whether we could capture the thing, whisk him off to the vet and then put him back without anyone noticing… but the WIRES lady made it pretty clear that the minute you take one of these things out of the wild, they have to spend months being looked after by hand and can only be released back into the wild after a very long familiarisation process. So that really wasn’t an option.

Fingers crossed it was, then.

A week ago, I noticed Jefferson drooling at the mouth. It could have been rabies, I suppose, or something equally disgusting… but my guess was that his abscess had burst and he was dealing with the puss-y consequences (sorry: maybe this blog post should have started with a Parental Guidance rating!) Again, the drooling didn’t seem to be interfering with his eating too much, so that seemed a hopeful sign. And sure enough, here’s the latest shot of our little friend:

Sorry about the quality of that photo: it was taken at near-midnight! But you can see, I hope, that his ear’s now fine and perky once more, and the lump on his face is mostly gone. He remains an awful lot smaller than any joey we’ve ever seen at this stage of their life before, but he’s feisty (fights for his place at the food bowl!) and his mum still appears to be looking out for him, grooming him and making sure he’s OK… which isn’t exactly standard wallaby behaviour (at least, not what we’ve ever seen before), but maybe suggests his long-term prognosis is now OK. All a bit of a worry, therefore, and not the straightforward progression from pouch to salad-muncher we’ve seen with all his previous macropodian brethren, but reassuring nonetheless.

What with all the public holiday shenanigans and our trip to the ghastliest hotel that Canberra can offer, I rather missed the deadline on this week’s Bach cantata. I did actually listen to it at the appointed hour, but writing about it and getting a translation together were a bit beyond me. Slapped wrists all round then, and I’ll try not to do it again!

It’s a shame I didn’t get around to writing about it on time, because it’s a particularly nice one: it has a rather unusual setting of the first movement, for example, which is neither chorale nor recitative/aria, but a combination of the two. The choir starts the chorale (with a rather lovely oboe/organ accompaniment), but the pure chorale is interrupted as tenor, bass and soprano soloists interject with their comments. Each brief recitative/interjection is followed by a return of the not-to-be-distracted choir/chorale. The whole effect is rather jolly -at least for this listener! Once you realise what they’re all singing about, it’s pretty clear that ‘jolly’ is probably not what you’re supposed to feel, but there you go!

The other reason this cantata is particularly interesting is that the text bears almost no resemblance to any of the readings for the day, Old Testament, Epistle or Gospel. There is a tiny bit of relevance to the Gospel for the day (which was Matthew 8, v1 -13, the story of Jesus first curing a leper and then the servant of a Roman Centurion), but it’s tricky to spot! The key passage is this one:

When he was come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed him. And, behold, there came a leper and worshipped him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.

In German, the bit where the leper says ‘if you will it, you can make me clean’ reads, “Herr, so du willst, kannst du mich wohl reinigen.” And those are the three words Bach’s librettist has seized on (and proceeded to wrestle into a mostly-unrecognisable form!). The cantata’s title therefore translates, broadly speaking, into ‘Lord, as you will, so let it be done to me’, and the entire piece is a meditation on the idea that however awkward and difficult life might be from time to time, God’s will is behind it all: there is a purpose to it all, and we must just learn to trust in God that this is so.

I’ve already mentioned the first movement is a particular highlight of the whole work, but so is the Bass’s long aria in the fourth movement (Herr, so du willt -note the echo of the three key words in the Gospel reading once again), in which the ‘if it’s your will’ is repeated, over and over: the orchestration and presentation changes with each repetition of the words, so that the effect is of repetition without boredom. Inspired stuff, basically. As you can probably tell, therefore, this is one of my favourites, and the usual samples can be downloaded in the usual fashion (the password to the zip file is diznix).

Next Sunday (for which I shall be on time, I hope!) is BWV 81, which is all about Jesus calming the storm. Have fun in the meantime!

It is Australia Day, so a public holiday, and therefore an occasion, we felt, to hop in the car and have a bit of an away-day break in sunny Canberra. After all, there is an excellent exhibition of some stunning artwork on at the National Gallery right now. And, besides, the country’s capital city has lots of other attractions worth a visit at any time.

So that’s what we did. The ‘Masterpieces from Paris’ exhibition was indeed worth the trip: Van Goghs, Pissaros, Picassos, Seurats and more, of stunning quality -and most unlikely to be viewable in the one space again (unless you’re a Parisian, of course, in which case it’s nothing special, I guess).

The National Portrait Gallery next door is currently hosting an Australian of the Year exhibition, in which portraits of past winners are viewable en masse. That was good fun, too.

For evening dinner, we went to the Jewel of India restaurant in the Melbourne Building, right in the heart of the city. It is quite new, apparently -and quite possibly the best Indian restaurant in the known Universe. I love Indian food and would say I am something of a connoisseur in regards to working out the difference between the so-so and the better-than-adequate… but, quite simply, the Jewel of India is the best Indian food I’ve ever eaten in Australia. Their website is a little rough around the edges, but their decor was clean, smart and comfortable. Their service was friendly and efficient without ever threatening to be in your face. Their prices were reasonable. The ambience was quiet and comfortable (no ghastly Bollywood tape tracks to annoy in the background, for example). Threir prices were extremely reasonable. And their food was simply wonderful. Thoroughly recommended, in short.

Not so the hotel we stayed in. It takes something a bit special to reduce me to the sort of language I’m about to use, but Rydges Lakeside is an utter shithole and I strongly advise that no-one in their right mind should ever even think about staying there. It’s not so much the bed sheets with oil stains on them. Or the random screws sticking out from the walls. Or the air conditioning temperature control that dangles loosely on the wall. Or the crack in the wall near the bedroom. Or the bathroom tap that drips incessantly. All of those could be forgiven and overlooked, I suspect, if one were feeling slightly charitable.

But an air conditioning unit that manages, when on full blast at the lowest possible temperature setting, to puff out slightly less air than an asthmatic ant with emphysema and reduce the room temperature by not one jot in consequence is -in an Australian summer- completely unforgivable.

I write these words at 1.40 AM as a result: the room is so warm that sleep is out of the question and I’m seriously contemplating nipping down to the car and letting its air conditioning do the job instead. A kip on the back seat there would be preferable to this insufferable inferno, basically.

I haven’t, of course, formally complained: for one thing, TOH seems able to snore daintily through the worst of it and thus causing a fuss would cause me even more grief later on, back home! Besides, the English don’t complain: we just blog about it afterwards.

It nevertheless remains the case that in all my 46 years of Earthly existence and the countless hotels I’ve stayed in on both sides of the globe and either hemisphere, I’ve never had the misfortune to stay in a worse hotel. Not once, ever. So, stay away from Rydges Lakeside in Canberra is all I’ll say by way of conclusion. In the immortal words of Elizabeth Taylor at the start of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf: What A Dump!

This weekend is a little trickier than normal when it comes to Bach cantatas. As my source for knowing what cantata to play on which weekend, I use the wikipedia page that lists the cantatas by their liturgical function. Thus, I’ve written about cantatas BWV 153, 65 and 154 which all got their first performances at this time of the year back in 1724. For this weekend, however, there was *no* cantata first performed in 1724.  There are suitable cantatas from 1725 and 1726. There is even one from 1729. But a 1724 offering doesn’t exist. So I shall instead have to listen to the BWV 155 cantata, which was written in 1716… and, presumably, used as the cantata in 1724 since it was the only one extant at that time for that week. I wonder what Herr Bach had been up to in mid-January 1724 to have caused himself to run out of cantata-writing time!

Anyway, the Gospel for this day in the 1700-ish Lutheran church was the one from St. John where Jesus turns water into wine at the feast of Cana (John 2 v. 1 – 11):

And so on. Bach’s librettists (Salomo Franck and Paul Speratus) focus on that rather curious statement by Jesus: My hour isn’t yet come, and spin it round a bit, as if to say: well, if not now, when?!  The cantata’s text dwells on the desperation that follows from having to hang around waiting for God to decide ‘now’ is the right time to make the ‘cup of tears’ that life sometimes seems to be, become instead a thing of comfort and joy. The singers, therefore, take the viewpoint expressed by the cantata’s very title (Mein Gott, wie lang, ach lange means ‘My God, how long, ah, how long?’), and the chorus (who usually end up singing the concluding ‘moral of the story’) can only offer the advice that although it often looks like God is not with you, you just need to grin and bear it and have faith that God really is with you, even if it doesn’t usually feel that way. (I must say this particular 21st century man has a lot of trouble dealing with this sort of ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ logic -of the sort that says, if bad things happen to you, it must have been your lack of faith; if good things happen to you, it’s all God’s doing. It may have made sense in the 18th century, but it just seems like having your cake and eating it to me these days!)

I don’t really warm to this cantata’s inner logic, in other words, though the music is (inevitably) a thing of beauty.

Samples of all five of the movements from this weekend’s cantata are available from the usual place, password protected, and the password is diznix. Complete recordings are, of course, widely available.

That last Chorale is so very Lutheran, with its strong emphasis on the power of “the word” to provide comfort and assurance! And you can see why, I think, they talk of modern-day psychiatrists as being somewhat the equivalent of earlier times’ priests! Anyway, I find the whole thing a bit mealy-mouthed and insufferably pious, so I’ll draw a veil over this particular cantata with some degree of pleasure!

My 46th birthday present arrived today, only 4 days late: http://www.amazon.com/Cantatas-J-Bach-Librettos-German-English/dp/0199297762/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263184996&sr=1-1 Slightly oddly, Amazon was promising me a delivery on February 9th, so they’ve surpassed themselves this time.

It’s a stonkingly expensive thing, of course, especially when you remember that Aussie dollars can’t buy as much as the US ones that page is displaying; but Dürr is pretty much definitive as far as Bach cantatas are concerned, so I had to have it. Might make my translations of the texts a little better in the future, I suppose; and if anyone ever posts anything very obvious in the comments, I can always reply dismissively, ‘well, durr!’ Sorry: that’s enough awful puns for one post.

Just before Australia Day this year (AusDay is always 26th January, in case you were wondering: it commemorates the day the first European settlers finally picked the right beach instead of the nasty one they’d been stuck on for nearly a week), we’ll be visiting Canberra’s National Gallery for its allegedly-impressive ‘Masterpieces from Paris’ exhibition as something of a late birthday treat. We’ll have to hope the car is working fine, otherwise we’ll have to take the van. And I suppose that if the van goes, we’ll not have to spend so much monet on fixing the car after all… Sorry, sorry. No more dreadful puns, I promise.

Anyway, enough of all this banter… back to work!

I don’t intend this blog should become a Bach-only zone, just in case you were wondering. It just happens that not a lot has, er, happened in this neck of the woods over the long, tedious Christmas/New Year holiday, whereas there have been quite a few religious anniversaries for which Bach provided the music 300 years (or so) ago. I did hit my 46th birthday on the 7th January; and I did cook a 6 Kg turkey for Christmas (and even if I say so myself, it turned out beautifully juicy and perfectly-cooked). We ended up eating a turkey curry on New Year’s Day, but no matter.

So, as work ramps up once more, and I encounter weird things I have to do in Windows, Linux and/or Oracle, technical stuff will make a re-appearance from time to time. But yes, Sundays for the next three years have pretty well been booked…

Continuing the journey through the Bach cantatas, this week we come to the one used for the first Sunday after Epiphany, which was first performed on 9th January 1724. The Gospel reading appointed for that day was Luke 2, verses 41-52, the edited highlights of which are:

Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up according to custom;  and when the feast was ended, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know it,  but supposing him to be in the company they went a day’s journey, and they sought him among their kinsfolk and acquaintances;  and when they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem, looking for him.

Bach’s librettist took large dollops of artistic license to turn that story of his parents losing Jesus in the Temple into a text which meditates at length on what it means to lose Jesus -and more importantly, to find him again- in one’s life. The cantata’s title (Mein liebster Jesus ist verloren) means, after all, “My loving Jesus is lost”. There are eight movements in total, scored for tenor, alto, and bass soloists plus chorus, together with a pair of oboe d’amore, strings, and basso continuo. It’s not as rich as last Wednesday’s offering, therefore, but it’s a great cantata anyway. Samples of all eight movements can be found in the usual place, and the password for the zip file is, as always, diznix.

Pressure of work means that, this weekend, I’m not able to do much more than simply give the German text and my (fairly loose!) translations of the same. Normal service hopefully resumes next weekend when it’s time for cantata 155.

A spiky introduction to a pretty bleak, impassioned aria from the tenor starts the piece. The text takes the idea of having ‘lost’ Jesus from the Gospel reading and personalises it. The piece wanders its way, pretty astringently, through assorted keys as the soloist gets increasingly worked up about the consequences of such a loss:

1. Aria (tenor)
Mein liebster Jesus ist verloren:
O Wort, das mir Verzweiflung bringt,
O Schwert, das durch die Seele dringt,
O Donnerwort in meinen Ohren.

My dearest Jesus is lost:
These are words that bring me despair,
A sword that pierces my soul,
A word that thunders my ears.

The same soloist then -somewhat more calmly- adds to the same thought in a short recitative.

2. Recitative (tenor)

Wo treff ich meinen Jesum an,
Wer zeiget mir die Bahn,
Wo meiner Seele brünstiges Verlangen,
Mein Heiland, hingegangen?
Kein Unglück kann mich so empfindlich rühren,
Als wenn ich Jesum soll verlieren.

Where do I find my Jesus?
Who will show me the way that
My saviour, the burning desire of my soul,
Has gone?
The worst misfortunes of life could not upset me more
Than would the loss of Jesus.

Time for the choir to join in with a lovely chorale (with an especially nice tenor line! I’m biased!!). Apart from the musical merits of the piece, the use of ‘Jesuslein’ in the text is endearing: the -lein suffix in German turns a word (in this case, obviously, ‘Jesus’) into a diminutive, implying familiarity and intimacy. It’s the same effect as calling your father ‘daddy’, I suppose. In this case, I’ve translated it as ‘little Jesus’. Note, too, a reference to ‘Schlangentreter’, which means ’snake-trampler’. It’s a fairly oblique reference to the Genesis 3 story of how the snake tempted Eve to eat of the tree of knowledge… and how God, as a consequence, cursed the snake to be hated by Eve’s offspring, who would trample it (“And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.”) It’s also a reference to Mark 16 (“and these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will … pick up snakes with their hands.”) and maybe to the bit in Acts 28, where St. Paul is bitten by a snake but suffers no harm (“Paul gathered a pile of brushwood and, as he put it on the fire, a viper, driven out by the heat, fastened itself on his hand … But Paul shook the snake off into the fire and suffered no ill effects.”)

3. Chorale

Jesu, mein Hort und Erretter,
Jesu, mein Zuversicht,
Jesu, starker Schlangentreter,
Jesu, meines Lebens Licht!
Wie verlanget meinem Herzen,
Jesulein, nach dir mit Schmerzen!
Komm, ach komm, ich warte dein,
Komm, o liebstes Jesulein!

Jesus, my rock and redeemer,
Jesus, my confidence,
Jesus, strong serpent-crusher,
Jesus, light of my life!
How my heart yearns in anguish
For you, little Jesus!
Come, ah come, I wait for You,
Come, O dearest little Jesus!

A jaunty little piece follows, sung by the alto. It’s got a nice lilt to it:

4. Aria (alto)

Jesu, laß dich finden,
Laß doch meine Sünden
Keine dicke Wolken sein,
Wo du dich zum Schrecken
Willst für mich verstecken,
Stelle dich bald wieder ein!

Jesus, let me find You,
Don’t let my sins become
A thick cloud behind which
You would hide from me.
Come back to me soon!

Quoting from the Gospel reading, the bass now answers the alto’s asking to be allowed to ‘find you’. It echoes Jesus’ somewhat pointed reply to his own parents: you ought to know very well how to find me. I’ll be in my father’s house!

5. Aria (bass)

Wisset ihr nicht, daß ich sein muß in dem, das meine Vaters ist?

Do you not know that I must be where my father is?

A long recitative for tenor now follows, responding to the idea that Jesus can be found ‘in his father’s house’.

6. Recitative (tenor)

Dies ist die Stimme meines Freundes,
Gott Lob und Dank!
Mein Jesu, mein getreuer Hort,
Läßt durch sein Wort
Sich wieder tröstlich hören;
Ich war vor Schmerzen krank,
Der Jammer wollte mir das Mark
In Beinen fast verzehren;
Nun aber wird mein Glaube wieder stark,
Nun bin ich höchst erfreut;
Denn ich erblicke meiner Seele Wonne,
Den Heiland, meine Sonne,
Der nach betrübter Trauernacht
Durch seinen Glanz mein Herze fröhlich macht.
Auf, Seele, mache dich bereit!
Du mußt zu ihm
In seines Vaters Haus, hin in den Tempel ziehn;
Da läßt er sich in seinem Wort erblicken,
Da will er dich im Sakrament erquicken;
Doch, willst du würdiglich sein Fleisch und Blut genießen,
So mußt du Jesum auch in Buß und Glauben küssen.

This is the voice of my friend,
Thanks be to God!
Jesus, my faithful treasure,
Gives comfort once more by
Allowing himself to be heard through his word.
I was with sick with pain.
My sorrow sapped the marrow of my bones;
But now my faith is strong again.
Now I am extremely pleased,
Because I see the delight of my soul
The Savior, my sun.
After a troubled night of sadness, his radiance
Has made my heart rejoice.
My soul, ready yourself!
You must go to him
In his father’s house, his temple.
For there he is made manifest in his word,
There he will refresh you in the sacrament -
Though, if you would worthily enjoy his flesh and blood,
You ought kiss Jesus in repentance and faith.

Now for the big surprise: a duet between tenor and alto. It’s a lovely piece -the particular combination of voices is relatively rare in the repertoire (though Bach did a glorious tenor/alto duet in his own Magnificat in D). On the grounds that Mary is frequently represented by an alto, I wonder if this is Bach’s supposition of what Joseph and Mary might have felt like having found Jesus back in the Temple? Anyway, the sense of  joyous celebration at having re-found Jesus is palpable. I find this one very difficult to get out of my head, anyway:

7. Duet (alto,tenor)

Wohl mir, Jesus ist gefunden,
Nun bin ich nicht mehr betrübt.
Der, den meine Seele liebt,
Zeigt sich mir zur frohen Stunden.
Ich will dich, mein Jesu, nun nimmermehr lassen,
Ich will dich im Glauben beständig umfassen.

How good it is for me that Jesus is found!
Now I am no longer sad.
He whom my soul loves
Shows himself to me for happy hours.
Jesus: never again shall I leave you,
Instead, now, I will faithfully stay with you.

A very short chorale finishes the piece, as usual drawing the moral of the story and pointing up the moral consequences of the story and sensitivities just elaborated :

8. Chorale

Meinen Jesum laß ich nicht,
Geh ihm ewig an der Seiten;
Christus läßt mich für und für
Zu den Lebensbächlein leiten.
Selig, wer mit mir so spricht:
Meinen Jesum laß ich nicht.

I will not leave my Jesus,
I will walk with him forever;
Christ shall guide me for ever
To the waters of life.
Blessed is he who says with me:
I will not leave my Jesus.