Sie Werden Euch In Den Bann Tun, BWV 183

(They will put you under banishment), , is a church cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach. He composed it in Leipzig for Exaudi, the Sunday after Ascension, and first performed it on 13 May 1725.

It is the fifth of nine cantatas on texts by Christiana Mariana von Ziegler, with whom Bach collaborated at the end of his second cantata cycle. It begins with quote from the Gospel, set for the bass as the vox Christi. For a closing chorale she used a stanza of Paul Gerhardt's "". The theme of the cantata is the reaction of the believer to the announcement of hardship and the hope for the assistance of the promised Holy Spirit. Bach scored the cantata for four vocal soloists (soprano, alto, tenor and bass), a four-part choir and a Baroque instrumental ensemble of two oboes d'amore, two oboes da caccia, a violoncello piccolo, strings and basso continuo. Unusually, all four oboes play together in two recitatives.

History and words

Bach wrote the cantata in his second year in Leipzig for the Sunday Exaudi, the Sunday after Ascension. The prescribed readings for the feast day were from the First Epistle of Peter, "serve each other" (), and from the second Farewell Discourse in the Gospel of John, the promise of the Paraclete, the "Spirit of Truth", and the announcement of prosecution ().

Some of the cantatas composed by Bach in his second year were chorale cantatas, a format he chose for services between the first Sunday after Trinity and Palm Sunday. For Easter he had returned to cantatas on more varied texts. Nine of the cantatas for the period between Easter and Pentecost are based on texts of Christiana Mariana von Ziegler, including this cantata. Bach later assigned it to his third annual cycle.

Ziegler begins the cantata with the same quotation from the Gospel as an unknown poet one year earlier in , the prediction of persecution of Christians. "They will put you under banishment, but the time will come, when, whoever kills you will think that he does God a service by it" (). She continues stressing the lack of fear possible for a follower who relies on "" (the protective arm of Jesus). In movements 3 and 4 she refers to the beginning of the Gospel, the spirit who will assist. The closing chorale is the fifth stanza of Paul Gerhardt's "".

Bach first performed the cantata on 13 May 1725.

Structure and scoring

Bach structured the cantata in five movements, beginning with what Gardiner describes as a "curtain raiser", a line from the gospel set as a recitative. This is followed by a sequence aria–recitative–aria, and the cantata is concluded by a four-part chorale. Bach scored the work for four vocal soloists (soprano, alto, tenor and bass), a four-part choir only in the closing chorale, and a Baroque instrumental ensemble in an unusual combination of instruments, two oboes d'amore (Oa), two oboes da caccia (Oc), two violins (Vl), viola (Va), a violoncello piccolo (Vp) and basso continuo.

In the following table of the movements, the scoring follows the Neue Bach-Ausgabe. The continuo, playing throughout, is not shown.

Music

In the first movement the words of Jesus are given to the bass, the voice type which by convention was the (voice of Christ). A year earlier (in ''Sie werden euch in den Bann tun'', BWV 44), Bach rendered the announcement of Jesus in a two-part movement, a duet for bass and tenor followed by an agitated chorus. In this cantata, he set it as a recitative of only five measures. The instrumentation is novel, having long chords of the four oboes, two oboes da caccia and two oboes d'amore, accompany the voice above a pedal point held by the continuo which creates a "sepulchral" sound, according to Julian Mincham. The Bach scholar Christoph Wolff notes that this "opulent oboe scoring" with all four oboes playing together is used only in the two recitatives (1 and 3).

The second movement, the first aria, is the longest of the work. It is sung by the tenor with an obbligato part for violoncello piccolo, an instrument with a tenor-bass range. The "dark and shaded" timbre of the movement has been seen as representing the protection provided by Christ. Denying the fear of the threatening death, the violoncello piccolo plays continuous runs.

Movement 3 is again a recitativo accompagnato, even more complex than the first one; the strings play long chords, whereas all the oboes repeat the same four-note motif throughout the movement, sung by the alto on the words "Ich bin bereit" (I am ready).

The second aria is accompanied by the strings and the two oboes da caccia in unison as obbligato instruments, thus both arias are dominated by instruments with a relatively low range (oboes de caccia having a pitch below that of a normal oboe). The opening line is appears three times, set similarly but not identically, which can be interpreted as a symbol of the Trinity.

The cantata is closed by a four-part chorale on the tune of "" by Johann Crüger.

Publication

Ziegler published the text in a collection of her work, along with the other ones set by Bach. These printed versions are slightly different from the texts used in the cantatas, and this is believed to be the result of the composer modifying the libretti with which he was presented. In the case of ''Sie werden euch in den Bann tun'' the differences between the printed version and that set by Bach are less than in the preceding cantatas such as .

The autograph score was inherited by C.P.E. Bach. It is extant as well as a set of parts. The music was not published until 1860 when it appeared as part of the first complete edition of the composer´s work, the . The editor of the volume in question was Wilhelm Rust. In the , it appeared in 1960, edited by Dürr.

Recordings

The selection is taken from the listing on the Bach Cantatas Website. Choirs with one voice per part (OVPP) and orchestras playing period instruments in historically informed performances are marked green.

Notes

References

Cited sources

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External links

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BWV 183 Sie werden euch in den Bann tun
English translation, University of Vermont

{{Good article
Church cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach
1725 compositions