Patterico's Pontifications

11/11/2018

Sunday Music: Bach Cantata BWV 52

Filed under: Bach Cantatas,General,Music — Patterico @ 12:01 am



It is the twenty-fifth Sunday after Pentecost. The title of today’s Bach cantata is “Falsche Welt, dir trau ich nicht” (False world, I trust you not). It is a solo cantata for soprano, with the full choir appearing only in the final chorale.

Today’s Gospel reading is Mark 12:38-44:

Warning Against the Teachers of the Law

As he taught, Jesus said, “Watch out for the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. They devour widows’ houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. These men will be punished most severely.”

The Widow’s Offering

Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents.

Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.”

The text of today’s piece is available here. It contains these words:

Honesty is banished from the world,
falsehood has driven it away,
now hypocrisy
remains in its place.
The best friend is unfaithful,
o miserable condition!

It’s all the same, it’s all the same,
even if I am repudiated!
If the false world is my enemy,
O then God will yet be my friend,
He who deals honestly with me.

Happy listening! Soli Deo gloria.

[Cross-posted at The Jury Talks Back.]

5 Responses to “Sunday Music: Bach Cantata BWV 52”

  1. Nice! Here’s a favorite… https://youtu.be/q2T1csHUgF4

    Colonel Haiku (2601c0)

  2. Watch out for the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and be greeted with respect in the marketplaces

    Human nature has not changed much!

    Patricia (3363ec)

  3. Sung by a boy soprano, just as Bach would have expected.
    In fact, you have to wonder if he wasn’t making a sly comment by choosing to set this text for a singer who was too young to really know how false the World can be. And choosing as introduction a movement he wrote for a princely court and sent off in a patronage bid to a royal prince, the Margrave of Brandenburg, who probably never heard a note of the music that is now the prince’s best claim to fame.

    kishnevi (bb03e6)

  4. kish,

    It’s authentic, but I was actually dissatisfied with the performance, which I listened to on my drive to and from church. It was on my mind to replace it, but I guess I won’t.

    Patterico (115b1f)

  5. That was the first complete recorded cycle, and lots of people over the years have found those boy sopranos to be its biggest problem. Even among those devoted to “authentic performance”

    Very few boy sopranos know how to sing well. And even when they do, they don’t usually have the lungs to support the technique.

    kishnevi (bb03e6)


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