Meine Seufzer, meine Tränen, BWV 13

Meine Seufzer, meine Tränen ('My sighs, my tears'),^[1] BWV 13, is a church cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach. He composed it in Leipzig for the second Sunday after Epiphany and first performed it on 20 January 1726 as part of his third cantata cycle.

Bach composed the cantata in his third year as Thomaskantor, setting a libretto which Georg Christian Lehms, a court poet in Darmstadt, had published already in 1711. Lehms based his text on one idea from the prescribed gospel, Jesus saying: "Mine hour is not yet come". The text is divided into three movements each, first sequence of aria, recitative and chorale, then of recitative, aria and chorale. The third movement is the second stanza of Johann Heermann's hymn "Zion klagt mit Angst und Schmerzen",^[2] the closing chorale is the final stanza of Paul Fleming's "In allen meinen Taten".

The cantata is scored for four soloists, a four-part choir (SATB) only in the closing chorale, two recorders, oboe da caccia, strings and continuo.

Bach composed the cantata in his third year as Thomaskantor (director of church music) in Leipzig for the Second Sunday after Epiphany.^[3][4] The prescribed readings for the Sunday were taken from the Epistle to the Romans, we have several gifts, each is unique, as part of the body of Christ (cf also I Corinthians 12) (Romans 12:6–16), and from the Gospel of John, the Wedding at Cana (John 2:1–11).^[3]

Bach set a text written by Georg Christian Lehms, court poet in Darmstadt, who published it in 1711.^[3] Bach had set texts by Lehms already when he composed cantatas for the Weimar court from 1714 to 1717.^[5] In the 1725/26 Christmas season, he had used mostly librettos by Lehms. The poet took a single idea from the gospel, Jesus saying: "Mine hour is not yet come". The text is divided into two parts of three movements each, the first dealing with the distress of someone feeling abandoned, set as an aria and a recitative, and the second with hope for God's help, a recitative and aria. Both parts are closed by a chorale. The third movement is the second stanza of Johann Heermann's hymn "Zion klagt mit Angst und Schmerzen",^[3][2] the closing chorale is the final stanza of Paul Fleming's "In allen meinen Taten".^[3][6] According to Alfred Dürr, it is unlikely that the work was split in performance before and after the service, considering its brevity.^[4]

Bach led the first performance at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig on 20 January 1726. The work is regarded as part of Bach's third cantata cycle.^[3]

The cantata in six movements is intimately scored for four soloists, soprano (S), alto (A), tenor (T), and bass (B), a four-part choir (SATB) in the chorales, two recorders (Fl), oboe da caccia (Oc), two violins (Vl), viola (Va), and basso continuo.^[4] The continuo is playing throughout.^[3]

The cantata is opened by an aria, a lamento accompanied by soft recorders and the dark sound of the oboe da caccia which leads frequently. It is a da capo form, but the middle section is again divided in two parts. In it, the voice shows the "Weg zum Tod" (road to death)^[1] by several downward steps.^[4] Dürr points out that this composition "illustrates how the imagination of the Baroque musician is particularly fired by texts dealing with sighing and pain".^[7] The following short secco recitative ends as an arioso on the words "vergebens flehen" (plead in vain).^[1]

In the chorale, the woodwinds play the cantus firmus in unison with the alto voice, while the strings play independent figuration in F major, illustrating hope, although the text says that hope is not yet in sight. John Eliot Gardiner describes the "confident diatonic harmonies" as an "optimistic, wordless answer" to the voice's "prayer for comfort".^[7]

A second expressive recitative leads to a second aria, which is accompanied by violin I and the recorders, playing in unison an octave higher. The lamenting text of the beginning "Ächzen und erbärmlich Weinen" (groaning and pitiful weeping)^[1] is stressed by intervals such as augmented second, diminished fifth and diminished seventh. The ritornello has two distinctly different parts, a lamenting section and a hopeful one, full of fast runs and passages. In the middle section, the text "wer gen Himmel siehet" (he who looks towards heaven)^[1] is accented by an octave leap upwards in the voice and upwards runs in the instruments, contrasting the downward line in movement 1.

The closing chorale is a four-part setting of the melody of "O Welt, ich muss dich lassen" by Heinrich Isaac, which is featured twice in Bach's St Matthew Passion in movements 10 (Ich bin's, ich sollte büßen) and 37 (Wer hat dich so geschlagen).^[4][8]

The entries are taken from the listing on the Bach Cantatas website.^[9] Instrumental groups playing period instruments in historically informed performances are marked green under the header Instr..

• Meine Seufzer, meine Tränen, BWV 13: Scores at the International Music Score Library Project
• Chapter 12 Bwv 13 – The Cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach, A listener and student guide by Julian Mincham, 2010
• Luke Dahn: BWV 13.6 bach-chorales.com
• Meine Seufzer, meine Tränen, BWV 13: performance by the Netherlands Bach Society (video and background information)