Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben

“Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben” (“Heart and mouth and deed and life”), Bach’s Cantata No. 147, amounts to an expression of pure joy at the coming of Christ and of love for his mother, Mary. It was first performed in Leipzig on 2 July 1723, the Feast of the Visitation, less than two months after the composer and his family moved to the city. He recycled much of its music from a work he had written for the Advent season in 1716, during his time as concertmaster to Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Saxe-Weimar. Bach made subtle changes to its original libretto by the Weimar court poet Salomo Franck, to include allusions to the Magnificat, the pregnant Mary’s hymn of praise on visiting her elderly relative Elizabeth, mother-to-be of John the Baptist; he also amplified its celebratory mood by adding a solo trumpet to his band of two oboes, bassoon, strings and continuo. Cantata 147 opens with a complex counterpoint of instruments and fugal voices, the surging energy of which is calmed by an accompanied recitative in which the solo tenor reminds humankind, the “servant of Satan and sin”, of the saviour’s redeeming grace. Arias for alto and solo oboe d’amore, soprano and solo violin, tenor and solo cello, and bass and solo trumpet bear witness to the apparently infinite range and depth of Bach’s gift for melodic invention. The work is arranged in two parts, each of which closes with a four-part chorale harmonisation interlaced with a recurring unison melody for oboes and first violins, familiar in its translation for English-speaking listeners as “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring” and its transcription for piano by Dame Myra Hess.