Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit

Bach’s Cantata No. 106, “Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit” (“God’s time is the very best time”), also known as Actus Tragicus, ranks together with Henry Purcell’s Music for the Funeral of Queen Mary among the great monuments of Christian mourning culture. The work, perhaps written in August 1707 to commemorate the recent death of Bach's uncle Tobias Lämmerhirt, is based on a finely tailored patchwork of biblical texts and Lutheran hymns concerning the inevitability of death both as a realisation of God’s law and as the necessary condition for the redemption of sin. Bach extracts a concentrated blend of tonal textures and colours from multiple permutations of solo voices, four-part vocal ensemble, two recorders (traditionally associated with angel musicians), two violas da gamba and basso continuo and uses it to create a score that expresses profound grief and boundless joy. The solemn tread of the sacred cantata’s instrumental introduction, with its sighing recorder melody, prepares the way for an opening chorus that contrasts the fervent triple-time setting of “In Him we live” with the chromatic harmonies of “In him we die”. Words from Psalm 90 run through the solo tenor’s plea for knowledge of death and the wisdom that rises from it. “Put your house in order” sings a solo bass before an arresting choral statement of words from Ecclesiastes: “It is the Old Covenant: man, you must die!”, glossed by an allusion from the recorders to the hymn “I have left all that concerns me up to God” and the solo soprano’s urgent confession, “Yes, come Lord Jesus, come”. Bach’s sublime settings of Jesus’ words from the cross, sung respectively by alto and bass, lead to the work’s joyful closing hymn to God’s glory.