Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf

Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf (The Spirit comes to help our weakness) was written in October 1729 for the funeral of Bach’s respected colleague Johann Heinrich Ernesti, the rector of Leipzig’s Thomas School. Bach found inspiration in biblical verses drawn from St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. His setting for two four-part choirs and continuo, possibly based on the music of an existing composition, trains the spotlight on individual words to intensify their emotional impact, with “Geist” (“Spirit”) carried on a fast-flowing stream of semiquavers, and “Seufzer” (“Sigh”) underlined by an elaborate melody flavoured with chromatic steps and sighing intervals. Bach writes a dazzling double fugue, “Der aber die Herzen forschet”, to convey the image of God searching human hearts for signs of the Holy Spirit. While the original manuscript source of Der Geist hilft, written in the composer’s hand, ends with a harmonisation of Martin Luther’s hymn Komm, heiliger Geist (“Come, Holy Spirit”), it was most likely sung as a free-standing piece during Ernesti’s funeral or at his graveside. About J.S. Bach's Motets Church musicians during Bach’s day were raised on a diet of unaccompanied Lutheran motets, simple polyphonic pieces from the early 1600s among them. Bach gave fresh life to the form throughout his career, sometimes to stretch the vocal skills of his Leipzig choristers with virtuosic test pieces for double choir, sometimes to provide funeral music for prominent citizens, sometimes to reinforce the message of a gospel reading or other biblical text. He created five motets between the early 1710s and late 1740s, while three other motet-like works have also been attributed or misattributed to him.