Der Friede sei mit dir

Text No. 1–3
Poet unknown, with
hymn by Georg Albinus interpolated in No. 2, 1649

Text No. 4
Martin Luther, 1524

First performance
Possibly on 3rd Day of Easter,
(27 April) 1734 (?)

Rudolf Lutz’s addition of a chorale-based sinfonia resolves the unsatisfying musical gaps in this constellation by rounding out and clarifying the Easter relevance of the cantata in a way that was not accomplished by Bach’s contemporaries.
The expansive recitative is set in a style that would be well suited to argumentatively developing the bible dictum of the lost tutti movement, and melds the blessing “May peace now be with thee” – pronounced in arioso style three times throughout the movement – with a memorable recitation describing Easter as the victory of the lamb and the liberation from oppressive law. Here, the key word “peace” is lent a broad interpretation, one that suggests the drying of all tears, the deliverance to a state free of falsity and sorrow, and thus to a meeting between God and man in his natural human state; in this setting, Christ does not speak through the mouth of a priestly intercessor, but rather, “he saith himself to thee” and thus directly to all persons of good will.
The aria and chorale “World, farewell, of thee I’m weary” links the bass’s world-weary rejection of earthly turmoil with a soprano setting of the chorale bearing the same name by Johann Georg Albinus (1649). But in contrast to many other such double movements, Bach does not add the chorale text here to comment on the freely versed text, thus giving voice at a second level to what may have been unutterable by the solo voice. Rather, both text levels here are identical in a way that summons an extraordinary intensity against the backdrop of the Passion. The actual “star” of this setting, however, is the solo violin, which, like in the aria “Keep thou, my heart now, this most blessed wonder” of the Christmas Oratorio, reveals Bach’s special relationship to the instrument that, as a concertmaster, he had fully mastered. Here, the wise naivety and noble cantilena of the violin part lends the movement a heavenly dimension, giving poignant musical expression to earthly suffering and the worthy strivings of humankind to attain a more perfect state.
The bass recitative “O Lord, now govern all my thoughts” returns again to the farewell metaphor of Simeon’s Day and expresses final submission to God’s will. Here, the faithful are not only willing, but sincerely relieved, to lay down their earthly woes and take up the “heavenly crown“ of the righteous. The somewhat abrupt transition to the closing chorale “Here is the proper Easter lamb“ is probably the result of the cantata’s patchy source materials and revision – and yet it can still be appreciated as a theologically sound interpretation of transcendent bliss.