Johann Sebastian Bach - Cantatas BWV 165-168 / O heiges Geist -und Wasserbad; Wo gehest du hin; Ihr Menschen, rühmet Gottes liebe; Tue Rechung! Donnerwort / Bach-Ensemble, Helmuth Rilling / Hänssler Classic Audio CD 2000 / CD 92.050

UPC 4010276015505

O heilges Geist- und Wasserbad (O holy bath of Spirit and water), BWV 165, is a church cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach. He composed it in Weimar for Trinity Sunday and led the first performance on 16 June 1715.

Bach had taken up regular cantata composition a year before when he was promoted to concertmaster at the Weimar court, writing one cantata per month to be performed in the Schlosskirche, the court chapel in the ducal Schloss. O heilges Geist- und Wasserbad was his first cantata for Trinity Sunday, the feast day marking the end of the first half of the liturgical year. The libretto by the court poet Salomo Franck is based on the day's prescribed gospel reading about the meeting of Jesus and Nicodemus. It is close in content to the gospel and connects the concept of the Trinity to baptism.

The music is structured in six movements, alternating arias and recitatives, and scored for a small ensemble of four vocal parts, strings and continuo. The voices are combined only in the closing chorale, the fifth stanza of Ludwig Helmbold's hymn "Nun laßt uns Gott dem Herren", which mentions scripture, baptism and the Eucharist, in a summary of the cantata's topic. Based on the text full of Baroque imagery, Bach composed a sermon in music, especially in the two recitatives for the bass voice, and achieved contrasts in expression. He led the first performance, and probably another on the Trinity Sunday concluding his first year as Thomaskantor in Leipzig on 4 June 1724.

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