Komm, du süße Todesstunde

Johann Sebastian Bach composed the church cantata Komm, du süße Todesstunde (Come, you sweet hour of death), BWV 161, in Weimar for the 16th Sunday after Trinity, probably first performed on 27 September 1716. Bach had taken up regular cantata composition two years 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. The text of Komm, du süße Todesstunde, and of most other cantatas written in Weimar, was provided by court poet Salomon Franck. He based it on the prescribed gospel reading about the young man from Nain. His text reflects on longing for death, seen as a transition to a life united with Jesus. The text includes as a closing chorale the fourth stanza of the hymn "Herzlich tut mich verlangen" by Christoph Knoll. The cantata in six movements opens with a sequence of alternating arias and recitatives leading to a chorus and a concluding chorale. The chorale tune, known as "O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden", appears in the first movement, played by the organ, and musical motifs of the arias are derived from it, providing an overall formal unity to the composition. Bach scored the work for two vocal parts (alto and tenor), a four-part choir, and a Baroque chamber ensemble of recorders, strings and continuo. In the alto recitative (movement 4), accompanied by all instruments, Bach creates the images of sleep, of waking up, and of funeral bells, the latter in the recorders and pizzicato of the strings. Bach expanded the final measures of the recitative ("so schlage doch") to a full length aria for tenor (Ach, schlage doch bald, selge Stunde) in the cantata Christus, der ist mein Leben, BWV 95, which he composed in 1723 in Leipzig. While the libretto was published in a collection in 1715, Bach probably did not perform it until 27 September 1716, due to a period of public mourning of six months in the Duchy of Weimar from August 1715. Bach revived the cantata when he was Thomaskantor in Leipzig, but not for his cantata cycles, which included three new works for the 16th Sunday after Trinity. He performed Komm, du süße Todesstunde with minor changes between 1737 and 1746. He also assigned it to the occasion of Purification, a feast with a similar topic.