Seufzer, Tränen, Kummer, Not

Meine Seufzer, meine Tränen ('My sighs, my tears'), BWV 13, is a church cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach. He composed it in Leipzig for the second Sunday after Epiphany and first performed it on 20 January 1726 as part of his third cantata cycle. Bach composed the cantata in his third year as Thomaskantor, setting a libretto which Georg Christian Lehms, a court poet in Darmstadt, had already published in 1711. Lehms based his text on one idea from the prescribed gospel, Jesus saying: "Mine hour is not yet come". The text is divided into two groups of three movements each, both concluded with a chorale. The first group features first an aria, then a recitative, the second first a recitative, then an aria. The third movement is the second stanza of Johann Heermann's hymn "Zion klagt mit Angst und Schmerzen", the closing chorale is the final stanza of Paul Fleming's "In allen meinen Taten". The cantata is scored for four soloists, a four-part choir (SATB) only in the closing chorale, two recorders, oboe da caccia, strings and continuo.