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Geist und Seele wird verwirret

Geist und Seele wird verwirret (Spirit and soul become confused) is a cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach. In Wolfgang Schmieder's catalogue of Bach's works, it is BWV 35.

The words are drawn from Georg Christian Lehms' Gottgefälliges Kirchen-Opffer (1711) and express wonderment at God's work.

The work was composed in Leipzig in 1726 for a performance on the twelfth Sunday after Trinity Sunday. It is one of only three Bach cantatas in which there are no singers apart from a single alto soloist (the others being Widerstehe doch der Sünde, BWV 54 and Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust, BWV 170, both of which also have texts by Lehms).

The accompanying orchestra is made up of 2 oboes, an oboe da caccia (tenor oboe), violins, violas, a solo organ and basso continuo. The work is in two parts and seven movements:

Table of contents
1 Part I
2 Part II
3 External links

Part I

  1. Concerto - a purely instrumental movement, with the solo organ set against the rest of the instruments.
  2. "Geist und Seele wird verwirret" ("Spirit and soul become confused") - an aria accompanied by all instruments, again prominently featuring the organ. This aria is about twice as long as the other two.
  3. "Ich wundre mich" ("I am amazed") - a recitative, accompanied by the continuo.
  4. "Gott hat alles wohlgemacht" ("God has made all things so well") - an aria accompanied only by the organ and basso continuo.

Part II

  1. Sinfonia - another purely instrumental movement, once again pitting the solo organ against the other instruments.
  2. "Ach, starker Gott, laß mich" ("O, mighty God, let me") - another continuo-accompanied recitative.
  3. "Ich wünsche nur bei Gott zu leben" ("I wish now only to live by God") - an aria accompanied by all instruments. The solo organ features once more, though less prominently than in the other movements.

A typical performance of the work will last around twenty-five minutes.

It is not clear who would have sung the alto part in Bach's time. In modern performances it is either given to a woman or a countertenor.

The opening nine bars of the Concerto of this cantata are identical to a fragment of an otherwise lost concerto for harpsichord by Bach (BWV 1059) dating from his time in Cöthen (from 1717 to 1723), which itself appears to be a version of an earlier concerto for oboe. As a result, musicologists have been able to reconstruct the original concerto movement from the cantata. It has also been speculated that the aria "Geist und Seele wird verwirret" might be an arrangement of the slow movement of the concerto and the Sinfonia a version of its finale. A version of the complete concerto reconstructed in this way has occasionally been performed and recorded.

External links