Motet: Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf

In addition to all of his other duties in Leipzig, J. S. Bach (1685-1750) had been hired originally to help teach the boys at the St. Thomas School. He deputized the Latin instruction, but undertook—to some frustration—the teaching of singing and basic music education to hundreds of students during his tenure. His relations with school officials gradually soured to the point where music was clearly marginalized in favor of the “regular” curriculum. Bach dealt with two men named Ernesti, apparently unrelated. The later official, J. A. Ernesti seems an outright opponent to Bach’s efforts. The earlier rector, J. H. Ernesti, was much more supportive, and Bach would remember him fondly in subsequent years.
J. H. Ernesti was a prominent classicist, poet, and rector of the Thomasschule when Bach submitted his application for the post. About six years later, for Ernesti’s funeral service, Bach composed a motet for two choirs on a text drawn from Martin Luther and the Epistle to the Romans. Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf (1729) is cast in three movements, starting with a classic antiphonal exchange between the two choirs. For the second movement, beginning at “Der aber die Herzen”, Bach recombines the choirs for a brilliant four-voice fugue. These two movements show Bach writing an extroverted, concert-style music filled with melismas and acrobatic leaps. Only in the finale, a traditional chorale for four voices, are we called back to the sacred setting for which Der Geist was written.

(c) Jason Stell