Cantata 182, composed in 1713, is for Palm Sunday, which is the first day of Holy Week and the Sunday before Easter, and commemorates Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem. As the day is associated in several ecclesiastical rites with the blessing and procession of palms, processional characteristics feature strongly in the music.
The Gospel for the day is a reading of the Passion according to St. Matthew 26:36–27:54: … the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak … behold, he is at hand that doth betray me …
all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword … I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood … why hast thou forsaken me?
The essence of the work is the public return of joy, which, despite the inevitability of further tribulations, does not fail to instill rejoicing for the future.
The work opens with an instrumental sonata (arrival of Christ), recorder and violin playing in dotted rhythm, over pizzicato (plucked, rather than bowed) strings and continuo in the steady 4/4 rhythm of common time. This sonata is of exceptional and greatly simple beauty. The solo instruments’ parts begin each phrase not with the very short 32nd note that the dotted rhythm would imply, but with an unmodified 16th, thus doubling, if ever so slightly, the expected length of the note, and so giving the melodic pattern an additional lilt—as if a person were beginning to walk. In overall effect, the whole is one of a processional march. In the concluding bars, the melodic structure of the march supplants the steady pace in the continuo, as if all were now going forward together to welcome Christ, Himmelskönig, sei willkommen (King of Heaven, ever welcome), which words begin the chorus (welcome of Christ), very animated and very finely written, that follows, and that details the response of the populace to his arrival.
More of my observations on the Bach cantatas are to be found here.
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