Yet I Would Gather Roses: Bach's Cantatas for the Fifth Sunday after Easter

Continuing the post-Easter cantatas, CD 19 of the set of Bach’s sacred cantatas bring us near to Ascension Day, when the risen Christ finally leaves his disciples, who in turn aren’t sure what to do except to wait in Jerusalem for what happens next. The cantatas for Fifth Sunday after Easter (Rogate Sunday) are: “Wahrlich, wahrlich, ich sage euch” (BWV, 86, “Verily, verily I say unto you”), “Bisher habt ihr nichts gebeten in meinem Namen” (BWV 87, “Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name”), and for this disc the liturgically unspecified “In allen meinen Taten” (BWV 97, “In all my undertakings”). The word "Rogate" comes from the Latin rogare, to ask, calling attention to the need to call upon God's care amid life's troubles. The four days before Ascension are called "rogation days."

The cover photo is of a woman from Lhasa, Tibet.

Conductor John Eliot Gardiner writes that, on the original 2000 pilgrimage, these cantatas were performed at Annenkirche in Dresden, a city which Bach loved. (Bach felt treated better there than in Leipzig and believed that musicians generally were treated well in Dresden.) My family and I visited the city in 2007 and were deeply moved, in particular its present-day beauty compared to the horror of February 1945. The text of the first cantata is Jesus’ words to the disciples (John 16): “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you.” The optimism of the text and the libretto, writes Gardiner, is poignant in light of the city’s wartime history, inviting “the listener to ask how these words of Jesus can be reconciled with
his or her own experience.” Bach musically traverses the libretto’s calls for confidence in God’s promises in spite of life’s pain.

Yet I would gather roses,

even though the thorns prick me.
For I am confident 
that my entreaty and supplication
will go straight to God’s heart,

for He has pledged His Word.

BWV 87 has “a mood of sustained reverence and pentience,” as Gardiner puts it. While the Gospel lesson is also from John 16, Bach uses “descending minor keys (d, g, c) for the first five of its seven movements” to suggest life’s suffering that we bear while at the same time trusting Christ’s promises.

Must I be troubled?

If Jesus loves me,
 all my pain
 is sweeter than honey,

a thousand sweet kisses He presses on my heart.
Whenever pain appears His love turns to gladness
even bitter suffering.

BWV 97, not specifically written for Rogate Sunday, is a setting of a poem by Paul Fleming and set to a hymn tune (which Bach employs) by Heinrich Isaac). The theme is one we’ve seen so often, the confidence one can feel as one places faith in God and trusts that “nothing can befall me but what He has provided.”

Rereading John 16, I'm impressed again with the confidence and joy preached by Christ even though, at the same time, he predicts pain and difficulty in the disciples' lives. Challenging circumstances happen regardless of the quality of our lives. But as we have our relationship with God in order---or at least we're working on it---God is never absent from our disordered lives and, in fact, is closer to us than even that "BFFL" to whom we turn in good and bad times alike.

As stated in the CD notes, all English translations of Bach's texts are by Richard Stokes.