'Bist du bei mir'

Anna Magdalena's Notebook

 Johann Sebastian Bach's second wife—to whom he was married at the time he died—was Anna Magdalena, a woman much loved by many generations of music-lovers, and certainly Bach-lovers.  Anna Magdalena maintained an album, in which she copied many short pieces by her husband, and many other pieces that took her fancy.

Among these is a remarkable aria: Bist du bei Mir, which was, identified last century, to have been written by Heinrich Gottfried Stölzel, a talented contemporary of Bach's.  (In fact, a biographer of Stölzel is said to have declared that Bach and Stölzel were equally talented.  However, Stölzel did not have nearly as great an impact on music as did Bach.)

I've joined the New Horizons band for seniors in our hometown, and this spring, we're performing Bist du bei mir, arranged for band.  When I was 17 or so, a friend of my parents was anxious to teach me violin.  So I was given the loan of a violin, and asked to practice this very piece.  At that time, I had never heard it before, and thought it a fussy little tune; I had been told it was by Bach himself, and I told myself that it couldn't possibly be by Bach, whom I revered.  Soon my violin teacher gave up on me, saying that my intonation was too 'piano-like', by which she meant that my ear wasn't good enough to tune my fifths according to the just intonation that string players use, but that I was playing 'piano fifths', that were just a tiny bit out of tune to the ears of violinists.  (Hardly anyone today can tell the difference, unless they're temperament experts, which I certainly am not.)

The Stölzel aria, I have come to recognize for half a century, is just a gem.  Early in the aria, there is a chord that I described in the post about Harmonica Harmony, the dominant ninth but without the root.  There are numerous features in the song that provide 'hooks' for anyone wanting to hear it, but no hooks are necessary; it is a brilliant tune, evidently recognized by Anna Magdalena Bach, who was an extremely musical person.

Bear in mind that the tune is, basically, an aria, that is, a song.  Most of the recordings of it on YouTube emphasize the soprano line.  But to me, the counterpoint is wonderful.  Without being obtrusive, the parts caress the melody, giving the accompaniment a lot of character.  In orchestral arrangements, the counterpoint is usually smothered, but here is one, FWIW.