Штёльцель мен Бах: музыкалық байланыстар және "Bist du bei mir" ариясы

Aria composed by Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel

"Bist du bei mir, geh ich mit Freuden" (If you are with me, I go with joy) is an aria from Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel's opera Diomedes, which was first staged on 16 November 1718. The aria is best known as "Bist du bei mir," BWV 508, a version for voice and continuo found as No. 25 in the 1725 Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach.

Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel's opera Diomedes was staged in Bayreuth in November 1718. There has been some speculation how one of its arias, "Bist du bei mir," came to be known in the Bach household in mid 1730s Leipzig, when Anna Magdalena Bach, Johann Sebastian's second wife, copied an arrangement of the aria into her second notebook. 21st century scholarship has shown that from the 1720s to the mid 1730s, at least several dozen to perhaps over a hundred of Stölzel's compositions were adopted by Bach or his family members in their public and private music practices. Only indirect evidence suggests how such music was transferred from Stölzel to the Bachs; Bach and Stölzel were in the same places at different times, and shared acquaintances, but whether they met in person can only be surmised.

When Augustus the Strong died on 1 February 1733, a period of mourning was declared in his realm, which included Saxony. During this period, lasting from Sexagesima Sunday (15 February) to the fourth Sunday after Trinity (28 June), no concerted music was to be performed in church services. Johann Sebastian Bach used the period to compose his Mass for the Dresden court. He may have had the musicians of the Dresden court orchestra in mind when composing this extended setting: one of these musicians was its then time concert master Pisendel, with whom Bach had been acquainted since before Stölzel had known him as concert master of Hoffmann's orchestra. Early July 1733, Bach was still completing the composition, and the performance parts he intended to send to Dresden. Around this time, there are the earliest documented signs he used cantatas composed by Stölzel for performance in Leipzig. He may have performed two cantatas from Stölzel's Namebook cycle, for the fifth and sixth Sunday after Trinity, in July 1733: his copies of these cantatas date from around this time. He performed Stölzel's Ein Lämmlein geht und trägt die Schuld on Good Friday 23 April 1734, and likely Stölzel's entire String Music cantata cycle from 1735 to 1736. Around the same time, that is, likely somewhere between 1734 and 1740, Anna Magdalena Bach entered a version for voice and continuo of "Bist du bei mir", an aria from Stölzel's 1718 Diomedes opera, in her second notebook. That was not the end of Bach's dealings with Stölzel's music: in the early 1740s he reworked an aria from Stölzel's Ein Lämmlein geht und trägt die Schuld, "Dein Kreuz, o! Bräut’gam meiner Seelen" to Bekennen will ich seinen Namen, BWV 200. Stölzel's acquiring music composed by Bach is documented in 1747, when he bought a copy of Bach's Musical Offering for Gotha, less than a month after its publication. Both Stölzel and Bach joined Lorenz Christoph Mizler's exclusive lt=Society of Musical Sciences: Stölzel in 1739, and Bach in 1747. After they died, Stölzel in 1749 and Bach in 1750, their obituaries were published in 1754, in the same issue of the Society's organ, the lt=''Musikalische Bibliothek.

In its 18th century manuscripts "Bist du bei mir" is a da capo aria for soprano in E flat major, in time. Its lyrics also survive in the printed libretto of Stölzel's Diomedes opera:

Translations of the aria's text have been published, for instance, by Novello and by Alfred Music, and at The LiederNet Archive.