Bist du bei mir

"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.

[5] 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.

At that time, Melchior Hoffmann was conductor of the Collegium Musicum founded by Telemann, which had Johann Georg Pisendel as its concert master.

[3][4] For the 39th birthday of George William, Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth (16 November) he composed a theatrical serenata, Der Liebe Sieges- und Friedes-Palmen.

[3][16] In 1720, three years before he became Thomaskantor in Leipzig, Johann Sebastian Bach started the Klavierbüchlein (keyboard-booklet) for his eldest son Wilhelm Friedemann.

[17] Some years later Wilhelm Friedemann copied a four-movement keyboard suite by Stölzel in this notebook, to which his father added a trio (BWV 929).

[6][7][29][30] 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.

[34] In its 18th-century manuscripts "Bist du bei mir" is a da capo aria for soprano in E-flat major, in 34 time.

Bist du bei mir, geh ich mit Freuden zum Sterben und zu meiner Ruh.

Ach, wie vergnügt wär so mein Ende, es drückten deine schönen Hände mir die getreuen Augen zu.

[37][38][39] Two sources from the first quarter of the 18th century document text and music of Stölzel's Diomedes opera:[40] The libretto specifies the performance venue as "auf dem großen Theatro" (transl.

[5] The 1720s manuscript with the five arias does not name the instruments for which it is scored: these are assumed to be strings, that is violins (vl), viola (va) and basso continuo (bc).

[2][42] Anna Magdalena Wilcke was an accomplished vocalist when she married Johann Sebastian Bach in 1721, around which time she was hired as a singer by his employer at Köthen.

25, "Bist du bei mir", BWV 508, belongs to the second category, along with another dozen pieces of vocal music in the 1725 notebook.

[52] There are various possibilities as to how the Diomedes aria became known in the Bach household, including, according to Andreas Glöckner, from scores that once belonged to the Oper am Brühl (which had bankrupted in 1720), or that "Bist du bei mir" simply was a well-known ditty in Leipzig in the second quarter of the 18th century, which Anna Magdalena thought would make a welcome addition to her Hausmusik collection.

[5] Like in the five arias manuscript, the "Bist du bei mir" version in Anna Magdalena's notebook is in E-flat major, and uses a soprano clef for the singing voice.

[37][72] A story about Bach's family life, published in the same year for a youthful audience, describes the aria as especially captivating among the songs and dances of the notebooks.

[71] Around 1915 Max Schneider discovered the orchestral version of "Bist du bei mir", along with four other arias by Stölzel, in an 18th-century manuscript at the library of the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin.

[88] In 1950 Wolfgang Schmieder listed "Bist du bei mir" as a composition by Bach in the first edition of the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis, assigning it the number 508 in that catalogue.

In 1957 the aria was published in the New Bach Edition, where its editor, Georg von Dadelsen, mentioned the lost orchestral version in the Critical Commentary volume.

[89][90][91] The 1998 edition of the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis kept "Bist du bei mir" in the main catalogue (i.e. without moving it to the Anhang either of the doubtful or of the spurious works), but mentions it was based on a setting by Stölzel in an inaccessible source.

[96] By this time "Bist du bei mir" and the four other arias of the SA 808 manuscript were identified as belonging to Stölzel's opera Diomedes.