Johann Sebastian Bach composed the church cantata ("Break with the hungry thy bread" or "Give the hungry thy bread"), , in Leipzig in 1726 for the first Sunday after Trinity, which fell on 23 June that year. Three years earlier, on the Sunday after Trinity in 1723, Bach had taken office as and started his first cycle of cantatas for Sundays and Feast Days in the liturgical year. On the Sunday after Trinity in 1724, he began his second cycle, consisting of chorale cantatas. is regarded as part of Bach's third cantata cycle which was written sporadically between 1725 and 1727. He marked the occasion by an ambitious work with an exceptionally masterful opening chorus.
The text of the cantata is taken from a 1704 collection of librettos from Meiningen, many of which had been set to music in cantatas of Bach's distant cousin Johann Ludwig Bach, Kapellmeister at Meiningen. The librettos have been attributed to his employer Duke Ernst Ludwig von Sachsen-Meiningen. The symmetrical structure of seven movements is typical for this collection: the opening quotation from the Old Testament, followed by a recitative and an aria; then the central quotation from the New Testament, followed by an aria and a recitative, leading into the final chorale. The theme of BWV 39 is an invocation to be grateful for God's gifts and to share them with the needy.
Bach set the opening Old Testament passage as a large scale complex movement for four-part chorus and full orchestra in three sections, one for each sentence in the biblical quotation. By contrast he set the central New Testament passage beginning the second part as a bass solo accompanied by a single obbligato cello, the bass voice representing the traditional voice of Jesus. The cantata is scored for three groups of instruments—alto recorders, oboes and strings—from which the four obbligato soloists are drawn that accompany the two arias, for alto and soprano.
Composition history Background Bach composed the cantata for the First Sunday after Trinity on 23 June 1726. This dating of the autograph manuscript was only determined late by authorities on Bach, particularly Alfred Dürr, Christoph Wolff and Klaus Hofmann who were involved in preparing Urtext editions for the Neue Bach-Ausgabe and establishing the Bach Archive in Leipzig. The circumstances surrounding the composition were clarified by other Bach scholars, notably William H. Scheide and Konrad Küster. Before the dating was known, several commentators had given 1732 as the date of composition, dubbing it the "Refugee Cantata", supposedly composed in response to the arrival of Protestants banished from Salzburg; it is unknown whether there was a repeat performance of the cantata to commemorate that event. The scholar Whittaker left a typed draft of a chronology of Bach's cantatas when he died, which appeared in a corrected appendix to the paperback reprint of 1978. In his foreword to a 1999 critical edition, Ulrich Leisinger points out that Leipzig had to avoid conflict with the Catholic court in Dresden and probably just granted humanitarian aid to the Protestants in transit.
The first Sunday after Trinity marks the beginning of the second half of the liturgical year, "in which core issues of faith and doctrine are explored". The order of service used in Leipzig at Bach's time called for an extended cantata in two parts for the occasion. It also had particular significance for Bach since it was on that day in 1723 that he assumed office as in Leipzig. His duties there included the education of the Thomanerchor and performances in the regular services in four churches in Leipzig, including the main churches and the . The most skilled church musicians—including SATB soloists and others doubling as choristers and instrumentalists—were based at the Thomaskirche where cantatas were performed each Sunday and on feast days. The other instrumentalists were either professional string players (Kunstgeiger), members of the Leipzig Stadtpfeifer, an ancient band of brass and wind players, or travelling musicians. Remaining gaps in the orchestra were filled by pupils from the Thomasschule and university students. Bach's orchestra would have had 12-20 players in addition to himself and an organist. In the Thomaskirche, the musicians performed from two galleries above and around the principal organ loft in the centre. Sometimes two cantatas would be performed during a service; and when a cantata was written in two parts, a sermon would be preached between the two parts or the second part would accompany communion. As Thomaskantor, Bach instituted several changes in performance practise in Leipzig: he introduced more frequent and regular rehearsals for choristers, including individual lessons; he installed former students as organists and directors of music in the churches for which he was responsible; and—going beyond his church duties—he helped select and train municipal musicians.
Cantata cycles On his appointment Bach embarked on the project of composing yearly cycles of cantatas with one for each Sunday and holiday of the liturgical year, a project which Wolff describes as "an artistic undertaking on the largest scale". The cantata he wrote Sunday after Trinity in 1723 was Die Elenden sollen essen, BWV 75, beginning the first cantata cycle; the cantata O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort, BWV 20, from 1724 began the second cycle, again on the Sunday after Trinity. With BWV 20, Bach entered on a new scheme for the second cycle: to compose chorale cantatas based exclusively on the main Lutheran hymns associated with the occasions in the liturgical calendar.
After completing his second cycle, Bach's third cycle was composed sporadically between 1725 and 1727. Moreover, Bach does not seem to have marked the anniversary of his appointment in 1725. From February 1726 up to late September that year, the cantatas performed in Leipzig were mostly those by Bach's distant cousin Johann Ludwig Bach, court composer at Meiningen. Johann Ludwig Bach set texts from the court at Meiningen published in 1704, twenty of them in 2013, according to Salomon Kümmerle's 1888 Encyclopädie der evangelischen Kirchenmusik. Bach copied and performed at least 18 of those, and he used texts from Meiningen for seven of the only nine cantatas that he newly composed during this period. He may have encountered gaps in his cousin's series, or he may have felt that the extant settings did not meet his expectations; the latter reason seems supported by at least one cantata text, Siehe, ich will viel Fischer aussenden, being composed by both. Bach's first cantata based on a Meiningen text was Gott fähret auf mit Jauchzen, BWV 43, for the Feast of the Ascension on 30 May 1726, followed by BWV 39, BWV 88, BWV 187, BWV 45, BWV 102 and BWV 17. They set texts in the formal scheme of his cousin. On 23 June 1726, Bach revived the tradition of a beginning on the Sunday after Trinity by performing for the beginning of his fourth year in office; it was the first "Meiningen" cantata written for a Sunday.
Readings and text
The prescribed readings for the Sunday were from the First Epistle of John, (the "God is Love" verses, ), and from the Gospel of Luke (the parable of the Rich man and Lazarus, ). Bach's first cantata for the occasion, , BWV 75 (1723), had concentrated on the contrast between the rich and the poor; and the second, the chorale cantata , BWV 20 (1724), concerned repentance when faced with death and eternity. In contrast the libretto of took as its theme gratitude for God's gifts and the duty to share them with the needy.
The libretto used by Bach for BWV 39 comes from the 1704 collection for Meiningen, entitled ; these religious texts have been attributed to Ernst Ludwig I, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, Johann Ludwig Bach's employer. They were set by both Bach and his cousin.
All the Meiningen cantatas of Johann Ludwig Bach, performed in Leipzig between February and September 1726, had librettos from this collection. They all have a uniform structure in seven verse sections: each cantata starts with a passage from the Old Testament; followed by a recitative on a long verse text; an aria; a central passage from the New Testament; a second aria; a second recitative, often with more than two sentences so that it can end with a chorus; and a final chorale, sometimes with two stanzas. The Old Testament and New Testament passages usually have a common theme, with the former often prefiguring the coming of Christ. Bach departed from his cousin's model in two ways. Firstly he divided the libretto into two parts that framed the church sermon: Bach usually started Part II with the central New Testament passage; only in the case of BWV 102 did he place it at the conclusion of Part I. Secondly Bach took the sixth verse section of the libretto, written in archaic alexandrines, wholly as a recitative leading into the final chorale.
In the libretto of BWV 39, the Old Testament passage is taken from the Book of Isaiah () and the New Testament passage from the Epistle to the Hebrews (). Both passages have as common themes the invocations to love thy neighbour and to share God's gifts. The final section of the libretto is the sixth stanza of David Denicke's 1648 hymn "", which involves the same themes. This hymn was sung to the same melody as "". The melody was first published by Louis Bourgeois as Psalm 42 in his collection of Psaumes octante trios de David (Geneva, 1551). The psalm melody itself was probably derived from the secular song "" in the Manuscrit de Bayeux published around 1510.
First performance Bach led the Thomanerchor in the first performance at the Nikolaikirche on 23 June 1726; Friedrich Wilhelm Schütz held the sermon.
Music Instrumentation and structure
Bach scored the cantata for three vocal soloists (soprano (S), alto (A) and bass (B)), a four-part choir SATB, and a Baroque instrumental ensemble of two alto recorders (Fl), two oboes (Ob), first and second violins (Vl), violas (Va) and basso continuo (Bc). There are two sets of continuo parts from 1726: one is a score transposed for positive organ with figuration added by Bach in the first three movements; the other has annotations by the copyist for cello and double bass.
The Meiningen cantatas of Johann Ludwig Bach were scored for the four vocal parts and a small group of instrumentalists, consisting of two oboes, violins, violas and continuo: at Meiningen, as with many of the smaller courts in Germany, resources were limited; it appears that continuo instruments like bassoons were available only when these works were performed elsewhere. When Bach performed his cousin's cantatas in Leipzig in 1726, he used the same orchestral forces as Meiningen for all but two, adding trumpets with drums in one and piccolo trumpets in another.
The baroque alto recorder (Blockflöte in German) enjoyed a period of popularity in Europe as an orchestral instrument in the seventeenth century, starting with Monteverdi in his opera L'Orfeo. By the middle of the eighteenth century it had been displaced by the transverse flute. In France the transition was more marked, since cultural life centred on Paris; it was more gradual in Germany, made up of many separate principalities, all with their own court or municipal musicians. The baroque recorder was used in orchestral music in association with death and the supernatural; to express tenderness; in pastoral scenes (as the shepherd's pipe); and to imitate bird song.