Lodate il Signore... Non temetelo... Gesù è la nostra gioia... Il suo Spirito soccorre alla nostra debolezza... Vieni, Gesù, vieni... Cantate al Signore un nuovo canto... [Praise the Lord... Fear Him not... Jesus, my joy...] These are the emotional cells of tonight’s program. It is worth noting the term “ein neues Lied” – Sing to the Lord a new song – in the first title in the Motet BWV 225.
The novelty of a song with a fresh outlook was among Martin Luther’s reform intentions: he personally arranged the translation from Latin to German, adopting the regular metric form of the chorale, where the harmonic simplicity of the chords in homophony meant the verses could easily be sung by the assembled faithful. This new song was also, in general terms, an ideal point of arrival, conceptual but also ontological, which Bach meant to put to the service of church music.
Two centuries from the Reformer, the Leipzig musician – called the Fifth Evangelist by some – reassembled his expressive means, turning back to the milestone of the chorale. This is the pivot for the Passions, the sacred cantatas, organ chorales, and motets. Around them, sometimes overlapping, are the arias, recitatives, more or less elaborate contrapuntal passages, fugues, trios, and so on.
The motet Bach wrote for the church in Leipzig is the result of a long polyphonic tradition. He thoroughly revamps a style that was almost obsolete in 1700, “contaminating” it with the cantata style, even though he could not back it with instruments.
Unfortunately history provides little news. Forkel, Bach’s first biographer, only recalls four motets.
In 1789 Mozart heard the new song motet – Singet dem Hern ein neues Lied – in the Thomaskirche and thought it was marvellous.
The famous motet structurally winds other bits and passages, all extremely complex and dramatic, into the chorale Jesu meine Freude (Jesus, my joy!). In all in fact eleven are known; uneven numbers are chorales and their transformations, and even numbers comment Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. In No. 9, Gute Nacht [Good Night] is insistently repeated over a barcarola pattern – hardly a friendly greeting or an invitation to rest. It’s more like a mocking greeting, intended to keep sins at a distance. Presumably it was meant to arouse an instinctive reaction in the listeners’ souls.

Sandro Boccardi