As early as September 16, 1725,(456) Bach was moving towards this solution. And it is significant that Picander’s hand is visible in the libretto. The next example(457) occurs three years later, and again reveals Picander’s authorship. Two other instances also occur in the early Leipzig period.(458) To that point, however, it is clear that Bach was not satisfied as to the most effective treatment of the hymn-libretto. But in the second Leipzig period, after his collaboration with Marianne von Ziegler, he arrived at and remained constant to a uniform design. Of the thirty-nine Choral Cantatas of the whole period only two exhibit the earlier form. Of all the others the libretto consists partly of unaltered hymn-stanzas—invariably used for the first and last movements, and occasionally elsewhere—but chiefly of paraphrased stanzas of the hymn, whose accustomed melody, wherever else it may be introduced, is associated invariably with the hymn when the text is used in its unaltered form. We, to whom both words and melody are too frequently unfamiliar, may view the perfections of the Choral Cantata with some detachment. But Bach’s audience listened to hymns and tunes which were in the heart of every hearer and a common possession of them all. The appeal of his message was the more arresting because it spoke as directly to himself as to those he addressed.
It would be satisfactory and interesting to point positively to Bach’s own handiwork in these libretti, of which he set fifty-four in the period 1724-44. Unfortunately it is impossible to do so, except, perhaps, in a single case,(459) where we can reasonably infer that the libretto is his. Of the rest, one is by Franck.(460) In eighteen of them the hand of Picander is more or less patent.(461) Nineteen(462) we can only venture to mark “anonymous,” though Picander is probably present in most of them. Ten are unaltered congregational hymns.(463) There remain, however, five(464) in which, perhaps, we detect another, and the last, of Bach’s literary helpers.
Wustmann draws attention(465) to the libretto of Cantata No. 38, a paraphrase of Luther’s Psalm 130. He finds in it, and reasonably, an expression of “Jesus religion” very alien to Picander’s muse, and suggests the younger Christian Weiss as the author of it. Like his father, he was Bach’s colleague, the godfather of his daughter, and undoubtedly on terms of close friendship with him. But if he wrote the libretto of Cantata No. 38, probably it is not the only one. The same note rings in four more of the Choral Cantatas,(466) which may be attributed tentatively to Weiss, though their ascription to Bach would be equally congruous.