Johann Sebastian Bach A conscience pure

Integrity is one of God‘s great gifts to mankind,
but sadly in these times,
we see how few possess it,
since man looks not to God to grant it.
We come to birth with hearts by sin afflicted,
our nature prone to fail.
To find the way, our life by God now governed,
we must by God’s own spirit be directed,
and on the path of virtue guided.
If God as friend you seek
then never to your neighbor be an enemy
through falsehood, craft or malice.

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Ein ungefärbt Gemüte
an teutscher Treu und Güte
macht uns vor Gott und Menschen schön.
Der Christen Tun und Handel,
ihr ganzer Lebenswandel
soll auf dergleichen Fuße stehn.

Die Redlichkeit ist eine von den Gottesgaben.

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Felix Loy
Translation: David Kosviner

The cantata Ein ungefärbt Gemüte BWV 24 for the 4th Sunday after Trinity Sunday was composed for the 20 of June 1723 and was the third cantata (after BWV 75 and 76) that Bach composed during his time in Leipzig.1 It was performed together with the cantata Barmherziges Herze der ewigen Liebe BWV 185 – which had already been composed in 1715 in Weimar – evidently during the same service as a two-part “double work” separated by the sermon. There is no evidence that further performances took place.

Bach composed the work upon a text taken from Erdmann Neumeister’s Geistlichen Poesien mit untermischten Biblischen Sprüchen und Choralen that was first published in 1714 in Frankfurt am Main.3 The text is freely related to the Sunday gospel reading (Lk 6:36–42) in which the sections written by Neumeister distinctly exhibit the author’s moralizing tendencies (indeed, well in accordance with the zeitgeist) that in this case are most certainly “heightened to the point of insufferability.” The disposition of the text is nevertheless distinguished by a masterfully constructed symmetry that is clearly accentuated in Bach’s

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