Johann Sebastian Bach Wo soll ich fliehen hin

O where shall I now go,
so full of grief and woe
and laden with transgression?
Where can I find salvation?
Though all the world befriend me,
my fear would still confound me.

The filth of sin has not just made me vile,
but covered and corrupted all my soul.
God would here cast me out as foul and sinful,
but since a drop of Christ’s own blood
can offer so much good,
he loves me, though my sin be shameful.
Christ’s precious blood is a great sea
where I may drown my vile transgression,
and when I come to wash in that great ocean,
it makes me clean from all impurity.

Break forth for me, richly,

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Wo soll ich fliehen hin,
weil ich beschweret bin,
mit viel und großen Sünden?
Wo soll ich Rettung finden?
Wenn alle Welt herkäme,
mein Angst sie nicht wegnähme.

Der Sünden Wust hat mich nicht nur befleckt,
er hat vielmehr den ganzen Geist bedeckt,
Gott müsste mich als unrein von sich treiben;
doch weil ein Tropfen heilges Blut
so große Wunder tut,
kann ich noch unverstoßen bleiben.
Die Wunden sind ein offnes Meer,
dahin ich meine Sünden senke,
und wenn ich mich zu diesem Strome lenke,
so macht er mich von meinen Flecken leer.

Ergieße dich reichlich, du göttliche Quelle,

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Sven Hiemke
Translation: David Kosviner

The cantata Wo soll ich fliehen hin (O where shall I now go) BWV 5 was composed for the 19th Sunday after Trinity on 15 October 1724 and is part of the so-called annual cycle of chorale cantatas which Bach began in his second year of service as Thomaskantor in Leipzig. The objective was to include all the Sundays and feast days of the liturgical year in one cycle of cantatas, each of which was based on a hymn – usually the Hymn of the Day for the Sunday or feast day in question. In the process the framing verses of the hymn are performed with the text and melody unchanged: In the opening movement of the cantata they appear as a figured chorale arrangement in which three choral voices with imitations prepare the individual hymn lines which are then heard in the fourth voice (mostly the soprano) in augmented note values, and at the end as a setting in the cantional style. The inner verses are paraphrased in the intervening recitatives and arias.

The author of the madrigal-like texts for Bach’s chorale cantatas remains unknown. It is possible that it was Andreas Stübel (born 1653), the former deputy headmaster of St. Thomas’s

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