"Acedia the Hollow Pain" and "Erbarme dich"

I suppose I should catch up on my early music blogging.

I used to follow a channel on YouTube which had the best early music, even better because the man who made the videos must have been insane, giving every piece some colorful, disturbing, arcane title and displaying slideshows of equally esoteric conspiracy-theory-type images throughout (usually Easter Island moai, hoax alien photos, Egyptian hieroglyphs, and the like).

For example, to J.S. Bach and those who study him, the following piece may have merely been "Sonata in c minor: I. Largo" (BWV 1017), but this guy named it "Acedia the Hollow Pain", and accompanied it with a slideshow of details from a Hieronymus Bosch painting (The Garden of Earthly Delights - link to image). What marvelous days of YouTube, long gone! His account has disappeared, but the video below contains the same music.

In any case, Bach later modified this piece into "Erbarme dich" in St. Matthew Passion. The piece is poignant for Lent and Holy Week, words given to St. Peter after having betrayed Christ:

German:

Erbarme dich, mein Gott,

um meiner Zähren willen!

Schaue hier, Herz und Auge

weint vor dir bitterlich.

Erbarme dich, mein Gott.

English:

Have mercy, my God,

for the sake of my tears!

See here, before you

heart and eyes weep bitterly.

Have mercy, my God.