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• 1 2023-09-26T09:38:28+00:00 Laß, Fürstin, laß noch einen Strahl BWV 198 / BC G 34 21 Funeral-ode cantata for Christiane Eberhardine, Queen Electress of Saxony/Poland. First performed on Oct 17, 1727 in St Paul's Church Leipzig. Text by JC Gottsched. plain 2024-04-24T15:55:04+00:00 1727-10-17 BWV 198 Funeral-ode BC G 34 Johann Sebastian Bach JC Gottsched Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Lass, Fürstin, lass noch einen Strahl, BWV 198 / BC G 34" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 697 James A. Brokaw II Christiane Eberhardine, Queen Elector of Saxony/Poland

  Funeral, Electress Christiane Eberhardine, October 17, 1727

  The work known as the Trauerode BWV 198 (Mourning ode) to Christiane Eberhardine of Brandenburg-Bayreuth, the electress of Saxony, is traditionally included among the church cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach. However, it is in fact a secular composition, even though it was meant to be performed in a church. The first indication of this work’s existence came in 1802 from the Bach biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel:

  Among many occasional pieces that he composed in Leipzig, I mention only two funeral cantatas: the one of which was performed at Cöthen, at the funeral ceremony of his beloved Prince Leopold; the other in the Paulinerkirche at Leipzig, at the funeral sermon upon the death of Christiane Eberhardine, Queen of Poland and Electress of Saxony. The first contains double choruses of uncommon magnificence and the most affecting expression; the second has indeed only simple choruses, but they are so appealing that he who has begun to play one of them will never quit it until he has finished it. It was composed in October 1727.¹  

  
  In describing the funeral music for Prince Leopold as having two choirs, Forkel in part fell victim to an error—and in part compounded this error through a misreading. The manuscript in his possession at that time does in fact name Johann Sebastian Bach as composer—wrongly—but it correctly refers to the funeral for the duke of Meiningen, Ernst Ludwig. Hence, it is actually a work by Bach’s Meiningen cousin Johann Ludwig Bach from 1724.² On the other hand, Forkel’s observations about the funeral music for the Saxon electress are on the mark. For matters concerning the work’s genesis and function, Forkel could rely upon the best of all sources: the composer’s autograph manuscript, also in Forkel’s possession, whose title page exhaustively describes the reasons for the work’s composition: “Funeral Music for the Homage and Eulogy upon the Death of Her Royal Majesty and Electoral Serenity of Saxony, Madame Christiane Eberhardine Queen of Poland etc. and Electress of Saxony etc. Duchess of Brandenburg-Bayreuth, by Mr Kirchbach Esq. held in St. Paul’s Church in Leipzig, Performed by Johann Sebastian Bach anno 1727 on October 18.”³
  
  It is evident from the inaccurate date that Bach formulated this title afterward: all contemporary accounts place the funeral ceremony on October 17. Aside from this, there is an unmistakable pride in this title’s elaborate verbosity, a pride in taking a crucial role in an artistic and political event of the highest order.
  
  This event’s background reaches well into the late seventeenth century. In the course of his efforts to gain the Polish crown, August the Strong, elector of Saxony, converted to Catholicism—but not at all to the delight of his mostly Lutheran subjects in Saxony. When his consort, Christiane Eberhardine, refused to follow him and remained Lutheran, her popular regard rose all the higher. The “mother of her country” died under somewhat mysterious circumstances on September 5, 1727, while at Castle Pretsch, not far from Torgau. Two days later, a countrywide period of mourning was decreed, during which even church music fell silent.
  
  For Leipzig, the obvious thing to do would have been to hold a dignified celebration worthy of the departed. The tolerant policies of the elector toward the Lutherans would certainly have permitted something of the sort. But both the city and the university regarded it as prudent to wait and proceed carefully. Previous experience suggested that taking full advantage of the available leeway could lead to the elector asking the city for a financial loan, which, on the one hand, could not and should not be refused but which, on the other, was unlikely to be repaid. A way out of the confused situation presented itself a few days later, when a young nobleman studying at the University of Leipzig, Hans Carl von Kirchbach, took the initiative and requested the university’s permission to hold a memorial service for the electress at St. Paul’s Church. The late Gothic church was used by the university partly for academic religious services and partly, as in this case, as an auditorium, a venue for events of all kinds. The noble edifice, decorated with many art treasures, withstood the Battle of Nations (Völkerschlacht) in 1813, as well as the bombardment of Leipzig in the Second World War. It was reserved for those in power in the years afterward, despite widespread protests by the population, to dynamite this architectural treasure in order to create space for a hideous new building. With that, an irreplaceable workplace of Johann Sebastian Bach was lost forever.
  
  As for the activities of Kirchbach and his colleagues in early September 1727, the university felt itself unable to take a decision for or against the proposal. And so, on the spur of the moment in early October, Kirchbach turned to Dresden, secured permission immediately, and began preparations for the funeral service. Despite academic tradition, Latin would not be used either for the eulogy or for the funeral music; instead, the German language, in accordance with the aims of the German Society, headquartered in Leipzig, would be used. To create a libretto, Kirchbach engaged Johann Christoph Gottsched, the staunch champion of language reform; for its composition, he chose Bach, the cantor of St. Thomas School.
  
  While these preparations were still under way in the first half of October 1727, the organist at St. Nicholas and the university music director, Johann Gottlieb Görner, got wind of the affair and intervened with the university. Although the event was private, the university authorities took up the matter and attempted to enforce Görner’s claim to the production of all academic musical events, including the one in preparation. Kirchbach did not get involved and accepted a settlement, under which he compensated Görner financially. In spite of this quarrel, Bach pressed on with the composition, which he completed on October 15, two days before the planned performance.
  
  The ceremony itself went forward in deepest solemnity. The city council and university faculty marched in procession from St. Nicholas to the university church, which was draped in black. Contemporary accounts praise the quality of the eulogy and the wealth of invention displayed in the funerary art, and they mention the splendor of the mourning gathering: “Aristocratic persons, high ministers, cavaliers, and other foreigners could be found on the fairway, along with a great number of prominent women, as well as the entire laudable university and a high noble and wise councilor.”⁴ What seemed outwardly to be the result of a private initiative in fact took on the significance of a state function. It is all the more significant that—contrary to contemporary custom—the composer of the funeral music is also mentioned in the accounts. A Leipzig university chronicler expressed himself in considerable detail about the role of the music in the proceedings: “When, then, everyone had taken his place, there had been an improvisation on the organ, and the Ode of Mourning written by Magister Johann Christoph Gottsched, a member of the Collegium Marianum, had been distributed among those present by the Beadles, there was shortly heard the Music of Mourning, which this time Capellmeister Johann Sebastian Bach had composed in the Italian style, with Clave di Cembalo [harpsichord], which Mr Bach himself played, organ, violas di gamba, lutes, violins, recorders, transverse flutes, &c., half being heard before and half after the oration of praise and mourning.”⁵ 
  
  The account of the performance in two parts is accurate, as is the exquisite instrumental ensemble—although the only preserved source, Bach’s autograph score, fails to distinguish between organ and cembalo, on the one hand, or flutes and recorders, on the other. The chronicler’s remark about the composition being “in the Italian style” is intended as a critical jab: Bach did not set the carefully stylized strophes in Gottsched’s ode as written but separated the strophes and took other measures of articulation to create a version of the libretto that he could set in the form of choruses, recitatives, and arias—very much in the style imported from Italy.
  
  In view of this music’s context, it is no wonder that it is among the finest and most ambitious to flow from Bach’s pen. Bach himself adopted parts of the composition two years later for funeral music for Prince Leopold of Köthen.⁶ Two years after that he used the same parts along with still others for his St. Mark Passion BWV 247, later unfortunately lost. In the nineteenth century, the Trauerode was regarded as unperformable for textual reasons. A “rescue” was attempted by paraphrase for All Saints’ Day. The work’s original form was recovered only in our era; it has enriched the Bachian repertoire with a priceless jewel. That the editors of the Bach-Gesellschaft editions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries introduced a grotesque transcription error in the text of the eighth movement, a tenor aria, because they assumed that Bach had deviated from Gottsched’s text with a downright vulgar expletive⁷ underscores how difficult it has been even for Bach experts to comprehend the event of October 17, 1727. Bach’s music was the centerpiece of a first-class funeral ceremony for the “mother of her country,” beloved for her unshakable faith, an event that, for reasons outward as well as inward, can be assumed to be a high point that the cantor of St. Thomas School may perhaps never have experienced again.
   

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  Footnotes

  1. NBR 451.—Trans.↵
  2. Hofmann (1983).↵
  3. “Trauer Music, so Bey der Lob- und Trauer Rede, welche auff das AbsterbenIhro Königlichen Majestät und churfürstlichen Durchlaucht zu Sachsen, FrauenChristianen Eberhardinen Königen in Pohlen etc. und Churfürstin zu Sachsen etc.gefürsteten Marckgräfin zu Brandenburg-Bayreuth von dem HochwohlgeborenenHerrn von Kirchbach in der Pauliner-Kirche zu Leipzig gehalten wurde, aufgeführetvon Johann Sebastian Bach anno 1727 den 18. Octobris.”—Trans.↵
  4. “Was für Fürstlichen Personen, hohen Ministres, Cavalliers und andern Fremdensich dieses mahl auf der Messe befunden, hat sich, nebst einer grossen Anzahlvornehmer Dames, wie auch die gantze löbliche Universität und ein Edler HochweiserRath in Corpore dabey eingefunden” (BD II:174 [no. 231]).—Trans.↵
  5. NBR, 136–37 (no. 136).—Trans.↵
  6. Klagt, Kinder, klagt es aller Welt BWV 1143.↵
  7. The sixth strophe of Gottsched’s ode begins: Der Ewigkeit saphirnes Haus
     Zieht deiner heitern Augen Blicke,
     Von der verschmähten Welt zurücke
     Und tilgt der Erden Denckbild aus.
     Eternity’s saphire house
     Draws your serene glances
     Back from the spurned world
     And erases the mental image of the earth. Bach’s text underlay in his composition score reads: Der Ewigkeit saphirnes Haus
     Zieht, Fürstom, deine heitern Blicke
     Von unsrer Niedrigkeit zurücke
     Und tilgt der Erden Denckbild aus.
     Eternity’s sapphire house
     Draws your serene glances
     Back from our lowliness
     And erases the mental image of the earth. The editors of the Bach-Gesellschaft volume in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries believed that Bach’s rather shakily written “Denckbild” should instead read “Dreckbild” (image of filth) in the unspoken yet mistaken assumption that it was an instance of acceptable Baroque “strong language” (Kraftwort) and without being clear as to the context in Leipzig’s St. Paul’s Church. The assumption that a composer of Bach’s rank might permit himself anything of the sort before the “pillars of society” is a characteristic example of the hagiography of the nineteenth century and even into the twentieth.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:36:18+00:00 Preise, Jerusalem, den Herrn BWV 119 / BC B 3 17 Town Council Election. First performed 08/30/1723 in Leipzig (Cycle I). plain 2024-04-24T17:28:42+00:00 1723-08-30 BWV 119 Leipzig Town Council Election BC B3 Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Preise, Jerusalem, den Herrn, BWV 119 / BC B3" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 579 James A. Brokaw II Leipzig I

  Leipzig City Council Inauguration, August 30, 1723

  With the cantata Preise, Jerusalem, den Herrn BWV 119 (Praise, Jerusalem, the Lord), Johann Sebastian Bach returned to a field he had not tilled for fourteen years, namely, the performance of festive music to celebrate the installation of new city councils in larger cities. Now in his first year as cantor of St. Thomas School in Leipzig, Bach encountered a long-standing custom similar to that in Mühlhausen, whereby council members served for life but were divided among several committees, each headed by a mayor.¹ These committees rotated on a multiyear basis in conducting city business. At any given time, about thirty councilmen and three mayors made up a sitting council and two resting councils. Plenary meetings, with all councilmen present, took place only on extraordinary occasions and for important reasons—such as the election of a new cantor for St. Thomas School in April 1723.
  
  In Leipzig the change of councils took place on the Monday following St. Bartholomew’s Day, celebrated on August 24. The significance of the day and the dignity of the council were matched by the rather old-fashioned rituals that preceded the event. These involved the town clerk, who was a senior councilman, meeting with the superintendent several days before the church service to formally ask him to deliver the sermon for the introduction of a new council. At the same time, a councilman of slightly lower rank with the obsolete title Thürknecht (door servant) would appear at the offices of the cantor to commission him for “the procurement of church music for the stipulated Monday” (die Besorgung der Kirchen Music auf besagten Montag). Both cantor and superintendent could have easily skipped their meetings, since both understood the significance of the day and knew their duties well. But for the council to do away with a “custom from time immemorial” (Brauch von alters her) would have required a formal decision on the part of the council that would have decreased its stature—an outcome hardly to be expected. 
  
  A letter of 1741 from Bach’s cousin Johann Elias Bach demonstrates how seriously the celebration of the annual council election was taken. He related several pieces of worrying news regarding the health of Anna Magdalena to the cantor, who was visiting his son Carl Philipp Emanuel in Berlin at the time, and followed it with the anxious observation: “To which is added the fact that St. Bartholomew’s Day and the Council election here will occur in a few weeks, and we should not know how we should conduct ourselves in respect to the same in Your Honor’s absence.”² It was obviously inconceivable that Bach might have allowed himself to be represented by a substitute. Consequently, it seems that in his twenty-seven years of service in Leipzig, Bach conducted just as many performances of town council election cantatas.³
  
  We have no way of knowing today what repertoire Bach employed to fulfill this ongoing obligation. Four Leipzig town council cantatas have been preserved along with their music, and another exists in fragmentary form. In addition, we have evidence of several texts. Even considering the possibility of repeated performances, we must assume that many such works are lost.
  
  It is all the more gratifying that with the cantata Preise, Jerusalem, den Herrn we have Bach’s very first such composition in Leipzig. We do not know who prepared the text for the work of nine movements. Traditionally, such a libretto had to combine praise of God with gratitude for the blessing of a godly government. Preferably, the libretto began with a psalm verse, as in this case, with verses from Psalm 147: “Preise, Jerusalem, den Herrn, lobe, Zion, deinen Gott! Denn er machet fest die Riegel deiner Tore und segnet deine Kinder drinnen, er schaffet deinen Grenzen Frieden” (12–14; Praise, Jerusalem, the Lord, praise, Zion, your God! For he strengthens the bars of your gates and blesses your children within, he makes peace within your borders). Then, with the recitative “Gesegnet Land, glückselge Stadt” (Blessed land, happy city), the “song of praise” turns to its own community. Here again, psalm verses are used. From Psalm 85, the plea of the previously pardoned nation for new blessings, come these verses: “Doch ist ja seine Hilfe nahe denen, die ihn fürchten, daß in unserm Lande Ehre wohne; daß Güte und Treue einander läßt begegnen; Gerechtigkeit und Friede sich küssen” (9–10; Yet his help is certainly near to those who fear him, that honor may dwell in our country; that goodness and devotion meet one another; justice and peace kiss one another). In the librettist’s poetry, the passage sounds like this:

  Wie kann Gott besser lohnen,
  Als wo er Ehre läßt in einem Lande wohnen? 
  Wie kann er eine Stadt
  Mit reicherm Nachdruck segnen,
  Als wo er Güt und Treu einander läßt begegnen,
  Wo er Gerechtigkeit und Friede 
  Zu küssen niemals müde.
  
  How can God bestow greater benefit
  Than where he allows honor to dwell in a country? 
  How can he bless a city
  With richer assurance
  Than where he lets goodness and devotion meet one together, 
  Where he never tires of letting 
  Justice and peace kiss one another.

  
  The first aria apostrophizes Leipzig using the familiar translation of its name, City of Lindens:

  Wohl dir, du Volk der Linden, 
  Wohl dir, du hast es gut.
  Wieviel an Gottes Segen 
  Und seiner Huld gelegen, 
  Die überschwenglich tut, 
  Kannst du an dir befinden.
  
  Happy are you, you people of the lindens, 
  Happy are you, it is well with you.
  How much dependent on God’s blessing 
  And his grace,
  Which manifests itself extravagantly, 
  You can find within yourself.

  
  The praise of the city continues in a recitative:

  So herrlich stehst du, liebe Stadt;
  Du Volk, das Gott zum Erbteil sich erwählet hat.
  
  So gloriously you stand, dear city;
  You people that God has chosen for his inheritance.

  
  Here again, the psalter—Psalm 33:12—stands as godparent: “Wohl dem Volk, des Gott der Herr ist, dem Volk, das er zum Erbe erwählet hat” (Happy the nation whose God is the Lord, the nation that he has chosen for his inheritance). In a tone of utter conviction, the librettist announces that everything 

      was wir Gutes bei uns sehn, 
  Nächst Gott durch kluge Obrigkeit
  Und durch ihr weises Regiment geschehn.    
  
      that we regard as good around us
  Happens, next to God, through prudent rulers
  And through their wise governance.

  
  Who would contradict such a statement? But there is better to come: the next aria calls it by its name:

  Die Obrigkeit ist Gottes Gabe, 
  Ja selber Gottes Ebenbild.
  Wer ihre Macht nicht will ermessen, 
  Der muß auch Gottes gar vergessen:
  Wie würde sonst sein Wort erfüllt?
  
  Authority is God’s gift,
  Yes, the very image of God himself. 
  Anyone unwilling to measure its power, 
  He must also forget God’s entirely:
  How otherwise would his word be fulfilled?

  
  This is actually a paraphrase of Romans 13, which begins with the words “Jedermann sei untertan der Obrigkeit, die Gewalt über ihn hat. Denn es ist keine Obrigkeit ohne von Gott; wo aber Obrigkeit ist, die ist von Gott verordnet” (Let everyone be subject to the authority that has power over him. For there is no authority unless from God; where, however, authority exists, it is ordained by God). Thanking God for the authorities is the concern of the two cantata movements that follow, whereby authority includes those being relieved of their duties, as well as those about to assume them with renewed energy. Once again, the librettist borrows from the psalter; he chooses the beginning of a strophe from Psalm 126 for a choral movement: “Der Herr hat Großes an uns getan, des sind wir fröhlich” (3; The Lord has done great things for us, of which we are glad). Inexplicably, the word “Großes” (great things) in the cantata text was transformed to “Guts” (good things). By way of introduction, a final recitative asks that an “arm Gebet” (poor prayer) be heard; what is meant is the fourth strophe of Luther’s German version of the Te Deum:

  Hilf deinem Volk, Herr Jesu Christ, 
  Und segne, was dein Erbteil ist.
  Wart und pfleg ihr zu aller Zeit 
  Und heb sie hoch in Ewigkeit. 
  Amen.
  
  Help your people, Lord Jesus Christ,
  And bless what is your inheritance.
  Tend and nourish them at all times 
  And raise them high in eternity.
  Amen.

  
  For the opening chorus with the verses from Psalm 147, Bach chooses the greatest possible festive setting: four trumpets and drums, three oboes and two recorders, string orchestra and chorus, and, in the bass, cellos, bassoons, and bass viols in unison with the organ. How these maximal demands were reconciled with the notoriously cramped loft of Leipzig’s St. Nicholas Church must remain an open question. Solemnity, dignity, and self-assurance characterize the broad beginning, whose dotted rhythms and pathos-laden, expansive scales indicate the magnificently ostentatious instrumental form of the French overture. The flow of the strings and woodwinds pauses three times, allowing fanfares in the trumpets and drums to be heard. Led by the trumpets in their high clarino range, the quick middle portion, only thirty measures in length, allows the psalm verse to pass by quickly in well-considered alternation of contemplation and celebration. Immediately, the slow instrumental introduction returns, achieving a thematic integration of the brass by way of a harmonic detour and thereby bringing about a climax and conclusion. Today, scholars are seriously considering the possibility that this movement was not entirely newly composed but goes back in large part to a purely instrumental predecessor.⁴
  
  The tenor aria, a paean to the City of Lindens, radiates serenity and contentment with its gently ambling rhythm and songlike, catchy melody, its loosely arranged, rondo-like form, and the dark coloration of the two deep oboes. The alto aria “Die Obrigkeit ist Gottes Gabe” is tuneful and quite dancelike, with the recorders representing the upper reaches of the woodwind range. Its buoyancy of mood seems conceived more in conjunction with a varied and diverse overall structure rather than primarily projection of the text. Still, it would have seemed logical to use any and all means to demonstrate the omnipotence of the authorities installed by God to those in attendance. The altered version of the psalm verse “Der Herr hat Großes an uns getan” is clothed in a brilliant choral fugue that grows in intensity; it is surely no coincidence that its theme suggests the chorale melody Nun danket alle Gott (Now thank all you God). The fugue itself is the centerpiece of an elaborately layered structure comprising instrumental ritornelli and various choral complexes. The simple closing chorale uses the melody of the Te Deum, whose Reformation-era form is based on materials handed down from the old church (altkirchlicher Tradition). Recent scholarship suggests that the trumpets provided improvisatory fanfares at the end of each line,⁵ lending the concluding chorale movement additional brilliance.
  
  Remarkably, even the press took notice of the performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s first town council cantata for Leipzig. An account published in a Hamburg newspaper in early September 1723 mentions not only the Leipzig town council election but also the “superb council election music”— but without mentioning the name of the composer.
  
  And this work received still another distinction in 1843 when it was heard in the Leipzig Gewandhaus under the direction of Felix Mendelssohn as part of a gala performance to inaugurate Leipzig’s first monument to Bach, funded by Mendelssohn and still to be found in the park before St. Thomas Church.

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  Footnotes

  1. Bach performed Gott ist mein König BWV 71 for a council inauguration on February 4, 1708, in Mühlhausen.—Trans.↵
  2. NBR, 212 (no. 222). Johann Elias Bach’s letter informing Bach of his wife’s illness,draft or copy, is in BD II:391 (no. 489).—Trans.↵
  3. However, it has recently become clear that Bach was indeed absent from his post at St. Thomas for as much as two years (perhaps 1742–43 or sometime between 1743 and 1746). In a letter of application written in 1751 by a former St. Thomas student, Gottfried Benjamin Fleckeisen, to succeed his father as cantor of the small town of Döbeln, Fleckeisen claimed that “I was an alumnus [boarder] at the St. Thomas School in Leipzig for nine years and while I was there served for four years as prefect of the choro musico. For two whole years I had to perform and conduct the music at the churches of St. Thomas and St. Nicholas in place of the capellmeister, and without boasting, may say that I always acquitted myself honorably” (translated in Maul 2018, xv). See also Maul (2017).—Trans.↵
  4. Klaus Hofmann (2016) has taken issue with the assessment of Alfred Dürr (1986) that the original version of the first movement was a French overture akin to those in Bach’s orchestral suites and that the middle section was newly composed.—Trans.↵
  5. Hofmann (2001).↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:37:19+00:00 Laßt uns sorgen, laßt uns wachen BWV 213 / BC G 18 15 Laßt uns sorgen, laßt uns wachen BWV 213. . Birthday celebration cantata for Friedrich Christian, Crown Prince of Saxony/Poland. First performed on Sep 05, 1733 in Leipzig. Text by CF Henrici (Picander). plain 2024-04-24T14:55:13+00:00 1733-09-05 BWV 213 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 Birthday celebration BC G 18 Johann Sebastian Bach CF Henrici (Picander) Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Lasst uns sorgen, lasst uns wachen, BWV 213 / BC G 18" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 672 James A. Brokaw II Saxony-Poland Friedrich Christian, Crown Prince of Saxony/Poland

  Dramma per musica, Hercules auf dem Scheide-Wege

  Members of Princely Houses: Saxony/Poland, September 5, 1733

  Laßt uns sorgen, laßt uns wachen BWV 213 (Let us care for, let us watch) belongs to a series of festival pieces that the Thomaskantor performed at functions with his Collegium Musicum, all of which celebrated birthdays and name days of the family of the prince elector of Saxony in Dresden. It is certainly no coincidence that the large number of these in close succession overshadows Bach’s previous activities of this kind. A likely explanation is that Johann Sebastian Bach hoped for a quick approval of the petition he sent in July 1733 for a title at the court of Dresden and that he wanted to strike while the iron was hot.
  
  One month after the outdoor performance of an homage cantata, now sadly lost, for the name day of the elector-prince, the Leipzig press once again announced a concert: “Tomorrow, the fifth of September of this year, in the Zimmermann garden before the Grimma Gate, the Bach Collegium Musicum will most humbly celebrate the high birthday of the Most Serene Elector-Prince of Saxony with a solemn musical work in the afternoon from four until six o’clock.”¹ “Elector-Prince” refers to Friedrich Christian, born in 1722, the son of Elector Friedrich August II of Saxony and his wife, Maria Josepha, born archduchess of Austria and daughter of a German emperor. A weak and sickly child according to a contemporary report, Friedrich Christian lived only forty-one years, dying in 1763 shortly after his father. Even so, for the young successor to the throne, Bach’s librettist Christian Friedrich Henrici chose the famous myth of the young Hercules who must choose between the easy path of “Wollust” (sensuality) and the steep, rough path of “Tugend” (virtue).
  
  The dedication to an eleven-year-old was certainly not record-breaking: on one occasion a librettist at the court of Gera drafted Tafelmusik (table music)—probably for composition by the Kapellmeister Emanuel Kegel—entitled Herculis Jugend und Tugend . . . für Heinrich [den] I., Reuß jüngerer Linie, als Selbiger am 10. März 1700 das Fünfte Jahr zurücklegte / mit eben so viel Sinn-Bildern (Hercules’s youth and virtue . . . for Heinrich [the] First, Reuß of the younger line, who completed his fifth year on March 10, 1700 / with just as many allegorical tableaux). This was probably an extreme case; normally such things were dedicated to adults. For example, on August 24, 1725, in Arnstadt, table music composed by Johann Balthasar Christian Freislich was performed for the birthday of Prince Günther: Der siegende Hercules als Bild eines sich selbst beherrschenden Regenten (Victorious Hercules, as the image of a self-governing regent). A few weeks earlier, Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel in Gotha celebrated the birthday of Duke Friedrich with a “drama” entitled Hercules Prodicius oder die triumphirende Tugend (Hercules, or virtue triumphant); two years later he presented this work on the Hamburg stage but without the homage scenes.² In the summer of 1750, immediately upon his return from his last trip to Germany, George Frideric Handel composed his musical “Interludium” The Choice of Hercules and performed it in March of the following year in Covent Garden in connection with Alexander’s Feast. In early September 1773, exactly forty years after Bach’s homage cantata, princely virtues were again exemplified by the “Choice of Hercules”: the librettist and composer were Christoph Martin Wieland and Anton Schweitzer, and the honoree was the then sixteen-year-old Crown Prince Carl August of Saxe-Weimar. Here again, the frail health of the dedicatee was papered over with pithy language. Yet Carl August was granted a happier fate than his Saxon forerunner: he enjoyed a long regency; Goethe’s appointment to Weimar at its beginning was a good omen, as it were.
  
  In a composition by the famous Hamburg opera composer Reinhard Keiser, entitled Concerto a tre Voci con Stromenti / Hercules auf dem Scheide-Wege, wo zur Rechten die Tugend, zur lincken Hand aber die Wollust sitzet (Concerto for three voices with strings / Hercules at the crossroad, where virtue is at the right, but sensuality is at the left hand), arias and recitatives are arranged rather schematically, one after the other,³ a hazard Bach and his librettist Henrici skillfully avoided. Instead, the heart of the action is framed by two tutti movements, declared as “Rathschluß der Götter” (Decree of the gods) at the beginning and “Chor der Musen” (Chorus of the Muses) at the end. Thus Hercules wrestles with his fate in solitude, with an echo as his partner in colloquy, and the alliance finally struck between Hercules and Virtue gives rise to an extended love duet. Finally, the trio of Hercules, Sensuality, and Virtue, in a somewhat unconventional interpretation of mythology, is joined by Mercury, messenger of the gods and patron deity of commerce—unmistakably a “broad hint” in the direction of Leipzig, the trade fair city.
  
  For the most part, Bach composed the extensive, thirteen-movement libretto in the summer of 1733, admittedly including several older movements. The closing chorus, similar to a gavotte, goes back to a Köthen secular cantata perhaps from 1721 (BWV 184.1/6).⁴ In a texture typical of Bach’s Köthen years, the vocal component is scored only for soprano and bass. In 1724 Bach used it in a Leipzig cantata for the third day of Pentecost (Erwünschtes Freudenlicht BWV 184.2), expanding it to four parts. The duet between Hercules and Virtue and the “echo aria” are based on an as yet unidentified model. For the duet, Bach had another idea in mind; he planned to use a duet that would later serve as the model for the duet “Et in unum Dominum” of the Mass in B Minor BWV 232. 
  
  The opening chorus and all four arias have become well known by virtue of their borrowing by the first four cantatas of the Christmas Oratorio in 1734–35. There has been much discussion and speculation over what is called parody procedure, that is, providing an existing work with new text or occasionally reworking it. In contrast to earlier interpretation, today it is undisputed that librettists devised the new texts with great circumspection, sensitivity, and understanding of the work.⁵ Even the incorporation of the echo aria into the oratorio, long misunderstood, is now regarded as legitimate once its theological motivation could be investigated. Virtue’s aria can be seen as characteristic of the procedure followed by Bach and his librettist: 

  Auf meinen Flügeln sollst du schweben,
  Auf meinem Fittich steigest du
  Den Sternen wie ein Adler zu.
  
  On my wings you shall hover,
  On my pinions you shall climb
  To the stars like an eagle.

  
  The beginning of Picander’s text alludes to Bible verses in Exodus and Deuteronomy 32:11: “Wie ein Adler ausführt seine Jungen und über ihnen schwebt, breitete er seine Fittiche aus und nahm ihn und trug ihn auf seinen Flügeln” (As an eagle carries out its young and hovers over them, he spread his wings and took him and carried him on his pinions). Bach sets the “steigen” (climb) and “schweben” (hover) with an appropriate figure; and for the figure of Virtue and the perfection it promises in the later course of the text, he judges fugue to be the only appropriate means. An aria so constructed could only be moved into the Christmas Oratorio by virtue of the skill of the librettist, who supplied the new text with the equally suitable keywords “Ehre” (honor), “Kraft” (strength), and “Mut” (courage). Admittedly, the long-standing question remains open whether Bach had the multisectional Christmas Oratorio in mind while at work on the homage cantata in 1733 and 1734 and whether this goal guided his effort, consciously or unconsciously.

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. “Das Bachische Collegium Musicum wird Morgen als den 5. September anni currentis im Zimmermannischen Garten vor dem Grimmischen Thore den hohen Geburtstag des Durchlauchtigsten Chur-Prinzen von Sachsen mit einer solennen Musick von Nachmittag 4. Bis 6. Uhr unterthänigst zelebrieren” (BD II:241 [no. 337]).—Trans.↵
  2. Böhme (1931, 113).↵
  3. Petzoldt (1935, 56 ff.).↵
  4. Neither the music nor the text has survived. The cantata’s existence is evidenced only by five surviving instrumental parts.—Trans.↵
  5. Schulze (1989); Schulze (1997).↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:36:18+00:00 Gott, man lobet dich in der Stille BWV 120.1 / BC B 6 12 Town Council Election. First performed 08/29/1729 in Leipzig after Trinity 1727. . plain 2024-04-24T17:29:16+00:00 1729-08-29 BWV 120 Leipzig Town Council Election BC B 6 Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Gott, man lobet dich in der Stille, BWV 120 / BC B 6 " in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 587 James A. Brokaw II Leipzig after Trinity 1727

  Town Council Election, August 29, 1729?

  The cantata Gott, man lobet dich in der Stille BWV 120 (God, one praises you in the stillness) belongs to the relatively small group of Bach’s town council election cantatas. These were works that were performed, rather infrequently, in honor of the Leipzig town council and by its explicit mandate. As was conventional in many German cities and in line with the political conventions of the era, councilmen were appointed for life, and their total number was divided into several councils, each of which was led by a mayor. In regular succession, these councils alternated in conducting the affairs of government. This rotation between “sitting” or governing council and “resting” councils occurred at the end of every August during Bach’s time in Leipzig—or, more precisely, on the Monday following St. Bartholomew’s Day. Early in the morning, the town council service was held in the municipal main church, St. Nicholas, which included a particular sermon as well as festive music.
  
  Although all participants were clear as to their responsibilities, the council insisted upon sending a scribe to the superintendent several days before the event in order to ask him to prepare the council sermon, as well as a representative with the old-fashioned title Thürknecht¹ to the cantor of St. Thomas to remind him of the expected musical composition. An anxious inquiry sent to Bach in August 1841, then visiting in Berlin, underscores the great importance all parties attached to this ceremony: “St. Bartholomew’s Day and the council election here will occur in a few weeks, and we should not know how we should conduct ourselves in respect to the same in Your Honor’s absence.”² It was obviously inconceivable that Bach might have allowed himself to be represented by a substitute.³
  
  In his twenty-seven years of service in Leipzig, Bach must have provided music to just as many town council election church services. Because it is difficult to estimate what portion of these may have been reperformances, it is difficult to say whether the entirety of the works Bach performed on those Mondays in August is represented by the works that survive: five compositions with music—including one in fragmentary form—as well as the three texts transmitted without music. On the other hand, it is striking that after 1740 Bach was still making an effort to expand the corpus of such works, so he was by no means resting on his laurels regarding the town council election cantatas.
  
  The cantata Gott, man lobet dich in der Stille is one of these works of Bach’s late period. Scholars had long been groping in the dark with respect to the work’s genesis before the holograph score became available again at the end of the 1970s. Along with other objects evacuated from the former Prussian State Library in Berlin, the autograph survived the confusion at the war’s end in a cloister in Lower Silesia. A bit later it arrived along with many other treasures at the library of Jagiellonian University in Kraków. The existence of these parts of the collection, thought to be lost, was acknowledged relatively late. Of course, secret vaults in which the missing sources were to be found had long been discussed, but all inquiries were met with denials until restrictions were finally lifted. 
  
  As regards our cantata, this means that a close study became possible only recently, particularly in connection with an edition under the auspices of the New Bach Edition (Neue Bach-Ausgabe). The new findings affect the work’s chronology, on the one hand, and the relationship between individual movements and particular predecessor works, on the other. Final clarity is not possible in every instance, since in only a few cases have all the works drawn upon by Bach been preserved. What is certain is that only the two recitatives and the closing chorale were newly composed for the first performance, which took place in 1742 or one of the years afterward. All the other movements are borrowings from older works.
  
  The retextings of such adopted movements in the cantata libretto stand out because of their lower linguistic quality. The opening movement, an aria, is an exception; it is based on Psalm 65:1: “Gott, man lobet dich in der Stille zu Zion, und dir bezahltet man Gelübde” (God, one praises you in the stillness of Zion, and one fulfills vows to you). The second movement, by contrast, is a bit clumsy:

  Jauchzet, ihr erfreuten Stimmen,
  Steiget bis zum Himmel ’nauf!
  Lobet Gott im Heiligtum
  Und erhebet seinen Ruhm;
  Seine Güte
  Sein erbarmendes Gemüte
  Hört zu keinen Zeiten auf.
  
  Exult, you gladdened voices,
  Climb up to heaven!
  Praise God in the sanctuary
  And exalt his renown;
  His goodness,
  His merciful disposition,
  At no time comes to an end.

  
  The third movement, a recitative, is linguistically concentrated and pertinent. In accordance with its function, it praises the city and its governors:

  Auf, du geliebte Lindenstadt,
  Komm, falle vor dem Höchsten nieder,
  Erkenne, wie er dich
  In deinem Schmuck und Pracht
  So väterlich 
  Erhält, beschützt, bewacht
  Und seine Liebeshand
  Noch über dir beständig hat.
  Wohlan,
  Bezahle die Gelübde,
  Die du dem Höchsten hast getan,
  Und singe Dank- und Demutslieder.
  Komm, bitte, daß er Stadt und Land
  Unendlich wolle mehr erquicken
  Und diese werte Obrigkeit
  So heute Sitz und Wahl erneut,
  Mit vielem Segen wolle schmücken.
  
  Arise, you beloved city of lindens,
  Come, fall before the Most High,
  Acknowledge how he
  In your beauty and magnificence
  So fatherly
  Sustains, protects, guards you
  And still has his loving hand
  Constantly over you.
  Well, then,
  Fulfill your vows
  That you have made to the Most High
  And sing hymns of thanks and humility.
  Come, pray, that he may wish to 
  Unendingly further refresh city and land,
  And these worthy rulers,
  Renewed today in seat and election,
  He may wish to adorn with many blessings.

  
  The effect of the aria text that follows, made to fit an earlier composition, is somewhat colorless:

  Heil und Segen
  Soll und muß zu aller Zeit
  Sich auf unsre Obrigkeit 
  In gewünschter Fülle legen,
  Daß sich Recht und Treue müssen
  Mit einander freundlich küssen.
  
  Salvation and blessing
  Shall and must at all times
  Lay upon our authorities
  In desired abundance,
  That justice and faithfulness must
  Kiss one another in friendship.

  
  The final recitative phrases a blessing for the new government, and the libretto closes with a strophe from Martin Luther’s German version of the Te Deum Laudamus.
  
  Bach’s composition begins with an unusually extended aria—particularly considering the brevity of the psalm verse—for alto, two oboi d’amore, and string instruments. The movement’s siciliano rhythm and, in particular, the virtuoso demands on the voice, with instrument-like passages that extend for long stretches, have long aroused suspicion that the aria is based on the slow movement of a solo concerto, perhaps for violin. Bach transformed the original into a duet for a wedding cantata performed in 1729; a year later, it was combined with the psalm text for a festive cantata to celebrate the anniversary of the Augsburg Confession. The aria in the town council election cantata probably goes back to this version directly.
  
  The following choral movement’s situation is scarcely less complicated. Its archetype likely originated before 1729 but is lost. In various ways, the 1729 wedding cantata, the 1730 festive cantata, and our town council cantata all go back to this lost archetype. From today’s perspective, the best-known version belongs not to the world of the cantata but to that of the mass. Around 1748 Bach once again recalled the original version and from it created the radiant “Et expecto” of the Mass in B Minor (BWV 232).
  
  A brief recitative for bass, newly composed for the town council cantata, is followed by the fourth movement, an aria for soprano, concertante violin, and strings—yet another of Bach’s favorite pieces, whose favored position can be seen in its eventful and sometimes complicated history. It may have begun with a soprano aria with obbligato violin, perhaps composed before 1723 in Köthen and perhaps as part of a wedding cantata. Arranged as an instrumental piece, it appears in an early version of Bach’s Sonata for Violin in G Major BWV 1021 with obbligato cembalo. Here, the right hand of the cembalo takes over the vocal part. Transformed back into an aria, the piece proceeded through the aforementioned cantatas of 1729 and 1730 and, finally, to our town council cantata.
  
  In contrast, the two remaining original movements, the last recitative as well as the closing chorale on the melody Herr Gott, dich loben wir, are easily understood. But the cantor of St. Thomas has one more riddle for us: following the closing chorale, he noted in his composing score: “In Fine Intrada con Trombe e Tamburi” (At the end, fanfares by trumpets and drums). The Leipzig Stadtpfeiffer would have performed this “Intrada” without sheet music, and so to this day it remains uncertain what sort of fanfares would have brought the first performance of the town council election cantata to an end.⁴

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. Gerichtsdiener in modern German, the closest English equivalent to which is “bailiff.”—Trans.↵
  2. NBR, 212 (no. 222). Johann Elias Bach’s letter informing Bach of his wife’s illness: draft or copy (BD II:391 [no. 489]).—Trans.↵
  3. However, it has recently become clear that Bach was indeed absent from his post at St. Thomas for as much as two years (perhaps 1742–43 or sometime between 1743 and 1746). In a letter of application written in 1751 by a former St. Thomas student, Gottfried Benjamin Fleckeisen, to succeed his father as cantor of the small town of Döbeln, Fleckeisen claimed that “I was an alumnus [boarder] at the St. Thomas School in Leipzig for nine years and while I was there served for four years as prefect of the choro musico. For two whole years I had to perform and conduct the music at the churches of St. Thomas and St. Nicholas in place of the capellmeister, and without boasting, may say that I always acquitted myself honorably” (translated in Maul 2018, xv). See also Maul (2017).—Trans.↵
  4. Hofmann (2001).↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:34:18+00:00 Aergre dich, O Seele, nicht BWV 186 / BC A 108 10 Seventh Sunday After Trinity. First performed 07/11/1723 in Leipzig (Cycle I). Text by Salomon Franck. plain 2024-04-24T17:28:45+00:00 1723-07-11 BWV 186 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 05Trinity07 Seventh Sunday After Trinity BC A 108 Johann Sebastian Bach Salomo Franck Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Ärgre dich, O Seele, nicht, BWV 186 / BC A 108" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 335 James A. Brokaw II Leipzig I

  Seventh Sunday after Trinity, July 11, 1723

  This cantata, Ärgre dich, o liebe Seele, nicht BWV 186 (Do not be offended, O dear soul), belongs to that small group of church music compositions that Johann Sebastian Bach composed near the end of his time at Weimar. He revised these cantatas heavily in the first few months of his activity as cantor of St. Thomas School at Leipzig and integrated them with his Leipzig cantata repertoire.¹ The reason for the transformations was the fact that the cantatas were written for the second to the fourth Sundays in Advent and could not be reused in Leipzig, where those three Sundays belonged to what was known as the tempus clausum, during which no musical performances took place in church. A text collection indicates what our cantata originally looked like. Published in Weimar and Jena in 1717 under the title Evangelische Sonn- und Fest-Tages-Andachten (Protestant Sunday and feast day devotions) by the Weimar chief consistory secretary, Salomon Franck, the print contains the cantata text Ärgre dich, o liebe Seele (Do not be offended, O dear soul) with the heading “Auf den dritten Advent-Sonntag” (On the third Sunday of Advent). In contrast to the Leipzig version, which has eleven movements, the Weimar version has only six. Following the opening chorus there are four arias, and the libretto concludes with a strophe from Ludwig Helmbold’s hymn Von Gott will ich nicht lassen (From God I will not leave), whose text begins “Darum ich schon dulde / Hie Widerwärtigkeit” (Therefore, if I even endure / Adversity here). Salomon Franck’s cantata libretto is closely bound to the Gospel reading for the third Sunday of Advent, the account in the eleventh chapter of Matthew of the imprisonment of John the Baptist. His reported question to Jesus, “Bist du, der da kommen soll?” (Are you the one who should come?), is quoted literally in the first aria of Franck’s libretto. The title line, “Ärgre dich, o liebe Seele, nicht” (Do not take offense, O dear soul), alludes to Jesus’s answer, which reads in part, “Selig ist, der sich nicht an mir ärgert” (Blessed is he who does not take offense at me).
  
  The transformation of the Advent cantata, probably composed in December 1716, to a cantata for the seventh Sunday after Trinity called for extensive revisions to the text to establish a connection to that Sunday’s Gospel reading, which is found in the eighth chapter of Mark. It gives an account of the feeding of the four thousand:

  At that time, since many people were there and had nothing to eat, Jesus called his disciples to him and spoke to them: I feel sorry for these people, for they have now been with me for three days and have had nothing to eat; and if I allow them to leave me for home without having eaten, they shall faint by the way, for several have come from afar. His disciples answered him: From where shall we take bread here in the desert in order to satisfy them? And he asked them: How many loaves do you have? They spoke: Seven. And he ordered the people to sit on the earth. And he took the seven loaves, and gave thanks, and broke them, and gave them to his disciples to set before them, and they laid them before the people. And they had a few small fishes, and he gave thanks and commanded that they also be set before them. They ate and were filled, and they lifted the other pieces, seven baskets. And they were about four thousand who had eaten; and he released them. (1–9)

  
  The Leipzig author who transformed Salomon Franck’s cantata text into a libretto for the seventh Sunday after Trinity remains unidentified. He left the Weimar opening movement unchanged:

  Ärgre dich, o Seele, nicht
  Daß das allerhöchste Licht,
  Gottes Glanz und Ebenbild,
  Sich in Knechtsgestalt verhüllt,
  Ärgre dich, o Seele, nicht!
  
  Do not take offense, O soul,
  That the light of the Most High,
  God’s gleam and true image,
  Disguises itself in servant’s form.
  Do not take offense, O soul!

  
  The poet repeats a key word at the beginning of the ensuing recitative and thereby makes a quick transition to a description of the Gospel of Mark:

  Die Knechtgestalt, die Not, der Mangel
  Trifft Christi Glieder nicht allein,
  Es will ihr Haupt selbst arm und elend sein.
  
  The servant’s form, the need, the want
  Affect not only Christ’s members.
  Even their head himself wishes to be poor and needy.

  
  It closes with these lines:

  Wenn Armut dich beschwert,
  Wenn Hunger dich verzehrt,
  Und willst sogleich verzagen,
  So denkst du nicht an Jesum, an dein Heil.
  Hast du wie jenes Volk nicht bald zu essen,
  So seufzt du: Ach Herr, wie lange willst du mein vergessen?
  
  When poverty weighs you down,
  When hunger consumes you 
  And you would immediately despair,
  Then you do not think of Jesus, your salvation.
  If you, like these people, do not eat soon, 
  You sigh: Ah, Lord, how long will you forget me?

  
  Franck’s first aria underwent significant revision. Its original version begins with the questions referenced in Matthew, which John has Jesus convey:

  Bist du, der da kommen soll,
  Seelen-Freund, in Kirchen-Garten?
  Mein Gemüt is zweifelsvoll, 
  Soll ich eines andern warten?
  
  Are you the one who should come,
  Soul’s friend, into the church garden?
  My mind is full of doubt.
  Should I wait for another?

  
  In the Leipzig version, this becomes:

  Bist du, der mir helfen soll,
  Eilst du nicht, mir beizustehen? 
  Mein Gemüt ist zweifelsvoll,
  Du verwirfts vielleicht mein Flehen.
  
  If it is you who should help me,
  Do you not hurry to stand beside me?
  My mind is full of doubt.
  Perhaps you reject my pleading.

  
  A second interpolated recitative continues the reflection on the different ranks of bodily and spiritual nourishment:

  Ach daß ein Christ so sehr
  Vor seinen Körper sorgt!
  Was ist er mehr?
  Ein Bau von Erden,
  Der wieder muß zur Erde werden,
  Ein Kleid, so nur geborgt.
  
  Ah, that a Christian so deeply
  For his body cares!
  What more is he
  Than a structure of earth
  That must again to earth return,
  A garment that is only borrowed.

  
  The close describes the teachings of Jesus as “geistlich Manna” (spiritual manna), leading into an allusion to the thirty-fourth psalm:

  Drum, wenn der Kummer gleich das Herze nagt und frißt,
  So schmeckt und sehet doch, wie freundlich Jesus ist.
  
  Therefore, when affliction gnaws and devours the heart,
  Then taste and see how friendly Jesus is.

  
  The associated aria follows this train of thought, however, only after significant changes in wording. The Advent version makes reference to the “Messias” announced by John. This language is, of course, absent from the Leipzig version:

  Mein Heiland läßt sich merken
  In seinen Gnadenwerken.
  Da er sich kräftig weist,
  Den schwachen Geist zu lehren,
  Den Matten Leib zu nähren,
  Dies sättigt Leib und Geist.
  
  My savior makes himself apparent
  In his works of grace,
  Where he powerfully shows how
  To teach the weak in spirit
  To nourish the feeble body.
  This satisfies body and spirit.

   
  A strophe from the 1524 chorale by Paul Speratus, Es ist das Heil uns kommen her (Salvation has come to us), closes the first part of the cantata.
  
  If the first part emphasizes the importance of salvation as opposed to the needs of the body, the second part—to be performed after the sermon—turns to the vanity and pride of the world and contrasts them to the words of Jesus. Thus the first recitative begins:

  Es ist die Welt die große Wüstenei;
  Der Himmel wird zu Erz, die Erde wird zu Eisen,
  Wenn Christen durch den Glauben weisen,
  Daß Christi Wort ihr größter Reichtum sei.
  
  The world is a great wilderness;
  The heavens turn to brass, the earth turns to iron
  When Christians show through faith 
  That Christ’s word shall be their greatest wealth.

  
  Following this preparation, the associated aria in Salomon Franck’s version was adopted in the Leipzig cantata without change:

  Die Armen will der Herr umarmen
  Mit Gnaden hier und dort;
  Er schenket ihnen aus Erbarmen
  Den höchsten Schatz, das Lebenswort.
  
  The poor would the Lord embrace
  With grace here and there.
  He gives them out of mercy
  The highest treasure, the word of life.

  
  The last recitative also fits this tone. It begins: “Nun mag die Welt mit ihrer Lust vergehen” (Now may the world with its pleasures pass away); remarkably, this programmatic line has no rhyme partner. For its core idea, the movement draws upon a verse from Psalm 119:

  In Jesu Wort liegt Heil und Segen.
  Es ist ihres Fußes Leuchte und ein Licht auf ihren Wegen.
  
  In Jesus’s word lies salvation and blessing.
  It is a lamp for their feet and a light upon their paths.

  
  The final aria is once again the unrevised poetry of Salomon Franck:

  Laß, Seele, kein Leiden
  Von Jesu dich scheiden,
  Sei, Seele, getreu!
  Dir bleibet die Krone
  Aus Gnaden zu Lohne,
  Wenn du von Banden des Leibes nun frei.
  
  Let, soul, no suffering
  Separate you from Jesus.
  Soul, be true!
  For you the crown remains
  Your reward of grace
  When you are free of the fetters of the body.

  
  Another strophe from Paul Speratus’s chorale Es ist das Heil uns kommen her concludes the cantata.
  
  Bach’s composition of this wide-ranging source text proves to be a remarkable mixture of older and more recent movements. The opening chorus and four arias show evidence of their Weimar origin both in the nature of their texts and in the characteristics of their musical style. The four recitatives and the closing chorale movements of the first and second parts were all added to the composition in Leipzig.
  
  The multipartite construction within a single movement so often found in Bach’s Weimar compositions—normally coupled with a colorful set of musical ideas—also characterizes the first movement of our cantata. Following a quite densely woven instrumental introduction, the voices enter in dissonant intervals, projecting the text “Ärgre dich” almost too literally. The instruments immediately follow suit, but then the chorus immediately thickens to a fugal texture, performing the admonition “Ärgre dich, o Seele, nicht” penetratingly and with gravity. By contrast, the other lines of text are granted an episodic role.
  
  In the first aria, the voice is accompanied only by the basso continuo; in accordance with the original version of the text, the assignment of the vocal part to the bass is to be understood in terms of John the Baptist. In the Weimar version of the second aria, the tenor voice was accompanied by an oboe da caccia, whose dark, sonorous coloration evokes an unpretentious image of the Messiah as presented by the text. The Leipzig score prescribes violin and oboe for this instrumental part, thereby implying that the entire texture is transposed up an octave. In view of this truly awkward range, especially for the woodwind instrument, one suspects that Bach might have undertaken revisions afterward; unfortunately, there are no indications of what the results might have been.
  
  In the third aria, “Die Armen will der Herr umarmen,” the soprano is accompanied by the unison violins, mostly in their middle and lower registers. As so often, the frequent chromaticism in this obbligato part does not stand for pain and suffering but for “Erbarmen” (mercy), the key word of the third line of text. The last aria, a duet for soprano and alto accompanied by all the strings and woodwinds, exhibits a dance character. The key of C minor and density of texture correspond to the text and forbid any thought of happy relaxation.
  
  An extensive chorale arrangement closes the second half of the cantata, as it does the first half. In no way is it a “simple four-part setting”; instead, it shows its kinship to the opening movements of the chorale cantatas from Bach’s second year at Leipzig.

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. The editors of BWV3 have concluded that “an alleged Weimar version [of BWV 186] recognized by BWV2 can only be traced back to the printed text of 1717 for the third Sunday after Advent. A group of three Advent cantatas for the year 1716 does not accord with the stipulations at Weimar for a new cantata every month (cf. BD II [no. 66]). BWV 70.1 is already documented for the second Sunday after Advent. The style, with Choreinbau (choral embedding), and the autograph manuscript speak for 1723 as the time of origin” (BWV3, 232 [no. 186]).—Trans.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:34:17+00:00 Die Elenden sollen essen BWV 75 / BC A 94 9 First Sunday After Trinity. First performed 05/30/1723 in Leipzig (Cycle I). plain 2024-04-24T16:43:59+00:00 1723-05-30 BWV 75 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 01Trinity1 First Sunday After Trinity BC A 94 Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Die Elenden sollen essen, BWV 75 / BC A 94" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 288 James A. Brokaw II Leipzig I

  First Sunday after Trinity, May 30, 1723

  
  In late May 1723, the newly appointed cantor of St. Thomas School, Johann Sebastian Bach, introduced himself to the people of Leipzig with the cantata Die Elenden sollen essen BWV 75 (The afflicted shall eat). Eight days earlier, he had moved with his family to the trade-fair city. For unknown reasons, this event found its way into the press, and in Hamburg in fact, in a correspondent’s report from Leipzig: “This past Saturday at noon, four wagons loaded with household goods arrived here from Köthen; they belonged to the former Princely Capellmeister there, now called to Leipzig as Cantor Figuralis. He himself arrived with his family on 2 carriages at 2 o’clock and moved into the newly renovated apartment in the St. Thomas School.”¹ Several chroniclers have documented a cantata performance on May 30, 1723. One of them wrote: “The 30th instant [May], being the First Sunday after Trinity, the new Cantor and Director of the Collegium Musicum, Mr. Johann Sebastian Bach, who has come hither from the Prince’s Court at Cöthen, produced his first music here, with great success.”² A press report, also from Hamburg, is not aware of “great success.” It says, however, that Bach “made his debut by performing his music before and after the sermon.” Finally, a third report indicates that the new cantor had recently “assumed his office in the city churches with the first music for St. Nicholas Church.”³
  
  We have no information as to how the new cantor of St. Thomas prepared for this important day. One could imagine that he composed his inaugural cantata before moving to Leipzig. That would, however, presume that the date of the first performance had been set within the medium term and that a text for the composition was available. Nothing more precise can be established, however; even the name of the text author remains unknown. In its first part at least, the libretto hews closely to the Gospel reading of the Sunday, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus the pauper, from Luke 16:19–25:

  There was, however, a rich man who clothed himself with purple and expensive linen and lived all his days gloriously and in joy. There was, however, a pauper of the name Lazarus who lay before his door full of sores and wanted to satisfy himself with the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table; but the dogs came and licked his sores. But it came to pass that the pauper died and was carried by the angels to the bosom of Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. As he now was in Hell and in torment, he lifted his eyes up and saw Abraham from afar and Lazarus in his bosom. And he called and spoke: Father Abraham, have mercy upon me and send Lazarus, that he dip his fingertips in water and cool my tongue, for I suffer pain in these flames. Abraham however spoke: Consider, son, that you have received your good fortune in your life, and Lazarus by contrast received evil; now, however, he is comforted and you are tormented.

  
  At the beginning of his cantata libretto, the unknown poet places a verse from Psalm 22, the Passion psalm of Christ, that approximates the parable from the Gospel reading: “Die Elenden sollen essen, daß sie satt werden; und die nach dem Herrn fragen, werden ihn preisen; euer Herz soll ewiglich leben” (26; The afflicted shall eat, so that they become satisfied; and those that ask after the Lord, shall praise Him; your heart shall live eternally). He then paraphrases the Sunday Gospel reading with free poetry: three recitatives and two arias. The first movement pair—recitative and aria—allude to the beginning of the reading by referring to the purple robe of the rich man:

  Was hilft des Purpurs Majestät, 
  Da sie vergeht?
  Was hilft der größte Überfluß, 
  Weil alles, so wir sehen, 
  Verschwinden muß?
  
  What help is the majesty of purple, 
  Since it fades?
  What help is the greatest surplus,
  Since all that we see
  Must disappear?

  
  And in the aria:

  
  Mein Jesu soll mein alles sein. 
  Mein Purpur ist sein teures Blut, 
  Er selbst mein allerhöchstes Gut, 
  Und seines Geistes Liebesglut 
  Mein allersüß’ster Freudenwein.
  
  My Jesus shall be my all.
  My purple is his precious blood, 
  He himself my all-highest good, 
  And his spirit’s loving glow
  My all-sweetest wine of joy.

  
  The next movement pair treats the opposing fates of the rich man and the pauper, the way to hell or to the bosom of Abraham. “Gott stürzet und erhöhet in Zeit und Ewigkeit” (God casts down and lifts up in time and eternity), reads the recitative. The aria states:

  Ich nehme mein Leiden mit Freuden auf mich. 
  Wer Lazarus’ Plagen
  Geduldig ertragen,
  Den nehmen die Engel zu sich.
  
  I take my suffering upon myself with joy. 
  Whoever has borne Lazarus’s torment 
  Patiently,
  The angels shall take him to themselves.

  
  A third recitative leads to the hymn that closes the first half of the cantata before the sermon, the fifth strophe from Samuel Rodigast’s 1564 chorale Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan (What God does, that is done well). Except for the psalm verse at the beginning, the succession of movements in the second half is the same as the first: three recitatives, two arias, and a chorale strophe. Wealth and poverty—the themes of the parable from the Gospel reading—are now related to the individual’s world of belief. If the first recitative of the second half laments “des Geistes Armut” (poverty of the spirit) and failing strength, the ensuing aria answers with “Jesus macht mich geistlich reich” ( Jesus makes me spiritually rich), whereby a phrase from the Sermon on the Mount, “Selig sind, die da geistlich arm sind” (Blessed are the poor in spirit), might stand in the background. If the next recitative demands self-renunciation and the avoidance of all that is earthly “Daß er in Gottes Liebe / Sich gläubig übe” (That he, in God’s love, / May exercise himself in faith), here again the ensuing aria gives the confident answer with its text beginning “Mein Herze glaubt und liebt” (My heart believes and loves). With “O Armut, der kein Reichtum gleicht” (O poverty that no wealth equals), the last recitative summarizes the core of the parable, leading to the concluding chorale strophe, once again drawn from Rodigast’s hymn Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan.
  
  Bach’s composition of this wide-ranging text assumes dimensions that are appropriate to a new beginning in a prominent and vibrant city. Hence the idea of the sumptuous French overture, here in two parts, stands behind the extensive opening chorus. In this case, as befits the psalm passage, it stands in the elegiac key of E minor, the key of sorrow and solace. The faster fugal concluding section on the text “Euer Herz soll ewiglich leben” (Your heart shall live eternally) is rather short compared to the melancholic beginning. The bass recitative is followed by a dancelike, animated aria with tenor solo “Mein Jesus soll mein alles sein” (My Jesus shall be my all). The restful serenity of the text statement is matched by the measured rhythmic motion, but without bringing a contemporary dance type to mind. One is prompted to wonder whether this unusually extensive aria goes back to an earlier work from Bach’s time at Köthen.
  
  The second aria, following a brief tenor recitative, also has no clear connection to any particular dance type. Here, in the buoyant collaboration of soprano and obbligato oboe d’amore on the text that begins “Ich nehme mein Leiden mit Freuden auf mich,” the subtle handling of “Leiden” (suffering) is opposed by an all but unbridled unfolding of “Freude” that gradually gains the upper hand. After a third equally brief recitative, a chorale movement concludes the first half of the cantata. Instead of being restricted to a simple four-part harmonization, it takes on the dimensions of an elaborate chorale arrangement with instrumental prelude, postlude, and interludes.
  
  The same chorale melody, Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan appears at the beginning of the cantata’s second half as part of an instrumental movement: above a fugal quartet of stringed instruments, the melody is performed line by line by the trumpets. As in the first half of the cantata, the first recitative is accompanied by string instruments; in unison these also form the obbligato part in the alto aria that follows, “Jesus macht mich geistlich reich.” This movement is also dancelike, although without any recognizable connection to the text. It is only in the fourth and last aria of the cantata that Bach—perhaps out of necessity and owing to the problematic nature of the text—abandons this procedure and combines solo bass, obbligato trumpet, and strings in concerted virtuosity. The beginning of the text “Mein Herze glaubt und liebt” is thus interpreted in the sense of confidence in victory. The chorale arrangement at the end of the first part is repeated to conclude the entire cantata. Only the text differentiates this from its predecessor, now the last strophe of Samuel Rodigast’s chorale Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan. 
  
  Thus ends the cantata whose unusual demands are appropriate to its context: the composer’s recent appointment to the cantorate at St. Thomas School. At the same time, the work outstripped the possibilities and boundaries of concerted church music, particularly for the first Sunday after Trinity. Hence Bach quickly gave up the outsized dimensions of the fourteen- movement model and returned to more normal proportions—at least with respect to the length of his works.

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. NBR, 106 (no. 102).—Trans.↵
  2. NBR, 106 (no. 103).—Trans.↵
  3. “trat der neue Cantor, Herr Johann Sebastian Bach, sein Amt bey denen Stadt-Kirchen mit der ersten Music der Kirche zu St. Nicolai an” (BD II:105 [no. 141]).—Trans.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:33:57+00:00 Ich liebe den Höchsten mit ganzem Gemüte BWV 174 / BC A 87 7 Second Day of Pentecost. First performed 06/06/1729 at Leipzig. Cycle IV "Picander Jahrgang" plain 2024-04-24T17:36:56+00:00 1729-06-06 BWV 174 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 29Pentecost1 Second Day of Pentecost BC A 87 Johann Sebastian Bach CF Henrici (Picander) Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Ich liebe den Höchsten mit ganzem Gemüte, BWV 174 / BC A 87" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 269 James A. Brokaw II Leipzig IV

  Pentecost Monday, June 6, 1729

  Within the scope of Bach’s vocal works, his cantata Ich liebe den Höchsten mit ganzem Gemüte BWV 174 (I love the Most High with all my mind) is thought to have originated rather late. This judgment can be understood in two respects. First, Bach composed the work near the end of his sixth year in office as cantor of St. Thomas. While this may not seem late in view of the next two decades of his life, it does in relation to his intense production of cantatas in his first three years in Leipzig. Second, “relatively late” can be related literally to Bach’s creative situation in June 1729. The second day of Pentecost, for which our cantata was written, fell on the sixth of June that year. A note in the performing parts for our cantata says that they were completed on June 5—indeed, quite late.
  
  The heavy workload for the Thomaskantor and his chorus during the high feast days of the church year may often have resulted in similar narrow-margin situations. Many times, the composer was forced to seek strategies to keep his workload manageable without allowing any decline in quality. Drawing upon existing works or parts of compositions was the usual procedure here. With regard to the cantata Ich liebe den Höchsten mit ganzem Gemüte, this approach was also an obvious one, because the text of the first movement does not provide an occasion for an elaborate, festive ensemble piece. This in turn has to do with the character of the Gospel reading for the feast day, found in the third chapter of John, which concerns Jesus’s conversation with Nicodemus and formulates serious concerns about faith at the beginning:

  Also hat Gott die Welt geliebt, daß er seinen eingeborenen Sohn gab, auf daß alle, die an ihn glauben, nicht verloren werden, sondern das ewige Leben haben. Denn Gott hat seinen Sohn nicht gesandt in die Welt, daß er die Welt richte, sondern daß die Welt durch ihn selig werde. Wer an ihn glaubt, der wird nicht gerichtet; wer aber nicht glaubt, der ist schon gerichtet, denn er glaubt nicht an den Namen des eingebornen Sohnes Gottes. (16–17)
  
  For God so loved the world that he gave his only son in order that all who believe in him shall not be lost but rather have eternal life. For God has not sent his son into the world that he might condemn it; but that the world through him might be saved. Whoever believes in him shall not be judged; whoever, though, does not believe, he is already condemned, for he does not believe in the name of the only son of God. 

  
  The text of our cantata takes up the statement “Also hat Gott die Welt geliebt.” It was written by the Leipzig postal secretary and well-known amateur poet Christian Friedrich Henrici as part of his complete annual cycle of cantata texts. Henrici began to publish this project in the early summer of 1728. He provided the first installment with a foreword that reads: “In honor of God, in response to the desire of good friends, and to promote much devotion, I have decided to prepare the present cantatas. I have undertaken this plan even more happily, since I may flatter myself that perhaps whatever is lacking in poetic charm will be replaced by the loveliness of the incomparable Herr Music Director Bach and that these songs will resound in the most important churches of devout Leipzig.”¹ We cannot know whether the cantor of St. Thomas School felt obligated by this broad hint to set the entire annual cycle to music. Hardly ten of the sixty odd possible compositions have survived, mostly from 1728 and 1729. One of them is our cantata for the second day of Pentecost.
  
  Its relatively short text begins with an aria and recitative that formulate the response of the individual believer to the announcement in the Gospel reading:

  Ich liebe den Höchsten von ganzem Gemüte,
  Er hat mich auch am höchsten lieb.
  Gott allein
  Soll der Schatz der Seelen sein,
  Da hab ich die ewige Quelle der Güte.
  
  I love the Most High with all my mind,
  He loves me to the highest degree.
  God alone
  Shall be the treasure of the soul.
  There I have the eternal source of goodness.

      
  The recitative goes into the connection between God’s love and the act of redemption:

  O Liebe, welcher keine gleich,
  O unschätzbares Lösegeld!
  Der Vater hat des Kindes Leben
  Vor Sünder in den Tod gegeben
  Und alle, die das Himmelreich
  Verscherzet und verloren,
  Zur Seligkeit erkoren.
  Also hat Gott die Welt geliebt.
  Mein Herz, das merke dir
  Und stärke dich mit diesen Worten;
  Vor diesem mächtigen Panier
  Erzittern selbst die Höllenpforten.
  
  O love, of which none is like,
  O invaluable ransom!
  The father has given his child’s life
  For sinners unto death delivered,
  And all whom the heavenly kingdom
  Has trifled with and lost,
  He has elected for salvation.
  God so loved the world,
  My heart, take note of that,
  And fortify yourself with these words:
  Before this mighty standard
  Even the gates of hell themselves tremble.

  
  The second aria transforms this into an invitation to a confession of faith:

  Greifet zu,
  Faßt das Heil, ihr Glaubenshände.
  Jesus gibt sein Himmelreich
  Und verlangt nur das von euch:
  Gläubt getreu bis an das Ende.
  
  Reach out,
  Take the salvation, you hands of faith.
  Jesus gives his heavenly kingdom
  And requests only this of you:
  Believe faithfully until the end.

  
  The ensuing chorale strophe, taken from a hymn written in 1671 by Martin Schalling, gathers together the sequence of ideas of the text. Its beginning reads as follows:

  Herzlich lieb hab ich dich,
  O Herr,
  Ich bitt, du wollst sein von mir nicht fern
  Mit deiner Hülf und Gnaden.
  Die ganze Welt erfreut mich nicht,
  Nach Himm’l und Erden frag ich nicht,
  Wenn ich dich nur kann haben.
  
  Truly do I love you,
  O Lord,
  I pray you will not be far from me
  With your help and grace.
  The entire world delights me not,
  Of heaven and earth I ask nothing
  If only I can have you.

   
  For the textual reasons described earlier, Bach placed a festive concerto movement at the beginning of his cantata. Essentially, this is the opening movement of a G major concerto for strings (BWV 1048) that originated before 1720 in Köthen or even earlier in Weimar. It was included in the famous dedication score to the margrave of Brandenburg in early 1721 and is thus part of the Brandenburg Concertos. Bach expanded the concerto, already wide-ranging and challenging, was expanded, with the addition of two horns and three oboes, the latter supported by more string instruments. Sometimes with full parts, sometimes with simplified excerpts from structural parts, and occasionally with newly composed, independent parts, the additional instruments enrich the musical events in density of counterpoint and sonorous opulence. A significant event underlies this sudden profusion of new musical riches: a few weeks earlier, through a clever gambit, the cantor of St. Thomas was able to engage one of Leipzig’s two Collegia Musica and thus fortify his performance forces for church music. The fact that the cantata sinfonia, a musically enriched version of the opening movement of the third Brandenburg concerto, requires a minimum of twenty-one performers speaks for itself, as does the observation that the opulent setting bears unmistakable similarities to the arrangements of Italian instrumental concertos offered at that time by the Dresden Hofcapelle, a famous ensemble always admired by Bach.
  
  The inner cheer of the alto aria distinguishes itself clearly from the outward brilliance of the instrumental introduction. The restrained animation of the 6
  8 meter, the characteristic rhythmic pattern of the siciliano, and the pastoral coloration of the two obbligato oboes are fully commensurate with the core idea of the text: “Ich liebe den Höchsten mit ganzem Gemüte.”
  
  In the two succeeding movements, the strings that were entrusted with leading roles in the sinfonia come to the fore. Three each of violins and violas as well as the basso continuo accompany the tenor recitative “O Liebe, welcher keine gleich” with three-voice chords. In spite of this apparently uncomplicated compositional task, Bach seems to have expended great effort on this recitative; his autograph score is virtually littered with corrections. The texture of the aria “Greifet zu, faßt das Heil, ihr Glaubenshände” is reduced to only three parts. The solo violins and violas unite to form one of those sonorous, melodic, and intensively declamatory obbligato parts. These are often found in Bach’s cantatas composed in Weimar after 1714, and they provide excellent counterpoint to the voice, in this case, the bass.
  
  In the concluding four-part chorale on the sixteenth-century melody Herzlich lieb hab ich dich, o Herr (Sincerely do I love you, O Lord), all participants once more join together, including the ripienists, who fell silent during the solo movements; only the brass instruments are not employed, as a result of their range, which is limited to the natural scale. At any rate, a recollection of the pomp of the opening movement would be out of place here.

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. “Gott zu Ehren, dem Verlangen guter Freunde zur Folge und vieler Andacht zur Beförderung habe ich mich entschlossen, gegenwärttige Kantaten zu verfertigen. Ich habe solches Vorhaben desto lieber unternommen, weil ich mir schmeicheln darf, daß vielleicht der Mangel der poetischen Anmuth durch die Lieblichkeit des unvergleichlichen Herrn Capell-Meisters, Bachs, dürfte ersetzet, und dieser Lieder in den Haupt-Kirchen des andächtigen Leipzigs angestimmet werden” (BD II:180 [no. 243]).—Trans.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:37:19+00:00 Auf, schmetternde Töne der muntern Trompeten BWV 207.2 / BC G 22 6 Auf, schmetternde Töne der muntern Trompeten BWV 207.2. . Name Day Celebration cantata for Friedrich August II of Saxony / III of Poland. First performed on Aug 03, 1735 in Leipzig. plain 2024-04-24T15:04:10+00:00 1735-08-03 BWV 207.2 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 Name Day Celebration BC G 22 Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Auf, schmetternde Töne der muntern Trompeten, BWV 207a / BC G 22" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 683 James A. Brokaw II Saxony-Poland Friedrich August II of Saxony / III of Poland

  Members of Princely Houses: Saxony/Poland, August 3, 1735. 

  This cantata, Auf, schmetternde Töne der muntern Trompeten BWV 207.2 (Fire away, blaring tones of spirited trumpets), is a new version of a festive composition with which a group of students at the University of Leipzig honored Gottlieb Kortte, a recently promoted professor of law.¹ Nearly nine years passed before Bach decided to pull the composition out of storage and put it to new use. This notice appeared in the Leipzig press regarding its performance: “On the high name day of His Royal Majesty in Poland and Princely Electoral Highness in Saxony etc., the Bach Collegium Musicum will most humbly perform a solemn music in illumination this evening in the Zimmermann gardens before the Grimma Gate.”² The “solemn music” in honor of the name day of Prince Elector Friedrich August II was a part of Johann Sebastian Bach’s multiyear effort to secure a title at the court of Dresden to elevate the profile of his position in Leipzig. The occasional performance of homage cantatas for birthdays and name days of the aristocracy was an effective way to keep the pending request alive over time. 
  
  A notice in the account books of the Breitkopf publishing house shows the public attention the cantor of St. Thomas was counting on for this occasion: 150 printed copies of the cantata text would be available one day before the performance. Unfortunately, not one of these has survived. More is the pity, because even though the 1735 cantata version’s text has been preserved in the complete performance materials, several questions remain open regarding the assignment of roles. Nor does any printed text survive from the professor’s cantata, nine years earlier. Still, it is easy to see in its libretto that the four vocal soloists were assigned the roles of “Glück” (Fortune), “Dankbarkeit” (Gratitude), “Fleiß” (Diligence), and “Ehre” (Honor). It seems likely that the librettist of the new version followed this model and supplied appropriate substitutions; indeed, the new text occasionally mentions figures from ancient mythology such as Mars and Mercury, Flora, Pallas, and Irene. In addition, the river Pleiße makes an appearance here, crucially important for Leipzig’s supply of timber and its access to the oceans of the world. It would be a valuable undertaking for future scholarship to bring some order to this rather diffuse set of observations.
  
  Bach’s planned performance presented his unidentified librettist with challenges of varying degrees of difficulty. For three recitatives, Bach gave the poet free rein, since Bach intended to compose them anew. On the other hand, both choral movements, the three arias, and the accompanied recitative just before the closing ensemble needed to be parodied; that is, music on hand needed to be supplied with new text. As in the model, the first movement would function as an invitation to make music together. The 1726 homage cantata invoked the play of the strings and sound of the drums:

  Vereinigte Zwietracht der wechselnden Saiten,
  Der donnernden Pauken durchdringender Knall.
  
  Concordant discord of changing strings,
  The rolling drums’ penetrating boom.

  
  It later spoke of “frohlockenden Tönen” (tones of rejoicing) and “doppelt vermehretem Schall” (doubly multiplied sound). The librettist, clearly with knowledge of Bach’s intended orchestration, wrote:

  Auf, schmetternde Töne der muntern Trompeten,
  Ihr donnernden Pauken, erhebet den Knall!
  Reizende Saiten, ergötzet das Ohr,
  Suchet auf Flöten das Schönste zu finden,
  Erfüllet mit lieblichen Schall
  Unsre so süße als grünende Linden
  Und unser frohes Musenchor!
  
  Fire away, blaring tones of spirited trumpets,
  You thundering drums, lift up your roar!
  Charming strings, delight the ear,
  Seek, upon flutes, the greatest beauty to find,
  Fill with lovely sound
  Our lindens, so sweet as they are verdant,
  And our cheerful chorus of Muses!

  
  The first recitative praises the idyll on the green banks of the Pleiße and compares them with the realm of Pallas Athena. The associated aria expands on the reason for this bold reinterpretation. In the 1726 version, it is sung by Diligence and begins with the exhortation:

  Zieht euren Fuß nicht zurücke,
  Ihr, die ihr meinen Weg erwählt!
  
  Do not draw back your foot,
  You, who choose my path.

  
  The song of praise for the elector’s name day, however, reads:

  Augustus’ Namenstages Schimmer
  Verklärt der Sachsen Angesicht.
  Gott schützt die frommen Sachsen immer,
  Denn unsers Landesvaters Zimmer
  Prangt heut in neuen Glückes Strahlen,
  Die soll itzt unsre Ehrfurcht malen
  Bei dem erwünschten Namenslicht.
  
  The luster of Augustus’s name day
  Transfigures the Saxon countenance.
  God protects devout Saxony always,
  For our sovereign’s chamber
  Shines today with beams of new fortune,
  Which now our reverence shall paint
  By the desired light of his name.

  
  In more precise language than this elaborately neutralized parody text, and unbound by the shackles of parody procedure, the duet recitative that follows praises the potentate’s importance for the well-being of his subjects. The associated aria movement does the same thing, but, as might be expected, it gets stuck halfway:

  Mich kann die süße Ruhe laben,
  Ich kann hier mein Vergnügen haben,
  Wir beide stehn hier höchst beglückt.
  Denn unsre fette Saaten lachen
  Und können viel Vergnügen machen,
  Weil sie kein Feind und Wetter drückt.
  Wo solche holde Stunden kommen,
  Da hat das Glücke zugenommen,
  Das uns der heitre Himmel schickt.
  
  Sweet repose can refresh me,
  I can have my pleasure here,
  We both stand here most delighted.
  For our rich crops laugh
  And can create much pleasure
  Because no foe or storm threatens them.
  Where such sweet hours come,
  There that happiness has increased
  That cheerful heaven sends us.

  
  The ensuing recitative quickly moves past this poetic low point:

  Augustus schützt die frohen Felder,
  Augustus liebt die grünen Wälder,
  Wenn sein erhabner Mut
  Im Jagen niemals eher ruht,
  Bis er ein schönes Tier gefället.
  Der Landmann sieht mit Lust
  Auf seinem Acker schöne Garben.
  Ihm ist stets wohl bewußt,
  Wie keiner darf in Sachsen darben,
  Wer sich nur in sein Glücke findt
  Und seine Kräfte recht ergründt.
  
  Augustus protects the happy fields,
  Augustus loves the green forests,
  When his exalted courage
  Never flags in the hunt
  Until he has felled a fine beast.
  The farmer looks with pleasure
  Upon the beautiful sheaves of his fields.
  He is always well aware
  That no one in Saxony need starve
  Who but reconciles himself to his fortune
  And founds his strength properly.

  
  This flows into a new aria, originally delivered by Gratitude, beginning with the exhortation “Ätzet dieses Angedenken / In den härtsten Marmor ein!” (Etch this commemoration / In the hardest marble!) but now with formulations that appeal to later generations and praise the great fortune of Augustus, inferring his greatness from his deeds. It was Bach’s intention to reuse the last recitative, in which all four allegorical figures speak, without change in the new cantata version. Here, the librettist of the new version had to call upon all his experience to work his way effectively through the dense maze of the model with no fewer than sixteen end rhymes. By comparison, the concluding song of praise was child’s play, on “Augustus, unseren Schutz” (Augustus, our protection) and “der starren Feinde Trutz” (the unbending enemies’ mortification) and so on.
  
  In comparison to the challenges faced by the librettist, Bach’s task was simple. The work to be performed had already existed in its essential aspects since 1726. The three recitatives needed to be newly composed; this was easily accomplished by inserting a new leaf in the score. It was also necessary to copy out the vocal parts anew with the completely new version of the text. The other performing materials could be adapted to the new purpose with minor changes. A march composed especially for the student procession had to be left out in any case. And so the cantata that had last been performed in honor of a professor who had probably died in the meantime experienced a second performance perhaps unexpected—but perhaps long planned. Few of the listeners in the summer coffee garden would have remembered the students’ tribute, now nearly a decade in the past. More likely, one or two might have recognized parts of the F major concerto for horns, oboes, and strings (BWV 1046) in the opening movement of our cantata as well as in an aria ritornello, which the director of music may well have performed in his Collegium Musicum from time to time. It is unlikely that anyone in Leipzig in 1735 was aware that this F major concerto and five sibling works had been dedicated to the margrave of Brandenburg in early 1721. Posterity has an easier time of it here, especially when it comes to imagining the sound of the horns in the Brandenburg archetype from the “blaring trumpets” passages.

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  Footnotes

  1. Vereinigte Zwietracht der wechselnden Saiten BWV 207.1 (Concordant discord of changing strings).—Trans.↵
  2. “Auf den Hohen Nahmens-Tag Ihro Königlichen Majestät in Polen und Churfürstlichen Durchlaucht zu Sachsen etc. wird das Bachische Collegium Musicum heute Abends eine solenne Music bei einer Illumination im Zimmermannischen Garten vor dem Grimmischen Thore untertänigst aufführen” (BD II:259 [no. 368]).—Trans.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:37:19+00:00 Tönet ihr Pauken, erschallet, Trompeten BWV 214 / BC G 19 6 Tönet ihr Pauken, erschallet, Trompeten BWV 214. . Birthday celebration cantata for Maria Josepha, Queen of Saxony/Poland. First performed on Dec 08, 1733 in Leipzig. plain 2024-04-24T14:50:50+00:00 1733-12-08 BWV 214 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 Birthday celebration BC G 19 Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Tönet ihr Pauken, erschallet, Trompeten, BWV 214 / BC G 19" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 676 James A. Brokaw II Saxony-Poland Maria Josepha, Queen of Saxony/Poland

  Members of Princely Houses: Saxony/Poland, December 8, 1733

  For this cantata, there is an inverse relationship between how well known its music is and how frequently it is performed. The key factor in the dissemination of its music is the Christmas Oratorio, into which Bach incorporated both of its choruses and two of its three arias. By contrast, the secular original has only recently begun to experience a livelier concert life. This may have come about in connection with a revaluation and reclamation of Bach’s secular works. In contrast to older views, these are no longer dismissed as passing tributes to the spirit of the age, as trivialities, as a tedious way to make a living; instead, they are seen as an equally important and valuable field of creativity in which Bach invested his creative powers without compromise. 
  
  The cantata Tönet, ihr Pauken, erschallet, Trompeten BWV 214 (Sound, you drums, ring out, trumpets) is dedicated to the thirty-fourth birthday of Electress Maria Josepha and was probably performed in Zimmermann’s Coffeehouse in Leipzig’s Katherinenstraße. Of the roughly 150 printed libretti only a single copy has survived; its title provides more detail as to the occasion: DRAMA PER MUSICA welches bey dem Allerhöchsten Geburths-Feste der Allerdurchlauchtigsten und Großmächtigsten Königin in Pohlen und Churfürstin zu Sachsen in unterthänigster Ehrfurcht aufgeführet wurde in dem COLLEGIO MUSICO durch Johann Sebastian Bach. Leipzig, dem 8. December 1733 (DRAMMA PER MUSICA that was performed in greatest humility at the all-highest birthday celebration of Her Most Serene Highness and Mightiest Queen in Poland and Electress of Saxony by the COLLEGIUM MUSICUM by Johann Sebastian Bach. Leipzig, December 8, 1733).¹ This was her first birthday celebration as Landesmutter (mother of the country): in the same year, her consort, Elector Friedrich August II of Saxony, had ascended to the throne, succeeding August the Strong. Leipzig’s Thomaskantor, Johann Sebastian Bach, had also attached some aspirations to this royal succession: in order to increase the value of his position in Leipzig he had asked the successor to the throne in writing to be granted a court title and at the same time sent him the performing parts for the Missa in B Minor BWV 232.2, which would later become the Kyrie and Gloria of the Mass in B Minor BWV 232.4. Because an answer to his request was not immediately forthcoming, Bach kept his petition in the regent’s mind by performing cantatas for the birthdays and name days of members of the electoral family, probably on the assumption that their announcements in the Leipzig press would be favorably received. Thus the Queen Cantata can be understood as a broad musical hint. 
  
  Maria Josepha, honored in absentia with the cantata performance in Leipzig, came from the house of Habsburg and was actually an heir to the imperial throne until she turned eighteen. After her father, Emperor Joseph I, died in 1711 after only six years of regency, his younger brother and successor to the imperial throne spared nothing in his effort to secure his own offspring’s claim to the crown. This took place in 1713 by way of what was known as the “pragmatic sanction” (pragmatische Sanktion). As a result of this agreement, Maria Theresa, born in May 1717, superseded her older cousin to be first in the line of succession. In spite of this relegation, the efforts begun in 1711 in Rome, Vienna, and Dresden to forge a connection between the houses of Habsburg and Wettin continued unabated. The wedding in Vienna on August 20, 1719, of Friedrich August II, prince-elector of Saxony, and the Austrian archduchess Maria Josepha, daughter of the emperor, proved to be an event of the greatest political significance. Through this connection to the German imperial house, the electoral court of Saxony secured its place among the first rank of European courts—after it had already achieved considerable elevation through its acquisition of the Polish crown in 1697. The entrance of the bride occasioned weeklong celebrations in the Saxon residence, with scarcely imaginable displays of splendor. A women’s party in the great garden is described as ending in an open-air theater, “which was incomparable in its design beneath the open sky, in which a French entertainment entitled Les quatres Saisons with intermixed ballets in the French language was presented, whose actors as well as dancers were from nobility. The orchestra, however, consisted of the entire royal ensemble, clothed in their proper livery. The vocalists and orchestra were more than one hundred persons, all on royal salary, so that this festival was one of the rarest and most exquisite celebrations that have ever been seen in the world.”² Fourteen years later, a similar level of expenditure could hardly have been offered by the bourgeois city of Leipzig and the privately organized Bachische Collegium Musicum, performing at no cost or on a modest expense allowance. Even so, the full festival complement was deployed in the none too spacious environs of Zimmermann’s Coffeehouse, with trumpets and drums, flutes, oboes, and strings, as well as a quartet of singers that may have been supplemented by other vocalists in the opening and closing movements.
  
  In keeping with custom and tradition, the unidentified librettist of our cantata has gods of antiquity as well as an allegorical figure deliver praise of the queen-electress. The composition begins with a general call to good cheer, with trumpets and drums, resounding strings and “muntre Poeten” (lively poets), which flows into a rhyme that was actually frowned upon:

  Königin lebe! Dies wünschet der Sachse,
  Königin lebe und blühe und wachse!
  
  Long live the queen! This wishes the Saxon,
  Long live the queen and blossom and thrive!

  
  Next, Irene, goddess of peace, enters with a recitative praising “der frohe Glanz der Königen Geburtsfests-Stunden” (the happy radiance of the queen’s birthday celebration hours) and a pleasing glance at her attribute of peace, the olive tree. Her opposite, the war goddess Bellona, enters next with an aria:

  Blast die wohlgegriffnen Flöten,
  Daß Feind, Lilien, Mond erröten,
  Schallt mit jauchzenden Gesang!
  Tönt mit eurem Waffenklang!
  Dieses Fest erfordert Freuden,
  Die so Geist als Sinnen weiden.
   
  Blow the well-handled flutes,
  That enemy, lilies, moon may blush,
  Ring out with exultant song!
  Make noise with your battle sounds!
  This celebration calls forth joys
  That nourish the soul as well as the senses.

  
  Very little influence of Johann Christoph Gottsched is to be found here: the idea of making “enemy, lilies, moon” blush through the playing of flutes would have found no favor with the author of Versuch einer Critischen Dichtkunst. The associated recitative is more martial. After the “knallendes Metall” (crashing metal) of the salute fired by the cannon royal, the “schimmernde Gewehr” (gleaming rifles) are praised, beside “Meiner Söhne gleichen Schritten / Und ihre heldenmäßge Sitten” (My sons’ marching steps / And their heroic demeanors). This is unmistakably aimed at the Saxon army; yet one senses from a letter written by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach to his godfather, Telemann, that this was not always a group inclined to heroic action. Written in the first year of the Seven Years’ War, Emanuel Bach referred to himself ironically as “an honor-loving Saxon who well understood that there wasn’t much danger involved.”³ The next recitative-aria movement pair is given to Pallas, protector of science and art. She urges her subordinates, the Muses, to make their own contributions to the celebration—albeit while avoiding “längst bekannte Lieder” (songs that are too well known). Fama, the embodiment of Fame, closes the round dance with an aria and recitative: she wishes to bring praise of the queen throughout the entire world and up to the firmament. The finale is an ensemble: Irene, the goddess of peace, begins with “Blühet, ihr Linden in Sachsen, wie Zedern!” (Blossom, you lindens in Saxony, like cedars!); Bellona, the goddess of war, seconds with “Schallet mit Waffen und Wagen und Rädern!” (Resound with weaponry and wagons and wheels!); Pallas Athena urges, “Singet, ihr Musen, mit völligem Klang!” (Sing, you Muses, with full sound!). All three, as well as Fama, close with these lines:

  Fröhliche Stunden, ihr freudigen Zeiten,
  Gönnt uns noch öfters die güldenen Freuden:
  Königin, lebe, ja lebe noch lang!
  
  Happy hours, you joyous times,
  Grant us still more often these golden joys:
  Queen, may you live, yes live still longer!

  
  One year later, four of the nine movements in this cantata became part of the Christmas Oratorio BWV 248. We cannot say whether Bach was so farsighted as to compose the cantata with this in mind—but it is not out of the question. The four recitatives were not brought into the oratorio; nor was the aria entirely focused on instrumental timbres, with its “wohlgegriffnen Flöten” (well-handled flutes). The expansive opening movement took on the same role in the first cantata of the oratorio; the rousing finale, performed twice, opens and closes the third cantata. The appeal of Pallas Athena to her Muses became the shepherd’s aria in the second cantata, whereby alto and obbligato oboe were exchanged for tenor and transverse flute. There was little to be changed in the bass aria with obbligato trumpet, which reads, “Großer Herr, o starker König” (Great ruler, O powerful king) in the first cantata of the Christmas Oratorio and “Kron und Preis gekrönter Damen” (Crown and prize of crowned ladies) in the original version. The latter is not exactly skillful linguistically; it is possible that the librettist wrote “Ruhm und Preis” (fame and praise) and that Bach exchanged “Kron” for “Ruhm” without noticing the repetition of the word. In any case, he was entirely pragmatic in his choice of vocal scoring. For Fama, the goddess of fame, he chose the bass voice because of its assertiveness against the obbligato trumpet.

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  Footnotes

  1. BD II:244 (no. 344).—Trans.↵
  2. “welches unter freyem Himmel unvergleichlich schön angeleget war, woraus ein Französisches Divertissement ‘Les quatre Saison’ betittelt mit untermischten Balletten in Französischer Sprache vorgestellt wurde, wovon die Acteurs als auch die Täntzerin und Winter aus adelichen Standes Personen bestunden. Das Orchester aber, war von der völligen königlichen Capelle in ihrer ordentlichen Kleidung bestellt. Die Vocal Musique und das Orquestre sind von mehr denn 100 Personen, so in Königlichen Besoldung stehen, bestellt worden, also, daß dieses Festin vor eine der rarest- und delicatesten Lustbarkeiten zu halten, die jemals in der Welt gesehen worden” (Becker-Glauch 1951, 98 ff., esp. 107).↵
  3. “ein ehrliebender Sachsen, der da wohl einsahe, daß nicht viel Gefahr darby zu übernehmen war.”—Trans.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:37:19+00:00 Preise dein Glücke, gesegnetes Sachsen BWV 215 / BC G 21 5 Preise dein Glücke, gesegnetes Sachsen BWV 215. . Anniversary of Election as King Friedrich August III of Poland cantata for Friedrich August III of Poland. First performed on Oct 05, 1734 in Leipzig. Text by JC Clauder. plain 2024-04-24T14:47:43+00:00 1734-10-05 BWV 215 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 Anniversary of Election as King Friedrich August III of Poland BC G 21 Johann Sebastian Bach JC Clauder Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Preise dein Glücke, gesegnetes Sachsen, BWV 215 / BC G 21" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 679 James A. Brokaw II Saxony-Poland Friedrich August III of Poland

  Members of Princely Houses: Saxony/Poland, October 5, 1734

  The homage cantata Preise dein Glücke, gesegnetes Sachsen BWV 215 (Praise your good fortune, blessed Saxony) was performed in October 1734 in honor of the electoral family. It is different from many of its sibling works in that the most important members of the royal house were present at the performance. Occasions of the first rank such as this came only rarely for the cantor of St. Thomas School, and for two such instances in 1727 and 1738 the music is lost, so that posterity can only refer to the verses of the librettists Christian Friedrich Haupt (Entfernet euch, ihr heitern Sterne BWV 1156) and Johann Christoph Gottsched (Willkommen! Ihr herrschenden Götter der Erden BWV 1161). By contrast, the cantata Preise dein Glücke, gesegnetes Sachsen is complete and well documented in every conceivable respect and, moreover, fits into Bach’s multiyear effort to elevate his profile through a title at the princely electoral Hofcapelle in Dresden. Bach had submitted a petition in that regard in July 1733, but the approval was long in coming. Experience had shown that any attempt to send a reminder had little chance of success, particularly when, in the case of the royal Polish / electoral Saxon court, the ruling family was continuously commuting between Dresden and Warsaw and, for all practical purposes, could never be reached. And so the only remaining possibility was to attract attention occasionally with appropriate musical performances, in particular, celebrating the birthdays and name days of the authorities with festival cantatas, and to convey the news of these performances by sending a printed copy of the text or at least to have an announcement in the press near the court. 
  
  Johann Sebastian Bach had planned an event of this sort for October 1734 and had begun to prepare a cantata for the birthday of the elector-prince for performance by Bach’s Collegium Musicum on October 7. But the electoral family visited Leipzig unannounced on October 2 during Michaelmas, intending to leave four days later, and another undertaking took precedence. Instead of a private concert by the Collegium Musicum, a torchlight parade through the city took place, as well as an outdoor evening concert in front of the Apel Haus on the south side of the market square, where the illustrious guests stayed. On a clear hint from the Dresden court, the university took the initiative, with a group of students raising financing. The fifth anniversary of what is called the royal election on October 6 was used as an external occasion. On that day in 1733, Elector Friedrich August II of Saxony had himself elected king of Poland in order to continue Saxon rule over Poland, initiated by his father, Friedrich August I, known to history as August the Strong. But Stanislaus Leszczyński, who had worn the Polish crown from 1707 to 1709, laid claim to the throne and had himself elected as king in September 1733, leading to military clashes in the course of which Saxony, supported by France and Russia, gained the upper hand. The city of Danzig managed to resist the longest, but even it buckled to superior strength in the summer of 1734. 
  
  The text of our cantata refers to these events in the usual manner for the age: highlighting the merits of the father of the people as war hero and peacemaker, as the creator of wealth and prosperity, and as patron god and ally of heaven while omitting otherwise requisite allegory and appropriation from ancient mythology. More still: the text shows clear ambitions in the direction of a purified German. Accordingly, it abstains from barely comprehensible learned allusions, faddish turns of phrase, and in particular all provincialisms. The explanation for this phenomenon is found in the person of the librettist, Johann Christoph Clauder. He came from an old Saxon-Thuringian family of scholars and was later active in an influential position in the Dresden court. As a student he was among the followers of Gottsched and served as an intermediary between him and his later adversaries in Switzerland. For a time, Clauder was considered the “Upper Saxon speech corrector” (obersächsischer Sprachkorrektor) of Johann Jacob Bodmer.¹
  
  We cannot say to what extent Bach took note of the literary qualities of the libretto. It also remains unknown to what extent he may have influenced the form of the text and whether, for example, he requested arias in particular verse meters. Indeed, he had scarcely three days to write out a score of more than forty pages, have a total of twenty-four performing parts copied out by a staff of assistants, gather together singers and instrumentalists, rehearse the cantata with them, and finally perform it.
  
  The almost insurmountable task was actually achieved, and it even resulted in an effective performance at which the electoral family, it is said, “did not leave the window so long as the music lasted, but rather graciously listened, and His Majesty was sincerely pleased.”²
  
  The factors that led to this success included, not least of all, Bach’s ability to manage his efforts and, when faced with a lack of time, to rely upon his earlier compositions.³Thus, in addition to the movements originally composed for our cantata—all the recitatives, the final chorus, the third aria, and the middle section of the opening movement—there are also components that are based on older compositions. These include the first and second arias, whose models have not yet been identified, as well as—especially—the beginning and ending portions of the opening chorus. Here, the text “Preise dein Glücke, gesegnetes Sachsen, / Weil Gott den Thron deines Königs erhält” (Praise your good fortune, blessed Saxony, / For God maintains the throne of your king) is so skillfully wedded to the music that it was only relatively recently that the original image of an homage cantata from the year 1732 was recognized (BWV 1157). There, the opening movement begins with the words “Es lebe der König, der Vater im Lande, der weise, der milde, der tapfer August” (Long live the king, the father of his country, the wise, the gentle, the courageous August). That Bach transplanted the elaborate double chorus into the new cantata, in spite of the shortage of time, gives one a sense of how much he expected from the performance before the elector, particularly in regard to the court title Bach had requested. The performance, illuminated by six hundred torches before what must have been a large audience, was a great success. But one of the best musicians in Leipzig, the trumpeter and senior member of the Stadtpfeiffer, Gottfried Reiche, fell victim to a stroke the following day, quite possibly due to the stress of performing in the dense smoke from the wax torches. This tragic incident must have darkened Bach’s joy over the successful homage (as well as over the honorarium of fifty thaler—a sum not to be dismissed). 
  
  The music of our cantata shows the fifty-year-old cantor of St. Thomas at the height of his creative powers. Older components are so skillfully and seamlessly integrated that the entire work seems molded from a single cast. The fact that the impressive double chorus from 1732 was not only reused here but also found its way into the Osanna of the Mass in B Minor BWV 232 caused some confusion in earlier scholarship as to priority. The newly composed middle section, which skillfully opens up further antiphonal possibilities for the two choirs, allows the opening movement to expand to over four hundred measures. It is not easy for the pearl necklace of recitatives and arias that follows to assert itself after this imposing portal: the elegant tenor aria, featuring fashionable galant rhythms; the bass solo, an “aria with heroic affect”; the soprano aria, embedded in the flutes’ lovely timbres. This last movement omits the normally requisite basso continuo so that the upper strings form the foundation, signaling something unusual, diverging from the expected. This is undoubtedly directed to a characteristic of the regent being glorified: answering malice with generosity and animosity with gentleness. A martial intermezzo in the last recitative recalls the recently endured threat of war before the final chorus with its harmonious and hopeful “laß uns die Länder in Frieden bewohnen” (let us inhabit the lands in peace), which recalls the finale of Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks (HWV 351). 

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  Footnotes

  1. Schulze (1959).↵
  2.  “so lange die Music gedauret nicht vom Fenster weggegangen, sondern solche gnädigst angehöret, und ihro Majestät hertzlich wohlgefallen” (BD II:250 [no. 352]).—Trans.↵
  3.  There is an excellent summary in Crist (1995).↵