This tag was created by James A. Brokaw II. The last update was by Elizabeth Budd.
Sei Lob und Ehr dem höchsten Gut BWV 117 / BC A 187
Purpose Not Transmitted, 1728–1731
This cantata, Sei Lob und Ehr dem höchsten Gut BWV 117 (Praise and honor be to the highest good), belongs to a relatively small group for which no occasion in the church calendar has been established. As to the reasons for this lack, we can speculate in several different directions. We should be alert not only to special circumstances of the work’s genesis but also to deficiencies of the work’s transmission. This last could easily have been disrupted by something as simple as the title folder for the work’s handwritten performance materials going astray during the composer’s lifetime or shortly afterward. For our cantata, this kind of loss seems likely. The scoring for a cantata was normally written on such a title folder; it occasionally also contained the occasion or purpose for the composition. When Bach’s autograph score came to light among the holdings of the Leipzig publisher Breitkopf at the beginning of the nineteenth century, any clear indications as to the work’s purpose were clearly no longer available. While we can be certain that the cantata was composed in the period from 1728 to 1731, its particular purpose remains shrouded in mystery. [Please see the addendum.—Trans.]Nor does the text offer anything beyond a modicum of relevant data. The cantata belongs to the equally small group of Bach’s cantatas whose texts consist of the unaltered strophes of a chorale, in this case, the nine strophes of the hymn Sei Lob und Ehr dem höchsten Gut, written by Johann Jacob Schütz, who was born in Frankfurt am Main in 1640 and died there not quite fifty years later. An attorney by training, he became an avid follower of Johann Jacob Spener as a young man but turned away from Pietistic thought toward rapturous millenarian convictions that increasingly drew him away from the church life of his era and its narrow surroundings. At thirty-three years of age he published an essay under the title Christliches Gedenkbüchlein zur Beförderung eines anfangenden neuen Lebens (Christian commemorative booklet for promotion of beginning a new life), which contains the hymn Sei Lob und Ehr dem höchsten Gut without listing an author; it is described only as a song of praise on Deuteronomy 32:3. That chapter begins with the words of a hymn that Moses recited to the entire congregation of Israel shortly before his death: “Hearken, you heavens, I will speak, and may the earth hear the speech of my mouth. Let my teaching pour like the rain, and my speech flow like the dew, like rain upon the grass and like drops upon the greenery. For I will praise the name of the Lord. Give glory to our God alone!” (1–3). “Gebt unserm Gott die Ehre” (Give glory to our God alone): all nine strophes of Schütz’s chorale close with this verse, and this line is nearly always left without a rhyme partner. The only exception is in the penultimate strophe, in which the invocation appears three times altogether. On the basis of its overall character, the text belongs among the “Lob- und Danklieder” (Songs of praise and thanksgiving) in hymnals of the day. It may be indicative of its theology that the text appears in a 1752 Leipzig hymnal with the (probably erroneous) author’s initials A.H.F.—clearly meant to refer to that most important exponent of Pietism in Halle, August Hermann Francke. More significant than this misinformation is the fact that in hymnals of both the early and late eighteenth century, in Saxony as well as Thuringia, the chorale is assigned to a particular Sunday in the church calendar: the twelfth Sunday after Trinity. Whether this solves the puzzle of what occasion was intended by Johann Sebastian Bach is of course debatable.
Bach’s composition divides the chorale’s nine strophes into three each of recitatives, arias, and choral movements. With respect to such a text, Bach’s approach was not at all obvious compared to most of the compositions in his annual cycle of chorale cantatas, composed in 1724 and 1725. In these cantatas, some chorale strophes do indeed remain unchanged—but for the most part, only the first and last strophes, the first set as an expansively conceived chorale arrangement at the beginning and a simple four-part setting at the end. The internal chorale strophes are normally paraphrased as recitative and aria texts, thereby adapting the strophes to these forms that are normally quite remote from the chorale. In only a few exceptional cases—to which the cantata Sei Lob und Ehr dem höchsten Gut belongs—did the entire text remain unchanged, even while being set to the modern operatic forms of recitative and aria.
Because of the uncertainty as to the work’s place within the church calendar we have no way of knowing whether Johann Sebastian Bach intended to close one of the remaining gaps in his chorale cantata cycle with this late work. Still, apart from the question of incorporation, there is a close connection between that comprehensive undertaking and the cantata Sei Lob und Ehr, as we can see in the later work the wealth of diverse experiences Bach gained working with the “chorale cantata” genre during his second year as cantor of St. Thomas in Leipzig. The mastery he gained there can be seen in many details of our cantata. Thus the opening movement, “Sei Lob und Ehr dem höchsten Gut dem Vater aller Güte” (Praise and honor be to the highest good, to the father of all goodness), shows an unexpected lightness and transparency of the spare instrumental part and the mostly chordal choral texture, which becomes darker only briefly at the text “der allen Jammer stillt” (who quiets all anguish). The elegance of diction and the dance-like, animated
8 meter of the movement are hardly suggested by the first strophe of the chorale text. A note at the end of Bach’s score provides an explanation: the opening movement is to be repeated at the close, but with the text of the ninth and last chorale strophe:
So kommet vor sein Angesicht
Mit jauchzenvollem Springen;
Bezahlet die gelobte Pflicht
Und laßt uns fröhlich singen;
Gott hat es alles wohl bedacht
Und alles, alles recht gemacht.
Gebt unserm Gott die Ehre!
Then come before his countenance
With exultant leaping;
Fulfill the solemn oath
And let us joyfully sing;
God has considered all things well
And made everything, everything right.
Give to our God the honor!
Obviously, this text informs the innate cheerfulness of Bach’s composition (with the exception of the brief darkening mentioned earlier). Consequently, Bach must have had the intention of binding the opening and closing strophes of the chorale with the same music before beginning work. Similar bracketing by repeating the opening music at the end occasionally turns up in Bach’s work; one need only recall the Pentecost cantata Erschallet, ihr Lieder BWV 172 and, above all, the third cantata in the Christmas Oratorio BWV 248 III. But a repetition of music with two different texts is fairly rare. Little wonder, then, that earlier editors of the cantata fell victim to an error here and believed that the final strophe must have been connected to the simple choral movement at the fourth position. The regrettable consequence of this error is that even today the cantata Sei Lob und Ehr is often performed with the fourth movement repeated at the end instead of the first, as intended.
As one would expect, the cornerstones of the cantata—the first, fourth, and ninth movements—all use the melody associated with the chorale unchanged: the melody Es ist das Heil uns kommen her (Salvation has come to us), which goes back to a pre-Reformation tradition. Allusions to this melody are also found in other movements of the cantata. In the fifth movement, a recitative for alto with string accompaniment, the last line of the strophe “Gebt unserm Gott die Ehre” broadens to an arioso, whereby the characteristic three repeated tones of the chorale melody’s beginning are exchanged between voice and basso continuo as if the two were confirming one another. The two other recitatives, the second and eighth movements, do not allude to the chorale in this way. The second movement, a bass recitative, changes meter and setting after eight measures and presents the last line, “Gebt unserm Gott die Ehre,” as a fervent arioso, repeated several times. The text of the tenor recitative, the next to last movement in the cantata, contains the last line of the chorale repeated three times. Here, Bach restricts himself to a simple recitative style, since from his point of view there is no need for repetition and accentuation.
In terms of richness of design and invention, the three arias—the third, sixth, and seventh movements—show the composer at the height of his creative power. The fact that each chorale strophe flows into the exclamation “Gebt unserm Gott die Ehre” and thereby cannot return to its beginning precludes Bach from setting them as da capo arias. But this posed no obstacle for Bach. The motivic substance of the third movement, an aria in E minor for tenor with two obbligato oboi d’amore, is quite distant from the chorale melody, yet nearly every phrase hints at it. In contrast, the sixth movement, an expressive aria in B minor for bass with obbligato solo violin, seems to intentionally avoid any connection to the chorale; in reality, however, this aria adopts the motives of the preceding alto recitative first in the accompaniment and then in the voice, citing—as the recitative does—the characteristic three repeated tones of the chorale melody’s beginning. Finally, the seventh movement, an aria in the slow tempo of a solemn dance for alto, strings, and transverse flute, is entirely devoted to the unfolding of its upper voice, carrying the melody, whereby voice and woodwind instrument proceed together, quickly alternating in the roles of foundation part and bright four-foot register.
It can hardly be disputed that, overall, the cantata Sei Lob und Ehr is a masterpiece of rare cohesion. Bach’s autograph score is for the most part a fair copy; its outward appearance seems to confirm the high estimation its composer held for it. On the other hand, it is unusually precise in its directions, so that the possibility of a commissioned work or one to be loaned out seems worth considering. Yet these considerations only multiply the number of unsolved riddles that surround the cantata Sei Lob und Ehr dem höchsten Gut to this day.