This tag was created by James A. Brokaw II. The last update was by Angela Watters.
Preise, Jerusalem, den Herrn BWV 119 / BC B 3
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.
Footnotes
- Bach performed Gott ist mein König BWV 71 for a council inauguration on February 4, 1708, in Mühlhausen.—Trans.↵
- 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.↵
- 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.↵
- 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.↵
- Hofmann (2001).↵