This tag was created by James A. Brokaw II. The last update was by Angela Watters.
Gott, man lobet dich in der Stille BWV 120.1 / BC B 6
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
- Gerichtsdiener in modern German, the closest English equivalent to which is “bailiff.”—Trans.↵
- 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.↵
- 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.↵
- Hofmann (2001).↵