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Herr Gott, dich loben alle wir BWV 130 / BC A 179
St. Michael’s Day, September 29, 1724
Johann Sebastian Bach wrote the cantata Herr Gott, dich loben alle wir BWV 130 (Lord God, we all praise you) for St. Michael’s Day, September 29, 1724, in his second year of service in Leipzig. The basis for this work, which belongs to Bach’s annual cycle of chorale cantatas, is the twelve-strophe chorale of the same name whose German version was produced around 1561 by Paul Eber. In hymnals of Bach’s era the chorale is found with the annotation “Philipp Melanchthon hats lateinisch gemacht, und Paul Eberus ins Deutsche übersetzt” (Philipp Melanchthon has made it in Latin, and Paul Eber translated it into German). Paul Eber’s chorale, the main hymn for St. Michael’s Day, hews closely to the epistle for the feast day in Revelation 12, which presents Michael’s battle with the dragon. The strophes of this text are concerned for the most part with praise and thanks for delivery from this danger and for the assurance of protection by hosts of angels.As usual in Bach’s chorale cantatas, several strophes are adopted with unchanged wording, and others are adapted for use as arias and recitatives by an unknown librettist. As in so many other cases, the opening strophe remains unchanged:
Herr Gott, dich loben alle wir
Und sollen billig danken dir
Für dein Geschöpf der Engel schon,
Die um dich schweben um deinen Thron.
Lord God, we all praise you
And shall fittingly thank you
For your creation of the resplendent angels,
Who round you hover about your throne.
Praise for the angels and their protection by day and night continues in the chorale’s second and third strophes, which are recast as a continuous recitative in the cantata. Its conclusion anticipates the aria that follows: “Wie nötig ist doch diese Wacht / Bei Satans Grimm und Macht?” (How crucial, though, is indeed this watch / With Satan’s wrath and power?). Paul Eber’s fourth strophe then reads:
Der alte Drach und böse Feind
Für Neid, Haß, und für Zorne brennt,
Sein Datum steht allein darauf,
Wie von ihm werd zertrennt dein Hauf.
The old dragon and evil foe
Burns for envy, hate, and for rage.
His only concern is
How your band may be torn asunder by him.
The poet used these lines, together with specific phrases from strophes 5 and 6, to form the aria text:
Der alte Drache brennt vor Neid
Und dichtet stets auf neues Leid,
Daß er das kleine Häuflein trennet.
Er tilgte gern, was Gottes ist,
Bald braucht er List,
Weil er nicht Rast noch Ruhe kennet.
The ancient dragon burns with envy
And constantly plots new suffering
That he might divide the little band.
He would gladly erase what is God’s,
He would readily use cunning,
For he knows neither rest nor repose.
A recitative continues with a synopsis of Eber’s seventh through tenth strophes:
Wohl aber uns, daß Tag und Nacht
Die Schar der Engel wacht,
Des Satans Anschlag zu zerstören.
But well it is for us that day and night
The host of angels keeps watch
To destroy Satan’s plot.
References to the prophet Daniel, particularly the rescue of Daniel from the lions’ den, and to the three men in the fiery furnace are included in the chorale and were not added by the librettist.
In the cantata’s next to last movement, an aria, the librettist strays from his model:
Laß, o Fürst der Cherubinen,
Dieser Helden hohe Schar
Immerdar
Deine Gläubigen bedienen,
Daß sie auf Elias Wagen
Sie zu dir gen Himmel tragen.
Let, O prince of cherubim,
This exalted host of heroes
Forever
Serve your believers,
That they, on Elijah’s chariot,
May carry them to you in heaven.
Phrasings like this are not found in Eber, but, for example, the ninth strophe from the chorale Freu dich sehr, o meine Seele begins with the verses “Laß dein’ Engel mit mir fahren / Auf Elias Wagen rot” (Let your angel travel with me / On Elias’s red chariot). The libretto for our cantata closes with the two last strophes of Paul Eber’s chorale, which take up the praise and gratitude of the beginning:
Darum wir billig loben dich
Und danken dir, Gott, ewiglich,
Wie auch der lieben Engel Schar
Dich preisen heut und immerdar.
Und bitten dich wollst allezeit
Dieselben heißen sein bereit,
Zu schützen deine kleine Herd,
So hält dein göttlichs Wort in Wert.
Therefore, we fittingly praise you
And thank you, God, eternally,
Just as [we thank] the dear host of angels,
[We] praise you now and forever
And pray that you will at all times
Order them to be prepared
To protect your little band,
Who holds your divine word as worthy.
Bach chose a festive setting with trumpets and drums for his composition, appropriate for a high-ranking feast such as St. Michael’s Day as well as the character of Eber’s chorale. In the manner typical of the chorale cantatas, the opening chorus combines the chorale melody in the soprano in large note values, motet-like imitative counterpoint in the other voices, and an independent orchestral component that works to unify the whole. Since the brass instruments are almost constantly involved, their restriction to the natural scale precludes any wide-ranging tonal excursions; this movement draws its essential impulses not from the harmonic realm but rather from the festive diversity of the instrumental ensemble, including trumpets and drums, three oboes, and strings.
After a brief alto recitative, the brasses are called upon for a second time in the aria “Der alte Drache brennt vor Neid” (The ancient dragon burns with envy), a movement of the type “aria with heroic affect.” Here, the trumpets and drums are assigned to the solo bass as obbligato instruments, and astonishing amounts of endurance and fluency are demanded from the first trumpet in particular. It may well be that Bach entrusted his first Stadtpfeiffer (city piper), the highly regarded trumpeter Gottfried Reicha, with a task that would place his extraordinary abilities on full display. In a reperformance of the cantata about a decade later, this glory was past. Whether Reicha could no longer manage the part because of advanced age or whether he had already died and his successor did not dare attempt the extraordinarily difficult part, in any case, Bach himself reworked the aria’s brilliant obbligato part for strings: a practical solution, but certainly an emergency measure.
The second recitative is more harmonically sophisticated than anything in the cantata up to this point. Here, the soprano and tenor voices are supported and accompanied by chords and sparing gestures in the strings. In contrast, the tenor aria “Laß, o Fürst der Cherubinen” seems once again uncomplicated, with its cheerful competition between the voice and obbligato flute and the exuberance of its alla breve meter. The entire ensemble is together once again in the closing chorale, in which the strings and the oboes, within the limits of their capabilities, follow the voices while the brasses lend an independent, festive brilliance to the line ends.
Bach’s performance materials for the cantata Herr Gott, dich loben alle wir were still complete and may still have been in the hands of a single owner in 1800. For reasons that can no longer be determined today, the parts were separated and scattered in all directions. The single parts are preserved in libraries in America, England, Austria, Switzerland, and Germany; others are in private hands and occasionally appear among offerings by auction houses. Among the happy owners of these cantata parts—for the most part not written out by Bach himself—were Johannes Brahms, the Belgian royal family, and the poet Stefan Zweig.