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Commentaries on the Cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach: An Interactive Companion

Gott, wie dein Name, so ist auch dein Ruhm BWV 171 / BC A 24

New Year’s Day, January 1, 1729

In Johann Sebastian Bach’s era, the New Year festival belonged to the special holidays of the church calendar even if it did not have the rank of the high holidays of Easter, Pentecost, or Christmas. But the beginning of a new year, when one wished good luck for oneself and others, for wise governance from landed aristocracy and city authorities, was reason enough to give church music a more festive character than otherwise and to enrich the orchestra with the brilliance of brass instruments. This applies to the cantata Gott, wie dein Name, so ist auch dein Ruhm BWV 171 (God, as is your name, so is also your renown). It originated for the New Year’s festival of 1729 and belongs to the roughly one-third of Bach cantatas whose librettist is known to us, in this case, the Leipzig postal secretary and occasional poet Christian Friedrich Henrici. Like his archrival, Johann Christoph Gottsched, Henrici was born in 1700, and he began offering his literary works to the Leipzig public at the same time Gottsched did, roughly 1724–25. Unlike Gottsched, whose efforts on behalf of the purity and renewal of the German language are generally recognized, the works of the undervalued Henrici are still awaiting a just literary and historical assessment. 

The first evidence of collaboration between Bach and Henrici is found in February 1725. Over the ensuing two decades, the Thomaskantor drew frequently on the work of the skilled poet. Under the pseudonym Picander, Henrici published an entire annual cycle of cantata texts in 1728–29 in the hope that Bach would set it to music in its entirety. Whether that came to pass we do not know. Barely a dozen of such compositions from the cycle have survived, among them our cantata. 

For the most part, Picander’s text paraphrases the very short Gospel reading for the feast of the New Year, consisting of a single verse from the second chapter of Luke: “And when eight days had passed, the child was circumcised, his name was called JESUS, which was so named by the angel, before he was conceived in the womb” (21). A verse chosen from Psalm 48 is connected to the main idea of the naming. Bach composed this text in the form preferred for such purposes, a choral fugue. Two aspects of this are unusual: first, the direct entry of a solo voice without the assistance of an orchestral prelude or a concertante or chordal framing, and second, the unusual declamation of the text “Gott, wie dein Name, so [pause] ist auch dein Ruhm bis an der Welt Ende” (God, as is your name, so [pause] is your fame to the ends of the earth).

The music for this first movement is well known in another context: it appears in the Credo of the B Minor Mass BWV 232 as the “Patrem omnipotentem.” In that version, which originated roughly twenty years after our cantata, the composer made changes in many measures to introduce a more animated accompaniment part in the bass that suited the Latin declamation in the vocal parts. In particular, however, he prepended six newly composed measures to the beginning of the movement in order to contrapuntally combine the first statement of the fugue on “Patrem omnipotentem” with the block-like chordal textures of the previous movement, “Credo in unum Deum.”

The technical term for reworking existing music with new text is “parody procedure,” and it pertains not only to the “Patrem omnipotentem” of the B Minor Mass but also to the apparent original, the chorale movement “Gott, wie dein Name.” The unusual declamation of the psalm text just mentioned is not the result of Bach’s lack of skill in dealing with his text exemplar. Upon closer inspection of the autograph score it becomes clear that the cantata version is itself a reworking of another, earlier composition. As to what the original text may have sounded like, we have no idea at all at present. In 1938 the Bach specialist Werner Neumann made several valuable findings regarding the original musical composition: according to his observations,1 the choral movement as it now exists—in the B Minor Mass as well as in the cantata—represents only the core of what was originally a more extensive work that began with an instrumental section and included instrumental interludes in which choral parts were later interwoven. Why Bach so radically shortened this expansive choral movement originating before 1729 (if only hypothetically deduced) cannot be said. The result is oddly ambiguous: the choral voices, active without pause, and the oboes and strings, for the most part in unison with the voices, tend toward a strict, backward-looking motet style. The independent trumpets and drums, which also carry thematic material, lend the movement a festive brilliance as well as a certain concerto-like lightness. 

The free poetry of Henrici/Picander begins with the second movement, an aria: “Herr, so weit die Wolken gehen, gehet deines Namens Ruhm” (Lord, as far as the clouds go, so goes your name’s renown). “Unendliche Weite” (infinite distances) may have been Bach’s musical reference point; clearly, he chose the form of a densely woven quartet texture in which the concertante instruments spin forth their figuration seemingly without end, without allowing a breath. The score does not reveal which instruments Bach intended. The key of A major brings the oboe d’amore to mind, but the range and unbroken passagework leave only the violin as a possibility. A downright inexhaustible lung capacity is required of the voice, a tenor. Particularly in the middle section of the aria, with the text “Alles, was die Lippen rührt, alles, was noch Odem führt, wird dich in der Macht erhöhen” (All that stirs the lips, everything, all, all that still draws breath will exalt you in your might), extraordinary instrumental passages are demanded of the singer, as if he is actually to be tested by “alles was noch Odem führt.” 

One can imagine a caesura following this aria, especially if the cantata was to be performed in two parts framing the sermon, after which the alto recitative once again takes up the ideas in the holiday Gospel reading: “Du süßer Jesus-name du, / In dir ist meine Ruh” (You sweet name of Jesus, you, / In you is my repose). And at the close:

Du bist mein Leben und mein Licht,
Mein Ehre, meine Zuversicht,
Mein Beistand in Gefahr
Und mein Geschenk zum neuen Jahr.

You are my life and my light,
My honor, my confidence,
My help in danger,
And my gift for the New Year.


“Jesus soll mein erstes Wort / In dem neuen Jahre heißen” (Jesus shall be my first word / Of the New Year), continues the poet, and he concludes his text strophe with the lines “Und in meiner letzten Stunde / Ist Jesus auch mein letztes Wort” (And in my last hour, / Jesus is also my last word). With the opposites “erstes Wort,” “neues Jahr” and “letztes Wort,” “letzte Stunde,” Picander might have been thinking of a musical realization rich in contrasts. Bach did not grant him this favor. He wrote no new composition but drew upon an aria for soprano that had originated in 1725 and belonged to the congratulatory cantata Zerreißet, zersprenget, zertrümmert die Gruft BWV 205 (Tear open, burst, smash the pit). Picander, who had created this text to honor a Leipzig university professor, gave the aria to Pallas Athena, patron protector of science. Bach composed a cheerfully animated aria movement in which the virtuoso first violin had to climb to the very highest reaches of its range, as if ascending a musical Parnassus. The regularity of the 12
8
meter, the weightless ease of the violin solo, the catchy melody of the soprano solo: all of these elements of the secular archetype may have been first and foremost in Bach’s mind as he remembered the Pallas aria from 1725 and made the decision to combine it with the text for the New Year—and did so although neither syllable count, nor rhyme scheme, nor even line count made this an obvious course of action. Without several compositional interventions, such a transformation would not have been achievable. Ultimately, however, Bach was successful, as he lengthened the piece from fifty to sixty measures and implemented a three-part scheme in accordance with the new text.

The next-to-last movement is a bass recitative accompanied by two oboes. The beginning of the text, “Und da du, Herr, gesagt: Bittet nur in meinem Namen, so ist alles Ja und Amen” (And since you, Lord, said: If you but ask in my name, then all is Yes and Amen), alludes to John 14, where it reads: “And whatever you shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the father may be glorified in the son” (13). In Bach’s composition, the quasi citation in his text is set in relief from its surroundings by a change in meter and the arioso shaping of the solo voice and its accompaniment. Picander’s text also relates to the traditional New Year’s plea for protection from “Feuer, Pest und Kriegesgefahr” (fire, pestilence, and the ravages of war) as well as the “Heil des Segens” (salvation of blessing) for government authorities and the entire country. For the closing chorale Bach once again spared himself the effort of new composition. From the chorale cantata on Johannes Hermann’s hymn Jesus, nun sei gepreiset BWV 41 (Jesus, now be praised) he took the composed final strophe, an extended festive movement of forty-five measures with intermittent fanfares for trumpets and drums, and installed it in the new work, a process that required only a change of key. 

The fact that, in a cantata of six movements, only one aria and two recitatives were newly composed, and the others—including the opening chorus, one of the main pillars of the entire work, as well as the expansive closing chorus and one of two arias—were taken from existing works gives pause for reflection. It might suggest a damaged relationship of the Thomaskantor to his office and responsibilities. But lack of time and easing of workload were probably not at all the key reasons for this way of handling his own work and a foreign text. It more likely has to do with Bach’s growing sovereignty over the years in the handling of and authority over his own oeuvre:2 not a process simply related to the exigencies of the moment, but rather one in which every movement, once created, had its own consciously calculated status, and in which every movement, as part of the entire repertoire, might remain at its assigned position or be reused as needed, if only once or on multiple occasions.

Footnotes

  1. Neumann (1938, 72).
  2. Eller (1975).

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