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Wer Dank opfert, der preiset mich BWV 17 / BC A 31
Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity, September 22, 1726
This cantata, Wer Dank opfert, der preiset mich BWV 17 (Whoever offers thanks, he praises me), was heard for the first time on September 22, 1726. Its text follows the Gospel reading for the fourteenth Sunday after Trinity, the account in Luke 17 of the healing of the ten lepers:And it came to pass that as he traveled toward Jerusalem, he passed through Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered a market, he was met by ten men who were lepers, who stood far off and raised their voices and spoke: Jesus, dear master, have mercy upon us! And as he saw them he said to them: Go forth and show yourselves to the priests! And it happened, as they went there, they were cleansed. But one among them, as he saw that he was healed, turned around and praised God with a loud voice and fell upon his face at his feet and thanked him. And that was a Samaritan. But Jesus answered and spoke: Are not ten of you cleansed? But where are the nine? Were there none found who returned to give glory to God other than this stranger? And he spoke to him: Arise, and go on your way; your faith has helped you! (11–19)
In particular, the unknown librettist takes up the Samaritan’s offering of thanks. As is his custom, he places a passage from the Hebrew Bible at the beginning, in this case, the last verse from Psalm 50, with which he sets the way forward: “Wer Dank opfert, der preiset mich, und das ist der Weg, daß ich ihm zeige das Heil Gottes” (23; Whoever offers thanks, he praises me, and that is the way that I shall show him the salvation of God). The first recitative calls up nature as witness; as in nearly all subsequent movements, the librettist indulges his proclivity for cavalcades of nouns at the cost of a final syllable if necessary:
Es muß die ganze Welt ein stummer Zeuge werden
Von Gottes hoher Majestät,
Luft, Wasser, Firmament und Erden,
Wenn ihre Ordnung als in Schnuren geht.
Ihn preiset die Natur mit ungezählten Gaben,
Die er ihr in den Schoß gelegt,
Und was den Odem hegt,
Will noch mehr Anteil an ihm haben,
Wenn es zu seinem Ruhm so Zung als Fittich regt.
The entire world must become a mute witness
To God’s high majesty,
Air, water, firmament, and earth,
As if their order moves by puppet string.
Nature praises him by countless gifts,
That he has placed in its bosom,
And whatever enjoys breath
Desires to have still more share in him,
If tongue as well as wing bestirs to his glory.
Scarcely less characteristic for the style of this librettist is his preference for Alexandrines, on full display in the first aria. He begins with formulations drawn from Psalm 57 before returning to Psalm 50, from which he drew the passage at the libretto’s beginning:
Herr, deine Güte reicht, so weit der Himmel ist,
Und deine Wahrheit langt, so weit die Wolken gehen.
Wüßt ich gleich sonsten nicht, wie herrlich groß du bist,
So könnt ich es gar leicht aus deinen Werken sehen.
Wie sollt man dich mit Dank davor nicht stetig preisen?
Da du uns willt den Weg des Heils hingegen weisen.
Lord, your goodness reaches as far as the sky is,
And your truth extends as far as the clouds go.
If I did not yet otherwise know how gloriously great you are,
Then I could see it easily from your works.
How shall one not in return constantly praise you with thanks?
There, on the other hand, you desire to show us the way of salvation.
With this, the connection to the Sunday Gospel reading is complete. The authoritative sentence from Luke 17 is quoted in the cantata text as a New Testament dictum: “Einer aber unter ihnen da er sahe, daß er gesund worden war, kehrete um und preisete Gott mit lauter Stimme und fiel auf sein Angesicht zu seinen Füßen und dankete ihm, und das war ein Samariter” (15–16; But one among them, as he saw that he was healed, turned around and praised God with a loud voice and fell upon his face at his feet and thanked him. And that was a Samaritan). The aria that follows, with its hymn-like language, is a prayer of thanksgiving from the one who was healed:
The final recitative is also filled with praise and thanks, even if these words, remarkably, are omitted. Once again the librettist indulges his love of Alexandrines as well as a torrent of nouns, including some whose final syllables are dropped: “Leib, Leben und Verstand, Gesundheit, Kraft und Sinn” (Body, life, and understanding; health, strength, and mind) appear at the beginning; a bit later, in “dubious density” (bedenklicher Dichte) there follows:Welch Übermaß der Güte
Schenkst du mir!
Doch was gibt mein Gemüte
Dir dafür?
Herr, ich weiß sonst nichts zu bringen,
Als dir Dank und Lob zu singen.
What overmeasure of goodness
You bestow upon me!
But what does my spirit give
You in return?
Lord, I know nothing else to bring
But to sing you thanks and praise.
Lieb, Fried, Gerechtigkeit und Freud in deinem Geist
Sind Schätz, dadurch du mir schon hier ein Vorbild weist.
Love, peace, justice, and joy in your spirit
Are treasures through which you show me here a prefigurement.
The third strophe of Johann Gramann’s 1530 hymn Nun lob, mein Seel, den Herren (Now praise, my soul, the Lord) closes the train of thought.
This libretto is documented as early as 1704 in Meiningen; it may have originated there. It is part of an annual cycle of texts that was printed several times, as late as 1726 in Rudolstadt under the title Sonn- und Fest-Tags-Andachten über die ordentlichen Evangelia (Sun- and feast-day devotions on the regular Gospels).1 It provided Bach the welcome opportunity to create a two-part cantata, the first part to be performed before the sermon, the second part after it, with a break before the New Testament passage. In keeping with tradition, the composition’s emphasis is on the first movement. In view of the gravitas and profundity of the psalm passage, the dominating structural principle could only be that of fugue. What is striking in the course of the movement, in particular the two fugal expositions, is the nearly instrumental demands upon the voices. Superficially, this appears to be because the opening sinfonia, twenty-seven measures long and extraordinarily closely worked, unmistakably anticipates the vocal component of the first movement that follows. That Bach placed such a compact, well-unified movement at the beginning was probably no coincidence. He would have foreseen that the psalm verse at the libretto’s beginning would require an extended, angular, and stubbornly unmanageable (widerborstig) subject if it was set as a fugue and not an arioso. It would have made sense to counteract its centrifugal tendency from the very beginning and accompany the fugal sections with an architectonic structure as a stabilizing element.The brief alto recitative is followed by the first aria, a quartet for soprano, two violins, and the basso continuo. That several details oddly recall the germinal motive of the opening instrumental movement may have been intentional, since the aria text clearly approximates the psalm text’s conclusion.
The passage from the New Testament opens the cantata’s second half, performed by the tenor in an evangelist’s narrative style. Also given to the tenor is the ensuing aria, a song of praise for the “Übermaß der Güte” (overmeasure of goodness). The catchy, song-like head motive, folk-like in character, seems to suggest a quotation of some kind. However, nothing is currently known about its origin or what its original text, if any, might have been.
The bass voice presents the last recitative with its self-confident profession of gratitude before the closing chorale on the pre-Reformation melody Nun lob, mein Seel, den Herren leads back to the A major of the opening movement. Roughly twelve years after its composition, this opening movement found its way into Bach’s Mass in G Major BWV 236, where, transposed down a step and slightly revised, it serves as the Cum Sancto Spiritu.