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Höchsterwünschtes Freudenfest BWV 194.2 / BC B 31
Organ Dedication, November 2, 1723
The cantata Höchsterwünschtes Freudenfest BWV 194.2 (Most highly desired festival of joy) owes its origins to a particular occasion. Properly speaking, it concerns two occasions, the first of which, however, has not yet been verified. The evidence for the second and perhaps more important one is a presentation print of the text, whose single exemplar in Berlin seemed inaccessible for decades because it had been incorporated in a different collection without leaving any indication of its location in the original collection.1 In English translation the detailed and elaborate title of this print reads:
As the High-Wellborn Lord, Lord Statz Hilmor von Fullen, Knight of the Holy Roman Empire at Störmthal, Marck-Klebern, and Liebert-Wolckwitz, Gentleman-in-Waiting to the King of Poland, and Worshipful Honorary Chamberlain to the Princely Electoral House of Saxony and Assessor at the Supreme Court of Justice, etc. through whose well-known generosity had the newly built organ in the church at Störmthal examined, the following cantata was performed at a public worship service and consecration of said organ by Johann Sebastian Bach, Princely Capellmeister at Anhalt-Cöthen, also Director of Choral Music at Leipzig and Cantor of St. Thomas School.2
The organ examiner, unnamed in this title, was Bach himself. Although his report has not been preserved, according to official memoranda he found the instrument to be “recognized praiseworthy as reliable and constant” (tüchtig und beständig erkannt und gerühmet) and “without blemish” (ohne Tadel), based on his examination on November 2, 1723. Also unmentioned in the presentation print was the organ builder, Zacharias Hildebrandt. At one time a student and later partner of Gottfried Silbermann, Hildebrandt was by now independent after painful disputes with his former partner. He received a flat-rate payment of four hundred thalers for the instrument with fourteen registers, as stipulated in the contract. However, Hildebrandt had to pay for all materials, from English pewter to glue and brass wire, and he had to pay all the craftsmen involved, from sculptors to carpenters, all while feeding his own people. Although the landowner, Statz Hilmor von Fullen, paid for two additional registers and made living quarters available to the organ builder free of charge, Zacharias Hildebrandt cannot have made any significant profit—a circumstance that seems to have been repeated for all his organ-building projects.
The inspection of the organ also apparently meant the end of restoration efforts at the church in Störmthal, a village southeast of Leipzig, so that the organ dedication also signified the return of the congregation to their church. This was the only thing the unknown librettist took into account in his libretto; in contrast to the custom of many of his contemporaries, he made no mention of the new organ at all. While the title of the printed text indeed refers to the newly built organ, the text itself is essentially that of a cantata for the consecration of a church. There is frequently talk of “Haus” (house), “Wohnung” (dwelling), and “erbautem Heiligtum” (erected sanctuary), but nothing regarding music or even a musical instrument. All celebration, all expressions of joy refer to the “heilige Wohnung” (holy dwelling); the text praises strength of faith and the power of the Word and asks for grace, help, and blessing.
The fact that the librettist’s wording is more specific in the recitatives than the arias has to do with the work’s genesis. The opening chorus and all four arias go back to a festival cantata (BWV 194.1) from Bach’s Köthen period about whose text and occasion nothing has been learned to date. Here and there, phrases from the lost original libretto presumably were adopted by the Störmthal cantata, but there is no way to prove it. Even so, at times one seems to hear echoes of secular poetry, as in the text of the opening chorus:
Höchsterwünschtes Freudenfest,
Das der Herr zu seinem Ruhme
Im erbauten Heiligtume
Uns vergnügt begehen läßt.
Höchsterwünschtes Freudenfest!
Most highly desired festival of joy,
Which the Lord, to his renown,
In the newly erected sanctuary
Lets us gladly celebrate.
Most highly desired festival of joy!
As mentioned, the recitatives are more specific and comprehensible, as the first one demonstrates:
Unendlich großer Gott, ach wende dich
Zu uns, zu dem erwählten Geschlechte,
Und zum Gebete deiner Knechte!
Ach laß vor dich
Durch ein inbrünstig Singen
Der Lippen Opfer bringen!
Wir weihen unsre Brust dir offenbar
Zum Dankaltar.
Du, den kein Haus, kein Tempel faßt,
Da du kein Ziel noch Grenzen hast,
Laß dir dies Haus gefällig sein,
Es sei dein Angesicht
Ein wahrer Gnadenstuhl, ein Freudenlicht.
Eternally, great God, ah, turn
To us, to your chosen people,
And to the prayers of your servants!
Ah, let our lips’ offering
Through fervent singing
Be brought before you!
We consecrate our hearts to you openly
As an altar of thanksgiving.
You, whom no house, no temple holds
Because you have neither limit nor boundaries,
Let this house be pleasing to you,
May it be to your countenance
A true throne of grace, a light of joy.
By this point at the latest, the poet’s model has become clear: it is Solomon’s prayer for the consecration of the Temple in 2 Chronicles 6. The nineteenth verse, after which the first recitative is modeled, reads: “But turn yourself, Lord, my God, toward the prayer of your servant and his pleading, that you hear the request and prayer that your servant makes before you.” The arias, by contrast, proceed in much more generalized formulations, in particular the first, in which rhyme sequence and line structure create a kind of circular movement:
Was des Höchsten Glanz erfüllt,
Wird in keine Nacht verhüllt,
Was des Höchsten heilges Wesen
Sich zur Wohnung auserlesen,
Wird in keine Nacht verhüllt,
Was des Höchsten Glanz erfüllt.
Whatever the radiance of the Most High fills
Will not be veiled by any night.
Whatever the holy being of the Most High
Has chosen for his dwelling place
Will not be veiled by any night,
Whatever the radiance of the Most High fills.
After another recitative-aria movement pair, two strophes from Johannes Heermann’s 1630 chorale Treuer Gott, ich muß dir klagen (Faithful God, I must lament to you) close the first half of the cantata. The second half begins with another recitative-aria pair, continues with a recitative dialogue and a duet, and, after another recitative, ends with two further chorale strophes, here from Paul Gerhardt’s 1647 hymn Wach auf, mein Herz und singe (Awaken, my heart, and sing).
For the most part, Bach’s composition of this wide-ranging, twelve-movement libretto goes back to a Köthen cantata for an unknown occasion. This explains its similarity to the suite, the fact that all arias exhibit a pronounced dance-like character. The opening chorus figures here as well; it takes the form of the French overture, with its slow opening and closing sections with dotted rhythms and sweeping scales, and a quick, fugal (or at least imitative) center section that in our cantata is performed by the chorus, while the slower external sections are reserved for the orchestra. The first aria for bass, strings, and an oboe presents the pastoral type, with its
8 meter, rocking figures, and gentle movement of the bass. The second aria, for soprano and strings, is unmistakably designed as a gavotte. The third aria, in which the tenor is accompanied only by the continuo, is similar to the gigue. The duet, the last movement in aria form, embodies the minuet. In addition to these dance types, many unusual demands on the vocalists testify to the origin of these movements in Köthen and their performance by virtuosos at court.3
In spite of these handicaps, Bach performed the cantata Höchsterwünschtes Freudenfest not only in November 1723 in Störmthal (BWV 194.2) but also several more times in Leipzig. The first of these is documented in 1724 for the feast of Trinity (BWV 194.3); the second followed a bit later, with reduced scoring and an altered and reduced sequence of movements (BWV 194.4); the third, once again for Trinity, is documented in 1731 but includes only the first half of the work. Later, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach performed the cantata in Halle. A copy of the score prepared by Johann Tobias Krebs, one of Bach’s first students and later active in Buttstädt, belongs to the choir archive in Crimmitschau. Just like Bach’s autograph manuscript, it bears the title Concerto Bey Einweyhung der Orgel in Störmthal (Concerto for the consecration of the organ at Störmthal) and thereby testifies to a masterpiece of organ construction that survives today and has made the name of the tiny village of Störmthal known the world over.
Footnotes
- Wollny (1997, 21–26).↵
- Als Der Hoch-Wohlgebohrne Herr, / Herr / Statz Hilmor / von Fullen, / Des Heiligen Römischen Reichs Ritter, / Auf Störmthal, Marck-Klebern und Liebert- / Wolckwitz, / Königlich Pohlnischer und Churfürstlicher Sächsischer / Hochbestallter Cammer-Herr und Ober-Hof- / Gerichts-Assessor, etc. / Das durch Dero Hochrühmliche Sorgfalt, / Neuerbauete Orgel-Werck / In der Kirche zu Störm-Thal übernehmen / und examinieren ließe, / Wurde / Nachfolgende Cantata / Bey öffentlichen Gottesdienste und Einweyhung besagter / Orgel aufgeführet, / Von / Johann Sebastian Bachen, / Hochfürstlich Anhalt-Cöthenischen Capell-Meister auch Directore Chori Musici / Lipsiensis, und Cantore der Schulen zu St. Thomas. / gedrückt bey Immanuel Tietzen.—Trans.↵
- The plausible hypothesis of a performance in Störmthal in deeper tuning can be neither confirmed nor excluded. Cf. Ellis and Mendel (1965, 201 f., 235) and Glöckner (2003, 92 ff.).↵