This page was created by James A. Brokaw II. The last update was by Elizabeth Budd.
Schleicht, spielende Wellen BWV 206 / BC G 23
Members of Princely Houses: Saxony/Poland, October 17, 1736
The origin and performance of the cantata Schleicht, spielende Wellen BWV 206 (Glide, playful waves) are bound up with highly unusual circumstances in the life of the cantor of Leipzig’s St. Thomas School. The key factor was Bach’s decision to seek a court title in Dresden following the death of August the Strong; however, a decision was not immediately forthcoming. A practical means of occasionally bringing the matter to mind was to perform homage cantatas on the birthdays and name days of members of the royal family in the hope that the royal residence might take note of copies of the printed texts sent to Dresden or at least of announcements in the Leipzig press of such performances.In early October 1734 Johann Sebastian Bach prepared one such cantata performance for the birthday of the elector, to be celebrated on the seventh day of the month. An unidentified librettist had prepared a libretto for the planned dramma per musica, a friendly—and hence undramatic—quarrel between four personified rivers: the Weichsel, representing the kingdom of Poland and its residence in Warsaw; the Elbe for Dresden and the electorate of Saxony; the Danube as an allusion to Vienna and the Hapsburg background of the electoral consort, Maria Josepha; and the Pleiße, standing for Leipzig, the trade fair city. The subject of the dispute is the difference of entitlement between the regions to the sovereign's presence, and the ranking that would result from it. Occasionally, the elector is actually addressed here, but that occurs, as it were, as an aside: in reality, the text aims at an homage at which the honoree is not present.
The situation changed unexpectedly when it became known in Leipzig that the elector and his family intended to visit Leipzig’s Michaelmas Fair from nearby Hubertusburg Castle and while there would be willing to accept an homage from the Leipzig University student body. In no time at all, a new cantata text had to be written and set to music and its performance prepared. The result of this superhuman effort was the cantata Preise dein Glücke, gesegnetes Sachsen BWV 215 (Praise your good fortune, blessed Saxony), performed on October 5, 1734, on Leipzig’s market square before the elector’s lodgings. Certainly, no one expected that only two days later the cantor of St. Thomas would perform the work originally intended, the cantata Schleicht spielende Wellen, now in a concert by Bach's Collegium Musicum.
Bach let the partly finished work languish for the moment—until “for the moment” turned into two years. An occasion to complete the composition presented itself in the autumn of 1736, when Bach’s position as cantor was badly shaken by a bitter dispute with the rector, known as the “prefects’ battle” (Präfektenstreit). Bach defended his presumed rights stubbornly and without the diplomatic skill the situation called for, and so he lost out to his superiors in city, church, and school. He renewed his efforts in search of a court title in Dresden and, several weeks later, finally saw his efforts rewarded. Upon performing a brilliant concert on the new Silbermann organ in the Church of Our Lady in Dresden, he was presented with a decree naming him as court composer.
In the tense interim period, the Leipzig press announced “a solemn concert with trumpets and drums for Sunday, October 17, 1736, at eight o’clock in the evening at Zimmermann’s Coffeehouse.”1 This certainly referred to the cantata Schleicht, spielende Wellen. The two hundred printed copies of the text indicate the degree of public response that had been hoped for. By and large, the libretto prepared for 1734 could be used without any changes; the only minor edits needed were those to replace references to then current events with neutral language. The recitative by Weichsel (the personification of the Vistula River in Poland) was particularly affected, with its vivid descriptions of military conflicts over the Polish royal succession and heavy losses in the battle of Danzig.
The librettist deserves much credit because—despite his concentration on the static topic of waterways—he prepared such a balanced and varied design of the entire work in advance and in such a skillful fashion. To use the words of Johann Mattheson, this enabled the composition to avoid the dangerous proximity of “empty sound games that are almost insufferably tasteless.”2 Admittedly, the musical depiction of “flowing” and “streaming” was unavoidable in the opening movement. As a broadly executed tone painting, it aims at a highly unified form, calmed and animated in light of the dynamic contrast between “murmelt gelinde” (murmurs gently) and “rauschet geschwinde” (rushes swiftly). In the middle section, in which the otherwise dominant brasses fall silent, there are three starts within only a few measures, bringing about a transition to a noticeably quicker tempo—an effective means of depicting a joy painstaking controlled but then “Dämme durchreißender Freude” (dam bursting).
Each of the four personifications of rivers now presents a recitative-aria movement pair. In the bass aria (the river Vistula), dance-like gestures and strange melodic constructions indicate an effort to musically clothe the text, which focuses on the subjugation of Poland, in a garment suggestive of Polish character. The tenor aria (the river Elbe) flows into an arioso that begins in strict canon at the fifth—for the sake of the oath pronounced in the text—but begins freer undulations in the accompanying part, thus anticipating the aria that follows. There, the constant figuration of the solo violin is conceived as tone painting. The voice and the string instrument engage in genuine competition over the course of many measures. In the middle section this becomes a lovely echo play: the continuo attempts to take part in the aria’s spare canonic structure. The canonic voice leading in the alto aria (the river Danube) is more consistent than those playful imitations. While the warm timbre of the two oboi d’amore might symbolize the electress’s conjugal love, the strict canonic writing indicates the insolubility of the marital bond.
The three flutes join in a “trias harmonica,” or harmonic triad, an inseparable concord that has emerged undamaged from the dispute, which distinguishes the soprano aria (the river Pleiße) from what has preceded it: fine dynamic shading, the artful interweaving of three and four melodic lines in high register, abrupt shifts to simple harmonies and fashionable syncopations, a clearly articulated form, and the inexhaustible combination and transformation of the tiniest motivic building blocks—all of these elements show the hand of the mature master, and the rank of his formal and inventive artistry. In contrast, the closing chorus has a pronounced simplicity. Closely akin to a gigue in character, designed formally as a rondo, it is nonetheless hymnic in its broad unfolding.
The work seems to have pleased the citizens of Leipzig. In any case, the cantata was reperformed for the name day of the electress,3 this time as an afternoon concert outdoors “in the Zimmermann gardens before the Grimma Gate.”