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Auf, schmetternde Töne der muntern Trompeten BWV 207.2 / BC G 22
Members of Princely Houses: Saxony/Poland, August 3, 1735.
This cantata, Auf, schmetternde Töne der muntern Trompeten BWV 207.2 (Fire away, blaring tones of spirited trumpets), is a new version of a festive composition with which a group of students at the University of Leipzig honored Gottlieb Kortte, a recently promoted professor of law.1 Nearly nine years passed before Bach decided to pull the composition out of storage and put it to new use. This notice appeared in the Leipzig press regarding its performance: “On the high name day of His Royal Majesty in Poland and Princely Electoral Highness in Saxony etc., the Bach Collegium Musicum will most humbly perform a solemn music in illumination this evening in the Zimmermann gardens before the Grimma Gate.”2 The “solemn music” in honor of the name day of Prince Elector Friedrich August II was a part of Johann Sebastian Bach’s multiyear effort to secure a title at the court of Dresden to elevate the profile of his position in Leipzig. The occasional performance of homage cantatas for birthdays and name days of the aristocracy was an effective way to keep the pending request alive over time.A notice in the account books of the Breitkopf publishing house shows the public attention the cantor of St. Thomas was counting on for this occasion: 150 printed copies of the cantata text would be available one day before the performance. Unfortunately, not one of these has survived. More is the pity, because even though the 1735 cantata version’s text has been preserved in the complete performance materials, several questions remain open regarding the assignment of roles. Nor does any printed text survive from the professor’s cantata, nine years earlier. Still, it is easy to see in its libretto that the four vocal soloists were assigned the roles of “Glück” (Fortune), “Dankbarkeit” (Gratitude), “Fleiß” (Diligence), and “Ehre” (Honor). It seems likely that the librettist of the new version followed this model and supplied appropriate substitutions; indeed, the new text occasionally mentions figures from ancient mythology such as Mars and Mercury, Flora, Pallas, and Irene. In addition, the river Pleiße makes an appearance here, crucially important for Leipzig’s supply of timber and its access to the oceans of the world. It would be a valuable undertaking for future scholarship to bring some order to this rather diffuse set of observations.
Bach’s planned performance presented his unidentified librettist with challenges of varying degrees of difficulty. For three recitatives, Bach gave the poet free rein, since Bach intended to compose them anew. On the other hand, both choral movements, the three arias, and the accompanied recitative just before the closing ensemble needed to be parodied; that is, music on hand needed to be supplied with new text. As in the model, the first movement would function as an invitation to make music together. The 1726 homage cantata invoked the play of the strings and sound of the drums:
Vereinigte Zwietracht der wechselnden Saiten,
Der donnernden Pauken durchdringender Knall.
Concordant discord of changing strings,
The rolling drums’ penetrating boom.
It later spoke of “frohlockenden Tönen” (tones of rejoicing) and “doppelt vermehretem Schall” (doubly multiplied sound). The librettist, clearly with knowledge of Bach’s intended orchestration, wrote:
Auf, schmetternde Töne der muntern Trompeten,
Ihr donnernden Pauken, erhebet den Knall!
Reizende Saiten, ergötzet das Ohr,
Suchet auf Flöten das Schönste zu finden,
Erfüllet mit lieblichen Schall
Unsre so süße als grünende Linden
Und unser frohes Musenchor!
Fire away, blaring tones of spirited trumpets,
You thundering drums, lift up your roar!
Charming strings, delight the ear,
Seek, upon flutes, the greatest beauty to find,
Fill with lovely sound
Our lindens, so sweet as they are verdant,
And our cheerful chorus of Muses!
The first recitative praises the idyll on the green banks of the Pleiße and compares them with the realm of Pallas Athena. The associated aria expands on the reason for this bold reinterpretation. In the 1726 version, it is sung by Diligence and begins with the exhortation:
Zieht euren Fuß nicht zurücke,
Ihr, die ihr meinen Weg erwählt!
Do not draw back your foot,
You, who choose my path.
The song of praise for the elector’s name day, however, reads:
Augustus’ Namenstages Schimmer
Verklärt der Sachsen Angesicht.
Gott schützt die frommen Sachsen immer,
Denn unsers Landesvaters Zimmer
Prangt heut in neuen Glückes Strahlen,
Die soll itzt unsre Ehrfurcht malen
Bei dem erwünschten Namenslicht.
The luster of Augustus’s name day
Transfigures the Saxon countenance.
God protects devout Saxony always,
For our sovereign’s chamber
Shines today with beams of new fortune,
Which now our reverence shall paint
By the desired light of his name.
In more precise language than this elaborately neutralized parody text, and unbound by the shackles of parody procedure, the duet recitative that follows praises the potentate’s importance for the well-being of his subjects. The associated aria movement does the same thing, but, as might be expected, it gets stuck halfway:
Mich kann die süße Ruhe laben,
Ich kann hier mein Vergnügen haben,
Wir beide stehn hier höchst beglückt.
Denn unsre fette Saaten lachen
Und können viel Vergnügen machen,
Weil sie kein Feind und Wetter drückt.
Wo solche holde Stunden kommen,
Da hat das Glücke zugenommen,
Das uns der heitre Himmel schickt.
Sweet repose can refresh me,
I can have my pleasure here,
We both stand here most delighted.
For our rich crops laugh
And can create much pleasure
Because no foe or storm threatens them.
Where such sweet hours come,
There that happiness has increased
That cheerful heaven sends us.
The ensuing recitative quickly moves past this poetic low point:
Augustus schützt die frohen Felder,
Augustus liebt die grünen Wälder,
Wenn sein erhabner Mut
Im Jagen niemals eher ruht,
Bis er ein schönes Tier gefället.
Der Landmann sieht mit Lust
Auf seinem Acker schöne Garben.
Ihm ist stets wohl bewußt,
Wie keiner darf in Sachsen darben,
Wer sich nur in sein Glücke findt
Und seine Kräfte recht ergründt.
Augustus protects the happy fields,
Augustus loves the green forests,
When his exalted courage
Never flags in the hunt
Until he has felled a fine beast.
The farmer looks with pleasure
Upon the beautiful sheaves of his fields.
He is always well aware
That no one in Saxony need starve
Who but reconciles himself to his fortune
And founds his strength properly.
This flows into a new aria, originally delivered by Gratitude, beginning with the exhortation “Ätzet dieses Angedenken / In den härtsten Marmor ein!” (Etch this commemoration / In the hardest marble!) but now with formulations that appeal to later generations and praise the great fortune of Augustus, inferring his greatness from his deeds. It was Bach’s intention to reuse the last recitative, in which all four allegorical figures speak, without change in the new cantata version. Here, the librettist of the new version had to call upon all his experience to work his way effectively through the dense maze of the model with no fewer than sixteen end rhymes. By comparison, the concluding song of praise was child’s play, on “Augustus, unseren Schutz” (Augustus, our protection) and “der starren Feinde Trutz” (the unbending enemies’ mortification) and so on.
In comparison to the challenges faced by the librettist, Bach’s task was simple. The work to be performed had already existed in its essential aspects since 1726. The three recitatives needed to be newly composed; this was easily accomplished by inserting a new leaf in the score. It was also necessary to copy out the vocal parts anew with the completely new version of the text. The other performing materials could be adapted to the new purpose with minor changes. A march composed especially for the student procession had to be left out in any case. And so the cantata that had last been performed in honor of a professor who had probably died in the meantime experienced a second performance perhaps unexpected—but perhaps long planned. Few of the listeners in the summer coffee garden would have remembered the students’ tribute, now nearly a decade in the past. More likely, one or two might have recognized parts of the F major concerto for horns, oboes, and strings (BWV 1046) in the opening movement of our cantata as well as in an aria ritornello, which the director of music may well have performed in his Collegium Musicum from time to time. It is unlikely that anyone in Leipzig in 1735 was aware that this F major concerto and five sibling works had been dedicated to the margrave of Brandenburg in early 1721. Posterity has an easier time of it here, especially when it comes to imagining the sound of the horns in the Brandenburg archetype from the “blaring trumpets” passages.
Footnotes
- Vereinigte Zwietracht der wechselnden Saiten BWV 207.1 (Concordant discord of changing strings).—Trans.↵
- “Auf den Hohen Nahmens-Tag Ihro Königlichen Majestät in Polen und Churfürstlichen Durchlaucht zu Sachsen etc. wird das Bachische Collegium Musicum heute Abends eine solenne Music bei einer Illumination im Zimmermannischen Garten vor dem Grimmischen Thore untertänigst aufführen” (BD II:259 [no. 368]).—Trans.↵