This tag was created by James A. Brokaw II. The last update was by Elizabeth Budd.
Preise dein Glücke, gesegnetes Sachsen BWV 215 / BC G 21
Members of Princely Houses: Saxony/Poland, October 5, 1734
The homage cantata Preise dein Glücke, gesegnetes Sachsen BWV 215 (Praise your good fortune, blessed Saxony) was performed in October 1734 in honor of the electoral family. It is different from many of its sibling works in that the most important members of the royal house were present at the performance. Occasions of the first rank such as this came only rarely for the cantor of St. Thomas School, and for two such instances in 1727 and 1738 the music is lost, so that posterity can only refer to the verses of the librettists Christian Friedrich Haupt (Entfernet euch, ihr heitern Sterne BWV 1156) and Johann Christoph Gottsched (Willkommen! Ihr herrschenden Götter der Erden BWV 1161). By contrast, the cantata Preise dein Glücke, gesegnetes Sachsen is complete and well documented in every conceivable respect and, moreover, fits into Bach’s multiyear effort to elevate his profile through a title at the princely electoral Hofcapelle in Dresden. Bach had submitted a petition in that regard in July 1733, but the approval was long in coming. Experience had shown that any attempt to send a reminder had little chance of success, particularly when, in the case of the royal Polish / electoral Saxon court, the ruling family was continuously commuting between Dresden and Warsaw and, for all practical purposes, could never be reached. And so the only remaining possibility was to attract attention occasionally with appropriate musical performances, in particular, celebrating the birthdays and name days of the authorities with festival cantatas, and to convey the news of these performances by sending a printed copy of the text or at least to have an announcement in the press near the court.Johann Sebastian Bach had planned an event of this sort for October 1734 and had begun to prepare a cantata for the birthday of the elector-prince for performance by Bach’s Collegium Musicum on October 7. But the electoral family visited Leipzig unannounced on October 2 during Michaelmas, intending to leave four days later, and another undertaking took precedence. Instead of a private concert by the Collegium Musicum, a torchlight parade through the city took place, as well as an outdoor evening concert in front of the Apel Haus on the south side of the market square, where the illustrious guests stayed. On a clear hint from the Dresden court, the university took the initiative, with a group of students raising financing. The fifth anniversary of what is called the royal election on October 6 was used as an external occasion. On that day in 1733, Elector Friedrich August II of Saxony had himself elected king of Poland in order to continue Saxon rule over Poland, initiated by his father, Friedrich August I, known to history as August the Strong. But Stanislaus Leszczyński, who had worn the Polish crown from 1707 to 1709, laid claim to the throne and had himself elected as king in September 1733, leading to military clashes in the course of which Saxony, supported by France and Russia, gained the upper hand. The city of Danzig managed to resist the longest, but even it buckled to superior strength in the summer of 1734.
The text of our cantata refers to these events in the usual manner for the age: highlighting the merits of the father of the people as war hero and peacemaker, as the creator of wealth and prosperity, and as patron god and ally of heaven while omitting otherwise requisite allegory and appropriation from ancient mythology. More still: the text shows clear ambitions in the direction of a purified German. Accordingly, it abstains from barely comprehensible learned allusions, faddish turns of phrase, and in particular all provincialisms. The explanation for this phenomenon is found in the person of the librettist, Johann Christoph Clauder. He came from an old Saxon-Thuringian family of scholars and was later active in an influential position in the Dresden court. As a student he was among the followers of Gottsched and served as an intermediary between him and his later adversaries in Switzerland. For a time, Clauder was considered the “Upper Saxon speech corrector” (obersächsischer Sprachkorrektor) of Johann Jacob Bodmer.1
We cannot say to what extent Bach took note of the literary qualities of the libretto. It also remains unknown to what extent he may have influenced the form of the text and whether, for example, he requested arias in particular verse meters. Indeed, he had scarcely three days to write out a score of more than forty pages, have a total of twenty-four performing parts copied out by a staff of assistants, gather together singers and instrumentalists, rehearse the cantata with them, and finally perform it.
The almost insurmountable task was actually achieved, and it even resulted in an effective performance at which the electoral family, it is said, “did not leave the window so long as the music lasted, but rather graciously listened, and His Majesty was sincerely pleased.”2
The factors that led to this success included, not least of all, Bach’s ability to manage his efforts and, when faced with a lack of time, to rely upon his earlier compositions.3Thus, in addition to the movements originally composed for our cantata—all the recitatives, the final chorus, the third aria, and the middle section of the opening movement—there are also components that are based on older compositions. These include the first and second arias, whose models have not yet been identified, as well as—especially—the beginning and ending portions of the opening chorus. Here, the text “Preise dein Glücke, gesegnetes Sachsen, / Weil Gott den Thron deines Königs erhält” (Praise your good fortune, blessed Saxony, / For God maintains the throne of your king) is so skillfully wedded to the music that it was only relatively recently that the original image of an homage cantata from the year 1732 was recognized (BWV 1157). There, the opening movement begins with the words “Es lebe der König, der Vater im Lande, der weise, der milde, der tapfer August” (Long live the king, the father of his country, the wise, the gentle, the courageous August). That Bach transplanted the elaborate double chorus into the new cantata, in spite of the shortage of time, gives one a sense of how much he expected from the performance before the elector, particularly in regard to the court title Bach had requested. The performance, illuminated by six hundred torches before what must have been a large audience, was a great success. But one of the best musicians in Leipzig, the trumpeter and senior member of the Stadtpfeiffer, Gottfried Reiche, fell victim to a stroke the following day, quite possibly due to the stress of performing in the dense smoke from the wax torches. This tragic incident must have darkened Bach’s joy over the successful homage (as well as over the honorarium of fifty thaler—a sum not to be dismissed).
The music of our cantata shows the fifty-year-old cantor of St. Thomas at the height of his creative powers. Older components are so skillfully and seamlessly integrated that the entire work seems molded from a single cast. The fact that the impressive double chorus from 1732 was not only reused here but also found its way into the Osanna of the Mass in B Minor BWV 232 caused some confusion in earlier scholarship as to priority. The newly composed middle section, which skillfully opens up further antiphonal possibilities for the two choirs, allows the opening movement to expand to over four hundred measures. It is not easy for the pearl necklace of recitatives and arias that follows to assert itself after this imposing portal: the elegant tenor aria, featuring fashionable galant rhythms; the bass solo, an “aria with heroic affect”; the soprano aria, embedded in the flutes’ lovely timbres. This last movement omits the normally requisite basso continuo so that the upper strings form the foundation, signaling something unusual, diverging from the expected. This is undoubtedly directed to a characteristic of the regent being glorified: answering malice with generosity and animosity with gentleness. A martial intermezzo in the last recitative recalls the recently endured threat of war before the final chorus with its harmonious and hopeful “laß uns die Länder in Frieden bewohnen” (let us inhabit the lands in peace), which recalls the finale of Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks (HWV 351).