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Wir danken dir, Gott, wir danken dir BWV 29 / BC B 8
City Council Inauguration, August 27, 1731
This cantata belongs to the relatively small group of Bach’s city council inauguration cantatas. These were works that were performed in honor of the Leipzig city council and by its explicit mandate. As was conventional in many German cities and in line with the political conventions of the era, councilmen were appointed for life, and their total number was divided into several councils, each of which was led by a mayor. In regular succession, these councils alternated in conducting the affairs of government. This rotation between “sitting” or governing council and “resting” councils occurred at the end of every August during Bach’s time in Leipzig—or, more precisely, on the Monday following St. Bartholomew’s Day. Early in the morning, the town council service was held in the municipal main church, St. Nicholas, which included a particular sermon as well as festive music.Although all participants were clear as to their responsibilities, the council insisted upon sending a scribe to the superintendent several days before the event to ask him to prepare the council sermon, as well as a representative with the old-fashioned title Thürknecht1 to the Thomaskantor to remind him of the expected musical composition. An anxious inquiry sent to Bach in August 1741, then visiting in Berlin, underscores the great importance all parties attached to this ceremony: “St. Bartholomew’s Day and the council election here will occur in a few weeks, and we should not know how we should conduct ourselves in respect to the same in Your Honor’s absence.”2It was obviously inconceivable that Bach might have allowed himself to be represented by a substitute.3
Five works survive with music, as well as one that is fragmentary and three with text only. It is difficult to say whether they represent the totality of work that Bach performed on those twenty-seven August Mondays in the St. Nicholas Church, because the number of repeat performances is difficult to judge. It is all the more fortunate that in the case of Wir danken dir, Gott, wir danken dir BWV 29 (We thank you, God, we thank you) we have precise documentation for no fewer than three performances: 1731, the year the cantata was composed; 1749, the last time Bach himself conducted the festive music for the town council election; and 1739, about halfway between the first and last performances. The 1739 performance is mentioned in a printed annual report by a member of the teaching staff at St. Thomas School, collega tertius Abraham Kriegel. In his Nützliche Nachrichten von denen Bemühungen derer Gelehrten und anderen Begebenheiten in Leipzig, he wrote: “On August 31 the council election sermon was delivered in the St. Nicholas Church by Herr Magister Christian Gottlob Eichlern on the first book of Kings, chapter VIII, verse 57, and afterward the Royal and Electoral Court Composer and Capellmeister Herr Johann Sebastian Bach [performed] a musical work as artistic as it was pleasing; the text was Chorus, ‘Wir dancken dir, Gott, wir dancken dir.’”4
The biblical passage chosen by Magister Eichler for his council election sermon begins with the words “May the Lord, our God, be with us, as he was with our fathers.” Ten years later, however, the sermon was about a passage in Psalm 82, considered a “threatening address by God to unjust authorities.” The passage reads: “You are gods and all of you children of the highest; but you will die like people and, like a tyrant, be destroyed” (6–7). Bach certainly had no part in the choice of this awkward text—but he could have spoken it from the heart. Only a few weeks earlier, he had stood by as the Leipzig council had his designated successor, Gottlob Harrer, perform an audition concert for a scenario in which he—Bach—might have died. It seems that the fact that the city fathers had given in to massive pressure from the almighty minister Count Brühl did not go unnoticed by Bach; it can hardly have given him any satisfaction.
Remarkably, neither of the sermon texts has any direct connection to the libretto for the cantata Wir danken dir, Gott, wir danken dir—almost as if the separation between the city scribe’s order for the sermon from the superintendent and the Thürknecht’s request of music from Bach meant that their preparations would be separated as well. Be that as it may, the cantata text by an unknown author adheres to the same stipulations for the same purposes, praises God and the wise authorities, and frequently draws upon the Psalter—as at the very beginning with Psalm 75:1: “Wir danken dir, Gott, wir danken dir und verkündigen deine Wunder” (We thank you, Lord, we thank you and proclaim your wonders). In accordance with the occasion, the chain of recitatives and arias that follows includes numerous remarks upon the city and its government either as direct statements or in the form of allusions to biblical examples. Thus the thanksgiving of the psalm verse is followed by the praise of an aria:
Halleluja, Stärk und Macht
Sei des Allerhöchsten Namen.
Zion ist noch seine Stadt,
Da er seine Wohnung hat,
Da er noch bei unserm Samen
An der Vätern Bund gedacht.
May Hallelujah, power, and might
Be the name of the Most High.
Zion is still his city,
Where he has his dwelling,
Where he still with our seed
Keeps the covenant of our fathers.
A recitative continues this praise, beginning with these lines:
Gottlob, es geht uns wohl;
Gott ist noch unsre Zuversicht,
Sein Schutz, sein Trost und Licht
Beschirmt die Stadt und die Paläste,
Sein Flügel hält die Mauern feste.
Praise God, it is well with us,
God is still our assurance,
His protection, his consolation and light
Shields the city and palaces,
His pinions keep the walls strong.
Phrases from Psalm 122 are clearly recognizable here, verses that were often favored for use in town council election music: “Wünschet Jerusalem Glück! . . . Es möge Friede sein in deinen Mauern und Glück in deinen Palästen!” (6–7; Wish Jerusalem prosperity! . . . May there be peace within your walls and prosperity within your palaces!). At its close, the recitative proclaims, self-confidently:
Wo ist ein solches Volk wie wir,
Dem Gott so nah und gnädig ist?
Where is there such a people as we,
To whom God is so near and gracious?
But another aria text follows immediately with the awareness that this grace must be requested:
Gedenk an uns mit deiner Liebe,
Schleuß uns in dein Erbarmen ein.
Segne die, so uns regieren,
Die uns leiten, schützen, führen,
Segne die gehorsam sein.
Remember us with your love,
Enclose us in your mercy.
Bless those who govern us,
Who lead, protect, guide us,
Bless those who are obedient.
And since the town council election marks the beginning of a new year, as it were, the last recitative prays and promises in the diction of a New Year’s cantata:
Vergiß es ferner nicht, mit deiner Hand
Uns Gutes zu erweisen;
So soll
Dich unsre Stadt und unser Land,
Das deiner Ehre voll,
Mit Opfern und mit danken preisen,
Und alles Volk soll sagen: Amen.
Halleluja, Stärk und Macht
Sei des Allerhöchsten Namen.
Further, do not forget with your hand
To show us good things;
So shall
You, by our city and our land,
Which is filled with your honor,
Be praised with offerings and with thanks,
And all the people shall say: Amen.
Let hallelujah, power, and might
Be the name of the Most High.
Following this allusion to the beginning of the first aria, the libretto closes with a strophe from Johann Gramann’s hymn Nun lob, mein Seel, den Herren (Now praise, my soul, the Lord). The final strophe begins, “Sei Lob und Preis mit Ehren / Gott Vater, Sohn, Heiligem Geist” (Let there be glory and praise with honor / For God the Father, Son, Holy Spirit).
Bach placed a concerto movement for organ and orchestra at the beginning of his composition of this text. This is a second arrangement in the form of a concerto of the Präludium from the Partita in E Major for Solo Violin (BWV 1006). In 1729 Bach had taken this piece, which had originated no later than 1720, for a wedding cantata (Herr Gott, Beherrscher aller Dinge BWV 120.2). In doing so, he transposed the violin part for the organ and externalized its intrinsic harmonies for oboes and strings. He now went beyond this not entirely unproblematic procedure by enriching the new arrangement with trumpets and drums—further obscuring the original idea in the solo violin version of projecting a multidimensional concerto form in a single-voiced texture.
The first vocal movement, a chorus on the text from Psalm 75, enters a different realm entirely. A solemn processional begins with archaic diction, advancing with dense canonic structures that approach fugue and intensifying to a hymnic seven-voice structure by including the brass instruments. Certain discrepancies between the structure of the text and the music’s course suggest that the movement was originally part of another work with a different text. Nonetheless, Bach held the piece in such high esteem that he added it to his 1733 B Minor Missa (BWV 232.2) as the “Gratias agimus tibi” and then, when completing the entire B Minor Mass (BWV 232.4) fifteen years later, had it serve additionally as the work’s crowning conclusion, the “Dona nobis pacem.”
By contrast, the two arias in the town council cantata strive for simplicity and tuneful appeal. The tenor aria, “Halleluja, Stärk und Macht,” has a kind of superficial cheer that is underscored by its uncomplicated three-part texture. On the other hand, the soprano aria, “Gedenk an uns mit deiner Liebe,” relies on a lovely siciliano rhythm, simple yet expressive harmonies, and an intimate, song-like melody that includes the stylish effect of the Lombard rhythm. The voice and upper part of the instrumental texture move in parallel, and the basso continuo pauses during vocal sections; these elements anticipate the style of the later decades of the eighteenth century. A brief recitative is followed by an abbreviated repetition of the first aria, now with alto and obbligato organ, thereby creating a transition not only to the third movement, the tenor aria, but also back to the opening sinfonia with the constant presence of the concertante organ. The closing chorale is reminiscent of the second movement, the hymn-like “Wir danken dir, Gott, wir danken dir,” with its line endings emphasized by the brilliance of the trumpets.
Footnotes
- Gerichtsdiener in modern German, the closest English equivalent to which is “bailiff.”—Trans.↵
- NBR, 212 (no. 222). Johann Elias Bach’s letter informing Bach of his wife’s illness: draft or copy (BD II:391 [no. 489]).—Trans.↵
- However, it has recently become clear that Bach was indeed absent from his post at St. Thomas for as much as two years, perhaps 1742–43 or sometime between 1743 and 1746. See the letter of application written in 1751 by a former St. Thomas student, Gottfried Benjamin Fleckeisen, to succeed his father as cantor of the small town of Döbeln, in which Fleckeisen claimed that “I was an alumnus [boarder] at the St. Thomas School in Leipzig for nine years and while I was there served for four years as prefect of the choro musico. For two whole years I had to perform and conduct the music at the churches of St. Thomas and St. Nicholas in place of the capellmeister, and without boasting, may say that I always acquitted myself honorably” (Maul 2017; translation of the Fleckeisen letter from Maul 2018, xv).—Trans.↵
- “Den 31. August ward die so genannte Raths-Wahl-Predigt in der Kirche zu St. Nicolai, von Herrn Magister Christian Gottlob Eichlern, über I. Buch der Könige, Kapitel VIII, Vers 57 und folgende gehalten, und darauf machte der Königliche und Churfürstliche Hof-Compositeur und Capellmeister, Herr Johann Sebastian Bach, eine so künstlich als angenehme Music; worzu der Text dieser war: Chorus, ‘Wir dancken dir, Gott, wir dancken dir.’”—Trans.↵