This tag was created by James A. Brokaw II. The last update was by Angela Watters.
Angenehmes Wiederau, freue dich in deinen Auen BWV 30.1 / BC G 31
For Members of the Aristocracy, June 24, 1738
Like its better-known sibling work, the Peasant Cantata BWV 212, the cantata Angenehmes Wiederau, freue dich in deinen Auen BWV 30.1 (Pleasant Wiederau, rejoice in your meadows) owes its origin to a change in ownership of an estate in the countryside near Leipzig. The Peasant Cantata concerns the inheritance of the chamberlain Carl Heinrich von Dieskau, who took ownership of the manor at Kleinzschocher in the summer of 1742 after the death of his mother. In this case, the homage was for the newly titled Herr von Hennicke, who had recently taken possession of the Wiederau estate. With a volubility characteristic of the age, the title page of the printed cantata text announces: “As the high, wellborn lord, HERRN Johann Christian von Hennicke, hereditary, feudal, and judicial lord of Wiederau, well-trusted privy counselor, state minister, and vice chamber president to his royal majesty in Poland and electoral highness in Saxony, as well as chamberlain of the chapters in Naumburg and Zeitz, was honored on September 28, 1737, in Wiederau[.] Johann Siegemund Beiche, Christian Schilling, Christian Friedrich Henrici showed their most humble devotion.”1 The remarkable trio of those offering homage here, appearing together for the first and only time, is explained by territorial circumstances. Beiche was chamberlain and magistrate (Cammer-Commissarius und Amtmann); Schilling was the director of the Pegau office responsible for administration of the Wiederau estate (Vorsteher des für die Verwaltung der Grundherrschaft Wiederau zuständigen Amtes Pegau); and Henrici may have joined in his capacity as the soon-to-be county tax collector. Henrici may also have served as librettist. Nowhere is Bach named as the composer. For him, the music to be performed was essentially a commissioned work; he had nothing to do with the honor ceremony itself.The ceremony was held in Wiederau Castle in Elsteraue, southwest of Leipzig. Although still standing today, the castle is badly in need of restoration. The imposing Baroque edifice, erected in 1705 by Johann Gregor Fuchs, was commissioned by the Leipzig merchant David Fleischer shortly after he had been awarded a title of nobility. The subsequent owner, Johann Christian von Hennicke, a parvenu like Fuchs who would later be elevated to the rank of imperial count, was perhaps better suited than any other person to be the object of a classic homage ceremony. And so the librettist and the composer opted for the tried-and-true floor plan of the dramma per musica, admittedly without being able to bring a personal touch to the proceedings.
The allegorical figures Time, Fortune, and Fate make appearances, as well as a tutelary deity, the personification of the river Elster. All participate in the tutti at the beginning:
Angenehmes Wiederau,
Freue dich in deinen Auen!
Das Gedeihen legt itzund
Einen neuen, festen Grund,
Wie ein Eden dich zu bauen.
Pleasant Wiederau,
Rejoice in your meadows!
Prosperity now lays down
A new, firm foundation
To build you as a new Eden.
The extensive libretto closes with a second strophe identical in structure to the first. The space between these two cornerstones is filled with recitatives and arias, whereby the figure of Fate is conceived in two different ways. She opens with a greeting that culminates in the wish that Wiederau might lay aside its name and henceforth be called Hennicks-Ruhe (Hennicke’s tranquility). “Willkommen im Heil, willkommen in Freuden, / Wir segnen die Ankunft, wir segnen das Haus” (Welcome in well-being, welcome in joy, / We bless your arrival, we bless the house) is the text of the associated aria. Immediately, Fortune swears immutable loyalty to “praised Hennicke” and confirms in his aria that
Was die Seele kann ergötzen,
Was vergnügt und hoch zu schätzen,
Soll dir Lehn und erblich sein.
Whatever can delight the soul,
Whatever pleases and is to be highly prized
Shall be your fief and legacy.
Fate promises “Schutz und Wacht” (protection and guardianship) but then strikes an unexpectedly gentle tone:
Ich will dich halten
Und mit dir walten,
Wie man ein Auge zärtlich hält.
Ich habe dein Erhöhen,
Dein Heil und Wohlergehen
Auf Marmorsäulen aufgestellt.
I will keep you
And rule with you
As one tenderly holds a glance.
I have placed your elevation,
Your benefit and well-being
Upon marble columns.
If Fate seems a bit out of character here, Time and Elster immediately take trouble to contribute what is expected of them. Time promises:
And in the aria:Sooft die Morgenröte tagt,
Solang ein Tag den andern folgen läßt,
So lange will ich steif und fest,
Mein Hennicke, dein Wohl
Auf meine Flügel ferner bauen.
As often as the rosy dawn appears,
So long as one day follows another,
So long will I, strong and fast,
My Hennicke, further build
Your well-being upon my wings.
Eilt, ihr Stunden, wie ihr wollt,
Rottet aus und stoßt zurücke!
Aber merket dies allein,
Daß ihr diesen Schmuck und Schein,
Daß ihr Hennicks Ruhm und Glücke
Allezeit verschonen sollt!
Hasten, you hours, as you will,
Eradicate and push back!
But mark this alone,
That this ornament and luster,
That Hennicke’s tranquility, fame, and fortune
You must forever spare!
Elster closes the circle with a greeting to the “werten Gäste” (worthy guests) and the exhortation to settle “Au und Ufer” (meadow and riverbank) with “Hütten” (housing) and “fester Wohnungen” (secure dwellings):
So wie ich dei Tropfe zolle,
Daß mein Wiedrau grünen solle,
So fügt auch euern Segen bei!
Just as I provide the water,
That my Wiederau might be green,
So add your blessings too!
The three allegorical figures have the last word before the closing ensemble; the less privileged Elster must fall silent here.
The libretto is, overall, rather difficult to manage, yet Johann Sebastian Bach was able to make something of it; a colorful and diverse series of movements flowed from his pen. The opening and closing movements feature a large festival orchestra with trumpets and drums, flutes, oboes, and strings. In some sections, the vocal part is rather polyphonic, but overall the writing is largely harmonic in nature. Quite striking in the opening and closing movements is the
4 meter with its syncopated rhythms, in which a longer note is surrounded by two shorter ones. In his book Der Vollkommene Capell-Meister, published in 1739, the Hamburg music scholar Johann Mattheson pronounced this “the highest fashion at the moment” (itzo die höchste Mode). We do not know whether Bach foregrounded this fashionable style to honor his commissioners’ wishes. It is possible, however, that there might be a connection with the reproaches hurled his way by Johann Adolph Scheibe. Born in Leipzig but living in Hamburg at the time, Scheibe had complained in print about Bach’s supposedly “overburdened and turgid” compositions. Accordingly, the Wiederau cantata might be seen as an artistic response to a scolding taken as unjust.
The bass and string instruments are joyfully animated in the first aria; with its brisk
8 meter it is quite similar to the gigue dance type. The second aria, for alto accompanied by an obbligato flute as well as muted or pizzicato strings, combines the even rhythms of a gavotte with a playful triplet motion and a syncopation now even more pronounced. For the third aria Bach had originally wanted to reuse an aria from his 1732 homage cantata in honor of the elector2 and had a peculiarly gentle new text prepared for the purpose. However, he ultimately decided in favor of a new composition with more pronounced syncopation than the preceding movements, so that it became a quintessential example of the Lombard rhythmic style. A short time later, the spurned original version found its way as a honeyed soprano aria into the Peasant Cantata mentioned above, now bearing the text:
Kleinzschocher müsse
So zart und süße
Wie lauter Mandelkerne sein.
Let Klein-Zschocher be
As tender and sweet
As utter almonds.
Time delivers an aria bereft of any reverence for current style; in the triple meter of the gigue, the hovering soprano part climbs to the upper extremes of its range. The last aria, a veritable polonaise, is reserved for Elster. It comes from an older composition from the 1720s.3 Bach seems to have particularly favored this composition; it turns up several times in his works.
When our congratulatory cantata was reshaped to become a church cantata for St. John’s Day, probably in 1738, this last aria was left behind. Everything else, however, was brought over to the new version. The fact that the church cantata—including the trumpets and drums of the secular original, which are out of place there altogether—stood alone until the publication of the Wiederau homage cantata in the last quarter of the twentieth century is among the peculiarities of Bach reception in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Footnotes
- “Als / Dem Hoch-Wohlgebohrnen Herrn, / HERRN / Johann Christian / von Hennicke, / Erb- Lehn- und Gerichts-Herr auf Wiederau, / Ihro Königlichen Majestät in Pohlen und Churfürst. Durchl. / zu Sachsen Hochbetrauter würcklicher Geheime Rath, Staats-Minister / und Vice-Cammer-Präsident, wie auch Cammer-Director des Stiffts / zu Naumburg und Zeitz, etc. / Den 28. September 1737, / in Wiederau gehuldiget wurde, / bezeigten / Ihro Excellence ihre unterthänige Devotion / Johann Siegemund Beiche, Christian Schilling, Christian Friedrich Henrici.”—Trans.↵
- Es lebe der König, der Vater im Lande BWV 1157.—Trans.↵
- O! Angenehme Melodei BWV 210.1.—Trans.↵