New Year's Day

Jesu, nun sei gepreiset
Zu diesem neuen Jahr
Für dein Güt, uns beweiset
In aller Not und G’fahr,
Daß wir habet erlebet
Die neu fröhliche Zeit,
Die voller Gnaden schwebet
Und ewger Seligkeit,
Daß wir in guter Stille
Das alt Jahr habn erfüllet.
Wir wollen uns dir ergeben
Itzund und immerdar,
Behüt Leib, Seele und Leben
Hinfort durchs ganze Jahr.

Jesus, be now praised
At this new year
For your goodness, shown to us
In all distress and danger
So that we have experienced
This joyous new time,
Which hovers full of grace
And eternal salvation,
That in good stillness
We have completed the old year.
We want to commit ourselves to you
Now and ever more,
Protect body, soul, and life
Henceforth through the entire year.

Laß uns das Jahr vollbringen
Zu Lob dem Namen dein,
Daß wir demselben singen
In der Christen gemein

Let us complete the year
In praise of your name,
That we sing of the same
Among the Christian congregation

As an aria text, this took the following form:

Laß uns, o höchster Gott, das Jahr vollbringen,
Damit das Ende so wie dessen Anfang sei.
Es stehe deine Hand uns bei, 
Daß künftig bei des Jahres Schluß
Wir bei des Segens Überfluß
Wie itzt ein Halleluja singen.

Let us, O Most High God, complete the year,
That its end may be as its beginning.
May your hand remain with us,
That in future at the year’s close
We, amid an overflow of blessings,
As now, sing an alleluia.

For the ensuing recitative, there remained only two lines available in the strophe: “Wollst uns das Leben fristen / Durch dein allmächtig Hand” (If you wish to draw out our lives in misery / Through your almighty hand). It would have been hardly conceivable to draw upon the Gospel reading for the holiday, for it consists of only a single verse from the second chapter of Luke, with its account of the circumcision and naming of Jesus. The librettist therefore chose other biblical verses focusing on the initial stage, among them from the first chapter of the Revelation of St. John: “Ich bin das A und O, der Anfang und das Ende” (22:3; I am the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the End), as well as from Psalm 139: “Deine Augen sahen mich, da ich noch unbereitet war, und alle Tagen waren auf dein Buch geschrieben, die noch werden sollten, als derselben keiner da war” (16; Your eyes saw me, as I was yet unprepared, and in thy book all my days were written, which were yet to become, since none of them were there). The recitative drew on these and other similar sources:

Ach, deine Hand, dein Segen muß allein
Das A und O, der Anfang und das Ende sein.
Das Leben trägest du in deiner Hand,
Und unsere Tage sind bei dir geschrieben;
Dein Auge steht auf Stadt und Land;
Du zählest unser Wohl und kennest unser Leiden,
Ach gib von beiden,
Was deine Weisheit will, worzu dich dein Erbarmen angetrieben.

Ah, your hand, your blessing must alone 
Be the A and O, the beginning and the end.
The life you carry in your hand,
And our days are written with you;
Your eye watches over city and country;
You count our well-being and know our misfortunes,
O grant us of both
What your wisdom demands, wherever your mercy drives you.

Other lines from Herman’s chorale strophe contain the prayer for protection of the community and fatherland, for peace and blessing and maintaining purity of faith:

Erhalt deine lieben Christen
Und unser Vaterland.
Dein Segen zu uns wende,
Gib Fried an allem Ende;
Gib unverfälscht im Lande
Dein seligmachend Wort.

Preserve your dear Christians
And our fatherland.
Send your blessing upon us,
Grant peace everywhere.
Give faithfully across our country
Your blessed-making word.

This gives the librettist the opportunity, in the next aria, to call to mind the importance of preserving the faith:

Woferne du den edlen Frieden
Von unsern Leib und Stand beschieden,
So laß den Seele doch dein seligmachend Wort.
Wenn uns dies Heil begegnet,
So sind wir hier gesegnet
Und Auserwählte dort.

Just as you have granted a noble peace
For our bodies and our station, 
Then but allow the soul your blessed-making word.
If we receive this salvation,
We are blessed here on earth,
And we are chosen there in heaven.

The background to this plea can be just as easily inferred from the two last lines of Herman’s chorale—“Die Teufel mach zuschanden / Her und an allem Ort” (Destroy the devils / Here and everywhere)—as from the recitative’s expanded paraphrase, at the center of which stands a literal quote from Martin Luther’s Litanei Deutsch (German litany):

Doch weil der Feind bei Tag und Nacht
Zu unserm Schaden wacht
Und unsre Ruhe will verstören,
So wolltest du, o Herre Gott, erhören,
Wenn wir in heiliger Gemeine beten:
“Den Satan unter unsre Füße treten.”
So bleiben wir zu deinem Ruhm
Dein auserwähltes Eigentum
Und können auch nach Kreuz und Leiden
Zur Herrlichkeit von hinnen scheiden.

Yet because the foe, by day and night,
Watches out to do us harm
And will destroy our peace,
So you want, O Lord God, to listen
As we in holy congregation pray,
“May Satan be trodden beneath our feet,”
So we remain, to your renown,
Your chosen property
And may also, after cross and sorrow,
Into glory from here depart.

As mentioned previously, the libretto’s conclusion is formed by the third and last strophe of Johannes Herman’s chorale.

Bach’s composition of this skillfully constructed text is not meant for New Year’s Day, as one might actually expect. Instead, the autograph score is inscribed at the top “Festo Circumcisionis Christi”—on the Feast of the Circumcision. This score had an unusual fate in the twentieth century. Probably part of the inheritance of Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, it came into private possession in Saxony in the eighteenth century; then in 1833 it was bought by the singer and dedicated collector of Bach’s works Franz Hauser; finally, in 1904 it was donated by the estate of his son to the Royal Library in Berlin. 

Several years later, someone—whose understanding of the collection of Bachiana was a bit different—must have ripped out the third-to-last folio in the score and made off with it. Shortly after the First World War, the first page of this folio was sent to the local history museum in Saalefeld, where it is currently stored. The second page, which seemed lost forever, turned up in Eisenach at the end of the 1970s, was identified, and thereafter was returned to Berlin without any further ado.¹ 

Fortunately for the perpetrator, the theft went undiscovered for many years, probably because of the unusually extensive composing score. This is chiefly due to the length of the first movement, which at 213 measures has an expanse seen nowhere else, and, moreover, to the abundant space required by the notation, as the movement requires a traditional festival scoring with trumpets and drums. In principle, this opening movement follows the model nearly all of its sister works in the chorale cantata cycle are bound to: the chorale melody is heard in large note values by one of the voices, here, as in most cases, the soprano; the other voices are subordinated to this leading voice figurally and contrapuntally; and the whole is embedded in a motivically unified instrumental texture. In the cantata Jesu, nun sei gepreiset, this unified instrumental texture is dominated over long stretches by the trumpets and drums, which cede their leading role with the entrance of the choir and then reclaim it after each exposition of one of the chorale phrases. This procedure holds for the first half of the movement, in which two identical sections sound lines 1 to 4 and then 5 to 8. At this spot in the text—“Daß wir in guter Stille / Das alt Jahr habn erfüllet” (That we in good stillness / The old year have completed)—meter, tempo, and dynamics change abruptly, but only a few measures later, the scenario changes once again as a closed motet movement follows on the last four lines of text in which the instruments simply double the vocal parts. In order to create a rounded musical form after this heterogeneous material, Bach returns to the manner of setting at the beginning, this time combining it with the repeated last two lines of the chorale strophe.

The four solo movements of the cantata are arranged by voice range, descending from soprano to bass. Bach links the naive sincerity of the first aria text, “Laß uns o höchster Gott, das Jahr vollbringen” (Let us, O highest God, complete the year), with the gracefully dance-like gestures and the instrumental palette of the pastorale, in which the voices, three oboes, and basso continuo combine in a densely woven harmonic texture. The brief alto recitative is followed by the tenor aria “Woferne du den edlen Frieden” (Just as you have granted a noble peace), a movement in which the musical substance stands in no particularly close relationship to the text, admittedly difficult to manage as it is. This aria is dominated by the technically challenging, highly expressive solo part of its obbligato instrument, a violoncello piccolo, whose dark timbre seems chosen for the solemnity of the text. The bass recitative is interrupted—as expected—by the insertion of several lines from the litany. The closing chorale repeats, in condensed form, the compositional procedures of the opening movement: the single lines of text are associated with intermittent fanfares of trumpets and drums, which recall the themes from the cantata’s beginning. In the last four lines of the chorale strophe, an altered meter appears, as in the first movement; yet here, as there, the last two lines are repeated, at variance with the text. The repeated lines are answered by a conclusory fanfare of the trumpets and drums.