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Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele BWV 69.1 / BC A 123
Twelfth Sunday after Trinity, August 15, 1723
Johann Sebastian Bach composed the cantata Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele BWV 69.1 (Praise the Lord, my soul) for the twelfth Sunday after Trinity in his first year in office as cantor of St. Thomas School in Leipzig. It is the original version of the city council election cantata Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele BWV 69.2. Only recently has scholarship been able to determine the origin of the cantata’s text.1 Bach took it from an annual cycle of texts printed in Gotha under the title GOtt-geheiligtes Singen und Spielen des Friedensteinischen Zions, nach allen und jeden Sonn- und Fest-Tages-Evangelien, vor und nach der Predigt angestellet vom Advent 1720 bis dahin 1721. These texts were distributed fairly widely and enjoyed high regard. Johann Friedrich Fasch set the entire cycle to music. Fasch was court music director at Zerbst and in 1722 Bach’s competitor for the position of cantor at St. Thomas School. By all appearances, Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel did the same. The cycle was expressly prepared for Stölzel, music director at Gotha. The reason for this is seen in the familial relationship between librettist and composer: the author of the text cycle was Johann Oswald Knauer, born in Schleiz in 1690 and the same age as Stölzel. Moreover, Stölzel married Knauer’s sister in 1719; they were brothers-in-law. Whether other composers also composed Knauer’s texts is a question for future research; evidence can be found in Gotha, Zerbst, and Leipzig as well as Delitsch and Weissenfels.Knauer’s cantata text refers to the Gospel reading for the twelfth Sunday after Trinity. Found in Mark 7, it gives the account of the miraculous cure of a deaf-mute:
And as he went out again out of the area of Tyrus and Sidon, he came to the Sea of Galilee, in the region of Decapolis. And they brought to him a deaf person who was mute, and they asked him to lay a hand upon him. And he took him away from the crowd, and placed a finger in his ears, and spat, and touched his tongue. And he looked up to heaven and sighed, and spoke to him: Ephphatha! Which is: Stand up! And immediately his ears opened, and the bond of his tongue was loosened, and he spoke plainly. And he forbade them, that they should tell no one. The more, however, he forbade, the more widespread it became. And they were astonished beyond measure and spoke: He has made everyone well again: he made the deaf to hear and the mute to speak. (31–37)
Knauer’s cantata text concerns the interpretation and application of this Gospel account and interprets the speechlessness of the one later healed in the traditional sense: not as disease but as stunned silence before the omnipotence of God, praising everywhere his blessings—and not without abundant repetition and verbosity. In contrast to the version set by Bach, Knauer’s text is a two-part cantata with a total of ten movements: each part begins with a biblical passage (Hebrew Bible in the first part, New Testament in the second), followed by an aria, recitative, aria, and chorale. Following the first Bible passage, a psalm verse, comes an aria with the exhortation to “Gottgefälliges Singen” (singing pleasing to God), then a recitative, followed by a second aria, whose text begins “Drum will ich seine Güte preisen” (Therefore, I will praise his goodness), and then the opening strophe from Paul Gerhardt’s chorale Sollt ich meinem Gott nicht singen (Shall I not sing to my God). A passage from the Sunday Gospel reading opens the second half; it is followed by an aria whose text begins “Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan” (What God does, that is well done); after the recitative there is a second aria with the core idea “Machs nur, wie es dir gefällt” (Only rule as you see fit) and, in closing, the sixth strophe from Samuel Rodigast’s chorale Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan.
Bach’s cantata uses only the first three and last three movements of Knauer’s text. This approach is successful in two respects: first, the restriction to six movements achieves parity with other cantatas of the middle Trinity period in 1723; and second, the avoidance of repetition leads to a beneficial tightening of literary and theological relevance. The beginning, a verse from Psalm 103, is identical in Knauer and Bach: “Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele, und vergiß nicht, was er dir Gutes getan hat” (2; Praise the Lord, my soul, and do not forget what good he has done for you). Knauer takes up the key word “Seele” in his first aria. Bach, however, reverses the sequence of the two next movements and begins with the recitative, slightly shortened compared to the original version:
Ach daß ich tausend Zungen hätte!
Ach wäre doch mein Mund
Von eitlen Worten leer!
Ach daß ich gar nichts redte,
Als was zu Gottes Lob gerichtet wär!
So machte ich des Höchsten Güte kund;
Denn er hat lebenslang so viel an mir getan,
Daß ich in Ewigkeit ihm nicht verdanken kann.
Ah, would that I had a thousand tongues!
Ah, but would that my mouth
Were empty of idle words!
Ah, would that I spoke nothing
Other than that directed to the praise of God!
Then I would proclaim the All Highest’s goodness;
For all my life long he has done so much for me
That in all eternity I cannot give him the thanks I owe.
The ensuing aria proves related semantically:
Meine Seele,
Auf, erzähle,
Was dir Gott erwiesen hat!
Rühme seine Wundertat,
Laß ein gottgefällig Singen
Durch die frohe Lippe dringen!
My soul,
Arise, declare
What God has shown you!
Praise his acts of wonder,
Let a singing that pleases God
Pass through your joyful lips!
Knauer’s version is less skillful:
Meine Seele,
Auf, erzähle
Deines Gottes Gütigkeit.
Laß ein gottgefällig singen
Durch die frohen Lippen dringen.
Mache dich zum Dank bereit.
My soul,
Arise, declare
The goodness of your God.
Let a singing that pleases God
Pass through your joyful lips.
Prepare yourself for thanksgiving.
Although separated from this aria by several movements and the break between the two halves of his libretto, Knauer’s last recitative formulates the word of thanks requested earlier. The version composed by Bach indeed starts with the Knauer text’s beginning but then goes its own way, particularly toward the end of the movement, where it produces a connection to the Sunday reading unanticipated in Knauer:
Mein Mund ist schwach, die Zunge stumm
Zu deinem Preis und Ruhm.
Ach! Sei mir nah
Und sprich dein kräftig Hephata,
So wird mein Mund voll Dankens sein.
My mouth is weak, my tongue mute
For your praise and glory.
Ah! Be near to me
And speak your mighty Ephphata,
Then will my mouth be full of thanks.
Like this recitative, the ensuing aria has almost nothing in common with Knauer’s text:
Mein Erlöser und Erhalter,
Nimm mich stets in Hut und Wacht!
Steh mir bei in Kreuz und Leiden,
Alsdenn singt mein Mund mit Freuden:
Gott hat alles wohlgemacht!
My redeemer and preserver,
Keep me always in your care and guard!
Stand by me in affliction and suffering,
Thereupon my mouth will sing with joy:
God has done all things well!
The concluding chorale strophe is identical in the two versions of the text.
Bach’s composition of this linguistically and intellectually concentrated libretto is largely defined by its multipartite, brilliantly festive opening movement, in whose center the two-part psalm verse is set as a double fugue. Crowned by the brilliance of the brass instruments, the self-assured “Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele” and the humble “und vergiß nicht, was er dir Gutes getan hat” are presented first separately as independent fugal sections, each with its own theme, after which they are combined, in astonishing compositional compression, without giving the impression of a conscious demonstration of musical prowess. With its imitative style, the ebullient tenor aria sends out its song of praise in all heavenly directions, sounding it in every register by transverse flute, oboe da caccia, and basso continuo. In contrast, the rather introverted bass aria, with its subtle sarabande rhythm, recalls the vocal chamber music of Bach’s time at Köthen. The closing chorale is known to be of older origin; it is descended from the cantata Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen BWV 12, written in Weimar in 1714. In late 1748 Bach transplanted the opening chorus and two arias into a town council election cantata of the same name (BWV 69.2), combining them with two newly composed recitatives and a different closing chorale. For the sake of simplicity, he entered the changes directly into the performance parts of the first version and permanently crossed out the movements to be eliminated, the recitative and chorale, thereby making a reperformance of the original version impossible. But this approach does not seem to make good sense entirely, and certainly not in 1748. In that year, the very busy cantor of St. Thomas could have reduced his workload by performing the cantata Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele in the town council election version on the Monday after St. Bartholomew’s Day and in the original version on the following Sunday—as it happened, the twelfth Sunday after Trinity.