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Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott BWV 80 / BC A 183b
Reformation Day, 1739?
The cantata Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott BWV 80 (A mighty fortress is our God) is for Reformation Day, celebrating Martin Luther’s renowned posting of theses in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517, the spark that ignited the Reformation led by Luther. Johann Sebastian Bach first encountered this feast day tradition, essentially restricted to the territory of Electoral Saxony, in 1723 after moving from Köthen to Leipzig. In 1667, 150 years after the posting at Wittenberg, the elector of Saxony, Johann Georg II, decreed October 31 to be a half holiday thenceforth, independent of the day of the week. It remained that way even in 1697, when the Saxon elector Friedrich August I converted to Catholicism for the sake of his efforts to gain the Polish crown. Leipzig, at the time a stronghold of Lutheran orthodoxy, found it necessary to take the sensibilities of the ruler into consideration in order to preserve its independence. For instance, a prime example occurred in 1732 when Salzburg archbishop Leopold von Firmian drove many established Lutheran residents in his lands to emigrate in an anachronistic counter-Reformation show of force. On their way to Prussia, many refugees stopped in Leipzig, and the city, church, and citizenry showed the travelers every conceivable generosity. No official greeting was forthcoming, however, since “Leipzig,” so the official statement read, “is under a governance that professes the Catholic religion, which our Salzburg Emigrants have abandoned.”1In those years in which Reformation Day fell on a Sunday, it is likely that the official diplomatic accommodations just described included downplaying the holiday by retaining the designation while, in the sermon, using the Gospel reading for the particular Sunday in the post-Trinity period. This happened four times during Bach’s tenure in Leipzig. Significantly, this was reversed for St. John’s and St. Michael’s Days, when the holiday was given preference. In the four years just mentioned, church music would have been subject to the stipulations for the sermon text, and Bach would have had no opportunity to perform a cantata for Reformation Day; instead, he would have produced a cantata for the given Sunday. Hence, there would have been no occasion for a Reformation Day cantata in 1723, Bach’s first year at Leipzig. A year later, however, the first version of a cantata on Luther’s hymn Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott would seem to fit the context of Bach’s chorale cantata cycle without difficulty. But it is equally plausible that this cantata originated only later and that another work, since lost, was performed in connection with the chorale cantatas. This hypothesis stems from the fact that the cantata Ein feste Burg is particularly heterogeneous in comparison to the other chorale cantatas. In most cases, in the chorale cantata annual cycle, the work is based on a chorale text whose first and last strophes are adopted without change, while the others are reshaped as needed to become recitatives and arias. The reverse is true for Ein feste Burg. Luther created his paraphrase of Psalm 46 (“Deus noster refugium et virtus”) between 1526 and 1528, a time of severe crises both internal and external. Three of the chorale’s four strophes found their way into the cantata only belatedly. At first there were two or even only one.
The cantata’s first version is a composition for Oculi Sunday that Bach must have performed in early 1715 and whose text is by the secretary of the Weimar High Consistory, Salomon Franck.2 The Gospel reading for Oculi, found in Luke 7, gives an account of an exorcism and victory over the devil. Accordingly, Franck’s text is largely concerned with themes of “war against Satan and his horde and against the world and sin.” The libretto’s warlike mien may have prompted Bach to repurpose the Weimar Oculi cantata— unusable during Leipzig’s tempus clausum—to a composition for Reformation Day in Leipzig. He did not have to rely on a librettist to do this; it only required the three missing Luther strophes to be fitted into the appropriate places in Franck’s libretto.
As expected, Luther’s first strophe stands at the beginning of the Leipzig version:
The text continues with what was originally the opening movement, the first aria authored by Franck:Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott,
Ein gute Wehr und Waffen.
A mighty fortress is our God,
A good defense and weapon.
Alles, was von Gott geboren,
Ist zum Siegen auserkoren.
Wer bei Christi Blutpanier
In der Taufe treu geschworen,
Siegt im Geiste für und für.
All that is born of God
Is elected for victory.
Whoever, before Christ’s lifeblood banner,
Has in baptism sworn loyalty
Conquers in spirit for ever and ever.
It was surely Bach’s idea—and not that of the Weimar librettist—to attach an untexted, instrumental quotation of the chorale melody Ein feste Burg, thereby producing a multitextual effect through association. In contrast to this feature in the Weimar cantata, an actual second text was added to the Leipzig version, the second chorale strophe:
Mit unsrer Macht ist nichts getan,
Wir sind gar bald verloren.
With our power nothing is done,
We are indeed soon lost.
In Franck’s text and Bach’s Weimar composition, this concluded the Oculi cantata. In the Leipzig version, it was moved near the beginning, where it was combined with the freely versified aria text, whose end rhymes match it, astonishingly: “geboren,” “erkoren,” “verloren,” “geschworen.” The ensuing recitative-aria pair contrasts love of God and of Jesus against the demand to drive out the devil and the world. Luther’s third strophe, another late addition, follows this:
Und wenn die Welt voll Teufel wär
Und wollten uns verschlingen.
And were the world full of the devil
And wanted to devour us.
A final recitative-aria pair culminates in these lines:
In the 1715 version, this aria began with the words “Wie selig ist der Leib, der, Jesu, dich getragen” (How blessed is the body that, Jesus, carried you), but these phrases had to give way to the cantata’s new purpose. Luther’s fourth strophe provides a powerful conclusion, “Das Wort sie sollen lassen stahn” (They shall let the word abide), with its closing lines certain of victory:Wie selig sind doch die, die Gott im Munde tragen,
Doch sel’ger ist das Herz, das ihn im Glauben trägt.
Es bleibet unbesiegt und kann die Feinde schlagen
Und wird zuletzt gekrönt, wenn es den Tod erlegt.
How blessed indeed are they who carry God in their mouths,
Yet more blessed is the heart that bears him in faith.
It remains undefeated and can strike the enemies
And will at last be crowned, when it conquers death.
As we have seen, Bach’s composition developed in two or even three stages. The oldest level comprises the solo movements that come from the Weimar cantata for Oculi of 1715. Included here is the original opening movement, the bass aria “Alles, was von Gott geboren,” with the repeated figures and fanfares by the strings that characterize the “Aria with Heroic Affect.” All of its parts are characterized by themes derived from the chorale; we can thus speak of a multilayered chorale fantasia with a heavily ornamented cantus firmus presented line by line, performed in Weimar by the oboe and in Leipzig by the soprano as well. Following the bass recitative, the soprano aria “Komm in mein Herzenshaus” (Come into the house of my heart) attempts to reconcile the most contrasting text elements with lighthearted music and intentional naivete. In contrast, the duet “Wie selig sind doch die” (How blessed indeed are they), in which voices and instruments in pairs go their own ways, shows how Bach, even at the beginning of his intensive production of cantatas, knew how to reconcile the interpretation of diverging cornerstones of text through the demands of a unified thematic flow.Laß fahren dahin,
Sie habens kein’ Gewinn,
Das Reich muß uns doch bleiben.
Let them all pass away,
They have no gain.
The kingdom must certainly remain ours.
When Bach first reshaped the Weimar solo movements to create a Reformation cantata (BWV 80.2), in 1730 at the latest but perhaps as early as 1724, he placed a simple four-part chorale setting of the strophe “Ein feste Burg” at the beginning. Moreover, he may have added the chorale strophe arrangement “Und wenn die Welt voll Teufel wär” at the same time, so that by including the texted cantus firmus in the bass aria as well as in the closing chorale, Bach represented all four strophes of Luther’s chorale in the cantata. The chorale arrangement is predicated entirely on the opposition between the battle tumult in the instrumental parts and the unshakable drive of the chorale melody, whose symbolically meant unison effect radiates out over the instruments.
At a later time, presumably after 1735 but perhaps only in Bach’s last year of life, he replaced the simple opening chorale movement with the extensive chorale fantasia on Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott (BWV 80.3). Every bit as unusual in its dimensions as in its vocal demands, this exceptional movement shows itself related to such late works as the Canonic Variations on Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her BWV 769 and The Art of Fugue BWV 1080. Moreover, it shows that even the motet-like sequencing principle admits an overall unity if the thematic diversity of the individual lines is compensated for by such an artful homogeneity of structure. Self-evidently, as it were, the fugal treatment of the choral voices and an intensive interpretation of the text that fosters diversity combine with the unifying tone symbolism of the chorale melody, which is presented in strict canon between oboes and instrumental basses. There can be no question that this finely woven structure of relationships in this singular artwork is seriously disrupted if one employs the trumpets and drums added by Wilhelm Friedemann Bach between 1750 and 1764. The fact that this unauthorized and coarse arrangement could persist until the present in musical practice indicates a problematic understanding of Bach and Luther as well.