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• 1 2023-09-26T09:32:57+00:00 Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele BWV 143 19 New Year's Day plain 2024-04-24T17:46:21+00:00 BWV 143 Mühlhausen 13NewYear New Year's Day BC WgT Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele, BWV 143 / BC WgT" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 60 James A. Brokaw II Mühlhausen summer 1707 to summer 1708

  BWV3: Purpose Unknown

  From all appearances, this cantata, Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele BWV 143 (Praise the Lord, my soul), seems to be a relatively early work. Both the form of the text and the compositional style certainly make it seem likely. At the moment, however, we cannot confirm this based on source material, since the manuscript transmission of the work begins only in the second half of the eighteenth century. 
  
  The layout of the text appears to be rather old-fashioned and likely to belong to the period before 1700. Verses from Psalm 146, a praise of God’s eternal faithfulness, serve as bearing pillars: “Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele” (1; Praise the Lord, my soul); “Wohl dem, des Hülfe der Gott Jakob ist, des Hoffnung auf den Herrn, seinem Gotte, stehet” (5; Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord, his God); “Der Herr ist König ewiglich, dein Gott, Zion, für und für” (10; The Lord is king in eternity, your God, O Zion, forever and ever); and “Hallelujah” (10). Strophes from a chorale by Jakob Ebert serve as a second level of text. Written in 1601, Du Friedefürst, Herr Jesu Christ (You prince of peace, Lord Jesus Christ) appears in a Leipzig hymnal from the late seventeenth century beneath the heading “Ein schön Lied in Kriegszeiten zu Christo unserm Herrn um Gnade und Erlösung zu bitten” (A beautiful hymn in time of war to Christ our lord to pray for grace and salvation). One gains little sense of the contemporary travails of war from the strophes chosen for our cantata, however. While the first strophe refers to Christ only in a general fashion as a “starker Nothelfer . . . im Leben und im Tod” (strong helper in emergencies . . . in life and in death), the third strophe, the cantata’s closing movement, prays for protection and help in past and future:

  Gedenk, Herr, jetzund an dein Amt,
  Daß du ein Friedfürst bist,
  Und hilf uns gnädig allesamt
  Jetzund zu dieser Frist;
  Laß uns hinfort
  Dein Göttlich Wort
  Im Fried noch länger schallen.
  
  Remember now, Lord, your office,
  That you are a prince of peace
  And graciously help us all together.
  Now during this period
  Henceforth let
  Your divine word
  Still longer resound to us in peace.

  
  In any case, the freely versified parts of the cantata libretto seem to mirror events of the time, particularly in the first of two identically constructed strophes:

  Tausendfachen Unglücks Schrecken,
  Trübsal, Angst und schnellen Tod,
  Völker, die das Land bedecken,
  Sorgen und sonst mehr Not
  Sehen andere Länder zwar,
  Aber wir ein Segensjahr.
  
  Thousandfold misfortunes’ horrors,
  Tribulation, anguish, and sudden death,
  Peoples who swarm over the earth,
  Troubles and yet more need,
  Other lands do see indeed,
  But we see a year of blessings.

  
  Even here it remains unclear whether the “andere Länder” (other lands) are to be found in the German-speaking realm and hence nearby or whether the thought is only general (as it were, in anticipation of Goethe’s Faust) of “Krieg und Kriegsgeschrei” (war and war cries):

  Wenn hinten, weit in der Turkei
  Die Völker aufeinander schlagen.
  
  When off, far away in Turkey
  The nations beat upon one another.

  
  Nor can the second freely versified strophe provide any clarification in the face of this uncertainty:

  Jesu, Retter deiner Herde,
  Bleibe ferner unser Hort,
  Daß dies Jahr uns glücklich werde,
  Halte Sakrament und Wort
  Rein der ganzen Christenschar
  Bis zu jenem neuen Jahr.
  
  Jesus, savior of your flock,
  Continue to remain our refuge,
  That this year for us may be fortunate,
  Keep your sacrament and word
  Pure for the entire Christian host
  Until the next New Year.

  
  Psalm verses, free poetry, and at least the second of the two chorale strophes by Jakob Ebert point unmistakably to New Year’s Day as the cantata’s designation. Not standing in the way is the fact that the oldest surviving score copy, according to a note, was used for a church consecration (“Kirchwey 1762”), although no further details are given. The arranger of the church consecration version replaced only those verses focusing all too clearly on New Year’s Day with more general formulations. Strictly speaking, however, it’s the other way around: he updated the general statements in the original. For in the freely versified strophe that speaks of “tausendfachem Unglück” (thousandfold misfortunes), the lines “Sehen andere Länder zwar, / Aber wir ein Segensjahr” (Other lands do see indeed / But we see a year of blessings) is replaced by “Trifft auch uns und unser Land; / Hilf uns, Herr, durch deine Hand” (Affects also us and our land; / Help us, Lord, by your hand). And in Jakob Ebert’s chorale strophe, the verse “Daß dies Jahr uns glücklich werde” (That this year be happy for us) is exchanged for “Wend ab Unglück und Beschwerde” (Turn away misfortune and lamenting). All of these changes seem entirely understandable, for the church consecration of 1762 fell in the sixth year of the devastating “great war” (großer Krieg), later known as the Seven Years’ War.
  
  Older Bach research, represented in particular by Philipp Spitta and Arnold Schering, was unaware of the altered version of 1762 and proceeded from a contrary assumption, as it were. In the original text for the New Year, they thought they were able to see allusions to events of the era and hence to regard the composition as “political” music, in the general sense. In 1880 Spitta wrote: “He [the librettist] views Saxony and Poland as a secure island around which may be seen the troubled waves of strife. While praising the king in this strain, he prays to Christ the Prince of Peace to perform His office. During all the time Bach was at Leipzig, there is only one occasion which will exactly suit the idea of these words, and that is the beginning of the year 1735. In the Silesian war Saxony was directly and essentially implicated; so that the date of the cantata is fixed beyond all doubt.”¹
  
  The question of the cantata’s date does not in fact admit a solution “beyond all doubt.” By 1880 it had long been known that Bach intended the fourth cantata of the Christmas Oratorio for New Year’s Day 1735—and in working through the assumption of a hastily arranged exchange with our cantata, one certainly would have been struck by the stylistic discrepancy between the two works. Spitta did not pose the question of authenticity of the cantata Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele, and since then it has been considered only rarely. Even today, not all doubts can be dispelled, even though the once problematic source situation has become more favorable in recent decades. The previously mentioned “Kirchwey” copy of 1762 came to light in a church library in Celle in Lower Saxony,² along with another copy; until then, only nineteenth-century sources had been available. The newly discovered manuscripts came from the estate of one Heinrich Wilhelm Stolze. Born in Erfurt and later active in Celle as city and castle organist, Stolze had music lessons from the Bach student Johann Christian Kittel as a child. Thus the “Kirchwey” copy of our cantata may well have originated in Thuringia and possibly in Erfurt. In 1762 the organist and music scholar Jacob Adlung died in Erfurt, and the Bach student Kittel succeeded him at the organ of the Preacher’s Church (Predigerkirche), the main and town hall church. The year 1762 is also the birth year of Heinrich Wilhelm Stolze’s father, Georg Christoph Stolze, later active in Erfurt as a cantor and music teacher. Near the end of the eighteenth century, the elder Stolze actually worked at Kittel’s side, Stolze as cantor of the Preacher’s Church, Kittel as organist.
  
  As circumstantial evidence for or against the authenticity of the cantata Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele, the mosaic tiles described here are not adequate. The problem lies in our understanding of the work’s style and the associated question of its place in Bach’s output. The years before 1710 seem likely—hence the early Weimar period, the year in Mühlhausen, or else Bach’s time as organist in Arnstadt. During this time, Johann Sebastian Bach was involved in cantata composition only in Mühlhausen from the summer of 1707 to the summer of 1708.³
  
  The works known to have been produced in this year certainly reveal a greater power of invention and a higher mastery of compositional handiwork than those exhibited by our cantata. Its movements are for the most part characterized by conventional melody, stereotypic rhythms, and inconsequential figuration. Larger musical relationships come into play only with the introduction of a chorale melody. Against this backdrop, the powerfully expressive aria “Tausendfachen Unglücks Schrecken” stands out rather oddly, prompting one to consider the possibility that it may have been interpolated at a later date. Thus many questions remain open at the moment; they range from the plausible attribution to another bearer of the name Bach to whether the key of B-flat is correct and, in connection with this, the setting—unusual and singular in Bach’s output—for three horns.⁴

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  Footnotes

  1. Spitta (1899, 3:65).—Trans.↵
  2. Dürr (1977).↵
  3. Markus Rathey (2016b) has proposed that BWV 143 may have served for the inauguration of the Mühlhausen council in 1709.—Trans.↵
  4. In his revised edition of BWV 143 for the Neue Bach-Ausgabe, Andreas Glöckner (2012) has reconstructed an original version of the cantata in C major (instead of B-flat) that uses trumpets instead of horns—a version that would fit well with the inauguration of the town council in Mühlhausen in 1709—in agreement with Rathey (2016b).—Trans.↵