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• 1 2023-09-26T09:38:28+00:00 Laß, Fürstin, laß noch einen Strahl BWV 198 / BC G 34 21 Funeral-ode cantata for Christiane Eberhardine, Queen Electress of Saxony/Poland. First performed on Oct 17, 1727 in St Paul's Church Leipzig. Text by JC Gottsched. plain 2024-04-24T15:55:04+00:00 1727-10-17 BWV 198 Funeral-ode BC G 34 Johann Sebastian Bach JC Gottsched Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Lass, Fürstin, lass noch einen Strahl, BWV 198 / BC G 34" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 697 James A. Brokaw II Christiane Eberhardine, Queen Elector of Saxony/Poland

  Funeral, Electress Christiane Eberhardine, October 17, 1727

  The work known as the Trauerode BWV 198 (Mourning ode) to Christiane Eberhardine of Brandenburg-Bayreuth, the electress of Saxony, is traditionally included among the church cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach. However, it is in fact a secular composition, even though it was meant to be performed in a church. The first indication of this work’s existence came in 1802 from the Bach biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel:

  Among many occasional pieces that he composed in Leipzig, I mention only two funeral cantatas: the one of which was performed at Cöthen, at the funeral ceremony of his beloved Prince Leopold; the other in the Paulinerkirche at Leipzig, at the funeral sermon upon the death of Christiane Eberhardine, Queen of Poland and Electress of Saxony. The first contains double choruses of uncommon magnificence and the most affecting expression; the second has indeed only simple choruses, but they are so appealing that he who has begun to play one of them will never quit it until he has finished it. It was composed in October 1727.¹  

  
  In describing the funeral music for Prince Leopold as having two choirs, Forkel in part fell victim to an error—and in part compounded this error through a misreading. The manuscript in his possession at that time does in fact name Johann Sebastian Bach as composer—wrongly—but it correctly refers to the funeral for the duke of Meiningen, Ernst Ludwig. Hence, it is actually a work by Bach’s Meiningen cousin Johann Ludwig Bach from 1724.² On the other hand, Forkel’s observations about the funeral music for the Saxon electress are on the mark. For matters concerning the work’s genesis and function, Forkel could rely upon the best of all sources: the composer’s autograph manuscript, also in Forkel’s possession, whose title page exhaustively describes the reasons for the work’s composition: “Funeral Music for the Homage and Eulogy upon the Death of Her Royal Majesty and Electoral Serenity of Saxony, Madame Christiane Eberhardine Queen of Poland etc. and Electress of Saxony etc. Duchess of Brandenburg-Bayreuth, by Mr Kirchbach Esq. held in St. Paul’s Church in Leipzig, Performed by Johann Sebastian Bach anno 1727 on October 18.”³
  
  It is evident from the inaccurate date that Bach formulated this title afterward: all contemporary accounts place the funeral ceremony on October 17. Aside from this, there is an unmistakable pride in this title’s elaborate verbosity, a pride in taking a crucial role in an artistic and political event of the highest order.
  
  This event’s background reaches well into the late seventeenth century. In the course of his efforts to gain the Polish crown, August the Strong, elector of Saxony, converted to Catholicism—but not at all to the delight of his mostly Lutheran subjects in Saxony. When his consort, Christiane Eberhardine, refused to follow him and remained Lutheran, her popular regard rose all the higher. The “mother of her country” died under somewhat mysterious circumstances on September 5, 1727, while at Castle Pretsch, not far from Torgau. Two days later, a countrywide period of mourning was decreed, during which even church music fell silent.
  
  For Leipzig, the obvious thing to do would have been to hold a dignified celebration worthy of the departed. The tolerant policies of the elector toward the Lutherans would certainly have permitted something of the sort. But both the city and the university regarded it as prudent to wait and proceed carefully. Previous experience suggested that taking full advantage of the available leeway could lead to the elector asking the city for a financial loan, which, on the one hand, could not and should not be refused but which, on the other, was unlikely to be repaid. A way out of the confused situation presented itself a few days later, when a young nobleman studying at the University of Leipzig, Hans Carl von Kirchbach, took the initiative and requested the university’s permission to hold a memorial service for the electress at St. Paul’s Church. The late Gothic church was used by the university partly for academic religious services and partly, as in this case, as an auditorium, a venue for events of all kinds. The noble edifice, decorated with many art treasures, withstood the Battle of Nations (Völkerschlacht) in 1813, as well as the bombardment of Leipzig in the Second World War. It was reserved for those in power in the years afterward, despite widespread protests by the population, to dynamite this architectural treasure in order to create space for a hideous new building. With that, an irreplaceable workplace of Johann Sebastian Bach was lost forever.
  
  As for the activities of Kirchbach and his colleagues in early September 1727, the university felt itself unable to take a decision for or against the proposal. And so, on the spur of the moment in early October, Kirchbach turned to Dresden, secured permission immediately, and began preparations for the funeral service. Despite academic tradition, Latin would not be used either for the eulogy or for the funeral music; instead, the German language, in accordance with the aims of the German Society, headquartered in Leipzig, would be used. To create a libretto, Kirchbach engaged Johann Christoph Gottsched, the staunch champion of language reform; for its composition, he chose Bach, the cantor of St. Thomas School.
  
  While these preparations were still under way in the first half of October 1727, the organist at St. Nicholas and the university music director, Johann Gottlieb Görner, got wind of the affair and intervened with the university. Although the event was private, the university authorities took up the matter and attempted to enforce Görner’s claim to the production of all academic musical events, including the one in preparation. Kirchbach did not get involved and accepted a settlement, under which he compensated Görner financially. In spite of this quarrel, Bach pressed on with the composition, which he completed on October 15, two days before the planned performance.
  
  The ceremony itself went forward in deepest solemnity. The city council and university faculty marched in procession from St. Nicholas to the university church, which was draped in black. Contemporary accounts praise the quality of the eulogy and the wealth of invention displayed in the funerary art, and they mention the splendor of the mourning gathering: “Aristocratic persons, high ministers, cavaliers, and other foreigners could be found on the fairway, along with a great number of prominent women, as well as the entire laudable university and a high noble and wise councilor.”⁴ What seemed outwardly to be the result of a private initiative in fact took on the significance of a state function. It is all the more significant that—contrary to contemporary custom—the composer of the funeral music is also mentioned in the accounts. A Leipzig university chronicler expressed himself in considerable detail about the role of the music in the proceedings: “When, then, everyone had taken his place, there had been an improvisation on the organ, and the Ode of Mourning written by Magister Johann Christoph Gottsched, a member of the Collegium Marianum, had been distributed among those present by the Beadles, there was shortly heard the Music of Mourning, which this time Capellmeister Johann Sebastian Bach had composed in the Italian style, with Clave di Cembalo [harpsichord], which Mr Bach himself played, organ, violas di gamba, lutes, violins, recorders, transverse flutes, &c., half being heard before and half after the oration of praise and mourning.”⁵ 
  
  The account of the performance in two parts is accurate, as is the exquisite instrumental ensemble—although the only preserved source, Bach’s autograph score, fails to distinguish between organ and cembalo, on the one hand, or flutes and recorders, on the other. The chronicler’s remark about the composition being “in the Italian style” is intended as a critical jab: Bach did not set the carefully stylized strophes in Gottsched’s ode as written but separated the strophes and took other measures of articulation to create a version of the libretto that he could set in the form of choruses, recitatives, and arias—very much in the style imported from Italy.
  
  In view of this music’s context, it is no wonder that it is among the finest and most ambitious to flow from Bach’s pen. Bach himself adopted parts of the composition two years later for funeral music for Prince Leopold of Köthen.⁶ Two years after that he used the same parts along with still others for his St. Mark Passion BWV 247, later unfortunately lost. In the nineteenth century, the Trauerode was regarded as unperformable for textual reasons. A “rescue” was attempted by paraphrase for All Saints’ Day. The work’s original form was recovered only in our era; it has enriched the Bachian repertoire with a priceless jewel. That the editors of the Bach-Gesellschaft editions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries introduced a grotesque transcription error in the text of the eighth movement, a tenor aria, because they assumed that Bach had deviated from Gottsched’s text with a downright vulgar expletive⁷ underscores how difficult it has been even for Bach experts to comprehend the event of October 17, 1727. Bach’s music was the centerpiece of a first-class funeral ceremony for the “mother of her country,” beloved for her unshakable faith, an event that, for reasons outward as well as inward, can be assumed to be a high point that the cantor of St. Thomas School may perhaps never have experienced again.
   

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  Footnotes

  1. NBR 451.—Trans.↵
  2. Hofmann (1983).↵
  3. “Trauer Music, so Bey der Lob- und Trauer Rede, welche auff das AbsterbenIhro Königlichen Majestät und churfürstlichen Durchlaucht zu Sachsen, FrauenChristianen Eberhardinen Königen in Pohlen etc. und Churfürstin zu Sachsen etc.gefürsteten Marckgräfin zu Brandenburg-Bayreuth von dem HochwohlgeborenenHerrn von Kirchbach in der Pauliner-Kirche zu Leipzig gehalten wurde, aufgeführetvon Johann Sebastian Bach anno 1727 den 18. Octobris.”—Trans.↵
  4. “Was für Fürstlichen Personen, hohen Ministres, Cavalliers und andern Fremdensich dieses mahl auf der Messe befunden, hat sich, nebst einer grossen Anzahlvornehmer Dames, wie auch die gantze löbliche Universität und ein Edler HochweiserRath in Corpore dabey eingefunden” (BD II:174 [no. 231]).—Trans.↵
  5. NBR, 136–37 (no. 136).—Trans.↵
  6. Klagt, Kinder, klagt es aller Welt BWV 1143.↵
  7. The sixth strophe of Gottsched’s ode begins: Der Ewigkeit saphirnes Haus
     Zieht deiner heitern Augen Blicke,
     Von der verschmähten Welt zurücke
     Und tilgt der Erden Denckbild aus.
     Eternity’s saphire house
     Draws your serene glances
     Back from the spurned world
     And erases the mental image of the earth. Bach’s text underlay in his composition score reads: Der Ewigkeit saphirnes Haus
     Zieht, Fürstom, deine heitern Blicke
     Von unsrer Niedrigkeit zurücke
     Und tilgt der Erden Denckbild aus.
     Eternity’s sapphire house
     Draws your serene glances
     Back from our lowliness
     And erases the mental image of the earth. The editors of the Bach-Gesellschaft volume in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries believed that Bach’s rather shakily written “Denckbild” should instead read “Dreckbild” (image of filth) in the unspoken yet mistaken assumption that it was an instance of acceptable Baroque “strong language” (Kraftwort) and without being clear as to the context in Leipzig’s St. Paul’s Church. The assumption that a composer of Bach’s rank might permit himself anything of the sort before the “pillars of society” is a characteristic example of the hagiography of the nineteenth century and even into the twentieth.↵