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• 1 2023-09-26T09:36:18+00:00 Gott ist mein König BWV 71 / BC B1 10 Town Council Election. First performed 02/04/1708 in Mühlhausen / BC B 1. plain 2024-04-24T16:31:34+00:00 1708-02-04 BWV 71 Mühlhausen Town Council Election BC B1 Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Gott ist mein König, BWV 71 / BC B1" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 575 James A. Brokaw II Mühlhausen

  Mühlhausen City Council Inauguration, February 4, 1708

  The cantata Gott ist mein König BWV 71 (God is my king) belongs to Bach’s church music for special occasions. One such special occasion in the middle-class cities of Bach’s era was the annual inauguration of the city council. Our cantata, composed in 1708, owes its origin to the town council inauguration in Mühlhausen, Thuringia.
  
  Mühlhausen, a free imperial city subject only to the Holy Roman emperor, was governed by a plenary council of forty-eight members. Of these forty-eight, three subcouncils of sixteen members each rotated at established intervals in conducting city affairs. Each council of sixteen comprised fourteen councilmen and two mayors. A description from the eighteenth century recorded how another such transfer of business proceeded in Mühlhausen:

  On February 3 the new councilmen were elected, and thus on the day afterward the inauguration of the new council occurred. The great bell, all alone, was rung between seven and eight o’clock in the morning. Then the council walked in procession from the town hall to the church. The path there was strewn with sand. The rifle company and young citizens formed a line on either side. The old, outgoing council walked ahead; the new one followed; and the council servants brought up the rear. Meanwhile, two bands of musicians with trumpets and drums played opposite one another in front of the bread market and the treasury. At the beginning of the church service two hymns were sung, then the regent’s sermon was delivered, and after the sermon a concert was held to wish the new council good fortune, vocally and instrumentally. This lasted an entire hour, and only the little council piece was named. On each occasion this was repeated in St. Blasius Church on the afternoon of the following Sunday. Another hymn was sung after the blessing. Afterward the new council led the procession and positioned itself by rank before the church door, where, beneath the open sky and the image of His Imperial Roman Majesty, they took their oath, administered by the general counsel standing in the doorway. Afterward the procession returned the way they had come, only that the new council took the lead. Then a great festival was held at the town hall, where the bakers’ guild presented a cake, called Mahlplatz, to honor the new council.

  
  The first performance of the “council piece” took place in spacious St. Mary’s Church. By ancient custom, the organist at the second main church, St. Blasius, was responsible for the composition. Frequently, although not always, the text and music of the composition were reproduced in printed form by the council’s administrative office and, presumably, distributed as commemorative gifts. Very few of these printed Mühlhausen council pieces have been preserved, but, happily, Bach’s cantata is among them. Actually, one needs to speak of “Bach’s cantatas,” since in 1709 Bach also provided the Mühlhausen council piece and issued it in print. Unfortunately, nothing further is known about this second print, not even the title of the lost cantata, which Bach must have composed and prepared for performance from his new post at the court of Weimar.
  
  The names of the two mayors in the sitting council chosen in February 1708 are given in the old-fashioned folio distributed along with the music print, which serves as a text supplement as well as an overall title. The names of the other councilmen, also honored by the sounds of Bach’s music as they were conducted into office, can be gleaned from the archives. They are Beyreiß and Stüler, Backmeister and Schmidt, Bellstedt, Stephan, and Hagedorn. Their professions are postal administrator, city scribe, master clothier and lawyer, master baker, and garment maker. The older of the two mayors, Adolf Strecker, was certainly more significant with regard to the cantata than his colleague, the master butcher Georg Adam Steinbach, who in 1708 entered high office for the first time; Strecker, on the other hand, had already presided over the council several times. Four months after his inauguration Strecker turned eighty-four years old, and death overtook him three months after that in the middle of his term. One remained mayor or councilman for life, even as advancing years robbed him of his powers.
  
  The unidentified librettist, perhaps a member of the Mühlhausen clergy, furnished a selection of Bible verses, all from the Hebrew Bible, as well as a chorale strophe with a high incidence of allusion to the biblical age of the first mayor. In any case, a verse from Psalm 74 begins the text, which at the time was understood as dealing “with divine salvation”: “Gott ist mein König von alters her, der alle Hilfe tut, so auf Erden geschieht” (God is my king from of old who works all salvation that happens on Earth). But this is followed by a conflation of two verses from 2 Samuel 19. These verses are about aged Barsillai of Gilead, who was at least eighty years old. He led King David and his people across the Jordan and replied to the request that he go along to Jerusalem thusly:

  Ich bin nun achtzig Jahr. . . .
  Warum soll dein Knecht sich mehr beschweren? (35)
  Laß mich umkehren
  Daß ich sterbe in meiner Stadt Bei meines Vaters
  Und meiner Mutter Grab. (37)
  
  I am now eighty years old. . . .
  Why should your servant be burdened more?
  Let me return
  That I may die in my city Beside my father’s
  And my mother’s graves.

  
  This biblical passage is attached to a chorale strophe from Johannes Heermann’s hymn O Gott du frommer Gott (O God you pious God), a “tägliches Gebet um göttlichen Gnade und Beistand” (daily prayer for divine grace and assistance). There, strophes 4 through 6 focus on “geduldiges Leiden” (patient suffering), and the sixth strophe, connected in the cantata to the passage from Samuel, reads:

  Soll ich auf dieser Welt 
  Mein Leben höher bringen 
  Durch manchen sauren Tritt 
  Hindurch ins Alter dringen
  So gib Geduld, für Sünd
  Und Schanden mich bewahr 
  Auf daß ich tragen mag
  Mit Ehren graues Haar.
  
  Should I in this world 
  Bring my life further 
  Through many a bitter step
  Pushing further into old age
  Then grant patience, protect me from sin
  And disgrace 
  That I may wear
  With honor my gray hair    

  
  The objection is occasionally raised that this strophe does not properly fit the biblical passage, since the strophe points to a future era while the passage takes it for granted. This objection can be dismissed as overdrawn. The biblical passage that follows is the last one that focuses on age. It comprises two verses from Deuteronomy and Genesis: “Dein Alter sei wie deine Jugend” (Deuteronomy 33:25; May your old age be as your youth) and “Und Gott ist mit dir in allem, das du tust” (Genesis 21:22; And God is with you in everything that you do).
  
  Everything further is aimed at the council election in general and focuses directly or indirectly on the usual wishes for a peaceful government serving the common good without disruption by external enemies. Psalm 74 is drawn upon again, with verses 16 and 17:

  Tag und Nacht ist dein. Du machest, daß beide, Sonn und Gestirn, ihren gewissen Lauf haben. Du setztest einem jeglichen Lande seine Grenze.
  
  Day and night are yours. You make it that both, sun and stars, have their certain course. For each and every country you set its borders.

  
  And later:

  Du wollest dem Feinde nicht geben die Seele deiner Turteltauben. 
  
  You do not wish to give the enemy the souls of your turtledoves.

  
  The close of the first psalm verse is developed further in a freely versified aria text:

  Durch mächtige Kraft 
  Erhältst du unsre Grenzen. 
  Hier muß der Friede glänzen,
  Wenn Mord und Kriegessturm 
  Sich allerort erhebt.
  
  Through mighty strength
  You maintain our borders. 
  Here peace must shine forth
  If murder and storm of war 
  Everywhere arise.

  
  This sort of thing was not simply a continuation of convention, for in those years central Germany in particular suffered the rampaging military campaigns of Swedish king Charles XII. And the free poetry based on the second psalm quotation once again prays for “Friede, Ruh und Wohlergehen” (peace, calm, and prosperity) for the government before wishing “Glück, Heil und großer Sieg” (good fortune, salvation, and great victory) for Emperor Joseph I, reigning since 1705.
  
  Bach’s composition largely reflects the rather backward-looking profile of this text, in which recitative and aria, elements that had been common since the beginning of the eighteenth century, are avoided as much as possible. For that reason, recent scholarship has classified this Mühlhausen cantata and its sibling works as the crowning culmination of stylistic developments of the seventeenth century¹ instead of regarding them as precursors by which Bach prepared himself for his later composition of cantatas. Whether local tradition may have played a role here or even if the possibility of restrictive proscriptions should be considered lies beyond our knowledge at this point. Any such restrictions in place in 1708 can only have affected the text and array of musical forms—certainly not, however, the musical forces involved. For here, Bach ensured that nothing was missing. Eighteen or if necessary twenty-two voices can participate, unfolding in five to six sonic groups of voices and instruments above the common organ basso continuo: three trumpets and drums; violins, viola, and bass viol; two oboes and bassoon; two recorders and cello; and four voices and four further reinforcing voice parts. 
  
  This considerable contingent obviously calls for the spaciousness of Mühlhausen’s St. Mary’s Church. Since the council piece was traditionally performed a second time on the Sunday following the election in St. Blasius, the composer had to find a way to accommodate the piece within the markedly more confined space of the second main church. Because most instrumental parts would have been only minimally set—the woodwinds and brass in particular—arranging the performing forces would have presented no great problem. It would have been more difficult to get together the necessary singers and instrumentalists in Mühlhausen. Presumably, assistants were used, volunteers mostly from surrounding villages who came into the city to help with the performance. Since the first performance fell on February 4, 1708, a Saturday, the second performance in St. Blasius would have taken place the following day, posing no serious organizational difficulties.
  
  It is not easy to say what caused Bach to assemble such elaborate and diverse performing forces, thereby distancing himself from traditions in Mühlhausen that were focused on moderation. Possibly, he was prompted to do so by the memory of the famous, festive Abendmusiken² that he had experienced two years earlier in Lübeck during his visit with Dieterich Buxtehude.³
  
  Bach’s cantata—or, to use his own term, “Motetto”—evinces a rather backward-looking character musically as well as textually. Characteristic in this regard are style elements of the seventeenth century such as small segmentation and frequent cadences. These elements affect not only the ensemble movements at the beginning and end but also the pastorale bass arioso “Tag und Nacht sind dein” (Day and night are yours) and the brass-accompanied alto aria “Durch mächtige Kraft” (Through mighty power). All the more surprising, then, is the expansive breadth with which closed developments of great intensity are created in the other movements. This sort of thing applies first of all to the tenor aria “Ich bin nun achtzig Jahr,” which combines its vocal part with the cantus firmus on the melody O Gott, du frommer Gott, richly ornamented and performed line by line. Second, it concerns the two motet-like fugues “Dein Alter sei wie deine Jugend” and “muß täglich von neuem dich, Joseph, erfreuen,” in which a permutation procedure handed down from the seventeenth century makes possible a spacious and architectonically convincing structure and—in the second fugue—an impressive intensification. In spite of all this, the crown jewel is the filigree akin to chamber music with which the twenty-three-year-old organist delivered his masterpiece in this cantata: the deeply emotional composition on the final psalm verse “Du wollest dem Feinde nicht geben die Seele deiner Turteltauben.”

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  Footnotes

  1. Krummacher (1991).↵
  2. Abendmusiken were evening concerts featuring elaborate five-part oratorioson the five Sundays before Christmas in the Marienkirche in Lübeck. These concertscame to prominence under Dieterich Buxtehude and would have been heard by Bachduring his stay in Lübeck with Buxtehude from late October / early November 1706to late January / early February 1707.—Trans.↵
  3. Karstädt (1962).↵