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• 1 2023-09-26T09:32:57+00:00 Sehet, welch eine Liebe hat uns der Vater erzeiget BWV 64 / BC A 15 15 Third Day of Christmas. First performed 12/27/1723 in Leipzig (Cycle I). Text by JO Knauer. plain 2024-04-24T16:26:59+00:00 1723-12-27 BWV 64 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 12Christmas2 Third Day of Christmas BC A15 Johann Sebastian Bach JO Knauer Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Sehet, welch eine Liebe hat uns der Vater erzeiget, BWV 64 / BC A15" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 43 James A. Brokaw II Leipzig I

  Third Day of Christmas

  This cantata, Sehet, welch eine Liebe hat uns der Vater erzeiget BWV 64 (See what manner of love the father has shown us), which originated in 1723, is in several respects a sister work to the cantata Darzu ist erschienen der Sohn Gottes BWV 40 (For this purpose the son of God is appeared), for the second day of Christmas. First of all, this similarity has to do with the choice of initial Bible text. For our cantata, this is the first verse from 1 John 3; in the case of the sister work, it is verse 8 from the same chapter. Remarkably, the composer entered the origins of both biblical passages on the title wrappers for both sets of original performing materials, perhaps because he became aware only afterward of the remarkable proximity and regarded it as worth recording or perhaps because Bach selected the two texts with the correspondence in mind. A second commonality is the fact that both cantatas include three chorale strophes, as opposed to one or at most two in most other cases. One is tempted to wonder if the two texts were deliberately brought close together—in which case, the question must remain open as to which one served as model for the other.
  
  If this question cannot be definitively answered at the moment, several possibilities present themselves that allow us to better understand the specifics of the text and thereby illuminate the genesis of our cantata. Of no little significance is the fact that the author of the text Sehet, welch eine Liebe was successfully identified in 1981.¹ His libretto is found in the collection printed in Gotha, GOtt-geheiligtes / Singen / und / Spielen / des / Friedensteinischen / Zions, / Nach allen und jeden / Sonn- und Fest-Tags-Evangelien, / vor und nach der Predigt / angestellet / Vom Advent 1720 bis dahin 1721 (God-sanctified singing and playing in Friedenstein Zion on Gospels for each and every Sunday before and after the sermon, from Advent 1720 to Advent 1721). Although unnamed in the cycle’s title, the author is mentioned in the foreword as Magister Knauer of Schleiz. This must be Johann Oswald Knauer, the son of a clergyman. Knauer was born in 1690 in Gera and began his studies in 1709 in Jena, transferred to the University of Leipzig in 1711, and then transferred to the University of Halle in 1715. Nothing has yet been learned about his activity in Schleiz. However, it is particularly revealing that Knauer's younger sister married the Gotha court composer Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel. And the text cycle was primarily meant for Stölzel, who set nearly all of it to music in 1720 and 1721. That the newly minted composer in his new position in Gotha would use a cantata text cycle written for him for this purpose by his brother-in-law seems plausible at the very least. The cycle also served a similar function at the court of Anhalt-Zerbst, where the newly appointed court composer, Johann Friedrich Fasch, drew upon Knauer’s texts as much as possible in 1722–23. 
  
  The third member of the group is Johann Sebastian Bach. In his first year at Leipzig, he also set texts by Knauer, although only in three instances, as far as we know today. Thus the cantata poem Sehet, welch eine Liebe was set to music by three famous composers: Stölzel, Fasch, and Bach. Stölzel’s and Bach’s works survive today; for Fasch there is at least textual evidence. From these materials it is clear that Fasch and Stölzel composed the text in its entirety, while Bach produced an altered and abbreviated version.
  
  Knauer’s original text begins with a motto, the frequently recurring “Sehet, welch eine Liebe,” and continues with two recitative-aria pairs; the first part of the cantata closes with a chorale strophe. The second part is identical in structure, beginning with a biblical passage (this time from Romans), continuing with two recitative-aria pairs, and closing with a strophe from another chorale. In contrast to this twelve-movement scheme, the version composed by Bach begins with the biblical passage used in Knauer but then leaps to the freely versified material in the second half and continues to the end. Thus, Bach used only six movements from Knauer’s libretto, and the poet’s intention in the “double annual cycle” of two cantatas for each Sunday or a single, large, bipartite composition is reduced to a one-part cantata. However, its scope is increased, as a chorale strophe is inserted before and after the first free text, a recitative. 
  
  All in all, Knauer’s text as composed by Bach exhibits very little connection to the Gospel reading for the third day of Christmas. To a much greater extent it concerns the ancient yet ever new theme of renunciation of the world’s temptations, the redemption of sin, and the certainty of heaven. In this regard, the biblical passage at the beginning functions as a guiding principle: “Sehet, welch eine Liebe hat uns der Vater erzeiget, daß wir Gottes Kinder heißen” (See what manner of love the Father has shown us, that we are called God’s children). Without further ado, the keyword “Liebe” is the subject of a chorale strophe, taken from Martin Luther’s Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ (May you be praised, Jesus Christ) of 1524:

  Das hat er alles uns getan,
  Sein groß Lieb zu zeigen an.
  Des freu sich alle Christenheit
  Und dank ihn des in Ewigkeit.
  Kyrieeleis!
  
  All this he has done for us
  To show his great love.
  For this let all Christendom rejoice 
  And thank him for it in eternity.
  Kyrieeleis!

  
  After this reminiscence of Christmas, unforeseen in Knauer’s text, a renunciation of the world follows directly, first in a recitative:

  Geh, Welt, behalte nur das deine,
  Ich will und mag nichts von dir haben,
  Der Himmel ist nun meine,
  An diesem soll sich meine Seele laben.
  
  Go, world, keep only what is yours,
  I seek and want to have nothing from you.
  Heaven is now mine,
  On this my soul shall refresh itself.

  
  The somewhat clumsy verse is only in part due to Knauer; it is also in part the result of an unknown arranger’s intervention. Whether Bach himself intervened here cannot be determined. In any case, the close of the recitative is also changed with the addition of “Drum sag ich mit getrostem Mut” (Therefore, I say with confident spirit) to introduce another chorale strophe. This connects to the first strophe of Balthasar Kindermann’s hymn: “Was frag ich nach der Welt / Und allen ihren Schätzen” (What do I ask of the world / And all of its treasures). Only then does the aria finally appear, which in Knauer immediately follows the recitative:

  Was die Welt
  In sich hält,
  Muß als ein Rauch vergehen.
  Aber was mir Jesus gibt
  Und was meine Seele liebt,
  Bleibet fest und ewig stehen.
  
  What the world
  Holds in itself 
  Must, like smoke, pass away.
  But what Jesus gives to me 
  And what my soul loves
  Stays strong and stands forever.

  
  The comparison with the transitoriness of smoke was introduced by the arranger; Knauer’s text reads:

  Was die Welt
  In sich hält,
  Muß mit ihr zugleich vergehen.
  
  What the world 
  Holds in itself
  Must pass away together with it.

  
  Changes were also made to the beginning of the recitative that follows. In Knauer it reads:

  Mein Erbteil ist gewiß,
  Kein Teufel kann mir solches rauben,
  Und ich besitz es schon im Glauben.
  
  My inheritance is certain,
  No devil can rob me of it,
  And I possess it already through faith.

  
  In the text used by Bach this became:

  Der Himmel bleibet mir gewiß,
  Und den besitz ich schon im Glauben.
  Der Tod, die Welt und Sünde,
  Ja selbst das ganze Höllenheer
  Kann mir als einem Gotteskinde
  Denselben nun und nimmermehr
  Aus meiner Seele rauben.
  
  Heaven remains certain for me,
  And I possess it already in faith.
  Death, the world, and sin,
  Yes, even the whole host of hell
  Cannot rob it from me, as a child of God,
  Now or ever
  From my soul.

  
  The unknown poet stays true to the keyword “Welt” until the end. The last aria begins “Von der Welt verlang ich nichts, / Wenn ich nur den Himmel erbe” (From the world I desire nothing / If I only inherit heaven), and the closing chorale is the fully appropriate strophe from Johann Franck’s hymn Jesu, meine Freude: “Gute Nacht, o Wesen, das die Welt erlesen, mir gefällst du nicht” (Good night, O state, that the world has chosen, you please me not). 
  
  As expected, Bach’s composition of this libretto—a substantial reworking of Johann Oswald Knauer’s text—places the most weight on the opening movement. The cantata performed the day before, Darzu ist erschienen der Sohn Gottes BWV 40, begins with a three-part festive concerted movement with a fugal section in the center. In this case, however, Bach sets the text from 1 John as a rather old-fashioned strict motet fugue. The support of the voices by the traditional Stadtpfeiffer ensemble of cornettino and three trombones enhances the archaic character of the movement, just as its distinctive theme with its emphatically declarative “Sehet” at the beginning produces great liveliness and comprehensibility. The first, unpretentious chorale movement on the melody Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ is followed by the alto recitative “Geh, Welt, behalte nur das deine,” a more extensively elaborate movement than usual, which, with its scales incessantly rising into emptiness, symbolizes worldly effort that comes to nothing. The recitative leads directly into the second chorale movement, “Was frag ich nach der Welt,” in which the sweeping three upper voices, serene and deliberate, confront an excessively busy bass voice that moves almost schematically from a rhythmic perspective—a rare and rather curious contrast, but one entirely motivated by the text. For the rejection of the world’s invalidity—“Was die Welt / in sich hält, / muß als wie ein Rauch vergehen”—Bach chooses the gavotte, a worldly, even frivolous dance type. A testament to worldliness is, however, not the intent. Much more, the meaningless, garrulous, empty phrases and the hackneyed melodic and harmonic commonplaces point to what is actually meant and formulated in the text. The final aria for alto and oboe d’amore, however, appears without any ambiguity whatsoever. It dedicates its unfeigned melody and self-assured pastoral air to the confessional “Von der Welt verlang ich nichts.” The closing chorale leads from the friendly region of G major back to the home key of E minor.
   

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. Krausse (1981).↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:34:19+00:00 Du sollt Gott, deinen Herren, lieben BWV 77 / BC A 126 11 Thirteenth Sunday After Trinity. First performed 08/22/1723 in Leipzig (Cycle I). Text by JO Knauer. plain 2024-04-29T16:05:07+00:00 1723-08-22 BWV 77 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 05Trinity13 Thirteenth Sunday After Trinity BC A 126 Johann Sebastian Bach JO Knauer Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Du sollt Gott, deinen Herren, lieben, BWV 77 / BC A 126" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 392 James A. Brokaw II Leipzig I

  Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity, August 22, 1723

  Johann Sebastian Bach wrote the cantata Du sollt Gott, deinen Herren, lieben BWV 77 (You shall love God, your Lord) for the thirteenth Sunday after Trinity during his first year in office as cantor of St. Thomas School in Leipzig. The beginning of its text refers to the Gospel reading for the Sunday, Jesus’s telling of the parable of the good Samaritan in Luke 10:

  And behold, a scribe stood up, tempted him and spoke: Master, what must I do, that I may inherit eternal life? He however said to him: How is it written in the law? How do you read? He answered and spoke: “You shall love God, your Lord, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might, and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.” He, however, spoke to him: You have answered correctly: Do that, and you will live. He, however, wanted to justify himself and spoke to Jesus: Who then is my neighbor? Then Jesus answered and spoke: There was a man who went from Jerusalem down to Jericho and fell among murderers; they stripped him and beat him and fled, leaving him half dead. It came to pass by chance that a priest came down the same road; and as he saw him, he passed by. A Levite did the same thing; as he came to the place and saw him, he passed by. A Samaritan, however, was traveling and came to the place; and as he saw him he wept for his sake, went to him, bound his wounds and poured oil and wine in them, and lifted him upon his beast and led him to the inn and took care of him. . . . Which, do you think, among these three may have been the neighbor to the one who had fallen among murderers? He spoke: The one who showed mercy upon him. Then Jesus spoke to him: Then go forth and do likewise. (25–34, 36–37)

  
  Scholars have only recently been able to discover the origins of the cantata text.¹ Bach took it from a collection printed in Gotha with 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. The author of the annual cycle of texts was Johann Oswald Knauer, born in Schleiz in 1690 and brother-in-law to the court music director at Gotha, Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel. Bach did not adopt the libretto uncritically. The most obvious difference is that Bach used only the second half of Knauer’s text, which has two sections with many movements. Even there, however, much in Bach’s cantata is rearranged, tightened, or reformulated in comparison to the printed text. 
  
  No change was made to the words of Jesus taken from Luke, which in turn can be traced back to Leviticus and Deuteronomy: “Du sollt Gott, deinen Herren, lieben von ganzem Herzen, von ganzer Seele, von allen Kräften und von ganzem Gemüte und deinen Nächsten als dich selbst” (Deuteronomy 10:12; You shall love God, your Lord, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your powers and all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself). In Knauer this is followed by “Hier hast du den Gesetz, das Gott dir vorgeschrieben: / Du sollst zuförderst Gott, und dann den Nächsten lieben” (Here you have the law, which God has required of you: / You shall love God above all, and then your neighbor). Bach omits this well-intentioned interpolation, meant as a clarification, and avoids Knauer’s interleaving of aria and recitative. He proceeds directly to the recitative and aria, which focus on the love of God. The recitative begins: “So muß es sein! Gott will das Herz vor sich alleine haben” (So it must be! God will have my heart for himself alone). It closes with the lines:

  Als wenn er das Gemüte,
  Durch seinen Geist entzündt
  Weil wir nur seiner Huld und Güte 
  Alsdenn erst recht versichert sind.
  
  Than when he the mind
  Through his spirit enkindles,
  For we, of his favor and goodness,
  Only then are truly assured.

  
  In Knauer it is more concise but also differently accentuated:

  Als wenn er das Gemüte
  Mit seiner Kraft entzünd,
  Weil wir dann seiner Güte
  Erst recht versichert sind.
  
  Than when he the mind
  With his power enkindles,
  For we then of his goodness
  Truly are assured.

  
  The aria continues this train of thought; its text begins: “Mein Gott, ich liebe dich von Herzen, / Mein ganzes Leben hangt dir an” (My God, I love you with all my heart, / My entire life depends on you).
  
  With the pair of movements that follow, the librettist turns his attention to the love of one’s neighbor while keeping the parable of the good Samaritan in view:

  Gib mir dabei, mein Gott, ein Samariterherz,
  Daß ich zugleich den Nächsten liebe
  Und mich bei seinem Schmerz 
  Auch über ihn betrübe.
  
  Grant me besides, my God, a Samaritan’s heart
  That I may at once love my neighbor
  And, in his pain,
  Also be distressed for him.

  
  At the close, the recitative in Bach’s cantata deviates slightly from Knauer’s text: “So wirst du mir dereinst das Freudenleben / Nach meinem Wunsch, jedoch aus Gnaden geben” (Then you will one day grant me the life of joy / According to my wish, yet out of grace). The ensuing remorseful aria strophe shows that the way there is not smooth but remains rocky and thorny: 

  Ach es bleibt in meiner Liebe
  Lauter Unvollkommenheit!
  Hab ich oftmals gleich den Willen,
  Was Gott saget, zu erfüllen,
  Fehlt mir’s doch an Möglichkeit.
  
  Ah, there remains in my love
  Such glaring imperfection!
  Though I often have the desire,
  What God says, to fulfill,
  Yet I lack the possibility.

  
  In the printed libretto, the conclusion is somewhat vague: “Doch das Gute zu erfüllen / Fehlet mir zu jederzeit” (But to fulfill the good / I am unable at any time). The version composed by Bach is, as elsewhere, more powerful and precise. Knauer’s libretto concludes with the last two strophes from Luther’s 1524 chorale Dies sind die heilgen zehn Gebot (These are the holy Ten Commandments). But remarkably, Bach decided against this plan. His score contains a chorale movement without text as well as the chorale strophe, added by a different hand, “Du stellst, mein Jesu, selber dich / Zum Vorbild wahrer Liebe” (You present yourself, Lord Jesus, / As a model of true love), the eighth strophe from David Denickes’s 1657 hymn Wenn einer alle Ding verstünd (If one understood all things). Long thought to be an unauthorized entry in the score, it has recently been identified as the work of Bach’s second-youngest son, Johann Christoph Friedrich, who may have taken it from the original performance parts.²
  
  More than any other part of Bach’s composition, the opening chorus has inspired analysts and exegetists to ever newer and bolder interpretations.³ These proceed from the fact that the words of Jesus at the beginning, given to the chorus in a dense, motet-like texture, are framed by a canonic cantus firmus, performed by the trumpets in small note values and by the bass in long notes. Musically, this recalls the opening chorus of the cantata Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott BWV 80 (A mighty fortress is our God), in which the four-part, motet-like arrangement is bordered by an instrumental canon between the oboes and the bass. In the cantata Du sollt Gott deinen Herren, lieben, this appears to be motivated in several respects. First, the Luther hymn about the holy Ten Commandments belongs to the de tempore hymns for the thirteenth Sunday after Trinity and is called for in Knauer’s libretto; Bach thus had several reasons to compensate for his avoidance of this conclusion for the cantata. Second, a concordant understanding of the Bible in Bach’s era can be assumed,⁴ which means that the Sunday Gospel reading and parallel passages can be understood side by side. In Matthew it reads, regarding the commandments of love of neighbor and God, “In diesen zwei Geboten hanget das ganze Gesetz und die Propheten” (The entire law and the prophets depend upon these two commandments). The two-part canon could thus be understood to symbolize the two commandments, whereby “canon” is understood literally as “law” and “regulation.”
  
  But rash conclusions can set in all too easily here. Philipp Spitta, the unerring nineteenth-century biographer and analyst of Bach, had already recognized that

  a working out in strict canon form between the instrumental bass and trumpet was inadmissible, since, in the first place, neither the value of the notes nor the intervals are the same; and, in the second place, the trumpet repeats the first line after each of the others in order to emphasise very expressly the words “These ten are God’s most holy laws”; finally, the whole melody is repeated once more straight through above an organ point on G. This playing with fragments of the melody, so to speak, rather points to the influence of the Northern school.⁵

  
  There is little to be added: few options were open to Bach other than to repeat the upper voice, moving in short note values, several times in order to even out the lead gained by the cantus firmus bass part, moving in large note values. But he made good use of the leeway he thus gained: a combination of luck and skill allowed the count of repetitions to equal exactly ten, so that the phrase “heilgen zehn Gebot” received symbolic emphasis. It does not follow from this, however, that this integration of number symbolism is natural and immanent in music. Achieving a particular numeric level is normally bound with curtailing purely musical aspects. In any case, this is how Philipp Spitta’s gentle criticism of the first movement’s structure is to be understood.
  
  The remaining cantata movements are easily characterized. The aria for soprano and—perhaps—two oboes is characterized by the constant parallel voice leading in sixths and thirds in the instruments, which, with its absolute rigor, is meant to embody the permanence of God’s love. However, the aria for alto and obbligato slide trumpet, “Ach es bleibt in meiner Liebe / Lauter Unvollkommenheit!” remains ruminative and self-tormenting. The surprising answer is provided by the simple concluding chorale on the melody Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein (Ah, God, look down from heaven), with its keyword connection: “Du stellst, mein Jesu, selber dich / Zum Vorbild wahrer Liebe” (You present yourself, my Jesus, / As a model of true love).

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. Krausse (1981).↵
  2. Wollny (2001a).↵
  3. Schering (1925); Dadelsen (1983). For criticism, see Schulze (2001), Schulze (2002c).↵
  4. Petzoldt (2004), as well as numerous individual studies by the same author.↵
  5. Spitta (1899, 2:429–31).—Trans.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:34:19+00:00 Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele BWV 69.1 / BC A 123 8 Twelfth Sunday After Trinity. First performed 08/15/1723 in Leipzig (Cycle I). Text by JO Knauer. plain 2024-04-24T16:29:38+00:00 1723-08-15 BWV 69a Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 05Trinity12 Twelfth Sunday After Trinity BC A 123 Johann Sebastian Bach JO Knauer Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele, BWV 69a / BC A 123" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 382 James A. Brokaw II Leipzig I

  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.

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  Footnotes

  1. Krausse (1981).↵