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• 1 2023-09-26T09:37:44+00:00 Geschwinde, geschwinde, ihr wirbelnden Winde BWV 201 / BC G 46 7 Drama per musica. First performed in Autumn 1729 in Leipzig. Text by CF Henrici (Picander). plain 2024-04-24T15:26:42+00:00 BWV 201 Leipzig BC G 46 Johann Sebastian Bach CF Henrici (Picander) Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Geschwinde, geschwinde, ihr wirbelnden Winde, BWV 201 / BC G 46" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 727 James A. Brokaw II Autumn 1729

  For Various Purposes, Autumn 1729

  The dramma per musica Der Streit zwischen Phoebus und Pan BWV 201 (The contest between Phoebus and Pan) gives the lie to the view that Bach’s secular cantatas are written, one and all, for particular occasions and are bound to them for all time.¹ Instead, this work was conceived from the beginning as a repertoire piece, particularly in view of its universally applicable text content, its musical qualities, and its rewarding solos.
  
  The libretto is the work of Bach’s “house poet” in Leipzig, Christian Friedrich Henrici; it takes a motif from the Metamorphoses of Ovid and develops it into a small dramatic plot about a singing competition between Phoebus Apollo, the god of the arts, and Pan, the god of shepherds and flocks. Without too much consideration for ancient mythology, these two protagonists are joined by the legendary kings Tmolus of Lydia and Midas of Phrygia, who serve as judges (or, actually, advocates or seconds); in addition, there are appearances by Momus, personification of ridicule, and Mercury, messenger of the gods. These six characters are faced with no deeply rooted conflicts to resolve, and there can be no expectation that Pan, the pastoral naif, will emerge victorious from the competition. Greater opposites are scarcely conceivable: the sensitive love song of Phoebus, with its exquisite timbral robes, and Pan’s rustic, boisterous dance tune, with its superficial tone painting. Moreover, the mythological ranking of the two deities absolutely forbids any competition between them on an equal footing. In spite of all this, the action is no mock battle. Yet the most important events are moved off to a side stage: the competition between the two singers, whose outcome is never in doubt for the insightful, devolves into a rivalry between the two seconds/critics. Tmolus, associated with Phoebus, turns out to be competent, while his adversary, Midas, is uneducated and unaware. Consequently, he is awarded donkey ears, and Momus writes a mnemonic jingle—in no way time bound—for him in the official record:

  Der Unverstand und Unvernunft 
  Will jetzt der Weisheit Nachbar sein, 
  Man urteilt in den Tag hinein,
  Und die so tun,
  Gehören all in deine Zunft.
  
  Folly and unreason
  Would now be the neighbors of wisdom. 
  People judge at random,
  And those who do so 
  All belong to your guild.

  
  The first performance of this dramma per musica—which, with its six arias, seven recitatives, and two ensemble movements, approaches the dimensions of an opera act—may have taken place in the autumn of 1729. A few months earlier, the cantor of St. Thomas had taken over the directorship of the Collegium Musicum, reestablished by Georg Philipp Telemann in the early eighteenth century. The main motivation for creating Der Streit zwischen Phoebus und Pan seems to have been to repudiate the dangerous tendency toward simplification by presenting, after a period of preparation and practice, an extensive new work with this ensemble advocating high musical standards.² The work was performed again several times in the 1730s and in 1749; this fact shows that the defense of “noble music” lost none of its currency in later years.
   

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  Footnotes

  1. Der Streit zwischen Phoebus und Pan is the title of the printed text.—Trans.↵
  2. According to Hans Joachim Kreutzer (2005, 92ff.), Der Streit zwischen Phoebus und Pan is Picander’s (and hence Bach’s) answer to Gottsched’s criticism of Picander in the first edition of the Versuch einer Critischen Dichtkunst, which is dated 1730 but which appeared at Michaelmas 1729. Johann Christoph Gottsched’s Versuch einer Critischen Dichtkunst für die Deutschen (Essay on the criticism of poetry for the Germans) is his principal effort to reform German poetry, rejecting the perceived bombast and absurd affectations of the Second Silesian School in favor of highly stylized French classicism.↵