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• 1 2023-09-26T09:38:46+00:00 O holder tag, erwünschte Zeit BWV 210.2 / BC G 44 6 Cantata for wedding of Privy Councilor Georg Ernst Stahl and Johanna Elisabeth Schrader. First performed on Sep 19, 1741 in Berlin. plain 2024-04-24T14:57:38+00:00 1741-09-19 BWV 210.2 Berlin 52.52002846645434, 13.393180674123663 Wedding BC G 44 Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "O holder tag, erwünschte Zeit, BWV 202 / BC G 41" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 720 James A. Brokaw II Berlin

  Weddings, September 19, 1741

  To a slightly greater degree than other similar compositions, the wedding cantata O holder Tag, erwünschte Zeit BWV 210.2 (O blessed day, longed-for time) seems to have some connection to Bach’s family. Posterity can only welcome this, for even though the work of Johann Sebastian Bach has outlasted the ages, the composer’s private life lies for the most part in the darkness of history. Among the few documents that highlight the situation are these often-cited lines from Bach’s autobiographical letter of October 28, 1730, to his friend and schoolmate Georg Erdmann, in which the composer assures his friend that his children, one and all, are “born musicians, [so that I] can already form an ensemble both volcaliter and instrumentaliter within my family, particularly since my present wife sings a good, clear soprano, and my eldest daughter, too, joins in not badly.”¹ The striking emphasis on Anna Magdalena Bach’s singing technique at a time when Bach’s sons from his previous marriage were accomplished string and keyboard musicians suggests that her brief career as a singer at the court of Anhalt-Köthen in 1721 and 1722 was not the end of the story. Admittedly, the music lexicographer Ernst Ludwig Gerber wrote near the end of the eighteenth century that Anna Magdalena Bach died “without once having made use of her talent in public."² Gerber might have been relying on his father’s accounts of having studied in Leipzig in the mid-1720s; as a student of Johann Sebastian Bach, he had also been associated with Bach’s family later on. However, such a statement probably reflects the view of a time when German female singers achieved fame across Europe and their appearance on opera and concert stages was a matter of course. From that perspective, the standard procedure in the first half of the eighteenth century of relying on boys and falsettists for soprano and alto parts in church and chamber music and sometimes in opera as well must have seemed positively Stone Age. For Bach, on the other hand, the inability to work with female singers in church or in his Collegium Musicum was a custom that was hardened by long tradition and with which one simply had to come to terms. It is thus no coincidence that truly demanding soprano parts are relatively rare in his vocal works.
  
  Among the small number of such exceptional compositions, the cantata O holder Tag, erwünschter Zeit undoubtedly takes first place. This work places such high demands on vocal technique, stamina, and phrasing that a performance by anyone other than a professional singer is scarcely imaginable. If Bach’s sobriquet “clear soprano” is actually an understated characterization of rather extraordinary vocal skill, then it seems nearly certain that the composer intended this challenging ten-movement solo, which lasts as long as an entire opera act, for his second wife. 
  
  Admittedly, we have no way of knowing when and for what occasion this work originated. The wedding cantata version itself can be assigned to the early 1740s, or, more precisely, the summer of 1741. It was dedicated to the wedding of the doctor and royal Prussian court counselor Georg Ernst Stahl with Johanna Elisabeth Schrader in Berlin on September 19, 1741. A few weeks earlier, the Thomaskantor had visited his second oldest son, Carl Philipp Emanuel, in the Prussian official residence, probably staying in the renowned physician’s home. We do not know whether the wedding date had already been set or whether Bach was already at work preparing a suitable composition. In any case, the serious illness of his wife, Anna Magdalena, as well as upcoming musical obligations with the annual town council election must have called him back to Leipzig. Even so, he did not let that prevent him from sending a particularly beautifully written solo soprano part for the cantata O holder Tag to Berlin along with other performance materials, thus contributing his part to the arrangements for the wedding of the doctor, a good friend of the Bach family. It was in this sense that, alongside several general allusions to a “patron of the arts” (Mäzenaten) and friend of music, the unidentified librettist of the new version entered an unmistakable reference to the doctor’s name in a prominent place, the last recitative:

  Dein Ruhm wird wie ein Demantstein,
  Ja wie ein fester Stahl beständig sein.³
  
  Your renown shall be as a diamond,
  Indeed, as constant as tempered steel.

  
  Several cantatas with very different texts preceded this, presumably the final version. Conceived as homage performances for patrons of the arts, their content consisted of praise of music and its protectors. These forms of the text, beginning with “O angenehme Melodei” (O pleasant melody), go back at least to 1729 (BWV 210.1). In the middle of January of that year, Duke Christian of Saxe-Weissenfels stayed in Leipzig. In 1994 a print of the text came to light;⁴ it shows that Bach took the opportunity to demonstrate “his most humble devotion” in a cantata. According to a later message from Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Duke Christian was among those potentates who “particularly loved [his father] and also supported proportionately.” The version performed in 1729 was repeated several times with minor edits to the text. One of the cantatas was performed in the 1730s in honor of Imperial Count Joachim Friedrich von Flemming, commander of the Leipzig garrison who lived at Pleissenburg fortress.
  
  It is possible that an even earlier homage composition precedes our wedding cantata as well as the homage music for the duke of Weissenfels; however, nothing is known about its text or the reason it was performed. A particularly plausible occasion would be a guest performance at Bach’s former post, the court of Anhalt-Köthen. Remarkably, in December 1725 its account books show payment of an honorarium “to the Leipzig Cantor Bach and his wife, who performed here on several occasions.”
  
  Since the text of this oldest version has not been preserved, assessments of the relation between text and music are only possible within limits. Apart from the literary quality of the text and its suitability, the strengths of our cantata lie above all in the diversity of its arias’ characters. Embedded in a texture of string instruments tinted by the warm timbre of the oboe d’amore, whose regular structure and dance-like gestures make one think of a suite movement such as a passepied, the soprano part first devotes itself to the interplay between the two poles outlined in the text, “casting down into a swoon” and “refreshing again,” in which it must climb virtuosically to high C-sharp with three ledger lines. With its balanced voice leading, gentle harmonies, and softly rocking 12
  8 meter, the second aria, with obbligato oboe d’amore and violin, alludes to the popular slumber scenes in contemporary opera. The third aria is characterized by abrupt changes between sighing, halting, and hastily rushing passages of the obbligato flute and the voice competing with it. In the polonaise aria, “Großer Gönner, dein Vergnügen” (Great patron, your pleasure), the oboe d’amore is able to unfold virtuosically; this piece was a favorite of Bach that he put to use in various secular contexts. The closing congratulatory aria, “Seid beglückt, edle Beide” (Be happy, noble pair), is energetic but carefully balanced timbrally; all participants join in the crowning finale. 

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  Footnotes

  1. NBR, 152 (no. 152).—Trans.↵
  2. Gerber (1790).—Trans.↵
  3. Maul (2001).↵
  4. Tiggemann (1994).↵