This page is referenced by:

• 1 2023-09-26T09:36:18+00:00 Preise, Jerusalem, den Herrn BWV 119 / BC B 3 17 Town Council Election. First performed 08/30/1723 in Leipzig (Cycle I). plain 2024-04-24T17:28:42+00:00 1723-08-30 BWV 119 Leipzig Town Council Election BC B3 Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Preise, Jerusalem, den Herrn, BWV 119 / BC B3" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 579 James A. Brokaw II Leipzig I

  Leipzig City Council Inauguration, August 30, 1723

  With the cantata Preise, Jerusalem, den Herrn BWV 119 (Praise, Jerusalem, the Lord), Johann Sebastian Bach returned to a field he had not tilled for fourteen years, namely, the performance of festive music to celebrate the installation of new city councils in larger cities. Now in his first year as cantor of St. Thomas School in Leipzig, Bach encountered a long-standing custom similar to that in Mühlhausen, whereby council members served for life but were divided among several committees, each headed by a mayor.¹ These committees rotated on a multiyear basis in conducting city business. At any given time, about thirty councilmen and three mayors made up a sitting council and two resting councils. Plenary meetings, with all councilmen present, took place only on extraordinary occasions and for important reasons—such as the election of a new cantor for St. Thomas School in April 1723.
  
  In Leipzig the change of councils took place on the Monday following St. Bartholomew’s Day, celebrated on August 24. The significance of the day and the dignity of the council were matched by the rather old-fashioned rituals that preceded the event. These involved the town clerk, who was a senior councilman, meeting with the superintendent several days before the church service to formally ask him to deliver the sermon for the introduction of a new council. At the same time, a councilman of slightly lower rank with the obsolete title Thürknecht (door servant) would appear at the offices of the cantor to commission him for “the procurement of church music for the stipulated Monday” (die Besorgung der Kirchen Music auf besagten Montag). Both cantor and superintendent could have easily skipped their meetings, since both understood the significance of the day and knew their duties well. But for the council to do away with a “custom from time immemorial” (Brauch von alters her) would have required a formal decision on the part of the council that would have decreased its stature—an outcome hardly to be expected. 
  
  A letter of 1741 from Bach’s cousin Johann Elias Bach demonstrates how seriously the celebration of the annual council election was taken. He related several pieces of worrying news regarding the health of Anna Magdalena to the cantor, who was visiting his son Carl Philipp Emanuel in Berlin at the time, and followed it with the anxious observation: “To which is added the fact that St. Bartholomew’s Day and the Council election here will occur in a few weeks, and we should not know how we should conduct ourselves in respect to the same in Your Honor’s absence.”² It was obviously inconceivable that Bach might have allowed himself to be represented by a substitute. Consequently, it seems that in his twenty-seven years of service in Leipzig, Bach conducted just as many performances of town council election cantatas.³
  
  We have no way of knowing today what repertoire Bach employed to fulfill this ongoing obligation. Four Leipzig town council cantatas have been preserved along with their music, and another exists in fragmentary form. In addition, we have evidence of several texts. Even considering the possibility of repeated performances, we must assume that many such works are lost.
  
  It is all the more gratifying that with the cantata Preise, Jerusalem, den Herrn we have Bach’s very first such composition in Leipzig. We do not know who prepared the text for the work of nine movements. Traditionally, such a libretto had to combine praise of God with gratitude for the blessing of a godly government. Preferably, the libretto began with a psalm verse, as in this case, with verses from Psalm 147: “Preise, Jerusalem, den Herrn, lobe, Zion, deinen Gott! Denn er machet fest die Riegel deiner Tore und segnet deine Kinder drinnen, er schaffet deinen Grenzen Frieden” (12–14; Praise, Jerusalem, the Lord, praise, Zion, your God! For he strengthens the bars of your gates and blesses your children within, he makes peace within your borders). Then, with the recitative “Gesegnet Land, glückselge Stadt” (Blessed land, happy city), the “song of praise” turns to its own community. Here again, psalm verses are used. From Psalm 85, the plea of the previously pardoned nation for new blessings, come these verses: “Doch ist ja seine Hilfe nahe denen, die ihn fürchten, daß in unserm Lande Ehre wohne; daß Güte und Treue einander läßt begegnen; Gerechtigkeit und Friede sich küssen” (9–10; Yet his help is certainly near to those who fear him, that honor may dwell in our country; that goodness and devotion meet one another; justice and peace kiss one another). In the librettist’s poetry, the passage sounds like this:

  Wie kann Gott besser lohnen,
  Als wo er Ehre läßt in einem Lande wohnen? 
  Wie kann er eine Stadt
  Mit reicherm Nachdruck segnen,
  Als wo er Güt und Treu einander läßt begegnen,
  Wo er Gerechtigkeit und Friede 
  Zu küssen niemals müde.
  
  How can God bestow greater benefit
  Than where he allows honor to dwell in a country? 
  How can he bless a city
  With richer assurance
  Than where he lets goodness and devotion meet one together, 
  Where he never tires of letting 
  Justice and peace kiss one another.

  
  The first aria apostrophizes Leipzig using the familiar translation of its name, City of Lindens:

  Wohl dir, du Volk der Linden, 
  Wohl dir, du hast es gut.
  Wieviel an Gottes Segen 
  Und seiner Huld gelegen, 
  Die überschwenglich tut, 
  Kannst du an dir befinden.
  
  Happy are you, you people of the lindens, 
  Happy are you, it is well with you.
  How much dependent on God’s blessing 
  And his grace,
  Which manifests itself extravagantly, 
  You can find within yourself.

  
  The praise of the city continues in a recitative:

  So herrlich stehst du, liebe Stadt;
  Du Volk, das Gott zum Erbteil sich erwählet hat.
  
  So gloriously you stand, dear city;
  You people that God has chosen for his inheritance.

  
  Here again, the psalter—Psalm 33:12—stands as godparent: “Wohl dem Volk, des Gott der Herr ist, dem Volk, das er zum Erbe erwählet hat” (Happy the nation whose God is the Lord, the nation that he has chosen for his inheritance). In a tone of utter conviction, the librettist announces that everything 

      was wir Gutes bei uns sehn, 
  Nächst Gott durch kluge Obrigkeit
  Und durch ihr weises Regiment geschehn.    
  
      that we regard as good around us
  Happens, next to God, through prudent rulers
  And through their wise governance.

  
  Who would contradict such a statement? But there is better to come: the next aria calls it by its name:

  Die Obrigkeit ist Gottes Gabe, 
  Ja selber Gottes Ebenbild.
  Wer ihre Macht nicht will ermessen, 
  Der muß auch Gottes gar vergessen:
  Wie würde sonst sein Wort erfüllt?
  
  Authority is God’s gift,
  Yes, the very image of God himself. 
  Anyone unwilling to measure its power, 
  He must also forget God’s entirely:
  How otherwise would his word be fulfilled?

  
  This is actually a paraphrase of Romans 13, which begins with the words “Jedermann sei untertan der Obrigkeit, die Gewalt über ihn hat. Denn es ist keine Obrigkeit ohne von Gott; wo aber Obrigkeit ist, die ist von Gott verordnet” (Let everyone be subject to the authority that has power over him. For there is no authority unless from God; where, however, authority exists, it is ordained by God). Thanking God for the authorities is the concern of the two cantata movements that follow, whereby authority includes those being relieved of their duties, as well as those about to assume them with renewed energy. Once again, the librettist borrows from the psalter; he chooses the beginning of a strophe from Psalm 126 for a choral movement: “Der Herr hat Großes an uns getan, des sind wir fröhlich” (3; The Lord has done great things for us, of which we are glad). Inexplicably, the word “Großes” (great things) in the cantata text was transformed to “Guts” (good things). By way of introduction, a final recitative asks that an “arm Gebet” (poor prayer) be heard; what is meant is the fourth strophe of Luther’s German version of the Te Deum:

  Hilf deinem Volk, Herr Jesu Christ, 
  Und segne, was dein Erbteil ist.
  Wart und pfleg ihr zu aller Zeit 
  Und heb sie hoch in Ewigkeit. 
  Amen.
  
  Help your people, Lord Jesus Christ,
  And bless what is your inheritance.
  Tend and nourish them at all times 
  And raise them high in eternity.
  Amen.

  
  For the opening chorus with the verses from Psalm 147, Bach chooses the greatest possible festive setting: four trumpets and drums, three oboes and two recorders, string orchestra and chorus, and, in the bass, cellos, bassoons, and bass viols in unison with the organ. How these maximal demands were reconciled with the notoriously cramped loft of Leipzig’s St. Nicholas Church must remain an open question. Solemnity, dignity, and self-assurance characterize the broad beginning, whose dotted rhythms and pathos-laden, expansive scales indicate the magnificently ostentatious instrumental form of the French overture. The flow of the strings and woodwinds pauses three times, allowing fanfares in the trumpets and drums to be heard. Led by the trumpets in their high clarino range, the quick middle portion, only thirty measures in length, allows the psalm verse to pass by quickly in well-considered alternation of contemplation and celebration. Immediately, the slow instrumental introduction returns, achieving a thematic integration of the brass by way of a harmonic detour and thereby bringing about a climax and conclusion. Today, scholars are seriously considering the possibility that this movement was not entirely newly composed but goes back in large part to a purely instrumental predecessor.⁴
  
  The tenor aria, a paean to the City of Lindens, radiates serenity and contentment with its gently ambling rhythm and songlike, catchy melody, its loosely arranged, rondo-like form, and the dark coloration of the two deep oboes. The alto aria “Die Obrigkeit ist Gottes Gabe” is tuneful and quite dancelike, with the recorders representing the upper reaches of the woodwind range. Its buoyancy of mood seems conceived more in conjunction with a varied and diverse overall structure rather than primarily projection of the text. Still, it would have seemed logical to use any and all means to demonstrate the omnipotence of the authorities installed by God to those in attendance. The altered version of the psalm verse “Der Herr hat Großes an uns getan” is clothed in a brilliant choral fugue that grows in intensity; it is surely no coincidence that its theme suggests the chorale melody Nun danket alle Gott (Now thank all you God). The fugue itself is the centerpiece of an elaborately layered structure comprising instrumental ritornelli and various choral complexes. The simple closing chorale uses the melody of the Te Deum, whose Reformation-era form is based on materials handed down from the old church (altkirchlicher Tradition). Recent scholarship suggests that the trumpets provided improvisatory fanfares at the end of each line,⁵ lending the concluding chorale movement additional brilliance.
  
  Remarkably, even the press took notice of the performance of Johann Sebastian Bach’s first town council cantata for Leipzig. An account published in a Hamburg newspaper in early September 1723 mentions not only the Leipzig town council election but also the “superb council election music”— but without mentioning the name of the composer.
  
  And this work received still another distinction in 1843 when it was heard in the Leipzig Gewandhaus under the direction of Felix Mendelssohn as part of a gala performance to inaugurate Leipzig’s first monument to Bach, funded by Mendelssohn and still to be found in the park before St. Thomas Church.

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. Bach performed Gott ist mein König BWV 71 for a council inauguration on February 4, 1708, in Mühlhausen.—Trans.↵
  2. NBR, 212 (no. 222). Johann Elias Bach’s letter informing Bach of his wife’s illness,draft or copy, is in BD II:391 (no. 489).—Trans.↵
  3. However, it has recently become clear that Bach was indeed absent from his post at St. Thomas for as much as two years (perhaps 1742–43 or sometime between 1743 and 1746). In a letter of application written in 1751 by a former St. Thomas student, Gottfried Benjamin Fleckeisen, to succeed his father as cantor of the small town of Döbeln, Fleckeisen claimed that “I was an alumnus [boarder] at the St. Thomas School in Leipzig for nine years and while I was there served for four years as prefect of the choro musico. For two whole years I had to perform and conduct the music at the churches of St. Thomas and St. Nicholas in place of the capellmeister, and without boasting, may say that I always acquitted myself honorably” (translated in Maul 2018, xv). See also Maul (2017).—Trans.↵
  4. Klaus Hofmann (2016) has taken issue with the assessment of Alfred Dürr (1986) that the original version of the first movement was a French overture akin to those in Bach’s orchestral suites and that the middle section was newly composed.—Trans.↵
  5. Hofmann (2001).↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:36:18+00:00 Gott, man lobet dich in der Stille BWV 120.1 / BC B 6 12 Town Council Election. First performed 08/29/1729 in Leipzig after Trinity 1727. . plain 2024-04-24T17:29:16+00:00 1729-08-29 BWV 120 Leipzig Town Council Election BC B 6 Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Gott, man lobet dich in der Stille, BWV 120 / BC B 6 " in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 587 James A. Brokaw II Leipzig after Trinity 1727

  Town Council Election, August 29, 1729?

  The cantata Gott, man lobet dich in der Stille BWV 120 (God, one praises you in the stillness) belongs to the relatively small group of Bach’s town council election cantatas. These were works that were performed, rather infrequently, in honor of the Leipzig town council and by its explicit mandate. As was conventional in many German cities and in line with the political conventions of the era, councilmen were appointed for life, and their total number was divided into several councils, each of which was led by a mayor. In regular succession, these councils alternated in conducting the affairs of government. This rotation between “sitting” or governing council and “resting” councils occurred at the end of every August during Bach’s time in Leipzig—or, more precisely, on the Monday following St. Bartholomew’s Day. Early in the morning, the town council service was held in the municipal main church, St. Nicholas, which included a particular sermon as well as festive music.
  
  Although all participants were clear as to their responsibilities, the council insisted upon sending a scribe to the superintendent several days before the event in order to ask him to prepare the council sermon, as well as a representative with the old-fashioned title Thürknecht¹ to the cantor of St. Thomas to remind him of the expected musical composition. An anxious inquiry sent to Bach in August 1841, then visiting in Berlin, underscores the great importance all parties attached to this ceremony: “St. Bartholomew’s Day and the council election here will occur in a few weeks, and we should not know how we should conduct ourselves in respect to the same in Your Honor’s absence.”² It was obviously inconceivable that Bach might have allowed himself to be represented by a substitute.³
  
  In his twenty-seven years of service in Leipzig, Bach must have provided music to just as many town council election church services. Because it is difficult to estimate what portion of these may have been reperformances, it is difficult to say whether the entirety of the works Bach performed on those Mondays in August is represented by the works that survive: five compositions with music—including one in fragmentary form—as well as the three texts transmitted without music. On the other hand, it is striking that after 1740 Bach was still making an effort to expand the corpus of such works, so he was by no means resting on his laurels regarding the town council election cantatas.
  
  The cantata Gott, man lobet dich in der Stille is one of these works of Bach’s late period. Scholars had long been groping in the dark with respect to the work’s genesis before the holograph score became available again at the end of the 1970s. Along with other objects evacuated from the former Prussian State Library in Berlin, the autograph survived the confusion at the war’s end in a cloister in Lower Silesia. A bit later it arrived along with many other treasures at the library of Jagiellonian University in Kraków. The existence of these parts of the collection, thought to be lost, was acknowledged relatively late. Of course, secret vaults in which the missing sources were to be found had long been discussed, but all inquiries were met with denials until restrictions were finally lifted. 
  
  As regards our cantata, this means that a close study became possible only recently, particularly in connection with an edition under the auspices of the New Bach Edition (Neue Bach-Ausgabe). The new findings affect the work’s chronology, on the one hand, and the relationship between individual movements and particular predecessor works, on the other. Final clarity is not possible in every instance, since in only a few cases have all the works drawn upon by Bach been preserved. What is certain is that only the two recitatives and the closing chorale were newly composed for the first performance, which took place in 1742 or one of the years afterward. All the other movements are borrowings from older works.
  
  The retextings of such adopted movements in the cantata libretto stand out because of their lower linguistic quality. The opening movement, an aria, is an exception; it is based on Psalm 65:1: “Gott, man lobet dich in der Stille zu Zion, und dir bezahltet man Gelübde” (God, one praises you in the stillness of Zion, and one fulfills vows to you). The second movement, by contrast, is a bit clumsy:

  Jauchzet, ihr erfreuten Stimmen,
  Steiget bis zum Himmel ’nauf!
  Lobet Gott im Heiligtum
  Und erhebet seinen Ruhm;
  Seine Güte
  Sein erbarmendes Gemüte
  Hört zu keinen Zeiten auf.
  
  Exult, you gladdened voices,
  Climb up to heaven!
  Praise God in the sanctuary
  And exalt his renown;
  His goodness,
  His merciful disposition,
  At no time comes to an end.

  
  The third movement, a recitative, is linguistically concentrated and pertinent. In accordance with its function, it praises the city and its governors:

  Auf, du geliebte Lindenstadt,
  Komm, falle vor dem Höchsten nieder,
  Erkenne, wie er dich
  In deinem Schmuck und Pracht
  So väterlich 
  Erhält, beschützt, bewacht
  Und seine Liebeshand
  Noch über dir beständig hat.
  Wohlan,
  Bezahle die Gelübde,
  Die du dem Höchsten hast getan,
  Und singe Dank- und Demutslieder.
  Komm, bitte, daß er Stadt und Land
  Unendlich wolle mehr erquicken
  Und diese werte Obrigkeit
  So heute Sitz und Wahl erneut,
  Mit vielem Segen wolle schmücken.
  
  Arise, you beloved city of lindens,
  Come, fall before the Most High,
  Acknowledge how he
  In your beauty and magnificence
  So fatherly
  Sustains, protects, guards you
  And still has his loving hand
  Constantly over you.
  Well, then,
  Fulfill your vows
  That you have made to the Most High
  And sing hymns of thanks and humility.
  Come, pray, that he may wish to 
  Unendingly further refresh city and land,
  And these worthy rulers,
  Renewed today in seat and election,
  He may wish to adorn with many blessings.

  
  The effect of the aria text that follows, made to fit an earlier composition, is somewhat colorless:

  Heil und Segen
  Soll und muß zu aller Zeit
  Sich auf unsre Obrigkeit 
  In gewünschter Fülle legen,
  Daß sich Recht und Treue müssen
  Mit einander freundlich küssen.
  
  Salvation and blessing
  Shall and must at all times
  Lay upon our authorities
  In desired abundance,
  That justice and faithfulness must
  Kiss one another in friendship.

  
  The final recitative phrases a blessing for the new government, and the libretto closes with a strophe from Martin Luther’s German version of the Te Deum Laudamus.
  
  Bach’s composition begins with an unusually extended aria—particularly considering the brevity of the psalm verse—for alto, two oboi d’amore, and string instruments. The movement’s siciliano rhythm and, in particular, the virtuoso demands on the voice, with instrument-like passages that extend for long stretches, have long aroused suspicion that the aria is based on the slow movement of a solo concerto, perhaps for violin. Bach transformed the original into a duet for a wedding cantata performed in 1729; a year later, it was combined with the psalm text for a festive cantata to celebrate the anniversary of the Augsburg Confession. The aria in the town council election cantata probably goes back to this version directly.
  
  The following choral movement’s situation is scarcely less complicated. Its archetype likely originated before 1729 but is lost. In various ways, the 1729 wedding cantata, the 1730 festive cantata, and our town council cantata all go back to this lost archetype. From today’s perspective, the best-known version belongs not to the world of the cantata but to that of the mass. Around 1748 Bach once again recalled the original version and from it created the radiant “Et expecto” of the Mass in B Minor (BWV 232).
  
  A brief recitative for bass, newly composed for the town council cantata, is followed by the fourth movement, an aria for soprano, concertante violin, and strings—yet another of Bach’s favorite pieces, whose favored position can be seen in its eventful and sometimes complicated history. It may have begun with a soprano aria with obbligato violin, perhaps composed before 1723 in Köthen and perhaps as part of a wedding cantata. Arranged as an instrumental piece, it appears in an early version of Bach’s Sonata for Violin in G Major BWV 1021 with obbligato cembalo. Here, the right hand of the cembalo takes over the vocal part. Transformed back into an aria, the piece proceeded through the aforementioned cantatas of 1729 and 1730 and, finally, to our town council cantata.
  
  In contrast, the two remaining original movements, the last recitative as well as the closing chorale on the melody Herr Gott, dich loben wir, are easily understood. But the cantor of St. Thomas has one more riddle for us: following the closing chorale, he noted in his composing score: “In Fine Intrada con Trombe e Tamburi” (At the end, fanfares by trumpets and drums). The Leipzig Stadtpfeiffer would have performed this “Intrada” without sheet music, and so to this day it remains uncertain what sort of fanfares would have brought the first performance of the town council election cantata to an end.⁴

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. Gerichtsdiener in modern German, the closest English equivalent to which is “bailiff.”—Trans.↵
  2. NBR, 212 (no. 222). Johann Elias Bach’s letter informing Bach of his wife’s illness: draft or copy (BD II:391 [no. 489]).—Trans.↵
  3. However, it has recently become clear that Bach was indeed absent from his post at St. Thomas for as much as two years (perhaps 1742–43 or sometime between 1743 and 1746). In a letter of application written in 1751 by a former St. Thomas student, Gottfried Benjamin Fleckeisen, to succeed his father as cantor of the small town of Döbeln, Fleckeisen claimed that “I was an alumnus [boarder] at the St. Thomas School in Leipzig for nine years and while I was there served for four years as prefect of the choro musico. For two whole years I had to perform and conduct the music at the churches of St. Thomas and St. Nicholas in place of the capellmeister, and without boasting, may say that I always acquitted myself honorably” (translated in Maul 2018, xv). See also Maul (2017).—Trans.↵
  4. Hofmann (2001).↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:36:18+00:00 Wir danken dir, Gott, wir danken dir BWV 29 / BC B 8 8 Town Council Election. First performed 08/27/1731 in Leipzig after Trinity 1727. . plain 2024-04-24T16:03:10+00:00 1731-08-27 BWV 29 Leipzig Town Council Election BC B 8 Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Wir danken dir, Gott, wir danken dir, BWV 29 / BC B 8" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 591 James A. Brokaw II Leipzig after Trinity 1727

  City Council Inauguration, August 27, 1731

  This cantata belongs to the relatively small group of Bach’s city council inauguration cantatas. These were works that were performed in honor of the Leipzig city council and by its explicit mandate. As was conventional in many German cities and in line with the political conventions of the era, councilmen were appointed for life, and their total number was divided into several councils, each of which was led by a mayor. In regular succession, these councils alternated in conducting the affairs of government. This rotation between “sitting” or governing council and “resting” councils occurred at the end of every August during Bach’s time in Leipzig—or, more precisely, on the Monday following St. Bartholomew’s Day. Early in the morning, the town council service was held in the municipal main church, St. Nicholas, which included a particular sermon as well as festive music. 
  
  Although all participants were clear as to their responsibilities, the council insisted upon sending a scribe to the superintendent several days before the event to ask him to prepare the council sermon, as well as a representative with the old-fashioned title Thürknecht¹ to the Thomaskantor to remind him of the expected musical composition. An anxious inquiry sent to Bach in August 1741, then visiting in Berlin, underscores the great importance all parties attached to this ceremony: “St. Bartholomew’s Day and the council election here will occur in a few weeks, and we should not know how we should conduct ourselves in respect to the same in Your Honor’s absence.”²It was obviously inconceivable that Bach might have allowed himself to be represented by a substitute.³
  
  Five works survive with music, as well as one that is fragmentary and three with text only. It is difficult to say whether they represent the totality of work that Bach performed on those twenty-seven August Mondays in the St. Nicholas Church, because the number of repeat performances is difficult to judge. It is all the more fortunate that in the case of Wir danken dir, Gott, wir danken dir BWV 29 (We thank you, God, we thank you) we have precise documentation for no fewer than three performances: 1731, the year the cantata was composed; 1749, the last time Bach himself conducted the festive music for the town council election; and 1739, about halfway between the first and last performances. The 1739 performance is mentioned in a printed annual report by a member of the teaching staff at St. Thomas School, collega tertius Abraham Kriegel. In his Nützliche Nachrichten von denen Bemühungen derer Gelehrten und anderen Begebenheiten in Leipzig, he wrote: “On August 31 the council election sermon was delivered in the St. Nicholas Church by Herr Magister Christian Gottlob Eichlern on the first book of Kings, chapter VIII, verse 57, and afterward the Royal and Electoral Court Composer and Capellmeister Herr Johann Sebastian Bach [performed] a musical work as artistic as it was pleasing; the text was Chorus, ‘Wir dancken dir, Gott, wir dancken dir.’”⁴
  
  The biblical passage chosen by Magister Eichler for his council election sermon begins with the words “May the Lord, our God, be with us, as he was with our fathers.” Ten years later, however, the sermon was about a passage in Psalm 82, considered a “threatening address by God to unjust authorities.” The passage reads: “You are gods and all of you children of the highest; but you will die like people and, like a tyrant, be destroyed” (6–7). Bach certainly had no part in the choice of this awkward text—but he could have spoken it from the heart. Only a few weeks earlier, he had stood by as the Leipzig council had his designated successor, Gottlob Harrer, perform an audition concert for a scenario in which he—Bach—might have died. It seems that the fact that the city fathers had given in to massive pressure from the almighty minister Count Brühl did not go unnoticed by Bach; it can hardly have given him any satisfaction. 
  
  Remarkably, neither of the sermon texts has any direct connection to the libretto for the cantata Wir danken dir, Gott, wir danken dir—almost as if the separation between the city scribe’s order for the sermon from the superintendent and the Thürknecht’s request of music from Bach meant that their preparations would be separated as well. Be that as it may, the cantata text by an unknown author adheres to the same stipulations for the same purposes, praises God and the wise authorities, and frequently draws upon the Psalter—as at the very beginning with Psalm 75:1: “Wir danken dir, Gott, wir danken dir und verkündigen deine Wunder” (We thank you, Lord, we thank you and proclaim your wonders). In accordance with the occasion, the chain of recitatives and arias that follows includes numerous remarks upon the city and its government either as direct statements or in the form of allusions to biblical examples. Thus the thanksgiving of the psalm verse is followed by the praise of an aria:

  Halleluja, Stärk und Macht
  Sei des Allerhöchsten Namen.
  Zion ist noch seine Stadt,
  Da er seine Wohnung hat, 
  Da er noch bei unserm Samen
  An der Vätern Bund gedacht.
  
  May Hallelujah, power, and might
  Be the name of the Most High.
  Zion is still his city,
  Where he has his dwelling,
  Where he still with our seed
  Keeps the covenant of our fathers.

  
  A recitative continues this praise, beginning with these lines:

  Gottlob, es geht uns wohl;
  Gott ist noch unsre Zuversicht,
  Sein Schutz, sein Trost und Licht
  Beschirmt die Stadt und die Paläste,
  Sein Flügel hält die Mauern feste.
  
  Praise God, it is well with us,
  God is still our assurance,
  His protection, his consolation and light
  Shields the city and palaces,
  His pinions keep the walls strong.

  
  Phrases from Psalm 122 are clearly recognizable here, verses that were often favored for use in town council election music: “Wünschet Jerusalem Glück! . . . Es möge Friede sein in deinen Mauern und Glück in deinen Palästen!” (6–7; Wish Jerusalem prosperity! . . . May there be peace within your walls and prosperity within your palaces!). At its close, the recitative proclaims, self-confidently: 

  Wo ist ein solches Volk wie wir, 
  Dem Gott so nah und gnädig ist?
  
  Where is there such a people as we,
  To whom God is so near and gracious?

  
  But another aria text follows immediately with the awareness that this grace must be requested:

  Gedenk an uns mit deiner Liebe,
  Schleuß uns in dein Erbarmen ein.
  Segne die, so uns regieren,
  Die uns leiten, schützen, führen,
  Segne die gehorsam sein.
  
  Remember us with your love,
  Enclose us in your mercy.
  Bless those who govern us,
  Who lead, protect, guide us,
  Bless those who are obedient.

  
  And since the town council election marks the beginning of a new year, as it were, the last recitative prays and promises in the diction of a New Year’s cantata:

  Vergiß es ferner nicht, mit deiner Hand
  Uns Gutes zu erweisen;
  So soll
  Dich unsre Stadt und unser Land,
  Das deiner Ehre voll, 
  Mit Opfern und mit danken preisen,
  Und alles Volk soll sagen: Amen.
  Halleluja, Stärk und Macht
  Sei des Allerhöchsten Namen.
  
  Further, do not forget with your hand
  To show us good things;
  So shall
  You, by our city and our land,
  Which is filled with your honor,
  Be praised with offerings and with thanks,
  And all the people shall say: Amen.
  Let hallelujah, power, and might
  Be the name of the Most High.

  
  Following this allusion to the beginning of the first aria, the libretto closes with a strophe from Johann Gramann’s hymn Nun lob, mein Seel, den Herren (Now praise, my soul, the Lord). The final strophe begins, “Sei Lob und Preis mit Ehren / Gott Vater, Sohn, Heiligem Geist” (Let there be glory and praise with honor / For God the Father, Son, Holy Spirit).
  
  Bach placed a concerto movement for organ and orchestra at the beginning of his composition of this text. This is a second arrangement in the form of a concerto of the Präludium from the Partita in E Major for Solo Violin (BWV 1006). In 1729 Bach had taken this piece, which had originated no later than 1720, for a wedding cantata (Herr Gott, Beherrscher aller Dinge BWV 120.2). In doing so, he transposed the violin part for the organ and externalized its intrinsic harmonies for oboes and strings. He now went beyond this not entirely unproblematic procedure by enriching the new arrangement with trumpets and drums—further obscuring the original idea in the solo violin version of projecting a multidimensional concerto form in a single-voiced texture. 
  
  The first vocal movement, a chorus on the text from Psalm 75, enters a different realm entirely. A solemn processional begins with archaic diction, advancing with dense canonic structures that approach fugue and intensifying to a hymnic seven-voice structure by including the brass instruments. Certain discrepancies between the structure of the text and the music’s course suggest that the movement was originally part of another work with a different text. Nonetheless, Bach held the piece in such high esteem that he added it to his 1733 B Minor Missa (BWV 232.2) as the “Gratias agimus tibi” and then, when completing the entire B Minor Mass (BWV 232.4) fifteen years later, had it serve additionally as the work’s crowning conclusion, the “Dona nobis pacem.” 
  
  By contrast, the two arias in the town council cantata strive for simplicity and tuneful appeal. The tenor aria, “Halleluja, Stärk und Macht,” has a kind of superficial cheer that is underscored by its uncomplicated three-part texture. On the other hand, the soprano aria, “Gedenk an uns mit deiner Liebe,” relies on a lovely siciliano rhythm, simple yet expressive harmonies, and an intimate, song-like melody that includes the stylish effect of the Lombard rhythm. The voice and upper part of the instrumental texture move in parallel, and the basso continuo pauses during vocal sections; these elements anticipate the style of the later decades of the eighteenth century. A brief recitative is followed by an abbreviated repetition of the first aria, now with alto and obbligato organ, thereby creating a transition not only to the third movement, the tenor aria, but also back to the opening sinfonia with the constant presence of the concertante organ. The closing chorale is reminiscent of the second movement, the hymn-like “Wir danken dir, Gott, wir danken dir,” with its line endings emphasized by the brilliance of the trumpets.

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. Gerichtsdiener in modern German, the closest English equivalent to which is “bailiff.”—Trans.↵
  2.  NBR, 212 (no. 222). Johann Elias Bach’s letter informing Bach of his wife’s illness: draft or copy (BD II:391 [no. 489]).—Trans.↵
  3. However, it has recently become clear that Bach was indeed absent from his post at St. Thomas for as much as two years, perhaps 1742–43 or sometime between 1743 and 1746. See the letter of application written in 1751 by a former St. Thomas student, Gottfried Benjamin Fleckeisen, to succeed his father as cantor of the small town of Döbeln, in which Fleckeisen claimed that “I was an alumnus [boarder] at the St. Thomas School in Leipzig for nine years and while I was there served for four years as prefect of the choro musico. For two whole years I had to perform and conduct the music at the churches of St. Thomas and St. Nicholas in place of the capellmeister, and without boasting, may say that I always acquitted myself honorably” (Maul 2017; translation of the Fleckeisen letter from Maul 2018, xv).—Trans.↵
  4. “Den 31. August ward die so genannte Raths-Wahl-Predigt in der Kirche zu St. Nicolai, von Herrn Magister Christian Gottlob Eichlern, über I. Buch der Könige, Kapitel VIII, Vers 57 und folgende gehalten, und darauf machte der Königliche und Churfürstliche Hof-Compositeur und Capellmeister, Herr Johann Sebastian Bach, eine so künstlich als angenehme Music; worzu der Text dieser war: Chorus, ‘Wir dancken dir, Gott, wir dancken dir.’”—Trans.↵