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• 1 2023-09-26T09:32:57+00:00 Nun komm der Heiden Heiland BWV 61 / BC A1. 32 First Sunday of Advent. First performed 12/02/1714 at Weimar. Text by Erdmann Neumeister. plain 2024-03-28T15:03:14+00:00 1714-12-02 BWV 61 Weimar 50.979493, 11.323544 11Advent First Sunday of Advent BC A 1 Johann Sebastian Bach Erdmann Neumeister Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Nun komm der Heiden Heiland, BWV 61 / BC A 1" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 11 James A. Brokaw II Weimar as concertmaster

  First Sunday of Advent

  There are two Bach cantatas that begin with the first strophe of Martin Luther’s chorale Nun komm der Heiden Heiland (Now come, savior of the Gentiles), and both are for the first Sunday of Advent. This one, the older of the two, originated in Weimar in 1714. The other was composed a decade later in Leipzig. The work composed in 1714 is based on a text by Erdmann Neumeister. Born near Weissenfels (Thuringia) in 1671 and active at first in various positions near this royal seat, in 1714 Neumeister was working as senior court chaplain and superintendent in Sorau, Silesia. In that year he published a new annual cycle of cantata texts in Frankfurt am Main under the title Geistliche Poesien mit untermischten biblischen Sprüchen und Choralen auf alle Sonn- und Festtagen (Sacred poems with interspersed biblical sayings and chorales for all Sundays and feast days), intended to be set by Georg Philipp Telemann, the director of music at Frankfurt. In March 1714 Telemann stood as godfather at the baptism of Bach’s son Carl Philipp Emanuel. Six decades later, Carl Philipp Emanuel reported regarding his father that “in his younger years he was often together with Telemann—who also lifted me out of the baptismal font.”¹ It seems likely that this close relationship, featuring godparenthood, enabled an exchange of news and recent developments that included Neumeister’s new annual cycle of texts.
  
  Annual text cycles normally were arranged according to the church year, beginning, as this one does, with the first Sunday of Advent. The Gospel reading for this Sunday, found in the twenty-first chapter of Matthew and nearly identically in Mark and Luke, describes the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem and, thus, the arrival of the savior:

  When they now came near to Jerusalem, at Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the village that lies before you, and immediately you shall find an ass tied, and a colt with her: loose them, and bring them unto me! And if anyone says something to you, you shall say, the Lord needs them, and immediately he will release them to you.” All this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Prophet, saying, “Tell the daughter of Zion, ‘Behold, thy king comes to you, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt, the foal of an ass.’” The disciples went forth, and did as Jesus commanded them, and brought the ass and the colt, and put their clothes on them, and they set him thereon. But many people spread their garments in the way, others cut down branches from the trees, and scattered them in the way. But the people however, those that went before followed, cried and said, Hosanna to the son of David! Blessed is he that comes in the Name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest! (1–9)

  As the title of his annual cycle indicates, Erdmann Neumeister’s cantata poetry belongs to the genre of mixed text form; that is, it contains free poetry—recitatives and arias—alongside chorale strophes and biblical passages. This form of mixed text was long regarded as Neumeister’s most important contribution to the development of the Protestant Church cantata, until it turned out that Neumeister neither invented this hybrid text nor particularly preferred it. His domain was free cantata poetry without chorale strophes or biblical passages, with which he surprised his contemporaries in 1702.² He completed the transition to mixed text subsequently and perhaps even reluctantly; according to a predecessor in Thuringia in 1704 whose identity remains unknown to scholarship, the roots of the practice reach far back into the seventeenth century.
  
  At the beginning of his libretto, Neumeister placed the first strophe of Luther’s German translation of the ancient church hymn Veni redemptor gentium, published in 1524:

  Nun komm der Heiden Heiland, 
  Der Jungfrauen Kind erkannt, 
  Des sich wundert alle Welt, 
  Gott solch Geburt ihm bestellt.
  
  Now come, savior of the Gentiles, 
  Known as the child of the Virgin, 
  Of this, all the world marvels, 
  God ordained him such a birth.

  A chorale fragment concludes the libretto, the Abgesang (second part) of the last strophe of Philipp Nicolai’s 1599 hymn Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern (How brightly gleams the morning star). Nicolai’s strophe begins with the words “Wie bin ich doch so herzlich froh” (How am I though so sincerely glad); the Abgesang reads:

  Amen! Amen!
  Komm du schöne Freudenkrone, bleib nicht lange! 
  Deiner wart ich mit Verlangen.
  
  Amen! Amen!
  Come, you beautiful crown of joy, tarry not long!
  I await you with longing.

  “Kommen” (come) is the most important keyword of the entire cantata libretto; it is missing only from the one movement that cites a passage from the Gospel. The free portions of the text are characterized by this keyword, as in movement 2, a recitative:

  Der Heiland ist gekommen,
  Hat unser armes Fleisch und Blut An sich genommen
  Und nimmet uns zu Blutsverwandten an.
  
  The savior is come,
  Has taken our poor flesh and blood Upon himself
  And accepts us as blood relatives.

  
  And at the conclusion:

  Was tust du nicht
  Noch täglich an den Deinen? 
  Du kömmst und läßt dein Licht 
  Mit vollem Segen scheinen.
  
  What do you not do
  Still daily for your people? 
  You come and let your light 
  Shine with full blessing.

  The accompanying aria prays for this blessing at the outset of the newly begun church year:

  Komm, Jesu, komm zu deiner Kirche 
  Und gib ein selig neues Jahr!
  Befördre deines Namens Ehre 
  Erhalte die gesunde Lehre 
  Und segne Kanzel und Altar.
  
  Come, Jesus, come to your church 
  And grant a blessed new year!
  Promote your name’s honor, 
  Uphold the sound teaching, 
  And bless pulpit and altar.

  Words of Jesus give the answer to this prayer from the third chapter of the Revelation of St. John: “Siehe, ich stehe vor der Tür und klopfe an. So jemand meine Stimme hören wird und die Tür auftun, zu dem werde ich eingehen und das Abendmahl mit ihm halten und er mit mir” (3:20; See, I stand before the door and knock. Should anyone hear my voice and open the door, to him I will go in and have the evening meal with him and he with me). The meaning of “Tür auftun” and “eingehen”—to open the door and go in—is expressed by the penultimate movement of the cantata, an aria whose text paraphrases the classic metaphor of the human heart as the dwelling of God:

  Öffne dich, mein ganzes Herze, 
  Jesus kommt und ziehet ein.
  Bin ich gleich nur Staub und Erde, 
  Will er mich doch nicht verschmähn, 
  Seine Lust an mir zu sehen,
  Daß ich seine Wohnung werde. 
  O wie selig werd ich sein!
  
  Open yourself, my whole heart, 
  Jesus comes and enters.
  Though I am but dust and earth,
  He will, nevertheless, not disdain me, 
  His pleasure in me to see,
  That I become his dwelling. 
  O how blessed will I be!

  1  Preluding.
  2  Motet.
  3  Preluding on the Kyrie, which is performed throughout in concerted manner [musiciret].
  4  Intoning before the altar.
  5  Reading of the Epistle.
  6  Singing of the Litany.
  7  Preluding on [and singing of ] the Chorale.
  8  Reading of the Gospel [crossed out: and intoning of the creed].
  9  Preluding on [and performance of ] the principal music [cantata].
  10  Singing of the Creed [Luther’s Credo hymn].    
  11  The Sermon.    
  12  After the Sermon, as usual, singing of several verses from a hymn.
  13  Words of Institution [of the Sacrament].
  14  Preluding on [and performance of ] the Music [probably the second half of the cantata]. And after the same, alternate preluding and the singing of chorales until the end of the Communion, et sic porro [and so on].³
  
  Accordingly, the “principal music” (after number 9) or the “Music” (during number 14)—that is, the cantata—would have been performed with the first part before the sermon, between the reading of the Gospel and the singing of the creed, Wir glauben all’ an einen Gott, and the second part after the Words of Institution and before or during Communion or the Offertory. But whether the cantata Nun komm der Heiden Heiland in fact was performed in two parts, the first part ending after the third movement, cannot be determined. It is also conceivable that the entire cantata was performed as principal music and that for the presentation of music during Communion or the Lord’s Supper the work of another composer was drawn upon.
  
  The Weimar Advent cantata Nun Komm der Heiden Heiland displays the thirty-year-old court organist at the height of his powers. The first movement meets a self-imposed challenge, as it integrates an arrangement of an ancient church hymn with the modern instrumental form of the French overture. This is in three parts; its first and last sections have dotted rhythms and sweeping scales that go back to the fanfares at the French opera in the seventeenth century that announced the arrival of the king. It is thus clear that Bach’s compositional experiment was meant to symbolize, formally, the entrance of Jesus in Jerusalem and the arrival of the savior at the same time. That no radiant major is allowed to sound, and instead a melancholy, shadowy minor, is conditioned by the modal nature of the ancient hymn tune. A change of tempo and meter in the middle section enables the buoyant fugal development of the text line “des sich wundert alle Welt.” Buoyant as well is the tenor aria, following a brief recitative extended by an arioso at its conclusion. Here, the upper strings—two violins and two violas—unite to form a pastose obbligato voice of sonorous timbre. The Gospel recitative, “Siehe, ich stehe vor der Tür und klopfe an” (See, I stand before the door and knock), is taken by the bass, the vox Christi (voice of Christ). The pizzicato interspersed with rests more reflects tense anticipation and preliminary uncertainty than simply tone painting of “knocking at the door.” Sincere naivete and the use of the most modest instrumental forces define the soprano aria, “Öffne dich, mein ganzes Herze,” whose increasingly joyous excitement flows directly into the closing chorale. The two violins form an obbligato part that gives it festive splendor, transiting the entire compass of the two instruments and climbing to the highest possible peak at the closing fermata, certainly conducted and performed in person by the composer and concertmaster, Johann Sebastian Bach.

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. “In seinen jungen Jahren war er oft mit Telemannen zusammen, welcher auchmich aus der Taufe gehoben hat” (BD III:289 [no. 803]).—Trans.↵
  2. Hobohm (2000); Rucker (2000); and Krausse (1986).↵
  3. NBR, 113 (no. 113).—Trans.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:32:57+00:00 Christen, ätzet diesen Tag BWV 63 / A8. 21 Christmas Day. First performed 12/25/1714 at Weimar. plain 2024-03-28T15:02:12+00:00 1714-12-25 BWV 63 Weimar 50.979493, 11.323544 12Christmas Christmas Day BC A 8 Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Christen, ätzet diesen Tag, BWV 63 / BC A 8" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 25 James A. Brokaw II Weimar as concertmaster

  Christmas Day

  In the cantata Christen, ätzet diesen Tag BWV 63 (Christians, etch this day), we have Bach’s earliest festive cantata for Christmas Day. Judging by the paper and handwriting characteristics in the only original parts that survive, the work originated in Weimar, presumably in 1714 or 1715. The cantata was reperformed in Leipzig on December 25, 1723, undoubtedly early in the day during the main service in St. Nicholas in accordance with local custom and then repeated in the afternoon in St. Thomas in the Vespers service. Other performances may have occurred around 1729 and a later time that cannot be more precisely determined.
  
  The uncertainty as to the cantata’s exact time of origin brings with it a host of further questions. It is tempting to assume a connection to Bach’s promotion to concertmaster of the Weimar court chapel in March 1714, when he incurred the obligation to perform monthly “pieces,” meaning church pieces, or cantatas. If one understands “monthly” to imply a four-week rotation—a premise that researchers have worked under for more than a century—then our cantata doesn’t clearly fit into a correspondingly ordered sequence of works in either 1714 or 1715. The source materials preclude a later date of origin, and composition before 1714 lacks an official occasion. Hence, one might tend to consider a commission sent to the concertmaster from outside Weimar, particularly because the notoriously narrow confines of the Weimar castle church would not have easily accommodated the opulent forces called for by the festive cantata. Delivery of musical materials to outside purchasers was nothing unusual for the period, and even the not exactly generous relations with the Weimar court allowed the organist and later court concertmaster considerable latitude. In February 1709 Bach wrote a cantata for the town council in the imperial city of Mühlhausen and apparently even led its performance. Four years later, he delivered a congratulatory cantata to the court of Saxe-Weissenfels for the birthday of Duke Christian; that cantata was later known as the Hunt Cantata (BWV 208). 
  
  At the end of November or beginning of December 1713, Bach stayed for about two weeks in the city of Halle¹ on the Saale to explore the possibility of a change in the position of organist and music director at the Market Church of Our Lady. On the express wish of the senior pastor, Johann Michael Heineccius, who was very devoted to music, Bach had to compose and perform a cantata in Halle. This guest composition, probably meant for the second Sunday of Advent, unfortunately does not survive. It should not be assumed to be our Christmas cantata. By Christmas 1713, Bach was already active in Weimar again. In his letter of January 14, 1714, to Halle declining the offer, he mentions demands at the moment due to “Church services in themselves”—by which his duties as court organist could be meant—as well as due to “certain obligations at Court in connection with the Prince’s birthday.”² What these sibylline remarks may refer to remains unclear. In any case, “the Prince” refers to the seventeen-year-old Prince Johann Ernst of Saxe-Weimar, a nephew of the reigning duke. Several months before, Johann Ernst had returned from a grand tour of several years through Western Europe. He was a significant lover and connoisseur of music, a violinist, and a composer. It may be that young Johann Ernst was Bach’s most important liaison for musical affairs at the Weimar court. It thus seems likely that the indicated “obligations” for the occasion of his birthday on December 25 had a great deal to do with music. Whether this involved the festive cantata for service in the castle church; whether it involved a composition by the court organist, Bach, and not the court Kapellmeister, Johann Samuel Drese, or his son Johann Wilhelm, active as vice Kapellmeister; and whether, finally, we might consider the cantata Christen, ätzet diesen Tag in this connection: these are all questions that remain unanswerable given the current state of our knowledge.
  
  In light of all this, it is remarkable that the text of our cantata does exhibit a clear connection to Halle, even if all details cannot be conclusively explained. Striking commonalities are found in a cantata text that was performed in the Market Church of Our Lady on October 31, 1717, on the two hundredth anniversary celebration of the Reformation.³ The composition was the work of Gottfried Kirchhoff, who entered service at the church in the summer of 1714 after the withdrawal of J. S. Bach and another candidate. The libretto might be the work of the previously mentioned Johann Michael Heineccius, a circumstance indicated by the fact that his sermon pursues the idea of “the light at evening” (das Licht am Abend) and that the cantata text begins with these lines:

  Christen, ätzet diesen Tag
  In Metal und Marmorsteine!
  Kommt und eilt mit frohen Weise,
  Gott vor sein Huld zu preisen,
  Der aus einen finstern Nacht
  Uns hat das Licht gebracht
  Und zu seinem Gnaden-Scheine.
  
  Christians, etch this day
  In metal and marble stones!
  Come and hurry with joyful songs
  To praise God for his grace,
  Who, in a dark night,
  Has brought to us the light 
  And to his radiant grace.

  
  The beginning and end of this strophe coincide with the text composed by Bach:

  Christen, ätzet diesen Tag
  In Metal und Marmorsteine!
  Kommt und eilt mit mir zum Krippen
  Und erweist mit frohen Lippen
  Euren Dank und euren Pflicht!
  Denn der Strahl, so da einbricht
  Zeigt sich euch zum Gnadenscheine!
  
  Christians, etch this day
  In metal and marble stones!
  Come and hurry with me to the manger
  And show with joyous lips
  Your thanks and your duty!
  For the ray that there breaks in
  Appears to you as radiant grace!

  
  Leaving aside for the moment the fact that the word “ätzet” (etch), here meaning either chemical processing of metal or sculptural work with stone, differs from current usage of the term, the Halle text of 1717 shows itself to be thoroughly superior in coherence and language to the one from Weimar, which is several years older. To “engrave the day” of the bicentennial celebration in metal or marble is an obvious thought that would apply only metaphorically to the birth of Christ. That the better text might have originated through reworking an inferior model is surely not to be ruled out. More likely, however, is the hypothesis that the Reformation text of 1717 composed by Kirchhoff and the Christmas version set to music by Bach in Weimar both go back to a common ancestor whose wording and occasion need to be investigated. Above all, the final movement points to a common origin, since it is entirely and exactly identical in each cantata libretto:

  Höchster, schau in Gnaden an
  Diese Glut gebückter Seelen!
  Laß den Dank, den wir dir bringen,
  Angenehme von dir klingen,
  Lass uns stets in Segen gehn
  Aber niemals nicht geschehen,
  Daß uns Satan möge quälen.
  
  Most High, look with grace upon
  These souls stooped in ardor!!
  Let the thanks we bring to you,
  Sound agreeable to you,
  Let us always go in blessing,
  But never let anything happen
  That Satan might torture us.

  
  The “Glut” (glow) discussed here—clearly in the figurative sense—logically presupposes “flames,” and these are found in both libretti. In the third-to-last place, Kirchhoff’s cantata contains a duet whose text begins:

  Ruft und fleht den Himmel an,
  Kommt, ihr Christen, kommt zusammen,
  Zeiget eure Andachts-Flammen,
  Denkt, was Gott an euch getan.
  
  Call and beseech Heaven,
  Come, you Christians, come together,
  Show the flames of your devotion,
  Consider what God has done for you.

  
  Bach’s cantata has a duet in the same place whose text beginning points more strongly to joyful singing and dancing:

  Ruft und fleht den Himmel an,
  Kommt, ihr Christen, kommt zum Reihen,
  Ihr sollt euch um dem erfreuen
  Was Gott hat anheut getan.
  
  Call and beseech heaven,
  Come, you Christians, come to the dance.
  You should rejoice over that
  Which God has done today.

  
  Clearly, the rationale for the “glow” in the final movement is entirely lost here. But Bach’s text poet knew how to help himself: he inserted it in the recitative transition to the final movement:

  Verdoppelt euch demnach, ihr heißen Andachtsflammen,
  Und schlagt in Demut brünstiglich zusammen,
  Steigt fröhlich himmelan
  Und danket Gott für dies, was er getan.
  
  Redouble yourselves, then, you flames of devotion,
  And fall in humble ardor together.
  Climb joyously to heaven
  And thank God for this, what he has done.

  
  The train of thought in this is not easy to follow, and thus here too it is evident that Bach’s cantata—even if a bit older—can hardly have been the model for the Heineccius text. In spite of this, it remains striking that the two cantatas—one by Bach in Weimar and the other by Kirchhoff in Halle—can be seen in principle to exhibit the same design: free poetry throughout, without biblical passages or chorale strophes; in each case, opening and closing tuttis; and in between, three recitative movements and two arias, in each case, set as duets. 
  
  Whatever a musical comparison of the two works might reveal must remain hidden as long as the composition by Gottfried Kirchhoff remains missing. Bach’s cantata survives only in its Weimar form; it was retouched with very minor changes in Leipzig. As previously indicated, it is difficult to explain the unusually festive forces called for in light of the space limitations of the Weimar castle church: four trumpets with drums; three oboes and bassoon; strings and basso continuo; four voices as well, fortified in the tutti movements by many ripieno parts. A sense of tonal color and a richness of invention that never flags—characteristic of Bach’s Weimar creations—allow a lively, joyously animated, and buoyant making of music to unfold in the opening and closing movements that spares as little of antiphonal elements as virtuoso demands, as matching the rank of court orchestra (Hofcapelle). The first of the two duets is more contemplative: in counterpoint with a lamenting oboe solo, soprano and bass present their grateful “Gott, du hast es wohl gefüget” (God, you have well disposed), whereby the imitative voice leading intensifies the forcefulness of the statement. In the dance-like second duet, “Ruft und fleht den Himmel an,” the same procedure produces a completely different effect: here the imitations prove to be continuous sources of energy for uninterrupted dances of jubilation. In the final movement, fugal work leads twice to musical compression. In this way, musical emphasis is given to the fervent “Höchster, schau in Gnaden an / Diese Glut gebückter Seelen” and, at the close of the middle section, the worry, characterized by harsh chromaticism, “daß uns Satan möge quälen.”
  
  
  
   

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  Footnotes

  1. Wollny (1994).↵
  2. NBR, 69 (no. 49).—Trans.↵
  3. Serauky (1939, 500–503).↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:38:28+00:00 Lass, Fürstin, lass noch einen Strahl BWV 198 / BC G 34. 17 Funeral-ode cantata for Christiane Eberhardine, Queen Electress of Saxony/Poland. First performed on Oct 17, 1727 in St Paul's Church Leipzig. Text by JC Gottsched. plain 2024-04-04T20:38:51+00:00 1727-10-17 BWV 198 Funeral-ode BC G 34 Johann Sebastian Bach JC Gottsched Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Lass, Fürstin, lass noch einen Strahl, BWV 198 / BC G 34" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 697 James A. Brokaw II Christiane Eberhardine, Queen Elector of Saxony/Poland

  Funeral, Electress Christiane Eberhardine, October 17, 1727

  The work known as the Trauerode BWV 198 (Mourning ode) to Christiane Eberhardine of Brandenburg-Bayreuth, the electress of Saxony, is traditionally included among the church cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach. However, it is in fact a secular composition, even though it was meant to be performed in a church. The first indication of this work’s existence came in 1802 from the Bach biographer Johann Nikolaus Forkel:

  Among many occasional pieces that he composed in Leipzig, I mention only two funeral cantatas: the one of which was performed at Cöthen, at the funeral ceremony of his beloved Prince Leopold; the other in the Paulinerkirche at Leipzig, at the funeral sermon upon the death of Christiane Eberhardine, Queen of Poland and Electress of Saxony. The first contains double choruses of uncommon magnificence and the most affecting expression; the second has indeed only simple choruses, but they are so appealing that he who has begun to play one of them will never quit it until he has finished it. It was composed in October 1727.¹  

  
  In describing the funeral music for Prince Leopold as having two choirs, Forkel in part fell victim to an error—and in part compounded this error through a misreading. The manuscript in his possession at that time does in fact name Johann Sebastian Bach as composer—wrongly—but it correctly refers to the funeral for the duke of Meiningen, Ernst Ludwig. Hence, it is actually a work by Bach’s Meiningen cousin Johann Ludwig Bach from 1724.² On the other hand, Forkel’s observations about the funeral music for the Saxon electress are on the mark. For matters concerning the work’s genesis and function, Forkel could rely upon the best of all sources: the composer’s autograph manuscript, also in Forkel’s possession, whose title page exhaustively describes the reasons for the work’s composition: “Funeral Music for the Homage and Eulogy upon the Death of Her Royal Majesty and Electoral Serenity of Saxony, Madame Christiane Eberhardine Queen of Poland etc. and Electress of Saxony etc. Duchess of Brandenburg-Bayreuth, by Mr Kirchbach Esq. held in St. Paul’s Church in Leipzig, Performed by Johann Sebastian Bach anno 1727 on October 18.”³
  
  It is evident from the inaccurate date that Bach formulated this title afterward: all contemporary accounts place the funeral ceremony on October 17. Aside from this, there is an unmistakable pride in this title’s elaborate verbosity, a pride in taking a crucial role in an artistic and political event of the highest order.
  
  This event’s background reaches well into the late seventeenth century. In the course of his efforts to gain the Polish crown, August the Strong, elector of Saxony, converted to Catholicism—but not at all to the delight of his mostly Lutheran subjects in Saxony. When his consort, Christiane Eberhardine, refused to follow him and remained Lutheran, her popular regard rose all the higher. The “mother of her country” died under somewhat mysterious circumstances on September 5, 1727, while at Castle Pretsch, not far from Torgau. Two days later, a countrywide period of mourning was decreed, during which even church music fell silent.
  
  For Leipzig, the obvious thing to do would have been to hold a dignified celebration worthy of the departed. The tolerant policies of the elector toward the Lutherans would certainly have permitted something of the sort. But both the city and the university regarded it as prudent to wait and proceed carefully. Previous experience suggested that taking full advantage of the available leeway could lead to the elector asking the city for a financial loan, which, on the one hand, could not and should not be refused but which, on the other, was unlikely to be repaid. A way out of the confused situation presented itself a few days later, when a young nobleman studying at the University of Leipzig, Hans Carl von Kirchbach, took the initiative and requested the university’s permission to hold a memorial service for the electress at St. Paul’s Church. The late Gothic church was used by the university partly for academic religious services and partly, as in this case, as an auditorium, a venue for events of all kinds. The noble edifice, decorated with many art treasures, withstood the Battle of Nations (Völkerschlacht) in 1813, as well as the bombardment of Leipzig in the Second World War. It was reserved for those in power in the years afterward, despite widespread protests by the population, to dynamite this architectural treasure in order to create space for a hideous new building. With that, an irreplaceable workplace of Johann Sebastian Bach was lost forever.
  
  As for the activities of Kirchbach and his colleagues in early September 1727, the university felt itself unable to take a decision for or against the proposal. And so, on the spur of the moment in early October, Kirchbach turned to Dresden, secured permission immediately, and began preparations for the funeral service. Despite academic tradition, Latin would not be used either for the eulogy or for the funeral music; instead, the German language, in accordance with the aims of the German Society, headquartered in Leipzig, would be used. To create a libretto, Kirchbach engaged Johann Christoph Gottsched, the staunch champion of language reform; for its composition, he chose Bach, the cantor of St. Thomas School.
  
  While these preparations were still under way in the first half of October 1727, the organist at St. Nicholas and the university music director, Johann Gottlieb Görner, got wind of the affair and intervened with the university. Although the event was private, the university authorities took up the matter and attempted to enforce Görner’s claim to the production of all academic musical events, including the one in preparation. Kirchbach did not get involved and accepted a settlement, under which he compensated Görner financially. In spite of this quarrel, Bach pressed on with the composition, which he completed on October 15, two days before the planned performance.
  
  The ceremony itself went forward in deepest solemnity. The city council and university faculty marched in procession from St. Nicholas to the university church, which was draped in black. Contemporary accounts praise the quality of the eulogy and the wealth of invention displayed in the funerary art, and they mention the splendor of the mourning gathering: “Aristocratic persons, high ministers, cavaliers, and other foreigners could be found on the fairway, along with a great number of prominent women, as well as the entire laudable university and a high noble and wise councilor.”⁴ What seemed outwardly to be the result of a private initiative in fact took on the significance of a state function. It is all the more significant that—contrary to contemporary custom—the composer of the funeral music is also mentioned in the accounts. A Leipzig university chronicler expressed himself in considerable detail about the role of the music in the proceedings: “When, then, everyone had taken his place, there had been an improvisation on the organ, and the Ode of Mourning written by Magister Johann Christoph Gottsched, a member of the Collegium Marianum, had been distributed among those present by the Beadles, there was shortly heard the Music of Mourning, which this time Capellmeister Johann Sebastian Bach had composed in the Italian style, with Clave di Cembalo [harpsichord], which Mr Bach himself played, organ, violas di gamba, lutes, violins, recorders, transverse flutes, &c., half being heard before and half after the oration of praise and mourning.”⁵ 
  
  The account of the performance in two parts is accurate, as is the exquisite instrumental ensemble—although the only preserved source, Bach’s autograph score, fails to distinguish between organ and cembalo, on the one hand, or flutes and recorders, on the other. The chronicler’s remark about the composition being “in the Italian style” is intended as a critical jab: Bach did not set the carefully stylized strophes in Gottsched’s ode as written but separated the strophes and took other measures of articulation to create a version of the libretto that he could set in the form of choruses, recitatives, and arias—very much in the style imported from Italy.
  
  In view of this music’s context, it is no wonder that it is among the finest and most ambitious to flow from Bach’s pen. Bach himself adopted parts of the composition two years later for funeral music for Prince Leopold of Köthen.⁶ Two years after that he used the same parts along with still others for his St. Mark Passion BWV 247, later unfortunately lost. In the nineteenth century, the Trauerode was regarded as unperformable for textual reasons. A “rescue” was attempted by paraphrase for All Saints’ Day. The work’s original form was recovered only in our era; it has enriched the Bachian repertoire with a priceless jewel. That the editors of the Bach-Gesellschaft editions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries introduced a grotesque transcription error in the text of the eighth movement, a tenor aria, because they assumed that Bach had deviated from Gottsched’s text with a downright vulgar expletive⁷ underscores how difficult it has been even for Bach experts to comprehend the event of October 17, 1727. Bach’s music was the centerpiece of a first-class funeral ceremony for the “mother of her country,” beloved for her unshakable faith, an event that, for reasons outward as well as inward, can be assumed to be a high point that the cantor of St. Thomas School may perhaps never have experienced again.
   

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. NBR 451.—Trans.↵
  2. Hofmann (1983).↵
  3. “Trauer Music, so Bey der Lob- und Trauer Rede, welche auff das AbsterbenIhro Königlichen Majestät und churfürstlichen Durchlaucht zu Sachsen, FrauenChristianen Eberhardinen Königen in Pohlen etc. und Churfürstin zu Sachsen etc.gefürsteten Marckgräfin zu Brandenburg-Bayreuth von dem HochwohlgeborenenHerrn von Kirchbach in der Pauliner-Kirche zu Leipzig gehalten wurde, aufgeführetvon Johann Sebastian Bach anno 1727 den 18. Octobris.”—Trans.↵
  4. “Was für Fürstlichen Personen, hohen Ministres, Cavalliers und andern Fremdensich dieses mahl auf der Messe befunden, hat sich, nebst einer grossen Anzahlvornehmer Dames, wie auch die gantze löbliche Universität und ein Edler HochweiserRath in Corpore dabey eingefunden” (BD II:174 [no. 231]).—Trans.↵
  5. NBR, 136–37 (no. 136).—Trans.↵
  6. Klagt, Kinder, klagt es aller Welt BWV 1143.↵
  7. The sixth strophe of Gottsched’s ode begins: Der Ewigkeit saphirnes Haus
     Zieht deiner heitern Augen Blicke,
     Von der verschmähten Welt zurücke
     Und tilgt der Erden Denckbild aus.
     Eternity’s saphire house Draws your serene glances
     Back from the spurned world
     And erases the mental image of the earth. Bach’s text underlay in his composition score reads: Der Ewigkeit saphirnes Haus
     Zieht, Fürstom, deine heitern Blicke
     Von unsrer Niedrigkeit zurücke
     Und tilgt der Erden Denckbild aus.
     Eternity’s sapphire house Draws your serene glances
     Back from our lowliness
     And erases the mental image of the earth. The editors of the Bach-Gesellschaft volume in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries believed that Bach’s rather shakily written “Denckbild” should instead read “Dreckbild” (image of filth) in the unspoken yet mistaken assumption that it was an instance of acceptable Baroque “strong language” (Kraftwort) and without being clear as to the context in Leipzig’s St. Paul’s Church. The assumption that a composer of Bach’s rank might permit himself anything of the sort before the “pillars of society” is a characteristic example of the hagiography of the nineteenth century and even into the twentieth.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:32:59+00:00 Du wahrer Gott und Davids Sohn BWV 23 / BC A 47. 16 Estomihi. First performed 02/07/1723 for Bach's audition in Leipzig plain 2024-03-28T15:11:27+00:00 1723-02-07 BWV 23 Köthen 51.340199, 12.360103 18Estomihi Estomihi BC A 47 Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Du wahrer Gott und Davids Sohn, BWV 23 / BC A 47" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 152 James A. Brokaw II Köthen

  Estomihi Sunday

  During Johann Sebastian Bach’s era in Leipzig, Lent began after Estomihi Sunday and with it a period without music called tempus clausum. This traditional silencing of concerted church music, broken only by the Feast of the Annunciation on March 25, brought with it in 1723 a certain time-related urgency for the Leipzig City Council. After the death of Johann Kuhnau, the cantorate of St. Thomas had been unoccupied for eight months, and although several candidates, such as Georg Philipp Telemann of Hamburg and Georg Friedrich Fasch of Zerbst, had signaled their interest, they decided to remain in their previous positions. If the council wanted to avoid further delay, it would have to make it possible for remaining candidates for the prominent position to perform their audition compositions before Estomihi Sunday 1723 at the latest. And thus it happened—with wise foresight, it should be added. At the year’s beginning, no one could have sensed that the successor decisively chosen in January, Christoph Graupner from Darmstadt, would also withdraw by the end of March. Be that as it may, in early February 1723 the council once again allowed performances by applicants, and this time even the press took notice. A newspaper in Hamburg printed a Leipzig announcement of February 9, which reads: “On Sunday last [February 7] in the morning the Hon. Capellmeister of Cöthen, Mr. Bach, gave his test here at the Church of St. Thomas for the hitherto vacant cantorate, the music of the same having been amply praised on that occasion by all knowledgeable persons.”¹
  
  “Sunday last” refers to Estomihi, the last opportunity for performances of church music before the weeks of the tempus clausum, and “music of the same” refers, at least in part, to the cantata Du wahrer Gott und Davids Sohn BWV 23 (You true God and David’s son). We now know that on February 7, 1723, Bach performed not one but two cantatas. Here we are talking about the cantata Jesus nahm zu sich die Zwölfe BWV 22 (Jesus took unto him the twelve), which, in its manuscript transmission, is clearly designated “das Probestück in Leipzig” (the audition piece in Leipzig), as well as Du wahrer Gott und Davids Sohn. The latter cantata appears to have been the one the composer readied first, since the score and parts were prepared in the ducal residence at Köthen, which had been Bach’s domain of activity since late 1717; the composer brought them with him to Leipzig. Why he needed to prepare a second cantata—probably on short notice—has long been in dispute. Perhaps it seemed to him, after further consideration, that it would be safer to perform a work at the Leipzig audition that was closer to the style of Kuhnau and hence the Leipzigers’ listening preferences than the exceedingly demanding cantata Du wahrer Gott und Davids Sohn. This work, which we can call the “original audition piece,” was undoubtedly performed on Estomihi Sunday in 1723, probably not as the Hauptmusik (main music) before the sermon but afterward as sub communione (during the celebration of Holy Communion). But that decision came later; originally, the cantata would have indeed been intended as the main music—as is suggested by its close textual relationship to the Gospel reading of the day.
  
  The Gospel reading for Estomihi Sunday is found in the eighteenth chapter of Luke. It begins with the journey to Jerusalem, and thus it unmistakably marks the beginning of Jesus’s period of suffering: “Then he took unto him the twelve, and said unto them, Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things shall be accomplished, that are written by the prophets concerning the son of man” (Luke 18:31). The account of the healing of a blind man follows a bit later:

  And it came to pass, that as he came near Jericho, a certain blind man sat by the wayside begging: As he however heard the people pass by, he asked what it meant. And they told him that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by. And he cried, saying, Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me. And they who went before rebuked him, that he should be silent: but he cried much more, thou son of David, have mercy on me. But Jesus stood still, and commanded him to be brought unto him. As they brought him near to him, he asked him, and spoke, What do you want me to do for you? And he said, Lord, that I might see. And Jesus said unto him, Be seeing! Your faith has helped you. And immediately he received his sight, and followed him, glorifying God: and all the people, when they saw it, gave praise unto God. (Luke 18:35–43)

  The cantata text, whose author remains unknown, takes up the call of the blind man on the wayside in the first movement, an aria, and quotes it in the following manner with commentary:

  Du wahrer Gott und Davids Sohn,
  Der du von Ewigkeit in der Entfernung schon
  Mein Herzeleid und meine Leibespein
  Umständlich angesehn, erbarm dich mein.
  
  You true God and David’s son,
  Who from eternity at a distance has already
  Looked closely upon my affliction and my bodily pain,
  Have mercy upon me.

  This manner of quotation and simultaneous explanation and interpretation is characteristic of a large portion of cantata poetry of the era—but it is seen here in unusually concentrated form. This is true of the middle part of the aria with the plea:

  Und laß durch deine Wunderhand 
  Die so viel Böses abgewandt,
  Mir gleichfalls Hilf und Trost geschehen.
  
  And through your wondrous hand
  Which has averted so much evil,
  Let help and consolation befall me likewise.

  It is true as well for the following recitative, which begins, again alluding to the blind man on the wayside,

  Ach! Gehe nicht vorüber;
  Du aller Menschen Heil,
  Bist ja erschienen, 
  Die Kranken und nicht die Gesunden zu bedienen
  
  Oh! Do not pass by,
  You, salvation for all people,
  Are certainly appeared
  To serve the sick and not the healthy.

  The last line alludes to a word of Jesus from Luke 5:31, which he spoke as he sat at table with tax collectors and sinners: “Die Gesunden bedürfen des Arztes nicht, sondern die Kranken” (The healthy have no need of the doctor, but rather the sick). There is again simultaneous quotation and interpretation in the third aria, whose beginning, “Aller Augen warten, Herr, du allmächtiger Gott, auf dich” (The eyes of all wait, Lord, you almighty God, upon you), takes up a formulation from Psalm 145:15: “Aller Augen warten auf dich, und du gibst ihnen ihre Speise zu seiner Zeit” (The eyes of all wait upon you, and you give them their meal in due season). Physical infirmity and spiritual blindness are both meant in the passage:

  Gib denselben Kraft und Licht,
  Laß sie nicht
  Immerdar in Finsternissen!
  
  Grant them [meaning the eyes] strength and light
  Do not leave them
  Forever in darkness!

  
  The cantata libretto closes with the German Agnus Dei, Christe, du Lamm Gottes (Christ, you lamb of God), whose appeal “Erbarme dich unser” (Have mercy on us) connects to the first movement and the call of the blind man by the wayside.
  
  More than nearly any other work, this composition reflects Bach’s transition between music director at Köthen and cantor of St. Thomas School at Leipzig. In particular, the first movement is very much like chamber music with its filigree of five obbligato parts—two oboes, two voices, and basso continuo—as well as its hovering rhythm and thickly woven imitative textures; it is among the most exquisite and sophisticated compositions in all of Bach’s cantatas.² The second movement, a recitative for tenor, does not simply restrict itself to expressive interpretation of text but presents another dimension as well: the upper accompanying instruments—two oboes and first violin—present the chorale melody Christe, du Lamm Gottes independently of the voices. By contrast, the following choral movement, “Alle Augen warten,” is, outwardly, apparently simple, almost song-like. This is particularly true of the way in which “Aller Augen warten, Herr . . .” is presented by the choir in a refrain-like fashion, while the other lines of text are incorporated in sections, clearly set apart by restriction to the two lowest voices. Upon closer examination, however, it becomes clear that the music is not simple at all; the clarity of the rondo-like form is complicated by an artful voice leading in which the bass voice offers subtle quotations of the chorale melody Christe, du Lamm Gottes.
  
  Originally, the cantata (BWV 23.1) was to have ended with this movement. For unknown reasons, perhaps owing to the cantata’s new function as music for Communion (BWV 23.2), Bach appended yet another supremely artistic chorale movement, the tripartite Christe, du Lamm Gottes. Two years later, in March 1725, he used this chorale arrangement as the final movement of the second version of the St. John Passion BWV 245.2. In light of our current knowledge, this seems ever more justified, since the chorale movement originated as part of a Passion, now mostly lost, that Bach must have composed by 1717 at the latest in Weimar. Another performance took place in 1769 in Hamburg: Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach used his father’s chorale arrangement as the closing movement of his own St. Matthew Passion. The printed text booklet bore the precautionary note: “Choral. Wird von der Gemeine nicht mitgesungen. Christe! Du Lamm Gottes, der Du trägst etc.” (Chorale. Not to be sung by the congregation. Christe! Thou Lamb of God, who bears etc.).
  
  When Johann Sebastian Bach decided to integrate this elaborate Passion chorale into his Estomihi cantata, he probably had at first no idea of the difficulties this would entail. Most likely with an eye on the challenging choral parts as well as the preparation time, which was certainly quite short, he assigned a traditional Stadtpfeiffer ensemble—cornet and three trombones—to support the four voices. In order to achieve a key that would allow this ensemble to be played, he needed to transpose the entire cantata a half tone lower, to replace the oboes with oboi d’amore, and to have a series of new parts copied out.³ In this altered form, the cantata was performed in February 1723 and perhaps once again in the following year. Several years afterward there was yet another performance (BWV 23.3); this time, Bach omitted the brass ensemble and thus could return to the original key. 
  
  Because of its eventful history, the cantata Du wahrer Gott und Davids Sohn had a remarkably extensive set of performing materials. From Bach’s estate they came into the custody of the Berlin State Library and were stored there undisturbed until the beginning of the twentieth century. Then, someone appears to have concluded that no one would have anything against his appropriating several of the many performing parts. As might be expected, the theft went unnoticed until the 1970s, when the parts, purloined before the First World War, unexpectedly turned up in Thuringia. Shortly afterward, they were returned to Berlin⁴—to the great pleasure of not only the librarians but also Bach research, which soon found itself well positioned to solve many riddles regarding the origin and performance history of Bach’s Estomihi cantata. 

   

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. NBR, 101 (no. 95).↵
  2. Geck (1972).↵
  3. Wolff (1978).↵
  4. Schulze (1977). Regarding the ascertainment of five additional parts, see Wolff (2002).↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:36:18+00:00 Preise, Jerusalem, den Herrn BWV 119 / BC B 3. 16 Town Council Election. First performed 08/30/1723 in Leipzig (Cycle I). plain 2024-04-10T16:25:03+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 2023-09-26T09:32:57+00:00 Nun komm der Heiden Heiland BWV 62 / BC A2. 16 Chorale cantata on hymn by Martin Luther. 1st Sunday of Advent. First performed 12/03/1724 in Leipzig (Cycle II). plain 2024-03-28T15:02:36+00:00 1724-12-03 BWV 62 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 11Advent Chorale Cantata First Sunday of Advent BC A 2 Johann Sebastian Bach Martin Luther Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Nun komm der Heiden Heiland, BWV 62 / BC A 2" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 15 James A. Brokaw II Chorale Cantata Annual Cycle Leipzig II

  First Sunday of Advent

  Nun komm der Heiden Heiland BWV 62 (Now come, savior of the Gentiles) is the later of two cantatas with the same name for the first Sunday of Advent. The earlier work, written in 1714 for Weimar and based on a poetic text by Erdmann Neumeister, includes one strophe from the Advent chorale that gives the work its name. By contrast, this cantata, written a decade later, makes use of all strophes of the chorale. Here—as in most of the works in what is known as Bach’s chorale cantata cycle—only the opening and closing chorale strophes are used without change, while the others are more or less freely reshaped into recitatives and arias. This paraphrase—for which an as yet unidentified author is responsible, perhaps active in Leipzig around 1724—is actually a second reworking, since the text prepared by Martin Luther in 1524 is itself a German version of the ancient Latin hymn Veni redemptor gentium (Come, redeemer of the nations). As mentioned, Luther’s first strophe in the version prepared for Bach remained untouched:

  Nun komm der Heiden Heiland,
  Der Jungfrauen Kind erkannt,
  Des sich wundert alle Welt,
  Gott solch Geburt ihm bestellt.
  
  Now come, the savior of the Gentiles,
  Known as the Virgin’s child,
  Of this, all the world marvels: 
  God ordained him such a birth.

  
  The same is true for the last strophe, with its praise of the Trinity:

  Lob sei Gott, dem Vater, g’ton,
  Lob sei Gott, sein’m eingen Sohn,
  Lob sei Gott, dem heilgen Geist,
  Immer und in Ewigkeit.
  
  Praise to God the Father, be,
  Praise to God, his only Son,
  Praise to God, the Holy Spirit,
  Ever and in eternity.

  Luther’s spare diction is restricted to the essential and is often merely suggestive. The more ambitious versification of the paraphrases written two centuries later stands in sharp contrast. For example, Luther’s sixth strophe reads as follows:

  Der du bist dem Vater gleich,
  Führ hinaus den Sieg im Fleisch,
  Daß dein ewig Gottes Gewalt
  In uns das krank’ Fleisch enthalt.
  
  You who are equal to the Father,
  Guide the victory in the flesh
  That your eternal power of God
  Supports in us the weak flesh.

  From this, the librettist crafted an aria text heroic in design in which the model can be sensed only vaguely:

  Streite, siege, starker Held,
  Sei vor uns im Fleische kräftig,
  Sei geschäftig,
  Das Vermögen in uns Schwachen
  Stark zu machen!
  
  Fight, conquer, strong hero,
  Be mighty for us in the flesh,
  Be vigorous and make
  The capability in us weak ones
  Strong!

  
  The approach is similarly free in the penultimate movement of the cantata, a recitative. Luther’s penultimate strophe is the model here:

  Dein Krippen glänzt hell und klar,
  Die Nacht gibt ein neu Licht dar,
  Dunkel muß nicht kommen drein,
  Der Glaub bleibt immer im Schein.
  
  Your manger shines bright and clear,
  In the night there is a new light,
  Darkness must not come within,
  Faith must remain ever radiant.

  
  In iambic meter, the preferred style for recitatives, this becomes:

  Wir ehren diese Herrlichkeit
  Und nahen nun zu deiner Krippen
  Und preisen mit erfreuten Lippen,
  Was du uns zubereit’:
  Die Dunkelheit zerstört uns nicht
  Und sahen dein unendlich Licht.
  
  We honor this glory
  And draw near now to your manger
  And praise with delighted lips
  What you prepared for us:
  The darkness did not destroy us,
  And we saw your unending light.

  The poet could have created more unity had he chosen a formulation for the fourth verse such as “Was du für uns hast zubereit” (What you have prepared for us). Whether the rather forceful foreshortening is to be seen as an artistic device of the cantata poet or an intervention on the part of the composer is a question that must be left open.
  
  As mentioned earlier, Bach composed the work based on this libretto in 1724. A reperformance is documented during the period 1732 to 1735. A bit later, another performance seems to have taken place. Remarkably, Bach’s holograph, his manuscript score in his own hand, contains the following outline of the service:

  Order of the Divine Service in Leipzig on the First Sunday in Advent: Morning.
  1. Preluding. 
  2. Motet. 
  3. Preluding on the Kyrie, which is performed throughout in concerted manner [musiziert]. 
  4. Intoning before the altar. 
  5. Reading of the Epistle. 
  6. Singing of the Litany. 
  7. Preluding on [and singing of] the Chorale. 
  8. Reading of the Gospel. 
  9. Preluding on [and performance of] the principal music [cantata]. 
  10. Singing of the Creed [Luther’s Credo hymn]. 
  11. The Sermon. 
  12. After the Sermon, as usual, singing of several verses from the hymnal; 
  13. Words of Institution [of the Sacrament]. 
  14. Preluding on [and performance of] the Music [probably the second half of the cantata]. And after the same, alternate preluding and the singing of chorales, until the end of the Communion, etc.

  It hardly seems likely that Bach would have needed this memory prompt after more than ten years of service as Thomaskantor. In 1723 Bach had entered a nearly identical service outline¹ in the holograph score for the older cantata on Nun komm der Heiden Heiland (BWV 61), composed in Weimar, brought to Leipzig, and reperformed there in December; this outline might in fact have been meant for him at that time. But the notation from the period after 1730 calls for another explanation. It may have arisen from the fact that in 1736, after a delay of three years, the elector of Saxony conferred upon Bach the title Hofcompositeur, and he needed to travel to Dresden to receive it. On this occasion, on the afternoon of December 1, 1736, he performed a two-and-a-half-hour concert on the new Silbermann organ in the Church of Our Lady and thus could not possibly have been back in Leipzig on December 2, the first Sunday of Advent. Bach may have looked beforehand for a substitute for his Leipzig official duties and written out the rather complicated sequence of the church service for him. This would elegantly explain the remarkable outline in the score and, at the same time, provide evidence for a reperformance in December 1736.
  
  A concerted arrangement of the chorale, characteristic of the chorale cantata cycle, opens the cantata. Here the melody of the hymn is presented line by line in long note values by one of the four voices, while the other three support it harmonically or are subordinated to it in the manner of a contrapuntal motet. The unity of the instrumental component serves the cohesion of the entire movement. The motet-like portion, in which the individual chorale lines are preceded by anticipatory imitation, is significantly more extended compared to many other chorale cantatas, as is the extensive coloratura meant as tone painting at the passage “des sich wundert alle Welt” (at which the entire world stands in awe). Of course, for this kind of elaborate arrangement, the brevity of text and melody is essential.
  
  In the second movement, a tenor aria whose text begins “Bewundert, o Menschen, dies große Geheimnis” (Admire, O people, this great mystery), the dance character is striking, as is the closed twenty-four-measure instrumental section at the beginning. With its 3
  8 meter, the movement’s type is roughly situated between passepied and minuet and is usually dominated by a song-like melodic and rhythmically pregnant head motif. The robust bass aria “Streite, siege, starker Held,” introduced by a brief recitative, offers a stark contrast. With its fanfare-like unison passages in the accompaniment and rolling passages for the voice, it belongs to the genre “Aria with Heroic Gesture,” so typical of the era. A sharp contrast to this earthboundedness is set by the otherworldly accompanied recitative for the two high voices that follows, which musically illustrates the birth of Jesus and the journey to his crib with luminous, unearthly key modulations. In conclusion, the melody of the ancient Latin church hymn Veni redemptor gentium is heard once again in four-part texture: “Nun komm der Heiden Heiland.”

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. NBR, 113 (no. 113).—Trans.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:36:18+00:00 Gott ist unsere Zuversicht BWV 197 / BC B 16. 14 Wedding. First performed 1736 to 1737 in Leipzig after Trinity 1727. . plain 2024-04-02T18:55:26+00:00 BWV 197 Leipzig Wedding BC B 16 Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Gott ist unsere Zuversicht, BWV 197 / BC B 16" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 604 James A. Brokaw II 1736 to 1737 Leipzig after Trinity 1727

  Wedding Ceremony, 1736–1737

  Bach inscribed his autograph score of the cantata Gott ist unsere Zuversicht BWV 197 (God is our assurance) with the words In diebus nuptiarum (On wedding days). Hence, it is for wedding celebrations and belongs to the not particularly comprehensive group of Trauungskantaten (wedding ceremony cantatas) or, in the terminology of Bach’s day, Brautmessen (bridal masses). Furnishing wedding ceremonies and celebrations with festive music was an ancient tradition, and the “better society” of Leipzig saw no reason to give it up or restrict its use. On the contrary: the annual average of such commissions was relatively stable, making it possible to calculate Bach’s supplemental income as a nearly constant amount. Regarding these fees, a regulation at St. Thomas School observed tersely that “with respect to the bridal masses, the cantor has until now been given one reichsthaler for each, with which he shall also henceforth be satisfied and shall not demand more.”¹
  
  In practice, however, a more lucrative arrangement was in force. Former St. Thomas School students described it when they were asked in 1781, when disagreements about fee amounts arose. Gottlob Friedrich Rothe, sexton at St. Thomas Church and later known as a friend of the writer Johann Gottfried Seume, went on record saying: “In previous times, the cantors Kuhnau, Bach, Harrer, along with the organists, served in person at bridal masses and afterward held a banquet as recreation. For the sake of convenience, the old Martius told the groom to give a thaler instead of this banquet. Since that time the thaler has always been given to those people.”² The concern here is for catering in addition to cash benefits, for the participation of cantors and organists in celebratory meals, and, later, for the more popular, time- saving option of receiving monetary compensation in lieu of participating in the wedding reception feast. The “alte Martius,” responsible for the new regulation of 1730, functioned in Bach’s day in Leipzig as director of weddings and funerals. Rothe’s colleague Carl Ephraim Haupt, sexton of St. Nicholas Church, unearthed another memory in 1781: “For a full bridal mass the Herr Cantor received two thalers, which he always kept, and one thaler instead of a double flask of wine (which I myself, as a student, many times gave the blessed Herr Cantor Bach in kind; the food has long since ceased).”³And so, contrary to the stipulation in the school regulations, the cantor of St. Thomas School received three thalers, one of which was paid in kind for some time and later was paid as a cash benefit. Two thalers went to the St. Thomas School students and five to the city musicians, or eight, in case trumpets and drums were involved. Hence, it was understandable that often the fathers of brides avoided these expenses and, under various pretexts, arranged stille Trauungen (silent weddings) without music or had the ceremony performed outdoors in the countryside. Just as understandably, the clergy and musicians tried to collect the fees to which they were entitled and that they had already taken into account in calculating their basic salaries; many legal disputes were fought over this.
  
  These relatively high fees were incurred by the full bridal masses—or, as we would say today, wedding ceremony cantatas (Trauungskantaten). "Half bridal masses" (halben Brautmessen) were less lavish, financially as well as musically. These involved the performance of several wedding chorales with instrumental accompaniment. These obligations were less profitable and productive in every respect, and the Thomaskantor made every effort to pass them off to a substitute. That person, most frequently a prefect in St. Thomas School, would then find out how well he could get along with the mischievous band of singers. In the early summer of 1736, the only way Gottfried Theodor Krauß, then twenty-two years old, knew how to earn respect was through corporal punishment. This touched off a long-lasting dispute between the cantor and rector of St. Thomas School that has come to be known in Bach biography as the “prefects’ battle” (Präfektenstreit). In one of his missives to the Leipzig town council, the rector remarked, viciously, that the “misfortune” (Unglück) of the prefect, who ultimately had to leave the school, was

  to be attributed solely to the negligence of the Cantor. For if he had gone to the wedding service as he should have, since there was nothing wrong with him, instead of thinking it was beneath his dignity to conduct at a wedding service where only chorales were to be sung (for which reason he has absented himself from several such wedding services, including the recent one for the Krögels, in connection with which, as I could not help hearing, the musicians in service to Your Magnificences and You, Noble Sirs, complained to other people)—then the said Krause would have had no opportunity to indulge in those excesses, both in the Church and outside.⁴

  
  The cantata Gott ist unsre Zuversicht is a true full bridal mass. It was composed during the tension-filled years 1736 and 1737, when the prefects’ battle threatened to shake the foundations of musical tradition at Leipzig’s St. Thomas School. Who the bridal couple may have been cannot be established today. The unknown librettist crafted his text in such a general fashion that any search for clues has little hope of success. Perhaps this is in fact an advantage of the libretto, reflecting Bach’s intention to use the cantata over and over. The opening movement begins with a phrase in the first verse of Psalm 46:

  Gott ist unsre Zuversicht,
  Wir vertrauen seinen Händen. 
  Wie er unsre Wege führt,
  Wie er unser Herz regiert, 
  Da ist Segen aller Enden.
  
  God is our assurance, 
  We trust his hands.
  As he guides our ways, 
  As he governs our heart,
  There is blessing for all purposes.

  
  Next, two recitatives surround an aria before the cantata’s first part, performed before the ceremony, closes with the third strophe from Luther’s chorale Nun bitten wir den Heiligen Geist (Now we implore the holy spirit): “Du süße Lieb, schenk uns deine Gunst” (You sweet love, grant us your favor).
  
  The aria in this first part of the cantata is striking; its text begins with these peculiar lines:

  Schläfert allen Sorgenkummer 
  In den Schlummer 
  Kindlichen Vertrauens ein.
  
  Put to sleep all care and sorrow 
  In the slumber
  Of childlike trust.

  
  This is an indication of parody, the retexting of music already on hand. The model is easily identified: it is found in what would later be known as Bach’s Easter Oratorio BWV 249 in the tenor aria “Sanfte soll mein Todeskummer” (Gentle shall my deathly trouble), which in turn goes back to a lullaby (Schlummerarie) in the secular model for the oratorio, the Shepherd Cantata BWV 249.1 as it is often called. Bach obviously planned to adapt this music, composed in 1725, and instructed his librettist accordingly. His efforts to create an appropriate new text were unrewarded, however, and Bach decided against his original intention in favor of new composition.
  
  Bach proceeded differently in the second part, performed after the ceremony. Here both arias go back textually as well as musically to a Christmas cantata that probably originated in 1728, Ehre sei Gott in der Höhe BWV 197.1 (Glory to God in the highest). The greeting to the infant Jesus, “O du angenehmer Schatz” (O you charming treasure), became “O du angenehmes Paar” (O you charming couple). These lines in the original are just as purposeful:

  Ich lasse dich nicht, 
  Ich schließe dich ein
  Im Herzen durch Lieben und Glauben.
  
  I will not let you go, 
  I enclose you
  In my heart through love and faith.

  
  They became these more general and less pointed lines:

  Vergnügen und Lust, 
  Gedeihen und Heil
  Wird wachsen und stärken und laben.
  
  Pleasure and delight, 
  Prosperity and salvation
  Will grow and strengthen and nourish.

  
  The second part of the cantata closes with a strophe from Georg Neumark’s Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten (Whoever only lets dear God rule). Bach’s score is silent as to which text is intended. Another rather uncertain tradition presents Neumark’s seventh strophe in a partially paraphrased version:

  So wandelt froh auf Gottes Wegen, 
  Und was ihr tut, das tut getreu.
  Verdienet eures Gottes Segen, 
  Denn der ist alle Morgen neu:
  Denn welcher seine Zuversicht
  Auf Gott setzt, den verläßt er nicht.
  
  Then wander happily on God’s ways, 
  And whatever you do, do it faithfully. 
  Earn your God’s blessing,
  For it is every morning new:
  For whoever places his trust
  In God, he will not forsake him.

  
  As discussed, there are two layers of different ages in Bach’s composition. The younger one includes the opening chorus, first aria, all the recitatives, and, mutatis mutandis, both choral movements. The older one is represented by the two arias in the second part, albeit with some alterations. The first of these arias, “O du angenehmes Paar” (O you charming pair), for bass, obbligato oboe, two muted violins, bassoon, and basso continuo, was scored for alto and two transverse flutes in the Christmas cantata; the original key, G major, was kept. The second aria, whose text begins “Verngügen und Lust” (Pleasure and delight), was originally scored in D major for bass and obbligato oboe d’amore. In the new version, it was transposed to G major and arranged for soprano, solo violin, and two oboi d’amore. The two oboes are only entrusted with filler parts, owing to the higher ranges of singing and instrumental obbligato parts. The wind parts in low register now do not allow the distance to the continuo bass to seem too large.
  
  The most important of the newer group of movements are the opening chorus and first aria. Accompanied by a large festival orchestra with trumpets and drums, as well as woodwinds and strings, the chorus enters after an instrumental introduction of twenty-four measures with the obligatory fugal exposition on the earnest text beginning “Gott ist unsre Zuversicht, / Wir vertrauen seinen Händen.” But this episode flows directly into several sustained chords, after which all polyphonic ambitions seem tossed aside. The loose interplay of vocal and instrumental parts gives hardly any hint that this is a church cantata for a particular occasion. Instead, the writing reminds us of Bach’s secular cantatas between 1730 and 1740.
  
  Similar features are found in the third movement, the “slumber aria,” scored for alto, oboe d’amore, strings, and basso continuo. But here Bach’s intentions regarding an adequate realization of the textual content can be clearly felt and easily comprehensible. If the aria in the Weissenfels Tafelmusik of 1725 had a unified scope, a certain degree of contradiction crept into the new version of the text for Easter of the same year, seen in the words “Todeskummer” (death throes) and “Schlummer” (slumber), on the one hand, and “tröstlich” (comforting) and “erfrischend” (refreshing), on the other. The librettist of the wedding cantata followed this tendency blindly; to the beginning section, with its “Schläfert alle Sorgenkummer,” he added a contrasting continuation with the words “Gottes Augen, welche wachen” (God’s eyes, which watch). Perhaps unwittingly, he failed to accomplish his task, thereby challenging the cantor of St. Thomas to compose a new composition, which had not been his initial intention. In this way, the contradiction intended by the text—but basically unintentional—is elevated to a principle, and the middle part of the aria is distinguished from the external parts by the change of key, meter, tempo,
  and thematic material.    

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. “Anlangende die Brautmessen, ist bisher dem Cantori von ieder ein Reichs-Thaler gegeben worden, mit welchem er auch hinführo sich begnügen lassen, und mehreres nicht fordern soll.”↵
  2. “In vorigen Zeiten haben die Cantores Kuhnau, Bach, Harrer, die gantzen Brautmessen in der Kirche und im Hauße, so wie die Organisten, in Persohn abgewartet, und nachher zur Recreation, eine Mahlzeit erhalten. Zu mehrerer Bequemlichkeit für solche, hat dann circa 1730, der alte Martius, den Bräutigam disponirt, ihnen statt dieser Mahlzeit einen Thaler zu geben. Seit der Zeit ist dieser Thaler allemal denen Leuten mit liquidiert worden” (BD III:342 [no. 852]).↵
  3. “Von einer ganzen Brautmeße bekommt der Herr Cantor 2 Thaler, die er allemal erhalten, und 1 Thaler statt einer Doppel-Flasche Wein (welche ich als Schüler dem seeligen Cantori Bach vielmahl selbst in natura gehohlt habe, die Speisung ist schon längstens abgekommen)” (BD III:342 [no. 851]).↵
  4. NBR, 181ff. (no. 184).↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:34:17+00:00 Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis BWV 21 / BC A 99. 11 Third Sunday After Trinity. First performed 06/17/1714 at Weimar. plain 2024-03-20T15:47:12+00:00 1714-06-17 BWV 21 Weimar 50.979493, 11.323544 03Trinity03 Third Sunday After Trinity BC A 99 Johann Sebastian Bach Salomon Franck Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis, BWV 21 / BC A 99" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 305 James A. Brokaw II Weimar as concertmaster

  Third Sunday after Trinity, June 17, 1714

  The cantor of St. Thomas School, Johann Sebastian Bach, presented the cantata Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis BWV 21.3 (I had much grieving) for the first time in Leipzig on June 13, 1723, the third Sunday after Trinity. This date, only a few weeks after his official assumption of office, marks an important shift in his production plans. In addition to new compositions of concerted church music, there were also reperformances of older works, cantatas that Bach had composed for Mühlhausen and, in particular, for Weimar and brought with him to Leipzig by way of Köthen. By all appearances, the Leipzig performance of our cantata was preceded by one at Hamburg (BWV 21.2) as part of Bach’s application (made from Köthen¹) for the position of organist at St. Jacobi and thus took place in the autumn of 1720, according to our knowledge today. Bach was not awarded the Hamburg position; however, the cantata performance had a later, unexpected echo.
  
  In his journal, Critica Musica, published in 1725, the composer and influential music theorist Johann Mattheson mocked what in his view were unnecessary, irrational text repetitions in movements 2, 3, and 8 of Bach’s cantata. After taking issue with a work by the Halle music director Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow, Mattheson took aim at Bach’s “amusing” (kurzweillig) and, in his opinion, laughable diction as follows:

  In order that good old Zachau [Handel’s teacher] might have company, and not be quite so alone, let us set beside him an otherwise excellent practicing musician of today, who for a long time does nothing but repeat: “I, I, I, I had much grief, I had much grief, in my heart, in my heart. I had much grief, etc., in my heart, etc., etc., etc., etc., etc. I had much grief etc., in my heart, etc., etc.” Then again: “Sighs, tears, sorrow, anguish (rest), sighs, tears, anxious longing, fear and death (rest) gnaw at my oppressed heart, etc.” Also: “Come, my Jesus, and refresh (rest) and rejoice with Thy glance (rest), come, my Jesus (rest), come, my Jesus, and refresh and rejoice . . . with Thy glance this soul, etc.”²

  
  Mattheson’s biting ridicule does not appear to have bothered Bach. On the contrary, the cantata Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis seems to have had pride of place in his oeuvre. Evidence for this is seen not only in the note in his own hand on the title folder containing the performance materials, explaining that the work could be used “in ogni tempo” (at all times) of the church year, but also in the performances on important occasions: the application to Hamburg of 1720 and the start of reperformances of older cantatas in Leipzig in 1723. In his own hand, Bach entered yet another date worth mentioning: the indication of a performance on the third Sunday after Trinity 1714 in Weimar (BWV 21.1). This was a special situation insofar as the young Prince Johann Ernst, a gifted composer and violinist who had returned to Weimar a year earlier from a grand tour through many countries, was now about to leave again for the baths at Taunus to seek a cure for a steadily worsening ailment. According to the monthly rotation schedule, Bach was expected to perform a cantata in the castle church on June 17, 1714; this would be his final opportunity to offer the departing prince a note of consolation by way of a composition. The eighteen-year-old Prince Johann Ernst was probably the most important point of contact at court for the organist and concertmaster, older by ten years. Bach certainly had reason enough to present his patron with a representative church cantata before his departure—a departure that no one had any way of knowing would be forever.
  
  The extensive, eleven-movement cantata was probably not newly composed for this occasion; it seems more likely that the Weimar production of 1714 was itself a reperformance. A predecessor of our cantata with ten or even eleven movements may itself have been preceded by one or more older versions, each with six movements, whose dates and occasions can only be sketchily guessed at. It seems unlikely that any of these dimly perceivable early versions were assigned to the third Sunday after Trinity,³ since neither the text in the form handed down to us nor the short version of the supposedly oldest components shows any relation to the Gospel reading for that Sunday. More likely is a connection to the Epistle from the fifth chapter of the first letter of Peter and its core phrase, “Alle eure Sorge werfet auf ihn; denn er sorget für euch” (7; Cast all of your cares upon him, for he cares for you).
  
  In fact, this thought—sorrow and affliction, on the one hand, consolation and hope, on the other—courses through the entire text of the cantata. At its beginning stands a verse from Psalm 94: “Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis in meinem Herzen; aber deine Tröstungen erquicken meine Seele” (19; I had much affliction in my heart, but your consolations restore my soul). The free poetry that follows at first stays close to the keyword “Bekümmernis.” The first aria begins “Seufzer, Tränen, Kummer, Not” (Sighing, tears, trouble, need); the ensuing recitative laments God’s turning away from his child; the second aria compares the tears of affliction to a sea of mortal dangers. A verse from Psalm 42 provides temporary relief: “Was betrübst du dich meine Seele, und bist so unruhig in mir? Harre auf Gott; denn ich werde ihm noch danken, daß er meines Angesichtes Hilfe und mein Gott ist” (11; Why are you aggrieved, my soul, and so disquieted within me? Wait upon God, for I shall yet thank him, that he is the help of my countenance, and is my God). This concludes the first part of the cantata, to be performed before the sermon.
  
  With the beginning of the second part, the genre changes. Jesus and the soul hold a dialogue⁴ clearly inspired by the Song of Songs, and the classic search theme must be included:

  Ach Jesu, meine Ruh,
  Mein Licht, wo bleibest du?
      O Seele sieh! Ich bin bei dir. 
  Bei mir? Hier ist ja lauter Nacht.
      Ich bin dein treuer Freund, 
      Der auch im Dunkeln wacht, 
      Wo lauter Schalken seind.
  
  Ah Jesus, my repose,
  My light, where do you tarry?    
      O soul, look! I am with you.    
  With me? Here it is surely darkest night.
      I am your loyal friend,
      Who keeps watch also in the darkness, 
      Where true rogues are.

  After this recitative dialogue, the two join together in a duet that, in the diction typical of the Song of Songs poetry of the Baroque, ends with these lines:

  Ach Jesu, durchsüße mir Seele und Herze
      Entweichet, ihr Sorgen, verschwinde, du Schmerze.
  
  Ah Jesus, sweeten my soul and heart 
      Flee, you cares, vanish, you pains.

  The last aria exhibits the same meter and nearly the same vocabulary. Beforehand, however, there appears another psalm passage, connected to two chorale strophes. Psalm 116 provides the verse “Sei nun wieder zufrieden, meine Seele, denn der Herr tut dir Guts” (May you once again be at peace, my soul, for the Lord has done for you good things); the two strophes are from Georg Neumark’s 1657 hymn Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten (Whoever only lets the dear God rule). The text abruptly concludes with a passage from the fifth chapter of the Revelation of St. John: “Das Lamm, das erwürget ist, ist würdig zu nehmen Kraft und Reichtum und Weisheit und Stärke und Preis und Lob. . . . Lob und Ehre und Preis und Gewalt sei unserm Gott von Ewigkeit zu Ewigkeit. Amen. Alleluja” (12–13; The Lamb, which was slain, is worthy to receive power and riches and wisdom and might and glory and blessing   Tribute and honor and praise and power to our God from eternity to eternity. Amen. Alleluia).
  
  Bach’s composition matches the diversity of the source texts; indeed, it seems intended to unify the heterogeneity. A stately sinfonia in the mold of a slow concerto movement begins with an oboe and solo violin in expressive dialogue. Its sorrowful effusions form a transition to the first choral movement, whose two contrasting sections seem to prefigure the overall course of the entire cantata. Close canonic structures, which are symbolic of multitude, and striking dissonances of the second, which are in the style of Italian concertos of the era, characterize the first section with its boundless, intensifying “Bekümmernis.” Only in the last third of the movement, where consolation is at issue, do things brighten with a more lively tempo and relaxed diction. Sorrow and doubt predominate once again in the following three movements. The motivically uniform soprano aria is full of torment, with its expressive dialogue between oboe and voice. In contrast, the tenor aria develops a Baroque abundance with its comparison of “Tränenbächen” (streams of tears) and a “Meer voller Trübsal” (sea of affliction), strengthened by the full complement of strings. The choral movement on the verse from Psalm 42 provides a calming conclusion to the first part. With its fragmented structure and concluding fugue, it strongly recalls Bach’s compositional style of the Mühlhausen period around 1707 and thereby strengthens the hypothesis of an early origin.
  
  A significantly more modern formal world opens with the beginning of the cantata’s second half in the duet movements for soprano and bass, traditionally assigned to the soul and Jesus. The same is true for the lively, animated tenor aria in the next to last position. On the other hand, the severe chorale motet “Sei nun wieder zufrieden” (May you once again be at peace) is again indebted to an older style. In two expositions, of which the second is intensified by colla parte instrumentation, the motet connects its psalm text to the melody and text of the hymn Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten. The magnificent concluding movement probably belonged originally to another composition, the rest of which is lost. It combines a slow opening part in which voices and instruments alternate in blocklike fashion with a quick fugue. In the combination of fugal voice exchange procedure and concerto form, it carries out a thrilling, gradual intensification that culminates in an abrupt “Alleluia” conclusion that seems to anticipate the finale of Mozart’s Symphony no. 39 in E-flat Major, K. 543.
  
  In all, the cantata Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis seems intentionally to present a cross section of the work of Johann Sebastian Bach, barely thirty years old, that draws upon all registers of his abilities as a representational work for application, even at the cost of unity. This brimming abundance could explain the appearance of the cantata at important stations of the composer’s life in 1714, 1720, and 1723, just as it demonstrates the high estimation of the work held by the composer himself, his contemporaries, and posterity.

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. Maul and Wollny (2003).↵
  2. NBR, 325 (no. 319).—Trans.↵
  3. Petzoldt (1993).↵
  4. Wolff (1996).↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:32:59+00:00 Himmelskönig, sei willkommen BWV 182 / BC A 53. 10 Palm Sunday. First performed 03/25/1714 at Weimar. Text by Salomon Franck. plain 2024-04-02T18:54:40+00:00 1714-03-25 BWV 182 Weimar 50.979493, 11.323544 20PalmSunday Palm Sunday BC A 53 Johann Sebastian Bach Salomonn Franck Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Himmelskönig, sei willkommen, BWV 182 / BC A 53" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 169 James A. Brokaw II Weimar as concertmaster

  Palm Sunday, March 25, 1714

  In several respects, the cantata Himmelskönig, sei willkommen BWV 182 (King of heaven, be welcomed) occupies a special place among the works of Johann Sebastian Bach. One of these is the fact that this is the work with which Bach began his regular composition of cantatas at Weimar. Another exceptional feature concerns the work’s intended place in the church year.
  
  For Bach, the move from Mühlhausen to Weimar in the early summer of 1708 meant a change from a position as city organist to a similar one at court. He served for nearly six years as court organist and chamber musician before he gained a promotion. If his main focus had previously been on organ performance and composition and, according to family lore, gaining “the goodwill of his gracious employers,” he now had to turn to a new, more strictly regimented realm of activity. The earliest biography states: “In the year 1714 he was named concertmaster at the same court. Now, the functions connected with this post then consisted mainly in composing church pieces and performing them.”¹ At present we have no further detail about the appointment because part of the archive was destroyed in 1774 when a lightning strike and resulting fire consumed much of the Weimar castle.
  
  Fortunately, at the beginning of the twentieth century an alternative was found for the lost records. The notes of a court secretary, akin to a diary, were examined in the Weimar archive, providing fairly precise points of reference. In the volume for 1714 the notes state: “Friday, the 2. of March, 1714, His Serene Highness the Reigning Duke most graciously conferred upon the quondam Court Organist Bach, at his most humble request, the title of Concertmaster, with official rank below that of Vice-Capellmeister Drese, for which he is to be obliged and to be held accountable to perform new works monthly.”²
  
  Bach’s “most humble request” has not been handed down. Even so, it is worth considering what it probably contained. The court organist would have referred to his appointment in 1708 with “most humble gratitude,” to the continuing grace and kind benevolence of the entire princely house, and to his obligations regarding the castle church organ and the court chapel ensemble. At this point, Johann Sebastian Bach would have started to speak of the high cost of living, the need to support his ever-increasing family, and the urgency of either receiving an increase in salary at court or seeking advancement elsewhere. For this last possibility, he held a trump card in his sleeve: in mid-December 1713, having successfully passed an audition, he had been chosen as organist at the Church of Our Lady in Halle and had a written contract in hand, ready for countersigning, and was at that moment engaged in drawing out negotiations with more monetary demands.
  
  If he wanted to retain his capable court organist, Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Saxe-Weimar had no other option than to give in to the pressure and strike a compromise acceptable to both sides. The appointment of a certain Georg Christoph Strattner in 1695 could serve as a model. Strattner was named vice music director with the requirement that he “in the absence of the current Capellmeister Johann Samuel Drese, or when he is unable to come out because of his known physical infirmity, shall direct the entire chapel, and in such cases hold the usual rehearsals in Drese’s quarters, and not less frequently than every fourth Sunday, perform a piece of his own composition in the ducal castle church under his own direction.” Strattner died in 1704; his position was taken over by a son of music director Drese, who was still in office in 1704 as well as 1714—and still sick.
  
  And so, in early 1714, the new position of concertmaster was arranged for Johann Sebastian Bach, together with the age-old obligation to provide newly composed Stücke (pieces)—in today’s parlance, church cantatas—in the castle church every month, in other words, on a four-week rotation. Traditionally, rehearsals were to be held outside the church, but there appear to have been problems with this. The notes of the court secretary make quite clear: “NB. Rehearsing of the musical pieces at home or one’s own lodgings was changed as of March 23, 1714, and it was expressly ordered that it should always take place in the church chapel.”³ Two days after the issuance of this direct order, Bach’s cantata Himmelskönig, sei willkommen was heard for the first time in the Kirchen-Cappelle, the elevated music gallery in the church. 
  
  Certainly, this work was not the very first Weimar church cantata by Bach. Two solo cantatas on texts by the Darmstadt court librarian Georg Christian Lehms probably preceded it: the cantatas Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut BWV 199 and Widerstehe doch der Sünde BWV 54. In addition, a composition on a text by Erdmann Neumeister could have originated before 1714: the Sexagesima cantata Gleichwie der Regen und Schnee vom Himmel fällt BWV 18. But it is just as clear that Bach’s Himmelskönig cantata is his first work composed “von Amts wegen” (officially in his new position). It is for Palm Sunday, the last Sunday before Easter. The Gospel reading for this Sunday, Matthew 21:4–8, is an account of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem:

  All this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, saying, “Tell ye the daughter of Zion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass, and a colt, the foal of an ass.” And the disciples went, and did as Jesus commanded them, And brought the ass, and the colt, and put on them their clothes, and they set him thereon. And a very great multitude spread their garments in the way; others cut down branches from the trees, and scattered them in the way.

  
  It is here that the cantata’s librettist begins. We do not know who it was; suggestions focus on the Weimar ducal consistory secretary Salomon Franck. Evidence in favor of Franck, twenty-six years older than Bach, includes the relatively conservative form of the text. Although it does not avoid the modern aria form, it seems to regard the contemporary recitative with undisguised mistrust. At the beginning of his text he placed a short strophe, meant for the chorus, that compares the arrival of Christ in Jerusalem to the human heart:

  Himmelskönig, sei willkommen, 
  Laß uns auch dein Zion sein!
  Komm herein,
  Du hast uns das Herz genommen.
  
  King of heaven, be welcomed, 
  Let us too be your Zion!
  Come in,
  You have stolen our hearts.

  
  A recitative follows, yet it contains no modern madrigalistic versification. Instead, it cites Psalm 40:7, certainly words of the psalmist yet unmistakably placed in the mouth of Jesus and binding the events of Palm Sunday and Holy Week:

  Siehe, ich komme; im Buch ist von mir geschrieben.
  Deinen Willen, mein Gott, tu ich gerne.
  
  See, I come; in the book it is written of me. 
  I delight to do thy will, my God.

  
  In various ways, this logical connection characterizes all the movements that follow: three arias, a chorale, the concluding chorus. The second of the three arias takes up the “garments” mentioned in Matthew; it now appears as “unbeflecktes Kleid” (spotless garment), a metaphor for the cleansing of sin:

  Leget euch dem Heiland unter, 
  Herzen, die ihr christlich seid! 
  Tragt ein unbeflecktes Kleid 
  Eures Glaubens ihm entgegen.
  
  Lay yourselves underneath the savior, 
  Hearts that are Christian!
  Offer up a spotless garment 
  Of your faith to him.

  
  The texts of the first and third arias speak of crucifixion and a martyr’s death:

  Starkes Lieben,
  Das dich, großer Gottessohn, 
  Von dem Thron
  Deiner Herrlichkeit getrieben, 
  Daß du dich zum Heil der Welt 
  Als ein Opfer vorgestellt.
  
  What strong love,
  That you, great Son of God 
  From the throne
  Of your glory were driven, 
  That you, to heal the world, 
  Presented yourself as a sacrifice.

  
  Later:

  Jesu, laß durch Wohl und Weh 
  Mich auch mit dir ziehen!
  Schreit die Welt nur, “Kreuzige,” 
  So laß mich nicht fliehen.
  
  Jesus, through wealth and woe 
  Let me also go with you!
  Though the world may only cry “Crucify!”
  So let me not flee.    

  
  Even the text of the closing chorus is unable to free itself from this dynamic:

  So lasset uns gehen in Salem der Freuden, 
  Begleitet den König in Lieben und Leiden. 
  Er gehet voran
  Und öffnet die Bahn.
  
  Then let us go into the Salem of joys, 
  Accompany the King in love and sorrow. 
  He goes ahead
  And opens the way.

  
  Just as the opening chorus is separated from the three arias by the psalm verses, the concluding free verse does not follow this group directly. Instead, it is preceded by the only chorale in the cantata, the next to last strophe from Paul Stockmann’s passion hymn Jesu Leiden, Pein und Tod ( Jesus’s suffering, pain, and death), whose text begins “Jesu, deine Passion ist mir lauter Freude” ( Jesus, your Passion is pure joy to me).
  
  The rather austere libretto inspired Bach to one of his most richly imaginative cantata creations. The words of the evangelist, “Siehe, dein König kommt zu dir sanftmütig” (Behold, your King comes meekly unto you), hover, unspoken, over the opening sonata: in their luminous upper ranges, recorder and solo violin proceed in solemn rhythm above dabbed chords in the strings—a procession experienced from afar, intangible as the ether, almost surreal, descending only at the close to the earth from heavenly heights. The first chorus is by contrast earthbound, alternating between the architectonic discipline of a permutation fugue, free canonic structures, and—in the central section—a dialogue between singers and instruments.
  
  The psalm verses given to the bass, the vox Christi, shift quickly from free recitative to the more appropriate arioso. The first aria is also given to the bass, the voice that embodies “Strength”; the self-confident, powerful texture of strings, led by the lively figuration of the violins, seems to be directly developed from the text’s opening phrase, “starkes Lieben.” The expressive alto aria, “Leget euch dem Heiland unter,” is characterized by constantly descending arabesques of melody, alternating between the voice and obbligato flute. In several respects, the tenor aria, “Jesu, laß durch Wohl und Weh,” goes even farther: in a key distant from the bass and alto arias, the accompanying instrumental ensemble is reduced to basso continuo, intensifying the expression and achieving the strongest sense of inwardness. The ensuing chorale is composed as a motet movement in which the singers are in part supported by the instruments; the chorale melody Jesu Kreuz, Leiden und Pein (Jesus’s cross, suffering, and pain) is performed in long note values by the soprano, together with violin and the recorder, at the octave in the manner of a four-foot register on an organ. In formal design, compositional technique, and treatment of text, the closing choral movement “So lasset uns gehen in Salem der Freuden” is the precise counterpart of the first chorus, so that the increasing anticipation of Holy Week in the course of the cantata ends with the return to the world of Palm Sunday.
  
  Johann Sebastian Bach reperformed his first Weimar masterpiece several times in Leipzig. He designated the work “Tempore Passionis. In specie Dominica Palmarum” (For Lent: Particularly for Palm Sunday), knowing well that in Leipzig, Palm Sunday fell during the period without music. “Tempore Passionis aut Festo Mariae Annunciationis” reads Bach’s title at another place, thereby focusing on the Feast of the Annunciation, an occasion when the cantata might be used in Leipzig. Upon the distribution of Bach’s estate in 1750, Philipp Emanuel Bach added to the three designations a fourth, for Estomihi Sunday. It is certainly a unique case among Bach’s cantatas and, to that extent, an estimation of the singular esteem held for this cantata.

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. NBR, 300 (no. 306).—Trans.↵
  2. NBR, 70 (no. 51).—Trans.↵
  3. NBR, 71 (no. 52).—Trans.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:36:18+00:00 Gott, man lobet dich in der Stille BWV 120.1 / BC B 6. 10 Town Council Election. First performed 08/29/1729 in Leipzig after Trinity 1727. . plain 2024-03-25T17:07:05+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 2023-09-26T09:32:58+00:00 Nimm, was dein ist, und gehe hin BWV 144 / BC A 41. 9 Septuagesimae. First performed 02/06/1724 in Leipzig (Cycle I). plain 2024-03-25T17:12:01+00:00 1724-02-06 BWV 144 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 15Septuagesimae Septuagesimae BC A 41 Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Nimm, was dein ist, und gehe hin, BWV 144 / BC A 41" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 131 James A. Brokaw II Leipzig I

  Septuagesima Sunday

  I still recall with great pleasure a certain fugue by the late Mr. J. S. Bach, on the words: Nimm was dein ist, und gehe hin. (The text was not dramatic; one could thereby imagine a chorus of admonishers.) This fugue evoked a most unusual attentiveness and particular delight even among most of the musically inexperienced listeners, which certainly did not come from the contrapuntal artifices but from the superb declamation which NB. the composer brought to the subject and, by way of a special little play, to the phrase gehe hin. The truthfulness, natural character, and exactly commensurate correctness of the declamation was immediately picked up by everyone’s ears. . . . I admit, however, that it is often difficult, and also not always and continuously possible to pay attention to the declamation in the subjects of a fugue, especially if the subject is to be used for certain contrapuntal artifices. At the same time, many a harmonic artificiality might well be clarified by a correct declamation.¹

  
  This description of the opening movement of the cantata Nimm, was dein ist, und gehe hin BWV 144 (Take what is yours and go forth) comes from the year 1760 and as such is a quite rare and indeed singular example of the reception history of Bach’s cantatas. The author of the text is the Berlin music theorist Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg, highly influential in his time; the quote is from his Kritische Briefen über die Tonkunst (Critical letters on composition), published in installments. 
  
  Marpurg was a vigorous defender of the virtues of Bach’s fugue writing and engaged in much debate in that regard with his rival Johann Philipp Kirnberger, also active in Berlin and also a Bach student. In contrast to Kirnberger, who came from simple circumstances and often complained of his meager general education, Marpurg was a cosmopolitan spirit and gifted writer who by 1740 had already spent quite a bit of time in Paris, the realm of his contemporaries Diderot and d’Alembert.² The vocabulary he chose to characterize the fugues of Bach—“truthfulness, natural character, and exactly commensurate correctness”—sounds rather like the terminology of the age of Enlightenment, leaving the question open as to how much Marpurg’s assessment might have in common with that of Bach.
  
  The quoted scriptural passage, “Nimm, was dein ist,” comes from the Gospel reading for Septuagesima Sunday, the ninth Sunday before Easter or the third Sunday before Lent. The twentieth chapter of Matthew tells the parable of workers in the vineyard: “For the kingdom of heaven is like a householder, who went out early in the morning to hire laborers in his vineyard. And when he agreed with the laborers for a penny a day, he sent them into his vineyard” (1–2). The parable further describes workers who are hired several or even many hours later, however, with the promise “I will give you what is right,” and, finally, the paying of wages when everyone receives the same amount—one penny—at which those who had been hired first were not amused:

  And when they had received it, they grumbled against the householder and said, these last have worked but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, who have borne the burden and heat of the day. But he answered one among them, and said: Friend, I do you no wrong: were you not at one with me for a penny? Take what is yours, and go forth! I will give unto this last, even as unto you. Or do I not have the power to do what I will with my own? Are you envious because I am good? So the last shall be first, and the first last: for many be called, but few chosen. (Matthew 20:11–16)

  
  “Nimm, was dein ist, und gehe hin” is one of a total of twenty-four sayings of Christ found among Johann Sebastian Bach’s Leipzig cantatas. The unknown author of the text places it at the beginning of his libretto and follows it with the sequence aria–chorale–recitative–aria–chorale. This six-movement type, with a New Testament passage at the start and two chorales, has fewer than ten examples among Bach’s cantatas from 1724 and 1725. The cantata Nimm, was dein ist is the earliest of these. Perhaps this early origin indicates an initial attempt, a tentative move into a previously unexplored area. For the poet seems not to be particularly inspired by the scenario of the workers in the vineyard and its deeper meaning. His thoughts revolve in a narrow radius around the concepts “sufficiency” (Genügsamkeit) and “pleasure” (Vergnügung), whereby the first means “modesty or lack of pretension” (Sichbescheiden) by today’s understanding, and the last could be translated as “contentment” (Zufriedenheit). However, according to Friedrich Smend, “Not to be understood in the bourgeois fashion of this world, but as ‘restoration of the soul,’ to be at peace in the devotion to God and the surrender to his will.”³ “Murre nicht, lieber Christ, wenn was nicht nach Wunsch geschicht” (Do not grumble, dear Christian, when something goes against your wishes), warns the first aria, taking the “Murre wider dem Hausvater” (grumble against the householder) from the Gospel text and continuing:

  Sondern sei mit dem zufrieden,
  Was dir dein Gott hat beschieden,
  Er weiß, was dir nützlich ist.
  
  Rather, be content with that 
  Which your God has destined for you.
  He knows what is useful for you.

  
  The first part of the cantata text closes with the first strophe from Samuel Rodigast’s hymn of 1674, “Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan, es bleibt gerecht sein Wille” (Whatever God deals is dealt bountifully; his will remains just). The ensuing recitative juxtaposes “Genügsamkeit” (sufficiency) and “Ungenügsamkeit” (discontentment): if “Genügsamkeit” takes the helm, “da ist der Mensch vergnügt, mit dem, wie es Gott fügt” (then one is content with what God ordains). “Ungenügsamkeit,” however, gives rise to grief, trouble, discontentment of the heart: “Und man gedenket nicht daran: Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan” (And one does not consider: what God deals is dealt bountifully). By recalling the first line of Rodigast’s chorale strophe, the text poet could have concluded a section and at the same time prepared to leave for new shores. Instead, in the aria text that follows, he remains on paths already trodden:

  Genügsamkeit 
  Ist ein Schatz in diesem Leben,
  Welcher kann Vergnügung geben
  In größter Traurigkeit.
  
  Contentment
  Is a treasure in this life
  That can provide pleasure
  Amid the greatest sorrow.

  
  And even with the selection of the closing chorale strophe, he does not leave the familiar territory: this strophe from a hymn by Margrave Albrecht von Brandenburg, “Was mein Gott will, das g’scheh allzeit, / Sein Will der ist der beste” (What my God wills, let it be for all time, / His will it is the best) of 1547 stands so close in content and word choice to Samuel Rodigast’s strophe of 125 years later that neither tension nor even contrast can be established.
  
  Johann Sebastian Bach’s composition of this somewhat problematic libretto originated in early 1724, his first year in Leipzig, and was performed for the first time on February 6 in St. Thomas Church. The place and date are confirmed by a text booklet printed that year that survived by chance to be read by the audience during the performance. Bach composed the opening movement on the saying of Christ (Christuswort) as a choral fugue in the manner of a motet—one of only a few such cases. The seven-word text was too short for a true motet, in which each phrase is assigned its own musical section, and it also did not fit the voice exchange technique preferred by Bach. The remaining possibility was a contrapuntally ambitious vocal fugue. Bach chose the alla breve style, appropriate to the church, in which the half note gets the beat and the eighth note is the smallest rhythmic value. The head of the theme, with two large intervals and a concluding descent to the tonic, recalls the chorale Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir (From deep affliction I cry out to you); whether this was intentional remains an open question. Two secondary themes are assigned to the text component “gehe hin,” one with long note values with ties over two and even three measures, and a second in rapid, almost playful declamation on three notes, two short and one longer. This second theme, which appears at one moment as a component of a fugal exposition and, at another, as part of an episode, impressed not only the theorist Marpurg but also the musically inexperienced listeners in his realm. From our perspective today it offers a tutorial for Bach’s economical use of his compositional materials. For nearly sixty measures, this “gehe hin” motive is omnipresent but never appears in parallel motion in more than two voices at the same time. Only in the very last measures does it appear in three and then in all four voices simultaneously, serving the final crescendo as well as the dignified and restful conclusion—very much in the sense of a mild correction, as delivered by the Gospel reading from Matthew. From this standpoint, Marpurg’s interpretation of the “chorus of admonishers” (Chor der Ermahnenden) appears to be a misunderstanding owing to the spirit of his epoch.⁴ 
  
  The aria that follows begins with the urgent advice “Murre nicht, lieber Christ” (Do not grumble, dear Christian), yet this kind of negative statement stands against the musical realization. In accordance with the custom of his era, Bach feels compelled to treat the statement as if it were meant affirmatively. Strings in their deep registers; frequent tone repetitions in the strings and the basso continuo; and the alto voice, almost entirely in its deepest register: all these allow the displeasure of the workers, indicated in the Gospel reading, to emerge vividly—in contrast to the librettist’s text. The rhythmic shape of the salutation “lieber Christ” (dear Christian) could be taken as a reminiscence of the rhythmically identical “gehe hin” of the previous movement. In its meter and simple setting, in particular the frequent unisons between the voice and first violin, the aria is of the minuet dance type, capable, in the view of a Bach contemporary, of expressing “measured merriment” (mäßige Lustigkeit)—in the case of our aria, rather more “measured displeasure” (mäßige Unlust). We leave this realm only with the sunny G major of the chorale movement “Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan.”
  
  The ensuing recitative, with its praise of “Genügsamkeit,” retraces the course of the first three cantata movements—from B minor to E minor to G major. It soon undergoes a harmonic darkening, however, when the discussion turns to grief, trouble, and discontent as the consequences of “Ungenügsamkeit.” The closing quotation of earlier text, “Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan,” recalls only distantly the music of the earlier chorale. Even so, it has a hidden relationship to the aria that follows a fulsome song in praise of “sufficiency.” This aria is a trio that is not dissimilar from Bach’s organ trios: two animated, melodic, and coequal upper parts—here soprano and oboe d’amore—are linked to a bass that, although it has its own profile, is clearly drawn from the two upper voices. The “hidden relationship” is produced by the oboe d’amore in the first six measures. The chorale melody “Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan” is hidden in the main notes, although in B minor and transferred to the middle register. When this passage reappears, nearly unchanged, at the end it produces a convincing transition to the concluding chorale movement, “Was mein Gott will, das g’scheh allzeit.” Originally a secular song, it entered sacred hymnody as early as the sixteenth century.

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. NBR, 363–64 (no. 357).—Trans.↵
  2. Smend (1966).—Trans.↵
  3. Schulze (2004a).↵
  4. In 2011 Schulze revisited his assessment of Marpurg’s parenthetical remark as a criticism of Bach’s choice of fugue to set the brief biblical passage. Drawing upon the writings of Heinrich Bokemeyer, Johann Mattheson, and Christian Gottfried Krause to articulate contemporary views disapproving of fugue to set texts spoken by individuals, Schulze pointed to late eighteenth-century writings by Agricola and Johann Georg Ebeling that found Bach’s fugues to be “fiery and sublime, with much art, full of powerful expression” (Ebeling) and that they contained “much fire and splendor” (Agricola) and concluded that they aimed at a “compromise” with the prevailing views of the age. By the same token, “the . . . ‘chorus of admonishers’ [is] . . . meant to justify the possibility, increasingly questioned by contemporary aesthetics, of choosing a polyphonic movement for the statement of an individual and to defend it against possible attacks by means of a reinterpretation. Thus, upon closer consideration, Marpurg’s remark is revealed to be an alternative to the prevailing views of his age” (Der . . . “Chor der Ermahnungen” . . . will die von der zeitgenössischen Ästhetik zunehmend in Frage gestellte Möglichkeit, für die Aussage eines einzelnen einen mehrstimmigen Satz zu wählen, rechtfertigen und mittels einer Umdeutung gegen mögliche Angriffe in Schutz nehmen. Mithin entpuppet sich Marpurgs Äußerung bei näherem Zusehen als Gegenentwurf zu herrschenden Ansichten seines Zeitalters) (Schulze 2011b, 33).—Trans.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:34:17+00:00 Die Elenden sollen essen BWV 75 / BC A 94. 8 First Sunday After Trinity. First performed 05/30/1723 in Leipzig (Cycle I). plain 2024-03-22T22:29:44+00:00 1723-05-30 BWV 75 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 01Trinity1 First Sunday After Trinity BC A 94 Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Die Elenden sollen essen, BWV 75 / BC A 94" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 288 James A. Brokaw II Leipzig I

  First Sunday after Trinity, May 30, 1723

  
  In late May 1723, the newly appointed cantor of St. Thomas School, Johann Sebastian Bach, introduced himself to the people of Leipzig with the cantata Die Elenden sollen essen BWV 75 (The afflicted shall eat). Eight days earlier, he had moved with his family to the trade-fair city. For unknown reasons, this event found its way into the press, and in Hamburg in fact, in a correspondent’s report from Leipzig: “This past Saturday at noon, four wagons loaded with household goods arrived here from Köthen; they belonged to the former Princely Capellmeister there, now called to Leipzig as Cantor Figuralis. He himself arrived with his family on 2 carriages at 2 o’clock and moved into the newly renovated apartment in the St. Thomas School.”¹ Several chroniclers have documented a cantata performance on May 30, 1723. One of them wrote: “The 30th instant [May], being the First Sunday after Trinity, the new Cantor and Director of the Collegium Musicum, Mr. Johann Sebastian Bach, who has come hither from the Prince’s Court at Cöthen, produced his first music here, with great success.”² A press report, also from Hamburg, is not aware of “great success.” It says, however, that Bach “made his debut by performing his music before and after the sermon.” Finally, a third report indicates that the new cantor had recently “assumed his office in the city churches with the first music for St. Nicholas Church.”³
  
  We have no information as to how the new cantor of St. Thomas prepared for this important day. One could imagine that he composed his inaugural cantata before moving to Leipzig. That would, however, presume that the date of the first performance had been set within the medium term and that a text for the composition was available. Nothing more precise can be established, however; even the name of the text author remains unknown. In its first part at least, the libretto hews closely to the Gospel reading of the Sunday, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus the pauper, from Luke 16:19–25:

  There was, however, a rich man who clothed himself with purple and expensive linen and lived all his days gloriously and in joy. There was, however, a pauper of the name Lazarus who lay before his door full of sores and wanted to satisfy himself with the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table; but the dogs came and licked his sores. But it came to pass that the pauper died and was carried by the angels to the bosom of Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. As he now was in Hell and in torment, he lifted his eyes up and saw Abraham from afar and Lazarus in his bosom. And he called and spoke: Father Abraham, have mercy upon me and send Lazarus, that he dip his fingertips in water and cool my tongue, for I suffer pain in these flames. Abraham however spoke: Consider, son, that you have received your good fortune in your life, and Lazarus by contrast received evil; now, however, he is comforted and you are tormented.

  
  At the beginning of his cantata libretto, the unknown poet places a verse from Psalm 22, the Passion psalm of Christ, that approximates the parable from the Gospel reading: “Die Elenden sollen essen, daß sie satt werden; und die nach dem Herrn fragen, werden ihn preisen; euer Herz soll ewiglich leben” (26; The afflicted shall eat, so that they become satisfied; and those that ask after the Lord, shall praise Him; your heart shall live eternally). He then paraphrases the Sunday Gospel reading with free poetry: three recitatives and two arias. The first movement pair—recitative and aria—allude to the beginning of the reading by referring to the purple robe of the rich man:

  Was hilft des Purpurs Majestät, 
  Da sie vergeht?
  Was hilft der größte Überfluß, 
  Weil alles, so wir sehen, 
  Verschwinden muß?
  
  What help is the majesty of purple, 
  Since it fades?
  What help is the greatest surplus,
  Since all that we see
  Must disappear?

  
  And in the aria:

  
  Mein Jesu soll mein alles sein. 
  Mein Purpur ist sein teures Blut, 
  Er selbst mein allerhöchstes Gut, 
  Und seines Geistes Liebesglut 
  Mein allersüß’ster Freudenwein.
  
  My Jesus shall be my all.
  My purple is his precious blood, 
  He himself my all-highest good, 
  And his spirit’s loving glow
  My all-sweetest wine of joy.

  
  The next movement pair treats the opposing fates of the rich man and the pauper, the way to hell or to the bosom of Abraham. “Gott stürzet und erhöhet in Zeit und Ewigkeit” (God casts down and lifts up in time and eternity), reads the recitative. The aria states:

  Ich nehme mein Leiden mit Freuden auf mich. 
  Wer Lazarus’ Plagen
  Geduldig ertragen,
  Den nehmen die Engel zu sich.
  
  I take my suffering upon myself with joy. 
  Whoever has borne Lazarus’s torment 
  Patiently,
  The angels shall take him to themselves.

  
  A third recitative leads to the hymn that closes the first half of the cantata before the sermon, the fifth strophe from Samuel Rodigast’s 1564 chorale Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan (What God does, that is done well). Except for the psalm verse at the beginning, the succession of movements in the second half is the same as the first: three recitatives, two arias, and a chorale strophe. Wealth and poverty—the themes of the parable from the Gospel reading—are now related to the individual’s world of belief. If the first recitative of the second half laments “des Geistes Armut” (poverty of the spirit) and failing strength, the ensuing aria answers with “Jesus macht mich geistlich reich” ( Jesus makes me spiritually rich), whereby a phrase from the Sermon on the Mount, “Selig sind, die da geistlich arm sind” (Blessed are the poor in spirit), might stand in the background. If the next recitative demands self-renunciation and the avoidance of all that is earthly “Daß er in Gottes Liebe / Sich gläubig übe” (That he, in God’s love, / May exercise himself in faith), here again the ensuing aria gives the confident answer with its text beginning “Mein Herze glaubt und liebt” (My heart believes and loves). With “O Armut, der kein Reichtum gleicht” (O poverty that no wealth equals), the last recitative summarizes the core of the parable, leading to the concluding chorale strophe, once again drawn from Rodigast’s hymn Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan.
  
  Bach’s composition of this wide-ranging text assumes dimensions that are appropriate to a new beginning in a prominent and vibrant city. Hence the idea of the sumptuous French overture, here in two parts, stands behind the extensive opening chorus. In this case, as befits the psalm passage, it stands in the elegiac key of E minor, the key of sorrow and solace. The faster fugal concluding section on the text “Euer Herz soll ewiglich leben” (Your heart shall live eternally) is rather short compared to the melancholic beginning. The bass recitative is followed by a dancelike, animated aria with tenor solo “Mein Jesus soll mein alles sein” (My Jesus shall be my all). The restful serenity of the text statement is matched by the measured rhythmic motion, but without bringing a contemporary dance type to mind. One is prompted to wonder whether this unusually extensive aria goes back to an earlier work from Bach’s time at Köthen.
  
  The second aria, following a brief tenor recitative, also has no clear connection to any particular dance type. Here, in the buoyant collaboration of soprano and obbligato oboe d’amore on the text that begins “Ich nehme mein Leiden mit Freuden auf mich,” the subtle handling of “Leiden” (suffering) is opposed by an all but unbridled unfolding of “Freude” that gradually gains the upper hand. After a third equally brief recitative, a chorale movement concludes the first half of the cantata. Instead of being restricted to a simple four-part harmonization, it takes on the dimensions of an elaborate chorale arrangement with instrumental prelude, postlude, and interludes.
  
  The same chorale melody, Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan appears at the beginning of the cantata’s second half as part of an instrumental movement: above a fugal quartet of stringed instruments, the melody is performed line by line by the trumpets. As in the first half of the cantata, the first recitative is accompanied by string instruments; in unison these also form the obbligato part in the alto aria that follows, “Jesus macht mich geistlich reich.” This movement is also dancelike, although without any recognizable connection to the text. It is only in the fourth and last aria of the cantata that Bach—perhaps out of necessity and owing to the problematic nature of the text—abandons this procedure and combines solo bass, obbligato trumpet, and strings in concerted virtuosity. The beginning of the text “Mein Herze glaubt und liebt” is thus interpreted in the sense of confidence in victory. The chorale arrangement at the end of the first part is repeated to conclude the entire cantata. Only the text differentiates this from its predecessor, now the last strophe of Samuel Rodigast’s chorale Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan. 
  
  Thus ends the cantata whose unusual demands are appropriate to its context: the composer’s recent appointment to the cantorate at St. Thomas School. At the same time, the work outstripped the possibilities and boundaries of concerted church music, particularly for the first Sunday after Trinity. Hence Bach quickly gave up the outsized dimensions of the fourteen- movement model and returned to more normal proportions—at least with respect to the length of his works.

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. NBR, 106 (no. 102).—Trans.↵
  2. NBR, 106 (no. 103).—Trans.↵
  3. “trat der neue Cantor, Herr Johann Sebastian Bach, sein Amt bey denen Stadt-Kirchen mit der ersten Music der Kirche zu St. Nicolai an” (BD II:105 [no. 141]).—Trans.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:36:18+00:00 Wir danken dir, Gott, wir danken dir BWV 29 / BC B 8. 7 Town Council Election. First performed 08/27/1731 in Leipzig after Trinity 1727. . plain 2024-03-28T15:20:42+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.

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  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.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:38:46+00:00 O holder tag, erwünschte Zeit BWV 210.2 / BC G 44. 5 Cantata for wedding of Privy Councilor Georg Ernst Stahl and Johanna Elisabeth Schrader. First performed on Sep 19, 1741 in Berlin. plain 2024-02-28T14:35:00+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).↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:35:19+00:00 Gott der Herr ist Sonn und Schild BWV 79 / BC A 184. 4 Reformation Day. First performed 10/31/1725 in Leipzig (Cycle III). plain 2024-02-21T16:55:52+00:00 1725-10-31 BWV 79 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 09Reformation Reformation Day BC A 184 Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Gott der Herr ist Sonn und Schild, BWV 79 / BC A 184" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 554 Leipzig III

  Reformation Day, October 31, 1725

  The cantata Gott der Herr ist Sonn und Schild BWV 79 (God the Lord is sun and shield) is for the festival of Reformation. This festival commemorates the posting of the theses in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517, which, according to tradition, was the initial spark of the Reformation, led by Martin Luther. Johann Sebastian Bach first encountered this feast day tradition, essentially restricted to the territory of Electoral Saxony, in 1723 after moving from Köthen to Leipzig. In 1667, 150 years after the posting at Wittenberg, the elector of Saxony, Johann Georg II, decreed October 31 to be a half holiday thenceforth, independent of the day of the week. 
  
  An occasion for composing an appropriate cantata evidently did not arise in Bach’s Leipzig period until 1724. A year later, he composed the cantata Gott der Herr ist Sonn und Schild for October 31, 1725. The musical opulence of this work is quite striking, so much so that it does not entirely seem to fit the traditional arrangements for what was only a half holiday. Whether extramusical factors were at work here cannot be said at present. In any case, it is worth noting that Bach had completed a visit to Dresden just a few weeks earlier that attracted considerable attention. A newspaper in Hamburg reported in late September 1725: “When the Capell-Director from Leipzig, Mr. Bach, came here recently, he was very well received by the local virtuosos at court and in the city since he is greatly admired by all of them for his musical adroitness and art. Yesterday and the day before, in the presence of the same, he performed for over an hour on the new organ in St. Sophia’s Church preludes and various concertos, with intervening soft instrumental music [Doucen Instrumental-Music] in all keys.”¹ One would scarcely go wrong in assuming that this gathering with musician friends of the court chapel, the performance on the new Silbermann organ, and the applause of cognoscenti all had their effect in subsequent weeks on the work of the Thomaskantor, recently returned to Leipzig.
  
  There are other grounds for advancing such a hypothesis: the libretto Bach chose for his Reformation cantata is of a fairly normal type and exhibits scarcely any features out of the ordinary. Instead, it follows a model whose originator has not yet been identified but whose unmistakable profile suggests a common origin—and this despite appearing at different times during Bach’s earliest years at Leipzig. Characteristic for this group of cantata texts is a six-movement scheme that begins with a passage from the Hebrew Bible followed by the sequence aria–chorale in the first part of the cantata, presumably to be performed before the sermon, and the sequence recitative–aria–chorale in the second part. 
  
  The text of our cantata fills this scheme with ideas that revolve around purity of doctrine, prayers for protection against enemies, and thanksgiving and praise for mercy granted. The libretto begins with a verse from Psalm 84: “Gott der Herr ist Sonn und Schild. Der Herr gibt Gnade und Ehre, er wird kein Gutes mangeln lassen den Frommen” (11; God the Lord is sun and shield. The Lord gives grace and honor, he will not allow the pious to lack for any good thing). The first aria further develops the ideas of “sun and shield”:

  Gott ist unsre Sonn und Schild.
  Darum rühmet dessen Güte
  Unser dankbares Gemüte,
  Die er für sein Häuflein hegt, 
  Denn er will uns ferner schützen,
  Ob die Feinde Pfeile schnitzen
  Und ein Lästerhund gleich billt.
  
  God is our sun and shield.
  Therefore, our grateful spirit
  Praises the goodness he shows
  For his little band of men,
  For he will protect us further,
  Though the enemies sharpen arrows
  And the dog of blasphemy roars.

  
  Whether the rather powerful rhyme at the end of the last line² is actually the work of the librettist or whether it is the result of Bach’s intervention must await the discovery of the text’s original. The third movement—and the first chorale—is the opening strophe of Martin Rinckart’s 1636 hymn Nun danket alle Gott (Now thank the God of all).
  
  With the outcry “Gottlob, wir wissen den rechten Weg zur Seligkeit” (Praise God, we know the right way to salvation), the lone recitative begins with self-assurance but a bit later moderates its tone slightly:

  Weil aber viele noch
  Zu dieser Zeit
  An fremdem Joch
  Aus Blindheit ziehen müssen,
  Ach so erbarme dich
  Auch ihrer gnädiglich,
  Daß sie den rechten weg erkennen
  Und dich bloß ihren Mittler nennen.
  
  But because many still
  To this day
  Yoked to unbelievers
  Must pull out of blindness,
  Ah, then have mercy
  Upon them with grace too,
  That they recognize the right way
  And name you alone as their mediator.

  
  The associated aria displays even less self-assuredness:

  Gott, ach Gott, verlaß die Deinen
  Nimmermehr,
  Laß dein Wort uns helle scheinen,
  Obgleich sehr
  Wider uns die Feinde toben,
  So soll unser Mund dich loben.
  
  God, O God, forsake those of yours
  Nevermore,
  Let your word shine brightly for us.
  Although furiously
  Against us do our enemies rage,
  Yet shall our mouths praise you.

  
  Even so, the last strophe of Ludwig Helmbold’s hymn Nun laßt uns Gott dem Herren (Now let us to God the Lord) provides a calming conclusion:

  Erhalt uns in der Wahrheit,
  Gib ewigliche Freiheit,
  Zu preisen deinen Namen
  Durch Jesum Christum. Amen.
  
  Preserve us in the truth,
  Grant freedom eternally
  To praise your name
  Through Jesus Christ. Amen.

  
  Bach’s composition gives the psalm verse at the beginning a setting of unanticipated dimensions. The opening movement comprises no fewer than 147 measures, with nearly a third of the total taken up with the instrumental introduction, in which at first the horns and drums dominate with a characteristically melodic theme before a fugue theme with hammering pitch repetitions enters to take the lead. At the end of this expansive introduction, the two themes are partially connected with one another. Subsequently, they alternate with each other several times while the chorus goes its own way, so to speak, freely and undeterred, with radiant chordal textures. The possibility of fugal intensification, foreshadowed by the opening sinfonia, is realized by the voices only after the middle of the movement, and then only for a limited time. Unity over the course of the movement is achieved above all by the overarching thematic material rather than the setting; on the contrary, diversity is the order of the day, a downright exuberant and overflowing multiplicity of ideas and combinations. It almost seems as if the compositional approach took on a life of its own, as if the composer, so to speak, let the opening movement get out of hand. A glance at Bach’s holograph composing score seems to confirm this impression. The paper he initially prepared for the movement originally comprised sixteen pages, which would largely have been taken up with the opening movement. However, it became clear that Bach had miscalculated. He had to include another folio from his stock, and then yet another, so that the score finally spanned twenty-four pages instead of the sixteen planned originally. 
  
  The other five movements needed to be much more concentrated. In the aria “Gott ist unser Sonn und Schild” a single obbligato instrument is assigned to the alto voice—in the first version an oboe, in later performances a flute. In contrast, the first chorale movement includes the entire festive ensemble, and the usual four-part texture is expanded via the addition of horns led independently and drums. Astonishingly, their obbligato parts are identical with the brass parts that open the first movement; this cannot conceivably be a coincidence. Bach must have composed the chorale—the third movement written into the composing score—in his head before starting work on the first movement. 
  
  After a brief bass recitative, the second aria movement shows itself to be the opposite of the overflowing opening movement: here, the soprano and bass voices begin without any instrumental introduction; they move largely in parallel with each other. The solo violin, which only plays interludes at first, is only gradually allowed to participate equally. In the closing chorale movement, the brass instruments are once again allowed to move independently, but to a much more modest degree than in the preceding chorale, which must be regarded as the nucleus of the entire cantata.
  
  In spite of the extraordinary difficulty of the brass parts, the cantata Gott der Herr ist Sonn und Schild was performed again on at least one occasion, most likely October 31, 1730. Several years later, Bach used the opening chorus and both arias in his Latin masses in A major (BWV 234) and G major (BWV 236). The opening chorus and duet became the Gloria and Domine Deus in the Mass in G Major; the alto aria became the Quoniam in the Mass in A Major. With a view to making the music easier to perform, Bach gave up the original brilliant setting for horns and drums and gave some of that music to the voices and some to the oboes.

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  Footnotes

  1. NBR, 117 (no. 118).—Trans.↵
  2. “Schild” and “billt.”—Trans.↵