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• 1 2023-09-26T09:32:58+00:00 Liebster Immanuel, Herzog der Frommen BWV 123 / BC A 28 18 Chorale cantata on hymn by Aherasverus Fritsch. Epiphany. Part of Chorale Cantata Annual Cycle. First performed 01/06/1725 in Leipzig (Cycle II). plain 2024-04-24T17:31:22+00:00 1725-01-06 BWV 123 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 14Epiphany Chorale Cantata Epiphany BC A 28 Johann Sebastian Bach Aherasverus Fritsch Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Liebster Immanuel, Herzog der Frommen, BWV 123 / BC A 28" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 86 James A. Brokaw II Chorale Cantata Annual Cycle Leipzig II

  Epiphany, January 6, 1725

  This cantata was first performed on January 6, 1725, in Leipzig. As part of Bach’s chorale cantata annual cycle, it makes use of all strophes of a chorale, retaining the first and last as originally written and paraphrasing the others to be set as recitatives and arias. Ahasverus Fritsch was the author of the hymn Liebster Immanuel, Herzog der Frommen (Dearest Emmanuel, prince of the devout), first printed in the 1670s. Born in 1629 in Mücheln near Geiseltal, then in Saxony, now Anhalt-Saxony, Fritsch had experienced firsthand the horrors of the Thirty Years’ War in his childhood and youth. The description of those sufferings could just as easily fit events of the late twentieth century:

  When he was only two years of age, the horrors of war forced his parents to flee with him . . . just as his home town went up in flames, and four houses burned; they lost everything. Erratically, they fled from one place to another while surrounded by plundering, robbery, burning, and murder. Fritsch had to spend his youth wandering in forests and fields, hiding himself in a ruin at one moment, then in an excavated grave, then in cellars and bushes; as soon as he was discovered or hunger drove him from hiding, he was attacked by soldiers and robbed of his clothing, left with nothing more than his shirt in the winter, or savagely beaten. He fell into enemy hands no fewer than six times. At the age of fourteen, he lost his father, whose heart was broken by the interminable succession of fire, flight, starvation, tribulation, and misery.

  
  In the midst of these deprivations, his mother made it possible for him to attend school in Halle; while suffering continuous need, he studied at the University of Jena. A position as tutor at the court of Rudolstadt was the beginning of a continuous ascent through the positions of court and judicial counselor, court clerk, chancellery director and president of the consistory, and finally the position of chancellor. His contact with the countesses Ludämilia Elisabeth and Ämilie Juliana influenced his religious poetry; Ludämilia Elisabeth’s two hundred Jesus hymns achieved recognition during her own lifetime. Fritsch’s wrestling with the expression of personal devoutness—even without unconditionally adopting the trappings of Pietism—can be seen against the background of church life during the Thirty Years’ War and its aftermath. It is only in this context that such exuberant formulations such as the title of the hymn collection make sense: “One hundred twenty-one new heavenly sweet Jesus hymns, in which the most exquisitely sweet powerful name of Jesus is found over seven hundred times, in deepest honor of our most worthy savior and redeemer, also the awakening of most holy devotion and joy of the soul, partly written, partly collected by Ahasverus Fritsch.”¹ Passages in the associated foreword include examples such as this one: “All is vanity, all is misery and wretchedness. But our Jesus is everything in all. Jesus is the faithful soul’s sugar and milk, manna, milk and wine, cinnamon, cloves, and balsam. Blessed is he who feels this heavenly sweetness of Jesus powerfully in his soul.”²
  
  The six strophes that underlie our cantata are marked by strongly accentuated personal piety. The title line takes up a keyword from the Gospel reading for Epiphany from Matthew 2, in which a quotation from the prophet Micah appears in connection with the description of the visit of the Wise Men from the Orient: “Und du Bethlehem in jüdischen Lande bist mitnichten die kleinste unter den Fürsten Juda’s; denn aus dir soll mir kommen der Herzog, der über mein Volk Israel ein Herr sei” (6; And you Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are not the least among the princes of Juda: for out of you shall come a prince that shall rule my people Israel). There is clearly a world of difference between this text and the ecstatic verses of Ahasverus Fritsch.

  Liebster Immanuel, Herzog der Frommen,
  Du meiner Seele Heil, komm, komm nur bald!
  Du hast mir, höchster Schatz, mein Herz genommen, 
  So ganz vor Liebe brennt und nach dir wallt.
  Nichts kann auf Erden
  Mir liebers werden,
  Als wenn ich meinen Jesum stets behalt.
  
  Beloved Emmanuel, prince of the devout,
  You, my soul’s salvation, come, come but soon!
  You, highest treasure, have taken my heart from me, 
  Which so entirely burns of love and beats for you. 
  Nothing on Earth can
  Become dearer to me
  Than if I always keep my Jesus.

  
  With a vocabulary that seems to come from the Song of Songs, the second strophe continues:

  Dein Nam ist zuckersüß, Honig im Munde 
  Holdselig, lieblich, frisch wie kühler Tau,
  Der Feld und Blume netzt zur Morgenstunde: 
  Mein Jesus ist nur, dem ich vertrau.
  
  Your name is sweet as sugar, honey in the mouth, 
  Charming, lovely, fresh as the cool dew
  That moistens field and flower at the morning hour: 
  My Jesus is the only one whom I trust.

  
  The unknown librettist working for Bach did not want to continue in that vein; instead, in the first recitative, he checks the enthusiasm in favor of a widened theological horizon:

  Die Himmelsüßigkeit, der Auserwählten Lust 
  Erfüllt auf Erden schon mein Herz und Brust, 
  Wenn ich den Jesusnamen nenne
  Und sein verborgnes Manna kenne:
  Gleichwie der Tau ein dürres Land erquickt, 
  So ist mein Herz
  Auch bei Gefahr und Schmerz
  In Freudigkeit durch Jesu Kraft entzückt.
  
  The heavenly sweetness, the delight of the chosen, 
  Fills already on Earth my heart and breast
  When I call the name of Jesus 
  And know his hidden manna.
  Just as the dew refreshes a dry landscape, 
  Thus my heart,
  Even in danger and pain,
  Is delighted in joy through Jesus’s power.

  
  The librettist’s task was not only to adapt sections of seventeenth-century poetry to the language of the eighteenth and to make it suitable for use in contemporary musical forms but also now and again to create a connection to the Gospel readings of the period after Christmas and for Epiphany. The latter could hardly be expected of Fritsch’s hymn, for in hymnals of the period it appears under the neutral rubric of “Jesus Hymns” (Jesuslieder) without any particular connection to a specific point in the church year. The third strophe offered an opportunity for clarification:

  Und ob das Kreuze mich gleich zeitlich plaget, 
  Wie es bei Christen oft pflegt zu geschehn; 
  Wenn meine Seele nur nach Jesu fraget,
  So kann das Herze schon auf Rosen gehn, 
  Kein Ungewitter
  Ist mir zu bitter,
  Mit Jesu kann ichs fröhlich überstehn.
  
  And if the cross here in this life torments me, 
  As it often happens to Christians,
  If my soul only asks after Jesus,
  Then can my heart go along the path of roses. 
  No thunderstorm
  Is for me too bitter.
  With Jesus I can happily endure it.

  
  An aria text was drawn from this with an allusion to the flight of the Holy Family:

  Auch die harte Kreutzesreise 
  Und die Tränen bittre Speise 
  Schreckt mich nicht.
  Wenn die Ungewitter toben, 
  Sendet Jesus mir von oben Heil und Licht.
  
  Even the painful journey of the cross 
  And the bitter meal of tears
  Do not frighten me.
  If storms thunder,
  Jesus sends me, from above, 
  Salvation and light.

  
  Strophe 4 of the hymn and the fourth movement of the cantata, a recitative, deal with the threat of hell, enemies and death, and salvation through Jesus. The scorn and persecution of the world, loneliness, and sadness but also the faithful company of Jesus are objects of the next movement. The last strophe of Ahasverus Fritsch’s hymn, adopted without change, deals with renunciation of the vanity of the world and complete submission to Jesus; it closes the sequence of ideas in the cantata libretto.
  
  Bach’s composition is dominated, as usual, by its broad, well-developed opening movement, in which the chorale melody is presented by the soprano in large note values, while the other voices provide a motet-like contrapuntal accompaniment, and the whole is lent contour and coherence by a motivically unified instrumental texture. The 9
  8 meter of the pastorale and the simple harmonies, with thirds and sixths predominant, give the movement a touch of tranquil inwardness. The first aria is sharply differentiated, as described by Arnold Schering:

  The various vivid and powerful expressions (hard, cross, tears, bitter, horrify, thunderstorm) awakened in Bach just as much richness of musical expression and imagery. Weary and tortuous, in a bitter F-sharp minor, from the third bar on, the sharp oboes perform the thorny, chromatic theme, disturbing one another. Its complete expressive power is unleashed only with the entrance of the human voice, and the tritone F-sharp / B-sharp is connected with the word “hard” and the arrival at high A with “cross.” It is a nice touch when, in the postlude, the often-heard main theme does not appear in the upper voices but is instead given to the bass, and it is entirely in keeping with the Baroque style’s predilection for violent expression that the thunderstorm episode that follows suddenly storms four measures ahead into the Allegro.³

  
  The second aria does not deliver a similar multitude of correspondences. Even so, the verse “Laß, o Welt, mich aus Verachtung / In betrübter Einsamkeit” (Out of contempt, O world, leave me / In distressed solitude) prompted the composer to give the voice, the bass, only a solo flute in accompaniment, thus illustrating the state of loneliness. The illustration of sadness through harmonic cloudiness was just as obvious a choice. With an effect common for the period—if rare in Bach’s cantatas—the closing chorale is lengthened. Not only the Stollen (the chorale’s opening section) is repeated here but also, exceptionally, the Abgesang (closing section) and, indeed, piano. The inward demeanor fits the closing verses well:

  Mein ganzes Leben 
  Sei dir ergeben,
  Bis man mich einsten legt ins Grab hinein.
  
  May my entire life
  Be surrendered to you
  Till one day I am laid in the grave.

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. “Einhundert Einundzwanzig Neue himmelsüße Jesuslieder, darinnen der hochteuresüße Kraft-Nahme Jesus über siebenhundertmal zu finden; zu schuldigster Ehreunsres hochverdienten Heylandes und Erlösers, auch Erweckung heiligster Andachtund Seelen-Freude theils abgefaßt, theils colligiret von Ahasvero Fritschio.”—Trans.↵
  2. “Alles ist Eitelkeit, alles ist Elend und Jammer. Aber unser Jesus ist alles in allem, Jesus ist der gläubigen Seelen eitel Zucker und Honig, Manna, Milch und Wein, Zimmer, Nelken und Balsam. Selig, der diese himmlische Jesus-Süße in seinem Geistkräftig empfindet.”—Trans.↵
  3. Schering (1950, 25–26).—Trans.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:34:20+00:00 Jauchzet Gott in allen Länden BWV 51 / BC A 134 13 cantata for soprano solo. Fifteenth Sunday After Trinity. First performed 09/17/1730 in Leipzig after Trinity 1728. . plain 2024-04-24T14:57:27+00:00 1730-09-17 BWV 51 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 05Trinity15 cantata for soprano solo Fifteenth Sunday After Trinity BC A 134 Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Jauchzet Gott in allen Länden, BWV 51 / BC A 134" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 416 James A. Brokaw II Leipzig after Trinity 1728

  Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity, September 17, 1730

  In various regards, the cantata Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen BWV 51 (Rejoice to God in all lands) occupies a special place in the vocal works of Johann Sebastian Bach. First of all, this applies to the generic term “cantata,” which stands as the work’s title on the manuscript’s first page. Apart from his secular works, Bach was quite sparing in his use of the term. It is found in several compositions that flawlessly embody the type defined around 1700, consisting only of recitatives and arias that use freely versified text. In addition, it is also found in several works that include chorale strophes in their texts, whether these are set in four parts or transferred to the solo voice, as in the case of our cantata.
  
  Also unusual are the demands on the solo soprano in terms of staying power, skill at coloratura, and vocal range. Even so, Johann Adolph Scheibe’s 1737 complaint proves unjustified, namely, that Bach’s pieces were too difficult to perform because the composer demanded that singers and instrumentalists match with their throats and their instruments what he was able to play on the keyboard, and that was impossible. In our cantata, one never meets the kind of mischievously amassed difficulties of the sort found in the solo cantatas of the Hamburg opera composer and Bach contemporary Reinhard Keiser.¹ Except for the high C (two octaves above middle C) that appears one time each in the opening and closing movements, the demands do not exceed the level required of choral sopranos in certain parts of the B-Minor Mass.
  
  Moreover, the combination of solo soprano and concertante trumpet² is unique in the works of Bach, particularly in view of the hardly understaffed ensemble of string instruments. The era was indeed quite familiar with the combination of soprano and trumpet, as seen in Alessandro Scarlatti’s cantata Su le sponde del Tebro or the oft-recounted story of the competition between the castrato Farinelli and a famous trumpeter in Rome in the 1720s. Still, no companion piece to Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen can be found in Bach’s oeuvre. Instead, when matching the power of one to three trumpets, Bach generally prefers the greater volume of the bass voice.
  
  Also without parallel in Bach’s oeuvre is the virtuoso mien of the entire cantata. It pays tribute to the skill of both soloists, and in doing so it runs the risk of slipping too close to a certain undesirable superficiality. Also significant in this regard is the remarkable effort to couple a concerto for two violins with a chorale cantus firmus. This constellation certainly has something to do with the fact that at roughly the same time as the first performance, about 1730, Bach composed his famous Concerto for Two Violins in D Minor BWV 1043 (or reperformed it, in the event it had been written earlier).
  
  In keeping with the composition’s tendency toward virtuosity, there is a peculiarity of the text that has long vexed Bach scholarship: while the libretto of the cantata Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen is entirely devoted to praise and adoration, it has scarcely anything to do with the Gospel reading of the fifteenth Sunday after Trinity. However, this exact assignment to the church calendar is a late addition; the original assignment read “In ogni Tempo” (for all times) in the church year, a relatively rare carte blanche in Bach’s cantatas.
  
  The secondary nature of the assignment just mentioned results in an ambiguity that is difficult to resolve regarding the work’s genesis and, in particular, its performers. Based on his profound understanding of Leipzig music history, Arnold Schering suggested that “a particularly skilled young choirboy, . . . or, what is more likely, a student falsettist” might have taken over the challenging solo soprano part.³ Then the trumpet part would have fallen to the senior member of the Stadtpfeifer (city pipers) ensemble, Gottfried Reicha. Decades later, the American musicologist Robert Marshall considered the possibility of a more professional performer, pointing to a soprano known to be active in Dresden around 1730, the castrato Giovanni Bindi—though without credibly explaining his participation in a Protestant Church cantata. Therefore, Klaus Hofmann of Göttingen proposed considering the possibility that the Leipzig Thomaskantor may have received a commission from outside the city and suggested a connection to the nearby court of Weissenfels, where there was a long tradition of birthday and other congratulatory musical pieces for soprano and trumpet. Furthermore, in Weissenfels, as well as in Hamburg and Darmstadt but not in Leipzig, female singers could take part in church music.
  
  Nevertheless, it is worth considering whether a particularly gifted St. Thomas soloist could have ventured the challenging soprano solo. To date we have no documentary evidence of this, but that is due to the particular nature of source transmission. In memoranda preserved in the archive of the Leipzig city hall, Bach and several of his predecessors describe the condition of the St. Thomas School and its choir in dismal terms, for well-considered reasons. Thus Johann Kuhnau, cantor of St. Thomas in 1717, complained about the excessive strain on students exposed to wind and weather without consideration for the effect on the most sensitive descant voices. The voices, he explained, were lost even before the singers had gained the ability to capably perform an easy short concert at sight with confidence, a goal that required longer training and often eluded even professional singers. The possibility mentioned almost accidentally by Kuhnau of achieving a certain level of perfection in spite of strenuous work as a musician echoes a remark by Johann Mattheson in Hamburg, who had been able to have women sing- ers appear, at least in the cathedral. Mattheson wrote in 1739: “The boys are of little use, I mean, the chapel boys. Before they have attained a reasonable ability to sing, the descant voice is gone. And if they know a bit more or have a mature voice, more so than others, they work so hard to develop themselves that their voice [Wesen] is unpleasant and has no staying power.”⁴ Mattheson obviously wanted to highlight his innovation. His words need to be put into perspective, just as should the oft-cited negative judgment of falsetto singing by Johann Adam Hiller, a successor to Bach as cantor of St. Thomas at the end of the eighteenth century. According to Hiller, concerts in Leipzig had “never had other singers than when one came forward from the viola or violin and, with a screeching falsetto voice, wanted to sing an aria in the manner of Salimbeni, which, into the bargain, he could not read correctly.”⁵ Here again we have a transparently self-interested remark, for it was Hiller himself who, shortly after the end of the Seven Years’ War, allowed women to appear at Leipzig concerts.
  
  As far as the capabilities of boy sopranos are concerned, we must consider that on average in the eighteenth century the change of voice happened considerably later than it does today. For example, in 1763 the seventeen- year-old son of Cantor Doles at St. Thomas School was still able to sing a soprano solo in a church celebration of the end of the Seven Years’ War. Bach himself, arriving in Lüneburg in 1700, was admitted to the matins choir as a soprano at the age of fifteen. Sometime later, it is plausibly reported, his voice broke, and his “uncommonly beautiful soprano voice” was gone. While it is only since the early nineteenth century that we have accounts of remarkable achievements by boy sopranos and altos in the Leipzig St. Thomas Choir, nothing speaks against the assumption that this is a continuation of a tradition that could develop, because, as it was said, “the school was a quasi conservatory and the students stayed in school longer than they do today.”
  
  The abilities of a similar boy soloist are described in the autobiography of one Pastor Christian Heinrich Schreyer.⁶ Born in 1751, he was admitted at the age of twelve years and three months to the choir school at St. Anne’s Church in Dresden and in a short time advanced to first soloist: “I was able to climb up to high f with equal strength, without falsetto. My narrow chest became even more so through the strains of breathing, and I was capable of singing runs of three to four measures without pause and of holding single tones even longer that earlier would have exhausted all my breath.”⁷ This refers to supplemental cadenzas, interpolation of higher pitches, and other means of demonstrating an exceptional artistic skill.
  
  One cannot dismiss the possibility that there were excellent soprano soloists in Leipzig as well during Johann Sebastian Bach’s time, around 1730 and later, who were equal to the demands of the cantata Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen. Further, while the reason for the work’s composition in any case is best sought outside Leipzig, this does not preclude possible reperformances there. It appears that there were at least three of these. One is attested to by several textual changes by Bach that focus on a Herrschaft (lordship; not more closely defined); a second, possibly, by the revised assignment to the fifteenth Sunday after Trinity. A third is documented by several changes in instrumentation undertaken by Wilhelm Friedemann Bach in Halle. A 1784 account attests that superb soprano soloists were available there as well from time to time. It mentions “a certain young man [who], roughly in his seventeenth year, has the great fortune of still singing the first soprano parts.... His voice is bright, with a very great range. His trills were—at least as of a year ago—uncommonly clear and large. He has a very high degree of expression in his power.”⁸ Almost all of these are exceptional cases. But this is exactly what an exceptional work such as Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen requires.

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. Scheibe (1737, 36); Kümmerling (1955); Lindner (1855, 186).↵
  2. Wolf (1997); Hofmann (1989); Marshall (1976).↵
  3. “ein erlesener junger Thomaner, . . . oder, was wahrscheinlicher ist, ein studentischer Falsettist” (Schering 1950, 121).↵
  4. “Die Knaben sind wenig nutz. Ich meine, die Capell-Knaben. Ehe sie eine leidliche Fähigkeit zum Singen bekommen, ist die Discant-Stimme fort. Und wenn sie ein wenig mehr wissen, oder einen fertigen Hals haben, als andre, pflegen sie sich so viel einzubilden, daß ihr Wesen unleidlich ist, und hat doch keinen Bestand.”—Trans↵
  5. "nie andere Sänger gehabt, als wenn einer von der Bratsche oder Violin vortrat,und mit einer kreischenden Falsettstimme, dem Salimbeni eine Arie nachsingen wollte, die er oben drein nicht recht lesen konnte.”—Trans.↵
  6. Schulze (1987, 191ff.).↵
  7. “Mit gleicher Stärke war ich ohne Fistel imstande, bis ins dreigestrichene F hinaufzusteigen. Selbst meine bisherige Engbrüstigkeit verminderte sich durch die Anstrengung des Atmens, und ich vermochte Läufer zu drei bis vier Takten lang ohneabsetzen zu singen und einzelne Töne noch länger auszuhalten, sowie ich vorher vollen Odem geschöpft hatte.”—Trans↵
  8. “ein gewissen jungen Menschen [der] jetzt ungefähr in seinem 17. Jahre noch immer mit vielem Glück die ersten Diskantrollen [singt]. . . . Seine Stimme ist hell, und von einem sehr großen Umfang. Der Triller war, wenigstens noch vor einemJahre, ungemein deutlich und groß. Den Ausdruck hat er in einem sehr hohen Gradin seiner Gewalt.” Serauky (1942, 184).↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:33:57+00:00 O ewiges Feuer, o Ursprung der Liebe BWV 34.2 / BC A 84 12 Pentecost. First performed 06/01/1727 in Leipzig (Cycle IV). plain 2024-04-24T16:06:42+00:00 1727-06-01 BWV 34 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 27Pentecost Pentecost BC A 84 Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "O ewiges Feuer, o Ursprung der Liebe, BWV 34 / BC A 84" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 259 James A. Brokaw II

  Pentecost, June 1, 1727

  In its form for the first day of Pentecost, this cantata (BWV 34.2) belongs to Bach’s late period and, by all appearances, was first performed in May 1746 or 1747. It is unlikely that the cantata was first performed in either of Leipzig’s main churches, St. Thomas and St. Nicholas, but rather—if we are not completely mistaken—the Church of Our Lady (Liebfrauenkirche), in nearby Halle.¹ These inferences are prompted by several remarkable aspects of Bach’s holograph manuscript.
  
  The Thomaskantor was quite sparing in his use of expensive manuscript paper, and there are over one hundred cases of his using the lower staff systems on a page, left vacant after writing out a complex movement with many voices, to notate a separate piece with fewer parts. Whether these are fair copies or composing scores has no bearing on the situation. In the case of our Pentecost cantata, however, the composer set up a foolproof notational scheme in which he wrote the first recitative on the same page as the middle portion of the first movement, with the instruction “Recitativ so nach dem ersten folget” (Recitative thus follows the first). To drive the point home, there is, at the da capo sign after the end of the middle section just mentioned, the notation “Nach Wiederhohlung des Da Capo folgt sub signo . . . das Tenor Recitativ und die Alt Aria et sic porro” (After repetition of the da capo there follows below the sign . . . the tenor recitative and the alto aria and so forth). It is scarcely imaginable that Johann Sebastian Bach would have used these notes and explanations for a composition of his own with only five movements. More plausibly, the score was to be loaned or given away, and the annotations were meant for the manuscript’s receiver, quite likely Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, who added to the score at several places where his father had entered very simple notation.
  
  The evidence for May 1746 as the performance date in Halle is that only a few weeks earlier Wilhelm Friedemann had taken office as organist and music director of the Church of Our Lady, and his father may have wanted to ease his son’s first steps in a new field of activity.² However, there does exist a cantata by Wilhelm Friedemann for the first day of Pentecost in 1746 whose text begins “Wer mich liebet, der wird mein Wort halten” Fk. 72 (Whoever loves me will hold my word). One would therefore have to assume that Bach’s son had performed two cantatas on May 29, 1746. However, no new composition by Wilhelm Friedemann is documented for the following year, and this could speak for a performance on May 21, 1747. The memorable meeting between J. S. Bach and the king of Prussia took place only two weeks before the putative performance date.³ Father and son undertook the journey to Potsdam together, and one can easily imagine that Friedemann might have taken the occasion to ask his father for the favor of a cantata dedicated to the quickly approaching high holiday.
  
  The annotations to the score mentioned above also support the conclusion that Wilhelm Friedemann received only the score from Leipzig and had to arrange for the preparation of performance parts himself. Fully copied parts would have required no instructions as to the sequence of movements. It is possible that J. S. Bach may have had parts prepared for his own use, but this question must remain open. In this case, simultaneous performances in Halle and Leipzig would have occurred. A Leipzig performance—if it in fact took place—would have been only in part a first performance. Only the two recitatives were newly composed for Pentecost. All of the other movements go back to a wedding cantata of the same name (BWV 34.1), which Bach seems to have reused several times. The wedding version, only fragmentarily preserved, was evidently first prepared for the nuptials of a clergyman. In any case, its concluding movement is eloquent:

  Gib, höchster Gott, auch hier dem Worte Kraft, 
  Das so viel Heil bei deinem Volke schafft:
  Es müße ja auf den zurücke fallen,
  Der solches läßt an heilger Stätte schallen. . . . 
  Sein Dienst, so stets am Heiligtume baut, 
  Macht, daß der Herr mit Gnaden auf ihn schaut.
  
  Give, Most High God, here too power to the word 
  That creates so much salvation for your people:
  It must indeed redound upon those 
  Who let it resound in holy places. . . .
  His service, ever cultivated in the sanctuaries, 
  Makes the Lord look upon him with grace.

  
  For a reperformance of the wedding cantata, these specific formulations were replaced by more general expressions, such as:

  Ein Danklied soll zu deinem Throne dringen 
  Und ihm davor ein freudig Opfer bringen.
  
  A song of thanks shall reach your throne 
  And bring a joyful offering before him.

  
  Of the seven movements in the first version, three were adopted in the Pentecost cantata: the opening and closing choruses of the first part, to be performed before the ceremony, and the aria at the beginning of the second part, to be performed afterward. Where possible, the unidentified librettist of the Pentecost cantata took characteristic and formative language from the original, thus demonstrating considerable understanding of the connection between text and music. Overall, the new libretto concerns the popular metaphor of the human heart as the dwelling of God. It immediately takes up the beginning of the reading from John 14:23: “Wer mich liebet, der wird mein Wort halten, und mein Vater wird ihn lieben, und wir werden zu ihm kommen und Wohnung bei ihm machen” (Whoever loves me will keep to my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him). The juxtaposition of “Tempeln” (temples) of the soul and “Hütten” (refuges) of the heart, long familiar in the early Bach cantatas, is seen once again in this relatively late cantata text.⁴ The opening movement of the wedding cantata begins:

  O ewiges Feuer, o Ursprung der Liebe, 
  Entzünde der Herzen geweihten Altar.
  
  O eternal fire, O source of love, 
  Enkindle our hearts’ consecrated altar.

  
  It became:

  O ewiges Feuer, o Ursprung der Liebe, 
  Entzünde die Herzen und weihe sie ein.
  Laß himmlische Flammen durchdringen und wallen, 
  Wir wünschen, o Höchster, dein Tempel zu sein, 
  Ach laß dir die Seelen im Glauben gefallen.
  
  O eternal fire, O source of love,
  Enkindle our hearts and consecrate them. 
  Let heavenly flames pervade and seethe, 
  We wish, O Most High, to be your temple. 
  Ah, let our souls please you in faith.

  
  The first recitative then clearly states:

  Drum sei das Herze dein; 
  Herr, ziehe gnädig ein.
  
  Therefore, may my heart be yours; 
  Lord, enter it with grace.

  
  The following aria, “Wohl euch, ihr auserwählten Seelen, / Die Gott zur Wohnung ausersehn” (Blessed are you, you chosen souls, / Whom God has selected for his dwelling), had in its original version the bucolic image of Jacob and Rachel from Numbers, the fourth book of Moses, as its theme:

  Wohl euch, ihr auserwählten Schafe, 
  Die ein getreuer Jakob liebt.
  Sein Lohn wird dort am größten werden, 
  Den ihm der Herr bereits auf Erden 
  Durch seiner Rahel Anmut gibt.
  
  Blessed are you, chosen flock,
  Whom a faithful Jacob loves.
  His reward will be at its greatest, 
  Which the Lord, already on Earth 
  Gives to him, through his Rachel, grace.

  
  The last recitative of the Pentecost cantata also stays with the image of the dwelling of God but translates it to the church:

  Erwählt Gott die heilgen Hütten, 
  Die er mit Heil bewohnt,
  So muß er auch den Segen auf sie schütten, 
  So wird der Sitz des Heiligtums belohnt. 
  Der Herr ruft über sein geweihtes Haus
  Das Wort des Segens aus:
  Friede über Israel.
  
  If God chooses the holy tabernacles, 
  Which he inhabits with salvation,
  Then he must also pour blessings upon them, 
  That the seat of the sanctuary be rewarded. 
  The Lord calls out over his consecrated house 
  These words of blessing:
  Peace upon Israel.

  
  “Peace upon Israel”: this word of blessing from the psalmist is paraphrased differently in the wedding and Pentecost cantatas, but always in accordance with the concern of the work.
  
  Bach’s composition presents a large festive ensemble setting in the broadly executed opening chorus, evoking the image of eternally blazing flames, as well as in the terse, powerful closing movement. As Arnold Schering wrote, its “fiery start and agility of the instruments [free themselves] of the ‘Hurry to those holy steps’ (Eilt zu denen heiligen Stufen) of the original version and meet here, with the feeling of thanksgiving in the highest degree. Earlier, this chorus ended the first part of the wedding cantata, before the sermon. Bach left alone its powerful terseness and homophonic form, which, in the Pentecost cantata, brings the whole to an almost unexpectedly quick conclusion.”⁵ The alto aria in the middle of the cantata is, in Schering’s words, “a world-famous piece, and one of the most beautiful that Bach ever wrote.”⁶ It unites, in the attachment to the original wedding text, “pastoral idyll and devoted shepherd love”: “This lovely mutual swaying of the two-part melody structure above the tranquil bass, the tender, swelling bending of the motive itself, the duetting . . . finally finding one another in thirds and sixths—hardly ever has a lovers’ dalliance been more delightfully represented with sonorous enchantment.”⁷
   

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  Footnotes

  1. Our understanding of this cantata’s date of origin was radically altered by the discovery of a printed text booklet in the Russian National Library in St. Petersburg for use by an audience member at St. Nicholas or St. Thomas Church in Leipzig. The date on the booklet’s cover, 1727, shows that the work was composed roughly twenty years earlier than previously thought and only shortly after the secular cantata BWV34.1, on which it is based. See Schabalina (2008, 65–68).—Trans.↵
  2. May 1746 is now understood to be the date of reperformance.—Trans.↵
  3. Schulze here refers to J. S. Bach’s visit to King Frederick II of Prussia at Potsdamon May 7, 1747, when the king presented Bach with a theme upon which Bach extemporaneously improvised a fugue. Bach later composed a collection of fugues (or ricercars), canons, and a trio sonata on the “royal theme,” which he published in September of that year under the title Das musikalische Opfer BWV 1079.—Trans.↵
  4. See note 1.—Trans.↵
  5. Schering (1950, 92).—Trans.↵
  6. Schering (1950, 92).—Trans.↵
  7. Schering (1950, 91).—Trans.↵