This page is referenced by:

• 1 2023-09-26T09:34:18+00:00 Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust BWV 170 / BC A 106 11 Cantata for alto solo. Sixth Sunday After Trinity. First performed 07/28/1726 in Leipzig (Cycle III). Text by GC Lehms. plain 2024-04-24T17:41:05+00:00 1726-07-28 BWV 170 Leipzig 50.979493, 11.323544 05Trinity06 Cantata for alto solo Sixth Sunday After Trinity BC A 106 Johann Sebastian Bach GC Lehms Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust, BWV 170 / BC A 106" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 328 James A. Brokaw II Leipzig III

  Sixth Sunday after Trinity, July 28, 1726

  Without question, this cantata is among the most challenging compositions of its kind. Who it was who had to master the difficult solo alto part at the first performance under Bach’s direction is not documented. It may have been Carl Gotthelf Gerlach, who is known to have occasionally served as an alto. A student in Leipzig, Gerlach was at the St. Thomas School earlier under Bach’s predecessor as cantor, Johann Kuhnau. 
  
  The cantata was heard for the first time on July 28, 1726. Another cantata must also have been performed on the same day: Ich will mein Geist in euch geben JLB-7 (I will put my spirit within you), by Bach’s Meiningen cousin Johann Ludwig Bach. It is likely that one cantata was performed before the sermon during the main worship service, the other afterward. It is not known which work received the preferred position before the sermon. It may have been the cantata by Bach’s Meiningen cousin, because it alone makes direct reference in its text to the Gospel reading of the Sunday. While Bach’s source text is indeed designated as “Andacht auf den sechsten Sonntag nach Trinitatis” (Devotion for the sixth Sunday after Trinity), a relation to the Gospel reading is more difficult to make out than for the cantata by Johann Ludwig Bach. Therefore, the cantata Vergügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust BWV 170 (Contented rest, beloved pleasure of the soul) would have been performed on this initial occasion only after the sermon, during Communion. 
      
  This work is one of the few flawless examples in Bach’s oeuvre of the cantata as it is exemplified by Erdmann Neumeister in his collection Geistliche Cantaten statt einer Kirchen-Music (Sacred cantatas instead of a church music), prepared in 1702 and reprinted in 1704. That is, traditional church music with its mixture of biblical text, chorale strophes, and a few freely versified portions was to be replaced—according to Neumeister’s initiative—by subjective expressions of piety exclusively in free poetry.¹ This effort achieved only partial success, although it was widely imitated. Who wrote the exclusively free poetry for this Bach cantata long remained a mystery to Bach research. On several occasions it was even suggested that Bach himself might have authored the text. In the 1950s it was proven not only that Bach had set this text to music in Leipzig but also that—fifteen years before Bach—Christoph Graupner had done so in Darmstadt, where he was court music director; he had also been among Bach’s competitors in 1723 for the Leipzig cantorate.² With this, attention was focused on the Darmstadt court librarian Georg Christian Lehms as author of the text. But it was only as recently as 1970 that final confirmation came with the discovery of a copy of Lehms’s text collection Gottgefälliges Kirchen-Opffer (Church offering pleasing to God), published at Darmstadt in 1711. It turned out that when he was at Weimar, before 1717, Bach had used two texts for composition from this volume and at Leipzig eight further texts in 1725 and 1726.³
  
  For the era, it was not at all unusual to draw upon a relatively old collection of texts. It was an inaccurate premise of older scholarship that a close temporal relationship necessarily existed between the appearance of a printed collection and an associated composition—a premise that led to a number of disastrous errors. In the case of the Lehms texts, it is clear that they, with their powerfully elemental Baroque manner of expression, stood diametrically opposed to the galant sensibilities of the age. Whether Bach prized them for exactly this reason and deliberately adopted a backward-looking attitude is impossible to say. 
  
  The Andacht (devotional) text authored by Lehms comprises five movements: three arias and two recitatives. The language is characterized by the frequent use of compound nouns, a feature that betrays a proclivity to powerful Baroque expression. On the one hand, this may have to do with the collection’s relatively early origin; on the other hand, it could point to the author’s background and spiritual home. Although he finished his career in Darmstadt, Lehms came from Liegnitz in Lower Silesia. It was the Silesian schools of poetry, in particular, the Second Silesian School of the late seventeenth century, that the early eighteenth century regarded as the stronghold of harsh, crude, overladen, overblown expression. Bach himself had to endure such a comparison when in May 1737 Johann Adolph Scheibe in Hamburg launched an attack against Bach’s compositional style, calling his works turgid and confused and comparing them to the works of the Silesian playwright Daniel Casper von Lohenstein.
  
  With “Vergnügte Ruh, beliebte Seelenlust” (Contented rest, beloved pleasure of the soul), Lehms begins his hymn of praise to “wahren Seelenfrieden” (true peace of the soul)—the “Stille und Ruhe des Herzens” (heart’s quiet and ease). He continues:

  Dich kann man nicht bei Höllensünden,
  Wohl aber Himmelseintracht finden;
  Du stärkst allein die schwache Brust.
  Drum sollen lauter Tugendgaben
  In meinem Herzen Wohnung haben.
  
  You cannot be found amid the sins of hell
  But rather in heavenly concord;
  You alone strengthen the weak breast.
  Therefore should true gifts of virtue
  Have their dwelling in my heart.

      
  But this gentle entreaty is only a prelude. Like a preacher thundering from the pulpit against the gathered throng of sinners, Lehms holds forth in his first recitative:

  Die Welt, das Sündenhaus,
  Bricht nur in Höllenlieder aus
  Und sucht in Haß und Neid,
  Des Satans Bild an sich zu tragen.
  Ihr Mund ist voller Ottergift,
  Der oft die Unschuld tödlich trifft,
  Und will allein von Racha! sagen.
  
  The world, that house of sin,
  Breaks forth only in songs of hell
  And seeks, through hate and envy,
  To bear Satan’s image.
  Its mouth is full of the poison of asps,
  Which often strikes innocence mortally
  And would only speak of Raca!

  
  With this, the poet builds a bridge to the Gospel reading for the sixth Sunday after Trinity, found in Matthew 5, not far from the Sermon on the Mount. It focuses on the message of justification with the words of Jesus: “For I say to you: Unless your righteousness is better than that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. You have heard what is said to the ancients: ‘You shall not kill; whoever kills, he shall be guilty before the law.’ I, however, say to you: Whoever is angry with his brother, he is guilty before the law; whoever, though, says to his brother: Racha! He is guilty before the council; however, he who says: You fool! He is guilty before the fires of hell” (20–22). In long, powerfully expressive verses, the second aria laments the misguided ways of the human heart:

  Wie jammern mich doch die verkehrten Herzen,
  Die dir, mein Gott, so sehr zuwider sein;
  Ich zittre recht und fühle tausend Schmerzen,
  Wenn sie sich nur an Rach’ und Haß erfreun.
  
  How the wayward hearts afflict me
  That against you, my God, are so sorely set.
  I truly tremble and feel a thousand pains
  When they delight only in vengeance and hate.

  
  “Gerechter Gott” (righteous God), cries the poet, “Was magst du doch gedenken” (What might you think), and concludes with the lines “Ach, ohne Zweifel hast du so gedacht: / Wie jammern mich doch die verkehrten Herzen!” (Ah, without doubt have you thought: / How the wayward hearts afflict me!). Thus the return to the aria’s beginning is accomplished by a simple artifice, and the train of thought is closed. The last recitative continues the lament “Wer sollte sich demnach / Wohl hier zu leben wünschen” (Who should therefore / Wish to live here) but returns to “Gottes Vorschrift” (God’s injunction), namely, to love even the enemy as a friend. The final chorale closes the circle to the “Vergnügte Ruh” of the beginning:

  Mir ekelt mehr zu leben,
  Drum nimm mich, Jesu, hin.
  Mir graut vor allen Sünden,
  Laß mich dies Wohnhaus finden,
  Wo selbst ich ruhig bin.
  
  I am sickened to live longer;
  Therefore, take me, Jesus, away.
  I shudder before all my sins.
  Let me find this dwelling place
  Wherein I can find peace.

   
  In spite of its rather overwrought language, the text is quite well suited for composition. It provided Bach the opportunity to draw on all registers of his art and to put an unusual wealth of invention on display. For the first aria, the song of praise to contented repose, the 12
  8 meter, at peace within itself and complete, and the soft gleam of the key of D major provide ideal foundations. Here, the richness of tone of the strings and the warm timbre of the oboe d’amore unfold just as does the self-possessed singing voice. With the beginning of the first recitative, this ideal world is left forever. Indeed, the image of the world itself is put in question, for in the second aria, “Wie jammern mich doch die verkehrten Herzen,” the world itself is—musically speaking—turned on its head. The otherwise obligatory bass foundation is omitted, violins and violas join to form a foundation in a high register, and singing voice and organ give themselves over to a harmonic and melodic adventure tantamount to the path through a maze. Only rarely did Bach employ this bassetto effect—the omission of the basso continuo—but on each occasion with particular intent. In this case, the “irregular” procedure characterizes the extraordinary, incomprehensible, not understandable rationally, or only in irregular fashion—in other words, the “wrong paths” of the “wayward” hearts. A parallel example of something not rationally explicable and hence set the same way in music would be the soprano aria from the St. Matthew Passion “Aus Liebe will mein Heiland sterben” BWV 244, 49.
  
  With its thematic invention and dance-like verve, the third aria of the cantata could pass as a song of praise of the joys of earthly existence were there not, at the very beginning, an augmented step from D to G-sharp—a tritone, the diabolus in musica. It represents the revulsion against the pharisaical existence, the necessity of reversing course.
  
  In 1750 Bach’s oldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann, performed the first aria of our cantata in Halle as part of a pasticcio (BR-WFB F 20), in which still another cantata movement⁴ by Johann Sebastian and a recitative of unknown origin were included. The second and third arias were not included; they were probably too challenging technically or, with their musical symbolism, would not have been understood.

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. Hobohm (2000); Rucker (2000); Krausse (1986).↵
  2. Schulze (1959).↵
  3. Noack (1970).↵
  4. The first movement of Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben BWV 147.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:37:19+00:00 Preise dein Glücke, gesegnetes Sachsen BWV 215 / BC G 21 5 Preise dein Glücke, gesegnetes Sachsen BWV 215. . Anniversary of Election as King Friedrich August III of Poland cantata for Friedrich August III of Poland. First performed on Oct 05, 1734 in Leipzig. Text by JC Clauder. plain 2024-04-24T14:47:43+00:00 1734-10-05 BWV 215 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 Anniversary of Election as King Friedrich August III of Poland BC G 21 Johann Sebastian Bach JC Clauder Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Preise dein Glücke, gesegnetes Sachsen, BWV 215 / BC G 21" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 679 James A. Brokaw II Saxony-Poland Friedrich August III of Poland

  Members of Princely Houses: Saxony/Poland, October 5, 1734

  The homage cantata Preise dein Glücke, gesegnetes Sachsen BWV 215 (Praise your good fortune, blessed Saxony) was performed in October 1734 in honor of the electoral family. It is different from many of its sibling works in that the most important members of the royal house were present at the performance. Occasions of the first rank such as this came only rarely for the cantor of St. Thomas School, and for two such instances in 1727 and 1738 the music is lost, so that posterity can only refer to the verses of the librettists Christian Friedrich Haupt (Entfernet euch, ihr heitern Sterne BWV 1156) and Johann Christoph Gottsched (Willkommen! Ihr herrschenden Götter der Erden BWV 1161). By contrast, the cantata Preise dein Glücke, gesegnetes Sachsen is complete and well documented in every conceivable respect and, moreover, fits into Bach’s multiyear effort to elevate his profile through a title at the princely electoral Hofcapelle in Dresden. Bach had submitted a petition in that regard in July 1733, but the approval was long in coming. Experience had shown that any attempt to send a reminder had little chance of success, particularly when, in the case of the royal Polish / electoral Saxon court, the ruling family was continuously commuting between Dresden and Warsaw and, for all practical purposes, could never be reached. And so the only remaining possibility was to attract attention occasionally with appropriate musical performances, in particular, celebrating the birthdays and name days of the authorities with festival cantatas, and to convey the news of these performances by sending a printed copy of the text or at least to have an announcement in the press near the court. 
  
  Johann Sebastian Bach had planned an event of this sort for October 1734 and had begun to prepare a cantata for the birthday of the elector-prince for performance by Bach’s Collegium Musicum on October 7. But the electoral family visited Leipzig unannounced on October 2 during Michaelmas, intending to leave four days later, and another undertaking took precedence. Instead of a private concert by the Collegium Musicum, a torchlight parade through the city took place, as well as an outdoor evening concert in front of the Apel Haus on the south side of the market square, where the illustrious guests stayed. On a clear hint from the Dresden court, the university took the initiative, with a group of students raising financing. The fifth anniversary of what is called the royal election on October 6 was used as an external occasion. On that day in 1733, Elector Friedrich August II of Saxony had himself elected king of Poland in order to continue Saxon rule over Poland, initiated by his father, Friedrich August I, known to history as August the Strong. But Stanislaus Leszczyński, who had worn the Polish crown from 1707 to 1709, laid claim to the throne and had himself elected as king in September 1733, leading to military clashes in the course of which Saxony, supported by France and Russia, gained the upper hand. The city of Danzig managed to resist the longest, but even it buckled to superior strength in the summer of 1734. 
  
  The text of our cantata refers to these events in the usual manner for the age: highlighting the merits of the father of the people as war hero and peacemaker, as the creator of wealth and prosperity, and as patron god and ally of heaven while omitting otherwise requisite allegory and appropriation from ancient mythology. More still: the text shows clear ambitions in the direction of a purified German. Accordingly, it abstains from barely comprehensible learned allusions, faddish turns of phrase, and in particular all provincialisms. The explanation for this phenomenon is found in the person of the librettist, Johann Christoph Clauder. He came from an old Saxon-Thuringian family of scholars and was later active in an influential position in the Dresden court. As a student he was among the followers of Gottsched and served as an intermediary between him and his later adversaries in Switzerland. For a time, Clauder was considered the “Upper Saxon speech corrector” (obersächsischer Sprachkorrektor) of Johann Jacob Bodmer.¹
  
  We cannot say to what extent Bach took note of the literary qualities of the libretto. It also remains unknown to what extent he may have influenced the form of the text and whether, for example, he requested arias in particular verse meters. Indeed, he had scarcely three days to write out a score of more than forty pages, have a total of twenty-four performing parts copied out by a staff of assistants, gather together singers and instrumentalists, rehearse the cantata with them, and finally perform it.
  
  The almost insurmountable task was actually achieved, and it even resulted in an effective performance at which the electoral family, it is said, “did not leave the window so long as the music lasted, but rather graciously listened, and His Majesty was sincerely pleased.”²
  
  The factors that led to this success included, not least of all, Bach’s ability to manage his efforts and, when faced with a lack of time, to rely upon his earlier compositions.³Thus, in addition to the movements originally composed for our cantata—all the recitatives, the final chorus, the third aria, and the middle section of the opening movement—there are also components that are based on older compositions. These include the first and second arias, whose models have not yet been identified, as well as—especially—the beginning and ending portions of the opening chorus. Here, the text “Preise dein Glücke, gesegnetes Sachsen, / Weil Gott den Thron deines Königs erhält” (Praise your good fortune, blessed Saxony, / For God maintains the throne of your king) is so skillfully wedded to the music that it was only relatively recently that the original image of an homage cantata from the year 1732 was recognized (BWV 1157). There, the opening movement begins with the words “Es lebe der König, der Vater im Lande, der weise, der milde, der tapfer August” (Long live the king, the father of his country, the wise, the gentle, the courageous August). That Bach transplanted the elaborate double chorus into the new cantata, in spite of the shortage of time, gives one a sense of how much he expected from the performance before the elector, particularly in regard to the court title Bach had requested. The performance, illuminated by six hundred torches before what must have been a large audience, was a great success. But one of the best musicians in Leipzig, the trumpeter and senior member of the Stadtpfeiffer, Gottfried Reiche, fell victim to a stroke the following day, quite possibly due to the stress of performing in the dense smoke from the wax torches. This tragic incident must have darkened Bach’s joy over the successful homage (as well as over the honorarium of fifty thaler—a sum not to be dismissed). 
  
  The music of our cantata shows the fifty-year-old cantor of St. Thomas at the height of his creative powers. Older components are so skillfully and seamlessly integrated that the entire work seems molded from a single cast. The fact that the impressive double chorus from 1732 was not only reused here but also found its way into the Osanna of the Mass in B Minor BWV 232 caused some confusion in earlier scholarship as to priority. The newly composed middle section, which skillfully opens up further antiphonal possibilities for the two choirs, allows the opening movement to expand to over four hundred measures. It is not easy for the pearl necklace of recitatives and arias that follows to assert itself after this imposing portal: the elegant tenor aria, featuring fashionable galant rhythms; the bass solo, an “aria with heroic affect”; the soprano aria, embedded in the flutes’ lovely timbres. This last movement omits the normally requisite basso continuo so that the upper strings form the foundation, signaling something unusual, diverging from the expected. This is undoubtedly directed to a characteristic of the regent being glorified: answering malice with generosity and animosity with gentleness. A martial intermezzo in the last recitative recalls the recently endured threat of war before the final chorus with its harmonious and hopeful “laß uns die Länder in Frieden bewohnen” (let us inhabit the lands in peace), which recalls the finale of Handel’s Music for the Royal Fireworks (HWV 351). 

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. Schulze (1959).↵
  2.  “so lange die Music gedauret nicht vom Fenster weggegangen, sondern solche gnädigst angehöret, und ihro Majestät hertzlich wohlgefallen” (BD II:250 [no. 352]).—Trans.↵
  3.  There is an excellent summary in Crist (1995).↵