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• 1 2023-09-26T09:36:19+00:00 Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich BWV 150 / BC B 24 30 Penance Service. First performed circa 1707 in Mühlhausen. . plain 2024-04-24T17:57:07+00:00 BWV 150 Mühlhausen Penance Service BC B 24 Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich, BWV 150 / BC B 24" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 618 James A. Brokaw II circa 1707 Mühlhausen

  Homage, ca. 1707

  The cantata Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich BWV 150 (For you, Lord, I do long) has been handed down to us without any assignment to the church calendar. In other respects, it is the source of headaches for performers as well as scholars. Indeed, the legitimacy of the attribution to Johann Sebastian Bach was in doubt for a very long time. In particular, it was Arnold Schering, one of the most significant music scholars of the first half of the twentieth century, who with immoderate oratory attempted to convince the experts of the cantata’s inauthenticity. Schering closed a 1913 special study¹ with a kind of sweeping statement with which he described the quality and transmission of the work: “It is all the same, whatever name of a minor Saxon or Thuringian cantor we may put on it. In any case it would be irresponsible, as far as the present case is concerned, if we were to allow the letters ‘di J. S. Bach’ by the teenage St. Thomas student Penzel, put there perhaps through ignorance or foolishness, to lead us astray ever again in our understanding of the personal style and powerful spirit of our Bach.”²
  
  Strong words, certainly. The analysis that precedes it spares nothing in criticizing compositional technique and text declamation, complains about the lack of clarity of form, and mocks errors of counterpoint. A good explanation for deficits of this sort would be that it could be an early work, making pardonable the sins against the rules of composition and declamation. Although even Arnold Schering cannot deny this idea, he remains true to his intention of striking this cantata from the Bachian canon. He takes advantage of the fact that the cantata has survived the ages only in a copy made shortly after 1750 by the St. Thomas School student Christian Friedrich Penzel and gives full rein to his eloquence:

  The formal layout and style of this so-called . . . Bachian cantata place it in the period around or shortly after 1700, where one can still occasionally find the segmented structure as well as simple chaconnes in 3
  2 meter. Leipzig masters of the first rank such as Knüpfer and Schelle are to be disregarded, as well as even Kuhnau, although as a cantata composer he occasionally came off badly. After such brilliant church pieces as he composed around 1710, he would not have offered Leipzig something so hackneyed and old-fashioned. It strikingly demonstrates the total immaturity in judgment of the young Penzel, as he copied this particular cantata that no one could have appreciated in 1750. Or was it piety before an ancient, yellowed manuscript in Sebastian’s music case that he in careless haste signed with the name of the great one? Precisely because of his immaturity, he scarcely would have thought of an intentional deception.³

  If one reduces this verbal cascade to its core substance, what remains is the assertion that the cantata would already have been regarded as distinctly unmodern when it was copied shortly after 1750 and was therefore—particularly regarding its pronounced, finely segmented structure—to be placed hypothetically around 1700. What kept Schering and others from placing the work around 1705 and regarding it as a youthful work by Johann Sebastian Bach? In addition to several musical blunders one would not want to ascribe to the master of the St. Matthew Passion, even in his younger years, it was above all the form of the text that did not conform to the prevailing opinion as to the course of development. It was believed that the combination of biblical passages and free poetry found in the cantata Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich could not have originated before 1710 because it presupposed a specific change in the form of cantata libretti. For decades there had been talk of a “text reform” and of its supposed originator, Erdmann Neumeister, chief pastor in Hamburg at the end of his career. It is said to have been Neumeister who, after introducing free poetry into the church cantata in 1702, eleven years later created the so-called mixed text form consisting of free poetry as well as biblical passages and chorale verse. In no way is this true, and it doesn’t apply to the cantata Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich anyway. For the mere presence of free poetry in the text has nothing to do with the modern formal world of recitative and aria drawn from opera, which Erdmann Neumeister had in fact made accessible to the church cantata. Instead, what we have here are strophic forms of an older style, suggesting that they may be the verses of a very rare, as yet unidentified chorale. To use texts of this sort for composition—even in connection with biblical text—was not at all unusual for the seventeenth century. Further, nothing speaks against the hypothesis that in choosing the text, the young Johann Sebastian Bach was following conventions of the age as well as the traditions of the Bach family. Another question concerns when and to what purpose the cantata may have been composed. There are securely dated works for comparison from Bach’s Mühlhausen period, from mid-1707 to mid-1708, but these are distinguished by a visibly more advanced compositional technique. Accordingly, the cantata Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich must have been composed during Bach’s years in Arnstadt, from the summer of 1703 to the summer of 1707. But at least until February 1706, the young Arnstadt organist refused to make music in the church with students at the lyceum, precluding the performance of cantatas. So the question remains open whether the cantata really belongs to the Arnstadt period and in Arnstadt itself or whether it may have been performed in one of the surrounding villages.
  
  Further, no details have been established regarding the author and origin of the text.⁴ Of its six sections, three are taken from Psalm 25:

  Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich. Mein Gott, ich hoffe auf dich. Laß mich nicht zuschanden werden, daß sich meine Feinde nicht freuen über mich. (1–2)
  Leite mich in deiner Wahrheit und lehre mich; denn du bist der Gott, er mir hilft, täglich harre ich dein. (5)
  Meine Augen sehen stets zu dem Herrn; denn er wird meinen Fuß aus dem Netze ziehen. (15)
  
  After you, Lord, I long. My God, I place my hopes in you. Let me not be ashamed, so that my enemies do not triumph over me.
  Lead me in your truth, and teach me; for you are the God who helps me, daily I await you.
  My eyes always look to the Lord; for he will pull my foot out of the net.

  
  The succession of these three psalm verses can be described with the keywords “Prayer,” “Confession,” and “Certainty.” At the center stands “Confession”; it is flanked by two six-line strophes that are interrelated, although they are structured differently. At the same time, they, as well as the concluding eight-line strophe, can be understood to interpret the psalm verses that precede them. To this extent, the cantata text can be said to be elegantly structured and consciously formed, despite its simplicity and brevity.
  
  The same can be said of the composition, with the proviso that the work depicts the young Bach’s search for his own musical language and, further, his struggle for mastery of his musical craft. Yet even at this putative early stage there is no lack of self-confidence: right away in the first movement, a sinfonia of fewer than twenty measures and a quite modest ensemble of two violins, bassoon, and basso continuo sets forth the main theme in all of its parts for the following vocal movement in the style of an Italian trio sonata. This theme consists mainly of a series of half-tone steps that fill out the interval of the fourth—the traditional lamento—so that the text “Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich” is presented as a passionate lamentation. In a rapid succession of lively and measured phrases, an extended fugal exposition is reached in which the text “daß sich meine Feinde nicht freuen über mich” is combined with a variant of the lamento theme, for which the coloratura on the keyword “freuen” (triumph) helps to reveal new aspects.
  
  The first freely versified text “Doch bin und bleibe ich vergnügt” (Yet I am and remain content) is set as an aria for soprano and obbligato violins. “Aria” is admittedly a high-flown designation for the short-segmented structure, in which hardly two measures follow one another without being separated by a cadence. Motet-like short segmentation also characterizes the second choral movement, on a passage from Psalm 25. Here, sustained single pitches stand out, an illustrative element depicting the word “harren” (await). The second aria is set up as a trio of alto, tenor, and bass, in parallel for the most part. Their text, beginning “Zedern müßen von den Winden / Oft viel Ungemach empfinden” (Cedars must, from the winds / Often suffer much hardship), provides the composer the occasion to depict, through the incessant figuration of the basso continuo, the raging of the forces of nature. The ensuing psalm verse follows the model of the first, beginning with the short-breathed exchange of phrases that culminates in a fugal intensification, here, however, with the more challenging procedure of permutation fugue.
  
  The closing and consummate tutti on the freely versified text that begins “Meine Tage in dem Leide / Endet Gott dennoch zur Freude” (My days of suffering / God will nevertheless end with joy) is designed as a chaconne, a series of variations above a constantly repeating theme in the bass. The solemnity of the step dance in 3
  2 meter and its rigorously managed procedures of repetition and variation produce a constant earnestness that creates a unity of character amid the diversity of variations. Thus a large-scale coherence is ultimately established that had been lacking from the previous movements. This “lack” obviously presupposes the perspective of Bach’s later oeuvre; in that early period to which the cantata belongs, diversity and variety within a confined space were undoubtedly a virtue, proof of richness of invention, and without this criterion a just assessment of the early works for keyboard and organ would be hardly conceivable.

  Addendum

  Only a few years after his book’s publication, Schulze was able to resolve several significant mysteries attending this cantata, clarifying the work’s purpose and producing a quite compelling hypothesis as to the author of its text.⁵ Within the seven-movement scheme, the three strophes of free verse (movements 3, 5, and 7) read as follows:

  3.
  Doch bin und bleibe ich vergnügt, 
  Obgleich hier zeitlich toben Kreutz, 
  Sturm und andre Proben, 
  Tod, Höll und was sich fügt.
  Ob Unfall schlägt den treuen Knecht, 
  Recht ist und bleibet ewig Recht.
  
  Yet I am and remain cheerful, 
  Although here briefly rage 
  Cross, storm, and other trials, 
  Death, hell, and all that follow.
  Though misfortune may strike the loyal servant, 
  Right is and must ever remain right.
  
  5.
  Zedern müssen von den Winden Oft viel 
  Ungemach empfinden, 
  Oftmals werden sie verkehrt.
  Rat und Tat auf Gott gestellt, 
  Achtet nicht was widerbellet,
  Denn sein Wort ganz anders lehrt.
  
  Cedars must, from the winds, 
  Often feel much hardship, 
  Often are they uprooted.
  Counsel and action based on God, 
  Ignore that which howls back,
  For his word teaches quite differently.
  
  7.
  Meine Tage in dem Leide
  Endet Gott dennoch zur Freude:
  Christen auf den Dornenwegen
  Führen Himmels Kraft und Segen.
  Bleibet Gott mein treuer Schutz, 
  Achte ich nicht Menschentrutz; 
  Christus, der uns steht zur Seiten, 
  Hilft mir täglich sieghaft streiten.
  
  My days in suffering
  God nevertheless ends in joy:
  Christians on their thorny paths
  Are led by heaven’s power and blessing 
  If God remains my loyal defense,
  I may ignore human spite; 
  Christ, who stands at our side,
  Helps me daily to fight victoriously.

  In 2005 an alert Belgian blogger named Johan DeWael noticed that the last four lines of the concluding eight-line strophe, the chaconne, begin with the letter sequence B-A-C-H and that in the third movement—the first strophe of free poetry—the six lines begin with D-O-K-T-O-R.⁶
  
  The online discussion focused on speculation that Bach had applied his signature to the text of his first cantata, and little further progress in solving the riddle was made. However, by correcting several errors of spelling and usage, Schulze was able to decipher an acrostic that involved all lines of free poetry in the text:

  The solution to this puzzle did not present any particular difficulties. All that was required were a few changes to the text as it has stood until now. In the fifth movement, verse 1 (measure 5), the reading “Zedern”—which accords with the primary source, Christian Friedrich Penzel’s copy of 1755 (P1044)—must be restored to its historical spelling “Cedern”:⁷

  Cedern müssen von den Winden

  Similarly, in movement 5, verse 3 (measure 15), the nonsensical reading “Oftmals” (often)—obviously the result of a handwriting error, unnoticed until now—had to be corrected to “Niemals” (never), appropriate to the “steadfastness of these trees”:

  Niemals werden sie verkehrt

  In movement 7, verse 4 (measure 28), the imprecise word “Führen” (to lead)—hardly appropriate to “Himmels Kraft und Segen” (Heaven’s power and blessing)—was replaced by the—conjectural—“Kühren” (old spelling, here used in the sense of “elect”):

  Küren Himmels Kraft und Segen

  The freely versified strophes, corrected through these minor edits, yield the acrostic Doktor Conrad Meckbach and thus refer to one of the most important Mühlhausen personages during the era of young Johann Sebastian Bach.⁸

  
  A year after publishing these revelations in Bach-Jahrbuch 2010, Schulze followed up with several corrections and clarifications.⁹ The spelling “DOCTOR” is more historically appropriate to the early eighteenth century and hence preferable to “DOKTOR”; moreover, the Penzel copy has “Creutz, Sturm und andere Proben” instead of “Kreutz,” as seen in recent editions. Second, a presentation print of the text must have been produced in addition to the performance, since the acrostic could not easily have been perceived aurally alone.
  
  Meckbach was a Mühlhausen burgomaster and town councilor who spoke in favor of hiring Bach as organist at Divi Blasii on May 24, 1707, and, a bit more than a year later, on June 26, 1708, recommended that Bach’s dismissal be granted to allow him to accept a new position at the court of Weimar.
  
  Schulze tentatively suggested that Georg Christian Eilmar, archdeacon at St. Mary’s in Mühlhausen, may have been the librettist, based on his authorship of several funeral odes for Meckbach’s wife in 1709. And in 2011 Schulze ventured the possibility that the work might have been in honor of Meckbach’s seventieth birthday on April 19, 1707. Locating the work at Mühlhausen, Schulze concluded in 2010, should make possible a fairer view of its musical merits, help to clarify its compositional superiority to works by contemporaries, and draw attention to commonalities and differences with its sister works Aus der Tiefen rufe ich, Herr, zu dir BWV 131 and Gott ist mein König BWV 71.

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. Schering (1913); Glöckner (1988).↵
  2. Schering (1913, 52).↵
  3. Schering (1913, 50–51).↵
  4. Please see the addendum to this essay.—Trans↵
  5. Schulze (2010); Schulze (2011a); Schulze (2011b).—Trans.↵
  6. Schulze (2010, 70).—Trans. ↵
  7. Schulze (2010, 71).↵
  8. Schulze (2010, 71).—Trans.↵
  9. Schulze (2011).↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:38:28+00:00 Schwingt freudig euch empor BWV 36.1 / BC G 35 5 Congratulatory cantata for the birthday of an academic. First performed in April - May 1725 in Leipzig. plain 2024-04-24T16:08:03+00:00 BWV 36.1 Congratulatory cantata BC G 35 Johann Sebastian Bach CF Henrici (Picander) Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Schwingt freudig euch empor, BWV 36.1 / BC G 35" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 701 James A. Brokaw II April - May 1725 An academic

  University Functions, April or May 1725

  That the cantata Schwingt freudig euch empor BWV 36.1 (Soar joyfully aloft) is a secular work is not immediately obvious from its title. Indeed, two church cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach (or, if you like, a single cantata in two different versions) begin with the same text. Furthermore, there are also two secular cantatas that are intimately related to our composition. It has taken some time for Bach scholarship to disentangle what at first seemed to be a complicated web of relationships. Ultimately, however, the relationships among and chronologies of the group of five works have proven to be both rational and transparent. Most of the unanswered questions concern the archetype of the entire group, the secular cantata Schwingt euch freudig empor. 
  
  In his autograph score, Bach concisely designated the work as “Cantata,” a term he rarely used. It is admittedly not a cantata in the narrowest sense, which would be a composition of several movements with a single voice and accompanying instruments or simply basso continuo. Our cantata belongs to a subtype, as it were, and indeed one of the most sophisticated: this follows from the participation of four voices, strings, and other instruments. What makes this a cantata, despite all this, is the disposition of the text, which is indeed presented by three soloists and choir. However, no roles are assigned to the participants neither from antique mythology nor from sources in history or the present. Titles such as “Serenata” or “Dramma per musica”—conventional at the time for secular cantatas having any kind of plot at all—do not apply here. From several perspectives, so to speak, a highly deserving teacher is offered an homage in which the text yields no clue whether the teacher is at a school or university.
  
  Older Bach scholarship was unanimously of the opinion that the homage belonged in the confines of Leipzig’s St. Thomas School. This view was based on an envelope accompanying the original manuscript, upon which an earlier owner had indicated that the cantata was for the birthday of Rector Johann Matthias Gesner. As things stand, this assertion can hardly be the result of a review of secondary literature or an investigation of records. Instead, it involves a note that the aforementioned collector had before him, perhaps on a damaged envelope from Bach’s time, and that he restored in his own hand. The reference to Rector Gesner does have some credence, because he is known to have always been a promoter of music—and a personal friend of Johann Sebastian Bach. It is considered to be a particular tragedy for the Thomaskantor that Gesner left his post as rector of St. Thomas School after only four years for the University of Göttingen, then in the process of being founded, so that a benefactor of music was lost to Leipzig and the St. Thomas School. Gesner, a great Latinist before the Lord, remained intimately bound to Leipzig despite the many demands upon him as university professor, librarian, and scientific administrator, as shown by a footnote he appended to a classic Latin text that became quite famous even before the eighteenth century was out. This was Gesner’s new edition of the twelve-volume De institutione oratoria by Marcus Fabius Quintilian, published with numerous annotations in 1738 by Vandenhoek Press, which still exists today. At one point, where Fabius Quintilian describes how Citharode, the cithara player, performed his songs from memory while accompanying himself on the instrument, Gesner notes reproachfully that all this is insignificant in comparison to the achievements of one Johann Sebastian Bach as conductor or keyboard performer. 
  
  Gesner’s eulogy was published on various occasions in the eighteenth century and even translated into German several times, which was quite unusual. It strongly implies close musical ties between Gesner and Bach and makes it seem likely that the congratulatory cantata was dedicated to Gesner. There is documentary evidence that Gesner attended choir rehearsals at St. Thomas School and heard performances of church music there with pleasure. Admittedly, from time to time the normally peace-loving Gesner tangled with the hardheaded cantor in discussions involving the relative priority of musical and academic matters at the school. Despite that, the congratulatory cantata could have been heard on any of various occasions in Gesner’s honor; it is documented that an elaborate musical performance was held for him when he left the school in the autumn of 1734.¹ In any event, a presentation of the cantata Schwingt euch freudig empor for Gesner’s birthday would have been a reperformance; the work originated in the first half of 1725, when Gesner was a well-established rector at a Gymnasium in Weimar and had not yet even thought of an appointment at Leipzig. It is not at all likely that Bach would have dared to deliver a congratulatory cantata to the rector of the royal Gymnasium in Weimar; only eight years previously Bach himself had been dishonorably discharged from the court because of stubbornness and other complaints, a stain there was no way to erase, at least until after the death of the reigning duke in the summer of 1728.
  
  Whoever it was who was honored with Bach’s “Cantata” in early 1725 remains shrouded in darkness.² By all appearances, the dedicatee is to be sought in the confines of the university, but it cannot be determined who—as the text reads—might be the

  Hochverdienter Mann, der in ausgesetzten Lehren
  Mit höchsten Ehren
  Den Silberschmuck des Alters tragen kann.
  
  Highly deserving man who in continual teaching
  With highest honor
  Can wear the silver regalia of age.

  
  Near the end, the text maintains that “Das Auge dringt aus den gewohnten Schranken / Und sieht dein künftig Glück und Heil” (The eye penetrates its usual limits / And sees your future fortune and welfare); hence, one might assume that the one addressed is not as near the end of his life’s course as the previous “silver regalia of age” seem to imply. Consequently, much of this text is likely meant metaphorically. What creates nearly insurmountable obstacles for today’s scholarship is exactly what facilitated the repurposing of the cantata at the time—perhaps for Gesner’s birthday in 1731.
  
  There was no lack of further reperformances. Although the recitatives needed to be newly composed for every occasion, arias and choruses needed only minor edits of text, for the most part. Thus in late 1726 or even a year earlier, there was a reissue in honor of Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen (BWV 36.2); in this case, the text began “Steigt freudig in die Luft” (Climb joyfully in the air). Soon afterward, the opening chorus as well as all three arias found their way into an Advent cantata that retained the original title, Schwingt freudig euch empor (BWV 36.4). In late 1731 Bach expanded this intermediate version to a two-part Advent cantata (BWV 36.5) with eight movements in total. Admittedly, this did not stop him, in the summer of 1735, from going back to the original composition, now ten years old, and performing it under the title Die Freude reget sich BWV 36.3 (Joy bestirs itself) in honor of a member of the Rivinus family of scholars in Leipzig. In contrast to the Köthen version, the Rivinus version has been completely preserved (or can be restored with little effort), so that it also can be made available to contemporary audiences. 
  
  Bach’s handling of his original creation conveys his esteem for its qualities and that he deemed it worthy for all time. The unknown librettist for the first version played a decisive role in this success, for his libretto, true to the maxims of contemporary theorists, gives the composer the opportunity to present various characters in close succession. The fact that gentle tones predominate in the cantata may have to do with the age of the honoree, or with a wish expressed by him, or with guidelines issued by others.
  
  This is how the opening movement proceeds, with its partly polyphonic, partly chordal choral parts in a filigree dominated by the soft timbre of the oboe d’amore that causes the accompanying string instruments to be a bit restrained. From the D major of this beginning, the tenor recitative and aria turn to the relative key, B minor. Voice and oboe d’amore—here in a soloistic role—combine in this aria, whose text, beginning “Die Liebe führt mit sanften Schritten / Ein Herz, das seinen Lehrer liebt” (Love leads with gentle steps / A heart that loves its teacher), seems to have established the music’s gentle, dance-like character in advance. The bass aria standing at the cantata’s center strikes a somewhat stronger tone and with its D major returns to the key of the opening movement. The text reads, in no way modestly:

  Der Tag der dich vordem gebar
  Stellt sich für uns so heilsam dar,
  Als jener, da der Schöpfer spricht:
  Es werde Licht!
  
  The day that once bore you
  Presents itself to us as beneficial
  As that on which the Creator spoke:
  Let there be light!

  
  The strings, led by the cheerfully animated concertante first violin, lend this movement brightness and a sense of festivity. Yet the third movement pair, a recitative and aria for soprano, returns to the realm of mild glow. At this point, a viola d’amore, a stringed instrument in the alto range with a silvery sound, joins with the soprano, alternating between lovely melody and figuration idiomatic to the instrument and echoing one another in the middle section in a coquettishly playful way. The cantata concludes with a choral movement in several parts, with interpolated recitatives, in which the three soloists once again appear in the order of their first entrances: tenor, bass, soprano. Here the dance character of the gavotte reigns, whose affect is, as Johann Mattheson writes, “truly an exultant joy.” It is truly a cause for celebration that this music has been preserved. Even so, we would like to know for whom it was originally intended.

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. Hofmann (1988).↵
  2. Several years after his book was published, Schulze revisited the question, considering several further people who may have been the cantata’s dedicatee, including Ludwig Christian Crell (1671–1733), a candidate who would fit the available evidence perfectly but for the facts that he served as rector of the competing St. Nicholas School and was quite Pietist in his beliefs. See Schulze (2010, 74–79).—Trans.↵