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• 1 2023-09-26T09:32:57+00:00 Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele BWV 143 19 New Year's Day plain 2024-04-24T17:46:21+00:00 BWV 143 Mühlhausen 13NewYear New Year's Day BC WgT Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele, BWV 143 / BC WgT" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 60 James A. Brokaw II Mühlhausen summer 1707 to summer 1708

  BWV3: Purpose Unknown

  From all appearances, this cantata, Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele BWV 143 (Praise the Lord, my soul), seems to be a relatively early work. Both the form of the text and the compositional style certainly make it seem likely. At the moment, however, we cannot confirm this based on source material, since the manuscript transmission of the work begins only in the second half of the eighteenth century. 
  
  The layout of the text appears to be rather old-fashioned and likely to belong to the period before 1700. Verses from Psalm 146, a praise of God’s eternal faithfulness, serve as bearing pillars: “Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele” (1; Praise the Lord, my soul); “Wohl dem, des Hülfe der Gott Jakob ist, des Hoffnung auf den Herrn, seinem Gotte, stehet” (5; Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the Lord, his God); “Der Herr ist König ewiglich, dein Gott, Zion, für und für” (10; The Lord is king in eternity, your God, O Zion, forever and ever); and “Hallelujah” (10). Strophes from a chorale by Jakob Ebert serve as a second level of text. Written in 1601, Du Friedefürst, Herr Jesu Christ (You prince of peace, Lord Jesus Christ) appears in a Leipzig hymnal from the late seventeenth century beneath the heading “Ein schön Lied in Kriegszeiten zu Christo unserm Herrn um Gnade und Erlösung zu bitten” (A beautiful hymn in time of war to Christ our lord to pray for grace and salvation). One gains little sense of the contemporary travails of war from the strophes chosen for our cantata, however. While the first strophe refers to Christ only in a general fashion as a “starker Nothelfer . . . im Leben und im Tod” (strong helper in emergencies . . . in life and in death), the third strophe, the cantata’s closing movement, prays for protection and help in past and future:

  Gedenk, Herr, jetzund an dein Amt,
  Daß du ein Friedfürst bist,
  Und hilf uns gnädig allesamt
  Jetzund zu dieser Frist;
  Laß uns hinfort
  Dein Göttlich Wort
  Im Fried noch länger schallen.
  
  Remember now, Lord, your office,
  That you are a prince of peace
  And graciously help us all together.
  Now during this period
  Henceforth let
  Your divine word
  Still longer resound to us in peace.

  
  In any case, the freely versified parts of the cantata libretto seem to mirror events of the time, particularly in the first of two identically constructed strophes:

  Tausendfachen Unglücks Schrecken,
  Trübsal, Angst und schnellen Tod,
  Völker, die das Land bedecken,
  Sorgen und sonst mehr Not
  Sehen andere Länder zwar,
  Aber wir ein Segensjahr.
  
  Thousandfold misfortunes’ horrors,
  Tribulation, anguish, and sudden death,
  Peoples who swarm over the earth,
  Troubles and yet more need,
  Other lands do see indeed,
  But we see a year of blessings.

  
  Even here it remains unclear whether the “andere Länder” (other lands) are to be found in the German-speaking realm and hence nearby or whether the thought is only general (as it were, in anticipation of Goethe’s Faust) of “Krieg und Kriegsgeschrei” (war and war cries):

  Wenn hinten, weit in der Turkei
  Die Völker aufeinander schlagen.
  
  When off, far away in Turkey
  The nations beat upon one another.

  
  Nor can the second freely versified strophe provide any clarification in the face of this uncertainty:

  Jesu, Retter deiner Herde,
  Bleibe ferner unser Hort,
  Daß dies Jahr uns glücklich werde,
  Halte Sakrament und Wort
  Rein der ganzen Christenschar
  Bis zu jenem neuen Jahr.
  
  Jesus, savior of your flock,
  Continue to remain our refuge,
  That this year for us may be fortunate,
  Keep your sacrament and word
  Pure for the entire Christian host
  Until the next New Year.

  
  Psalm verses, free poetry, and at least the second of the two chorale strophes by Jakob Ebert point unmistakably to New Year’s Day as the cantata’s designation. Not standing in the way is the fact that the oldest surviving score copy, according to a note, was used for a church consecration (“Kirchwey 1762”), although no further details are given. The arranger of the church consecration version replaced only those verses focusing all too clearly on New Year’s Day with more general formulations. Strictly speaking, however, it’s the other way around: he updated the general statements in the original. For in the freely versified strophe that speaks of “tausendfachem Unglück” (thousandfold misfortunes), the lines “Sehen andere Länder zwar, / Aber wir ein Segensjahr” (Other lands do see indeed / But we see a year of blessings) is replaced by “Trifft auch uns und unser Land; / Hilf uns, Herr, durch deine Hand” (Affects also us and our land; / Help us, Lord, by your hand). And in Jakob Ebert’s chorale strophe, the verse “Daß dies Jahr uns glücklich werde” (That this year be happy for us) is exchanged for “Wend ab Unglück und Beschwerde” (Turn away misfortune and lamenting). All of these changes seem entirely understandable, for the church consecration of 1762 fell in the sixth year of the devastating “great war” (großer Krieg), later known as the Seven Years’ War.
  
  Older Bach research, represented in particular by Philipp Spitta and Arnold Schering, was unaware of the altered version of 1762 and proceeded from a contrary assumption, as it were. In the original text for the New Year, they thought they were able to see allusions to events of the era and hence to regard the composition as “political” music, in the general sense. In 1880 Spitta wrote: “He [the librettist] views Saxony and Poland as a secure island around which may be seen the troubled waves of strife. While praising the king in this strain, he prays to Christ the Prince of Peace to perform His office. During all the time Bach was at Leipzig, there is only one occasion which will exactly suit the idea of these words, and that is the beginning of the year 1735. In the Silesian war Saxony was directly and essentially implicated; so that the date of the cantata is fixed beyond all doubt.”¹
  
  The question of the cantata’s date does not in fact admit a solution “beyond all doubt.” By 1880 it had long been known that Bach intended the fourth cantata of the Christmas Oratorio for New Year’s Day 1735—and in working through the assumption of a hastily arranged exchange with our cantata, one certainly would have been struck by the stylistic discrepancy between the two works. Spitta did not pose the question of authenticity of the cantata Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele, and since then it has been considered only rarely. Even today, not all doubts can be dispelled, even though the once problematic source situation has become more favorable in recent decades. The previously mentioned “Kirchwey” copy of 1762 came to light in a church library in Celle in Lower Saxony,² along with another copy; until then, only nineteenth-century sources had been available. The newly discovered manuscripts came from the estate of one Heinrich Wilhelm Stolze. Born in Erfurt and later active in Celle as city and castle organist, Stolze had music lessons from the Bach student Johann Christian Kittel as a child. Thus the “Kirchwey” copy of our cantata may well have originated in Thuringia and possibly in Erfurt. In 1762 the organist and music scholar Jacob Adlung died in Erfurt, and the Bach student Kittel succeeded him at the organ of the Preacher’s Church (Predigerkirche), the main and town hall church. The year 1762 is also the birth year of Heinrich Wilhelm Stolze’s father, Georg Christoph Stolze, later active in Erfurt as a cantor and music teacher. Near the end of the eighteenth century, the elder Stolze actually worked at Kittel’s side, Stolze as cantor of the Preacher’s Church, Kittel as organist.
  
  As circumstantial evidence for or against the authenticity of the cantata Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele, the mosaic tiles described here are not adequate. The problem lies in our understanding of the work’s style and the associated question of its place in Bach’s output. The years before 1710 seem likely—hence the early Weimar period, the year in Mühlhausen, or else Bach’s time as organist in Arnstadt. During this time, Johann Sebastian Bach was involved in cantata composition only in Mühlhausen from the summer of 1707 to the summer of 1708.³
  
  The works known to have been produced in this year certainly reveal a greater power of invention and a higher mastery of compositional handiwork than those exhibited by our cantata. Its movements are for the most part characterized by conventional melody, stereotypic rhythms, and inconsequential figuration. Larger musical relationships come into play only with the introduction of a chorale melody. Against this backdrop, the powerfully expressive aria “Tausendfachen Unglücks Schrecken” stands out rather oddly, prompting one to consider the possibility that it may have been interpolated at a later date. Thus many questions remain open at the moment; they range from the plausible attribution to another bearer of the name Bach to whether the key of B-flat is correct and, in connection with this, the setting—unusual and singular in Bach’s output—for three horns.⁴

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. Spitta (1899, 3:65).—Trans.↵
  2. Dürr (1977).↵
  3. Markus Rathey (2016b) has proposed that BWV 143 may have served for the inauguration of the Mühlhausen council in 1709.—Trans.↵
  4. In his revised edition of BWV 143 for the Neue Bach-Ausgabe, Andreas Glöckner (2012) has reconstructed an original version of the cantata in C major (instead of B-flat) that uses trumpets instead of horns—a version that would fit well with the inauguration of the town council in Mühlhausen in 1709—in agreement with Rathey (2016b).—Trans.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:32:58+00:00 Meinen Jesum laß ich nicht BWV 124 / BC A 30 15 Chorale cantata on hymn by Christian Keymann. Sunday after Epiphany. Part of Chorale Cantata Annual Cycle. First performed 01/07/1725 in Leipzig (Cycle II). plain 2024-04-29T15:47:48+00:00 1725-01-07 BWV 124 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 14Epiphany1 Chorale Cantata Sunday after Epiphany BC A 30 Johann Sebastian Bach Christian Keymann Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Meinen Jesum lass ich nicht, BWV 124 / BC A 30" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 93 James A. Brokaw II Chorale Cantata Annual Cycle Leipzig II

  Sunday after Epiphany

  The cantata Meinen Jesum laß ich nicht BWV 124 (I will not let my Jesus go) belongs to Bach's chorale cantata cycle, a complex of about forty-five compositions that are similar in structure. Typically, a chorale cantata is based on the text and melody of a church hymn—normally a chorale from the sixteenth or seventeenth century—and uses the first and final strophes of the hymn as a frame. The final strophe requires the least expenditure of effort; it almost always appears as a simple if harmonically rich four-part setting in which the instruments undertake no independent role but simply support the voices in unison. By contrast, the opening movement, the composition of the opening chorale strophe, is most often extensively developed. Here the orchestra takes on an independent concertante role, with prelude, interludes, and postlude. The chorale melody is presented by one of the voices in long note values, and the other voices either support the leading voice chordally or are contrapuntally subordinate to it in the manner of a motet. 
  
  The portions of the text between the first and last strophes of the chorale may be composed without change as recitatives and arias, or, more commonly, they may be reworked in a madrigalesque manner in order to better suit these forms. 
  
  Philipp Spitta, the great Bach biographer of the second half of the nineteenth century, felt that he was justified in asserting that this mature model was characteristic of Bach’s composition in his fiftieth to sixtieth years of age and that it represented the crowning achievement of his work with the chorale. Hence the following summary of the chorale cantatas flowed from Spitta’s pen:

  As we glance backwards from this point over Bach's life, we are struck by the completeness and rounding-off of his artistic development. His starting-point in early youth was the sacred song of the people, and to it he returns at the end of his career. He felt that all he could create in the sphere of Church music must have an inherent connection with the chorale and the forms of art conditional to it. He must have deemed it the noblest goal of his ambition to give his genius that direction which should create a form that displays the chorale in its highest possible stage of artistic development. The chorale cantatas lack, it may be, that profuse variety of form which during the earlier and middle periods of his life calls forth our highest wonder. But the serene mastery over the technical materials of his art, the deep mature earnestness which pervades them, can only be regarded as the fruit of such a superabundant art-life. In considering these works in their unalterable and characteristic grandeur, we seem to be wandering through some still, lofty, Alpine forest in the peaceful evening that closes a brilliant summer day.¹

  
  There is little to object to in Spitta’s assessment of the importance of the chorale tradition. Whether the chorale cantatas exhibit a lack of “diversity of form” in comparison to other cantatas by Bach or, more pointedly expressed, whether they deserve the reproach of uniformity is a matter of opinion, on the other hand. Spitta evidently derived the justification for this reproach from his apparent judgment that the chorale cantatas belonged to Bach’s late period and that the composer had, for practically a decade, held on to a model once found to be effective in the calm of his later years—or even the stubbornness thereof.
  
  At the end of the 1950s, this castle of hypothesis collapsed like a house of cards as the study of the original sources proved beyond the shadow of a doubt that the chorale cantatas belong not to Bach’s late period but, for the vast majority, to his second year in office as cantor of St. Thomas School—between the summer of 1724 and early 1725.² Thus Bach’s adherence to a model is to be ascribed not to the unconflicted tranquility of old age but rather to the intention to create an entire annual cycle of cantatas for all Sundays and holidays based on the same unified concept.
  
  According to current knowledge, the chorale cantata cycle of 1724 to 1725 represents the most wide ranging and ambitious project that Bach ever took on. And if we are not completely mistaken, this plan overwhelmed even his capabilities, causing him to give up the project prematurely. A large number of occasions in quick succession on one side and unyielding artistic standards on the other could not be reconciled over the long run. And so the cantata series ends not on the Feast of Trinity 1725 as envisioned but before Easter, on Palm Sunday. 
  
  The cantata Meinen Jesum laß ich nicht came at the end of a particularly dense succession of new compositions. From the first day of Christmas, December 25, 1724, until the first Sunday after Epiphany, January 7, 1725—within fourteen days, in other words—no fewer than seven chorale cantatas were performed for the first time. This meant an unusual burden for Bach, even if one allows for the fact that he could make use of the period between the first Sunday of Advent and Christmas Day, a period that was free of musical obligations.
  
  The text and melody of the hymn Meinen Jesum laß ich nicht come from the city of Zittau in eastern Saxony. Christian Keymann, rector of the Gymnasium there, wrote the six strophes of text; Andreas Hammerschmidt, organist at the Church of St. Johannis in Zittau, published them in musical form in his collection Fest-, Buß-, und Danklieder (Hymns of celebration, penance, and thanksgiving) of 1658. The occasion for the text was the death of the Saxon electoral prince Johann Georg I in October 1656. Johann Georg was, in the words of his biographer, “overly devoted to the hunt and to drinking to excess” and “theologically in the thrall of a literal piety.”³ He had made “Meinen Jesum laß ich nicht” his motto to live by and professed this motto even on his deathbed. The unfortunate politics of Johann Georg during the Thirty Years’ War, his futile attempt to protect Saxony from the ravages of war through alliances—first with the Holy Roman emperor, then with King Gustav II Adolf of Sweden—led instead to terrible devastation of the country, bringing living conditions to a low level without parallel, including in Zittau, the workplace of Christian Keymann and Andreas Hammerschmidt. With this background it is easier to understand why, in song collections of the era, this hymn is inscribed “Auf Churfürst Johann Georgii I. zu Sachsen Symbolum; auch wider die Traurigkeit.”
  
  Traditionally, this chorale appears among the hymns for the Sunday after Epiphany. It is, however, difficult to draw cross connections to the Gospel reading for that Sunday, the story of the twelve-year-old Jesus in the Temple in Luke 2, or to the Epistle from Romans 12. Further, the unknown librettist, who quite freely reworked the second through fifth strophes of Keymann’s poem to form recitatives and arias, made little effort to achieve a closer relation to the themes of the day. In the first recitative-aria pair, his verses revolve around “Ich laße meinen Jesum nicht,” in life as in death. The “search” theme, familiar from the Song of Songs, appears in the second recitative, where this life is described as a “Wüstenei und Marterhöhle / Bei Jesu schmerzlichste Verlust” (wilderness and den of torment / At the most painful loss of Jesus). Due to its meter, the associated aria text is filled with an unusual cheerfulness as it casts its eye without a fight, as it were, toward the other side: 

  Entziehe dich eilends, mein Herze, der Welt, 
  Du findest im Himmel dein wahres Vergnügen.
  Wenn künftig dein Auge den Heiland erblickt.
  
  Withdraw yourself quickly, my heart, from the world,
  You will find in heaven your true contentment.
  When, in the future, your eye sees the savior.

  
  The closing chorale strophe, unchanged, once again alludes to the motto of the Saxon electoral prince:

  Jesum laß ich nicht von mir,
  Geh ihm ewig an der Seiten;
  Christus läßt mich für und für
  Zu dem Lebensbächlein leiten.
  Selig, der mit mir so spricht:
  Meinen Jesum laß ich nicht.
  
  I will not let Jesus go from me.
  I go eternally at his side;
  Christ leads me forever and ever
  To the little stream of life.
  Blessed is he who says to me:
  I will not let go of my Jesus.

  
  The letters that begin the first five lines—J G C Z S—stand for Johann Georg, Churfürst zu Sachsen.
  
  For his composition, Johann Sebastian Bach chose E major, a key he rarely used. His contemporary Johann Mattheson characterized it thusly: “E major is unsurpassed in expressing a despairing or fatalistic sorrow. . . . In certain circumstances it has something so cutting, parting, suffering, and penetrating that it can be compared with nothing other than the fatal separation of body and soul.”⁴
  
  The structure of the opening movement is such as to have the epigram “Meinen Jesum laß ich nicht,” which stands in the center of the entire chorale, understood as personal testimony. Thus it places a solo oboe d’amore against the chorus and the string ensemble. The warm timbre and the endless garlands of the solo part can be taken to embody the human voice; indeed, it can embody the person himself in the sense of the next to last line of the chorale, “Er ist meines Lebens Licht” (He is the light of my life). The use of the oboe d’amore in the aria for tenor, the third movement in the cantata, points in the same direction: while the pitiless, rhythmically jagged chords of the string instruments take up the text passages “Furcht und Schrecken” (fear and horror) and the “hartem Todesschlag” (hard death blow), the bravely assertive oboe is associated with the closing lines of the text: “Doch tröstet sich die Zuversicht: / Ich laße meinen Jesum nicht” (Yet this assurance comforts me: / I will not leave my Jesus).
  
  The second aria, “Entziehe dich eilends, mein Herze, der Welt,” a lively, dance-like duet for soprano and alto, seems to turn more toward the world rather than away from it. One frequently comes across things of this sort in Bach’s cantatas; that is, a textual statement meant negatively is transformed to its positive antithesis, achievable only in music. Thus the dance-like liveliness of the duet may symbolize an image of the thoughtless frivolity of this world—unless it is aimed at the second line of text, “Du findest im Himmel dein wahres Vergnügen,” in which case a “heavenly dance” (himmlisches Reigen) is meant. In any case, the plain accompaniment by bass instruments means the total avoidance of worldly ornament.
  
  In closing with the inward-turning chorale strophe “Jesum laß ich nicht von mir,” the cantata returns to the words and melody of Christian Keymann and Andreas Hammerschmidt. Only a few years later, we find the same text a second time in Bach’s work, along with its melody, the key of E major, and even many harmonic details: in the first version of the St. Matthew Passion BWV 244.1.29 as the closing chorale of the first part.

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  Footnotes

  1. Spitta (1899, 3:107–8).—Trans.↵
  2. Dürr (1957); Dadelsen (1958).↵
  3. “der Jagdlust und dem Trunke bis zum Übermaß übergeben” and “theologisch in der sprichwörtlich gewordenen Kurfrömmigkeit befangen.”—Trans.↵
  4. “E dur drücket eine verzweiflungsvolle oder ganz tödliche Traurigkeit unvergleichlich wohl aus. . . . [E]s hat bey gewissen Umständen so was schneidendes, scheidendes, leidendes und durchdringendes, daß es mit nichts als einer fatalen Trennung Leibes und der Seelen verglichen werden mag” (Mattheson 1713, 250).—Trans.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:37:19+00:00 Was mir behagt, ist nur die muntre Jagd BWV 208 / BC G 1 14 Was mir behagt, ist nur die muntre Jagd BWV 208. First performed on Feb 27, 1713 for birthday celebration cantata for Duke Christian, Sachse-Weissenfels. Text by Salomo Franck. plain 2024-04-24T14:58:48+00:00 1713-02-27 BWV 208 Weißenfels 51.21941422591295, 11.955274281618594 Birthday celebration BC G 1 Johann Sebastian Bach Salomo Franck Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Was mir behagt, ist nur die muntre Jagd, BWV 208 / BC G 1" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 659 James A. Brokaw II Saxony-Weißenfels Duke Christian, Sachse-Weissenfels

  Court of Saxe-Weissenfels, 1713

  The significance of Bach’s secular vocal compositions is often underestimated. Seen as occasional works of middling rank and as too closely bound to the spirit of the age, they often provide us the only opportunity to discuss the whole complex of Bach’s parody technique in its entirety, based on the transfer of individual arias and choruses into his sacred vocal music and his procedure for providing them with new texts. Philipp Spitta, the most prominent Bach scholar of the nineteenth century, actually maintained, categorically, that Bach’s compositional style was principally sacred and that he was practically unable to produce secular works; rather, his music was only temporarily on loan to texts that were inappropriate: “His secular occasional works were, rather, nonsecular, and as such they did not fulfill their purpose. The composer returned them to their true home when he transformed them to church music.”¹
  
  But even such a broadside—which recalls Christian Morgenstern’s formulation that “was nicht sein kann, nicht sein darf” (that which cannot, must not be)—cannot erase an entire field of creativity.² To the fifty or so such works from Bach’s pen whose music or at least text is preserved, at least as many have been lost without a trace. Nothing justifies the assumption that the composition and performance of a secular vocal work seemed a burdensome obligation to Bach or that he was never in more of a hurry than when he supposedly rushed to integrate such a piece in his sacred vocal works. Instead, closer study of the secular cantatas shows that they were not handled any differently than church cantatas, oratorios, masses, or passions. In other words, they were treated as repertoire pieces to be reperformed at the next appropriate occasion with as little effort devoted to revision as possible. This procedure shows, on the one hand, that Bach valued these works as essential components of his entire oeuvre in the way Goethe did, so to speak, and, on the other, that he was as unwilling to tolerate any lapses in quality in this area as in any other. Instead, he always gave his best here and considered the results to be presentable on any occasion.
  
  The Hunt Cantata BWV 208 can serve as a perfect example for Bach’s management of his secular vocal works as outlined here. The composition originated rather early, no later than 1713 (BWV 208.1); Bach performed it for the last time about thirty years later, in the summer of 1742 (BWV 208.2). In the intervening years, three of its movements were provided with new texts and adopted by various church cantatas; yet this did not affect the continued presence and reperformance of the entire work in Bach’s last decade.
  
  Bach’s autograph score gives no hint as to the original reason for the work’s composition. In it the work is simply entitled “Cantata,” although either “Serenata” or “Dramma per musica” would have probably been more appropriate. More clarity is provided by a 1716 reprint of the text, found in part 2 of Salomon Franck’s Geistliche und Weltlichen Poesien (Sacred and secular poetry). There, the four mythological personages in the libretto are named, along with the following remark: “At the High-Princely Birthday Celebration for Lord Duke Christian of Saxe-Weissenfels, Performed at a Banquet Concert Following a Sport Hunt held in the Princely Hunting Lodge.”³ Christian’s birthday fell on February 23 and was usually celebrated on that day or immediately before or afterward. Christian became duke upon the death of his older brother Johann Georg in May 1712. Since the features of Bach’s handwriting exclude any later date, the Hunt Cantata consequently was composed in February 1713 and dedicated to Christian’s first birthday as regent.⁴
  
  The “Princely Hunting Lodge” belonged to the Weissenfels castle complex. What a “Sport Hunt” looked like in practice can be deduced from certain traditions that continue up to the present day (or the recent unhappy past). To spare the potentate the exertion of a real hunt, the game to be killed was driven into an enclosed area, where it fell victim to the hunting party.
  
  The title of the banquet music performed in the Weissenfels hunting lodge is found neither in Bach’s score nor in Salomon Franck’s reprint of the text. Instead, it is contained in a handwritten note accompanying the score in which the outlines of a dedication can be seen for a print that must have been produced in the past but of which not a single exemplar survives. The note reads: “Frolockender GötterStreit bey des etc. Hochfürstlichen Geburths Tage Unterthänigst aufgeführet von etc.” (Jubilant battle of gods at the etc. high-princely birthday, most humbly performed by etc.). While the first “et cetera” can be deciphered easily—it can only refer to Duke Christian—the writer spared himself the duke’s complete and long-winded title—we would love to know more about the “Performed by etc.” It cannot simply be assumed that the name of the composer and his rank and title stood here (“Fürstlich Sachsen-Weimarischer Hof-Organist und Cammer-Musicus”); the performing ensemble, the Weissenfels Hof-Capelle, might also have been mentioned here.
  
  Finally, the title “Jubilant dispute of the gods” gives us an indication as to the structure of the libretto. In accordance with the way the aristocracy of the era understood themselves, a congratulation could only be accepted from a person of equal birth rank. In the age of the divine right of kings, “equal birth rank” included the gods and heroes of antiquity, and so nearly every librettist helped themselves to the nearly inexhaustible arsenal of ancient mythology. To bring at least a hint of plot into the course of a text of this sort (whose function of homage and tribute inherently destined it to one-sidedness), one happily set up a sham dispute about rank between those to be honored, which would be resolved at the end as quickly as the quarrel had been picked out of thin air at the beginning. Admittedly, even this element is inadequately developed in the text for Bach’s Hunt Cantata, and the libretto—the work of Weimar ducal consistory secretary Salomon Franck—lacks dramatic tension. Four gods of the antique world are mustered: Diana, the goddess of the hunt, also known as Artemis by the Greeks; Pales, the goddess of shepherds and pastures; Endymion, an Aeolian legendary figure, a son of Zeus, who gave him eternal sleep and eternal youth; and Pan, the goat-footed god of mountains and flocks whose home is Arcadia. 
  
  All four enter the stage with a recitative and aria, one after the other. Diana begins, praising the hunt as “pleasure of the gods” and an appropriate activity for heroes. Endymion lodges a weak protest and recalls being a prisoner in the “snares of Cupid.” Diana takes him to task, saying that such things cannot now be thought of, because the “high birthday feast” for “dear Christian” must be celebrated. Pan rushes to lay down his shepherd’s staff and praise the duke as the “Pan of his country,” without whom the country would seem like a body without a soul. Pales aims in the same direction, praising serenity, peace, and good fortune as the blessings of the regent who protects his subjects as a good shepherd watches over his flock. All four join together in the song of praise “Lebe, Sonne dieser Erden” (Live, sun of this earth), with which things might be brought to an end. However, all four speak up again: Diana and Endymion together, Pales and Pan at odds, and only a second song of praise at last provides the finale: “Ihr lieblichste Blicke, ihr freudige Stunden, euch bleibe das Glücke auf ewig verbunden” (You loveliest sights, you joyous hours, may good fortune remain yours forever).
  
  Details about how the musical performance proceeded must remain largely a matter of conjecture. In comparison to the four soloists, who probably had no additional support even in the two ensemble pieces, the orchestra was relatively richly scored: two hunting horns, two recorders, three oboes, strings, and basso continuo. One can assume that all participants came from Weissenfels, with the exception of the composer, who may have conducted from the cembalo. The demands on the virtuosity of soloists and instrumentalists remain limited for the most part; evidently, Bach was more interested in textual characteristics and the effective use of timbre. Thus the hunting horns are naturally assigned to Diana’s aria, the oboe trio to Pan’s song of praise, the bucolic coloration of recorders moving in parallel thirds and sixths to Pales’s first aria, and a solo violin to Diana and Endymion’s duet. On the other hand, Endymion’s aria and each of Pales’s and Pan’s second arias forgo obbligato instruments; their only instrumental accompaniment is the basso continuo. Bach himself may have artistically enriched this part improvisationally, but the only score handed down to us shows no trace of this. Alert observers at the time may have taken critical note of the way that Bach, in the last two arias, ignored the jurisdiction of the mythological figures of Pan and Pales as he gave the text on “Felder und Auen” (fields and valleys), appropriate for Pales, the goddess of shepherds and fields, to Pan, just as Bach allowed Pales to enthuse about “wollenreichen Herden” (large flocks rich with wool).
  
  The two ensemble movements are partly homophonic and chordal and partly canonic or fugal. In the late 1720s Bach transferred the closing movement of the Hunt Cantata to a church cantata for St. Michael’s Day and did so again in 1740 for a cantata for the Leipzig city council election.⁵ In 1725 Pan’s aria, accompanied by three oboes, found its way into the Pentecost cantata Also hat Gott die Welt geliebt BWV 68 (God so loved the world), as did Pales’s second aria, after extensive revision. With its new text, “Mein gläubiges Herze, frohlocke, sing, scherze” (My faithful heart, rejoice, sing, play), it became widely known in later eras.
  
  As mentioned, these borrowings did not inhibit further performances of the Hunt Cantata in its original or slightly modified form. Only a few years after its premiere in Weissenfels, a second performance is likely to have occurred in Weimar to honor Duke Ernst August. Another performance in Weissenfels is at least within the realm of the possible. There is evidence of another performance in Leipzig at a concert by Bach’s Collegium Musicum. One would very much like to know how listeners in galant Leipzig may have responded to the music, then thirty years old. It can hardly escape the alert listener that the last six movements are all in F major. The composer may have sought relief by working in one or another instrumental movement from his repertoire as an introduction or interlude—a possibility, given the practices common at the time, that one must also consider for the performances in Weissenfels and Weimar. Many questions remain open in this regard.

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. Spitta (1899, 2:576–77).—Trans.↵
  2. Christian Morgenstern’s poem Die unmögliche Tatsache (1909) recounts the plight of Palmström, an elderly gentleman who looks the wrong way at a busy intersection and is run over. Railing at the city administration, at the police, at automobile drivers, he nonsensically concludes that cars are not permitted there and that his mishap never happened at all: “Weil, so schließt er messerscharf, / was nicht seinkann, nicht sein darf ” (For, he reasons pointedly, / that which cannot, must not be) (Knight 1964, 34).—Trans.↵
  3. “Am Hoch-Fürstlichen Geburths-Festin Herrn Herrn Hertzog Christians zu Sachsen-Weissenfels nach gehaltenen Kampff-Jagen im Fürstlichen Jäger-Hofe bey einer Tafel-Music aufgeführet.”—Trans.↵
  4. “Am Hoch-Fürstlichen Geburths-Festin Herrn Herrn Hertzog Christians zu Sachsen-Weissenfels nach gehaltenen Kampff-Jagen im Fürstlichen Jäger-Hofe bey einer Tafel-Music aufgeführet.”—Trans.↵
  5. The cantata for St. Michael’s Day is Man singet mit Freuden vom Sieg BWV 149. The cantata for the city council election is Herrscher des Himmels, König der Ehren BWV 1141.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:32:57+00:00 Gottlob, nun geht das Jahr zu Ende BWV 28 / BC A 20 13 Sunday after Christmas. First performed 12/30/1725 in Leipzig (Cycle III). Text by Erdmann Neumeister. plain 2024-04-29T16:16:40+00:00 1725-12-30 BWV 28 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 12Christmas3 Sunday after Christmas BC A 20 Johann Sebastian Bach Erdmann Neumeister Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Gottlob, nun geht das Jahr zu Ende, BWV 28 / BC A 20" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 57 James A. Brokaw II Leipzig III

  Sunday after Christmas

  As implied by its title, this cantata is for an occasion that appears late in the civil year: the Sunday after Christmas, which comes up only now and then. Its appearance in 1725 caused the Thomaskantor a brief moment of awkwardness. During the period before Christmas when no music was performed and only a guest performance in Köthen with his wife, Anna Magdalena, had provided a bit of diversion, Johann Sebastian Bach began to set a collection of cantata libretti to music that had already inspired him to compose two solo cantatas during his time at Weimar. The prolix title of the collection at issue begins with Gottgefälliges / Kirchen- / Opffer / In einem gantzen / Jahr-Gange / Andächtiger Betrachtungen, / über / die gewöhnlichen / Sonn- und Fest-Tags Texte . . . (Church offerings to please God in a complete annual cycle of devout reflections on the standard texts for Sundays and holidays) by the Darmstadt court librarian Georg Christian Lehms, printed in 1711 and originally meant for Christoph Graupner. As a unified sequence of cantata texts of common origin from the first day of Christmas to the start of Epiphany, the poems by the Liegnitz-born Lehms were quite convenient. However, he had omitted the rarely occurring Sunday after Christmas from his opus. So Bach needed to seek a replacement, and he found it in Erdmann Neumeister’s Geistliche Poesien mit untermischten biblischen Sprüchen und Choralen auf alle Sonn- und Festtage (Sacred poems with interspersed biblical sayings and chorales for all Sunday and feast days), an annual cycle printed in Frankfurt and originally written for Georg Philipp Telemann. Whether the cantor of St. Thomas School found the time and opportunity to consider the subtle differences between Lehms’s somewhat incomplete gantzen Jahr-Gange (complete annual cycle), as his title continues, and Neumeister’s poetic texts auf alle Sonn- und Festtage (for all Sundays and holidays) we cannot know.
  
  Neumeister’s libretto, which Bach probably used as a matter of necessity, remarkably avoids any connection to the reading of the day, a selection from the second chapter of Luke. Directly following the Gospel reading for the Purification of Mary, with the depiction of the baby Jesus in the Temple, the verses meant for the Sunday after Christmas describe the meeting between Mary, the aged Simeon, and the equally elderly Hanna, who was spending her days in fasting and prayer. The cantata text, on the other hand, focuses on the threshold between the old and new year, expresses thanks for good deeds bestowed, and prays for blessings of the new year. Indeed, the text entitled “Am Sonntage nach Weynachten” (On Sunday after Christmas) could also be redesignated for New Year’s Day without further ado.
  
  Even the opening movement, an aria, is filled with joyous feelings of thanksgiving:

  Gottlob! nun geht das Jahr zu Ende,
  Das neue rücket schon heran.
  Gedenke, meine Seele, dran,
  Wieviel deines Gottes Hände 
  Im alten Jahre Guts getan!
  Stimm ihm ein frohes Danklied an;
  So wird er ferner dein gedenken
  Und mehr zum neuen Jahre schenken.
  
  Praise God! Now the year comes to an end,
  The new one already draws near.
  Consider, my soul, this,
  How much good your God’s hands
  In the old year have done!
  Strike up for him a joyful song of thanks;
  That he will further think of you
  And give more in the new year.

  
  The request to strike up a song of thanks is answered by the first strophe of a chorale written by Johann Gramann in 1530:

  Nun lob, mein Seel, den Herren,
  Was in mir ist, den Namen sein!
  Sein Wohltat tut er mehren,
  Vergiß es nicht, o Herze mein. 
   
  Now praise, my soul, the Lord,
  Whatever is in me, praise his name!
  His beneficence he increases,
  Forget it not, O heart of mine.

  
  A word of the Lord from Jeremiah 32:41 expands on the “Wohltat” (beneficence), taken from a section that promises the salvation of Israel: “So spricht der Herr: Es soll mir eine Lust sein, daß ich ihnen Gutes tun soll, und ich will sie in diesem Lande pflanzen treulich, vom ganzen Herze und von ganzer Seele” (Thus says the Lord: It shall be for me a pleasure, that I do good for them, and I will establish them in this land in faith, with my whole heart and my whole soul). The ensuing recitative responds to this promise with overflowing praise:

  Gott ist ein Quell, wo lauter Güte fleußt,
  Gott ist ein Licht, wo lauter Gnade scheinet,
  Gott ist ein Schatz, der lauter Segen heißt,
  Gott ist ein Herr, der’s treu und herzlich ist. 
  
  God is a spring, where pure goodness flows,
  God is a light, where pure grace shines,
  God is a treasure, that pure grace is called,
  God is a Lord, whose intentions are true and sincere. 

  
  The associated aria combines praise, thanksgiving, and a prayer for a fortunate new year:

  Gott hat uns im heurigen Jahre gesegnet,
  Daß Wohltun und Wohlsein einander begegnet.
  Wir loben ihn herzlich und bitten darneben,
  Er woll auch ein glückliches neues Jahr geben.
  Wir hoffens von seiner beharrlichen Güte
  Und preisens im voraus mit dankbarem Gemüte.
  
  God has blessed us in the present year,
  That goodness and well-being have met each other.
  We praise him sincerely and pray, moreover,
  That he will grant us a happy new year.
  We hope for this from his unwavering goodness
  And praise him in anticipation with thankful spirit.

  
  The keyword “preisen” (praise) provides the contact point for the concluding strophe from Paul Eber’s hymn Helft mir Gotts Güte preisen (Help me praise God’s goodness):

  All solch dein Güt wir preisen,
  Vater ins Himmels Thron,
  Die du uns tust beweisen
  Durch Christum, deinen Sohn,
  Und bitten ferner dich:
  Gib uns ein friedsam Jahre,
  Für allem Leid bewahre
  Und nähr uns mildiglich.
  
  All such goodness of yours we praise,
  Father on heaven’s throne,
  Which you show us
  Through Christ, your son,
  And pray further to you:
  Grant us a peaceful year,
  From all suffering preserve
  And nourish us abundantly.

  
  Bach’s composition of this not entirely grateful text is dominated by the chorale arrangement in motet style, the second movement of the cantata. Philipp Spitta, in the second volume of his Bach biography, published in 1880, found the highest praise for it: 

  The principal chorus is the second number, but such is its weight, that the finished beauty of the preceding soprano air hardly asserts itself, and all that comes after sinks into nothingness. Bach had taken the composition of the chorus in hand earlier than the rest of the work and had sketched it first separately, for in the complete score it shows hardly any corrections and has all the appearance of a fair copy. At the conclusion of this gigantic work the master himself looked back on it with proud satisfaction—he has done what he scarcely ever did—counted up its 174 bars and noted them at the end. It is a chorale for chorus on “Nun lob mein Seel den Herren”—“My soul now praise the Lord”—and resembles a motet insofar as that the instruments—strings, three oboes, cornet, and three trombones—work with the voices, and it is only the figured bass that is here and there allowed a way of its own. The type is that of the Pachelbel organ chorale, elaborated to the highest degree of which it was capable within the limits of the motet form. Particularly we may note, as belonging to this form, the picturesque musical rendering of the separate lines of the verses by the use of contrapuntal parts, which interpret the forgiveness of “us miserable sinners” by acute chromatic passages, or pour out the consolations of God as it were in a stream over wretched humanity, and then soar up “like to the eagle.” Bach subsequently wrote several pieces of this kind, and they are worthy of the first-born, but none surpasses it.¹

  
  One could allow Spitta’s classification “first-born” to stand if it could be shown that our motet movement indeed originated before the chorale cantata cycle began in mid-1724. Otherwise, one would have to conclude that the compositional experience of writing at least forty chorale arrangements for instruments and chorus within a year’s time flowed into the creation of this unusually concentrated and closely worked movement. Particularly revealing in terms of the reception history of the chorale motet is the fact that, shortly after Johann Sebastian Bach’s death at the latest, it found its way into a motet pasticcio with the text Sei Lob und Preis mit Ehren (Be lauded and praised with honor). The pasticcio combines a cantata movement by Telemann, our chorale motet, and an arrangement of a foreign work either by Bach or by his successor, Gottlob Harrer. Under the title Jauchzet dem Herrn, alle Welt (Cheer the Lord, all the world) with the designation BWV1 Anh. 160, the pasticcio belonged to the motet repertoire of the St. Thomas School, which so deeply impressed Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart on his visit to Leipzig in 1789.

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. Spitta (1899, 2:433–34).↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:32:58+00:00 Alles nur nach Gottes Willen BWV 72 / BC A 37 12 Third Sunday after Epiphany. First performed 01/27/1726 in Leipzig (Cycle III). Text by Salomon Franck. plain 2024-04-24T16:32:10+00:00 1726-01-27 BWV 72 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 14Epiphany3 Third Sunday after Epiphany BC A 37 Johann Sebastian Bach Salomon Franck Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Alles nur nach Gottes Willen, BWV 72 / BC A 37" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 118 James A. Brokaw II Leipzig III

  Third Sunday after Epiphany

  The Gospel reading for the third Sunday after Epiphany in Matthew 8 describes the healing of a leper and a man afflicted with gout. The beginning reads as follows:

  As he however came down from the mountain, great multitudes followed him. 
      And, behold, there came a leper and worshipped him, saying, Lord, if you will, can you make me clean. And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed. (1–3)

  
  Similar narratives are found in the Gospels of Mark and Luke.
  
  The text of our cantata, which takes up this account, is found in the collection Evangelisches Andachts-Opffer (Protestant devotional offering), printed in 1715 by the Weimar court poet and chief consistory secretary Salomon Franck. His poems, intended primarily for the royal Weimar court chapel, were set to music in 1715 and 1716 by Johann Sebastian Bach, as well as, perhaps, Weimar music director Johann Samuel Drese and his son Johann Wilhelm Drese. The four-week rotation, arranged by the court for the purpose of division of labor, meant that only a fraction of the libretti was available to Bach for composition. However, he must have kept a printed cycle “for all cases,” so to speak, and brought it with him to Köthen and then to Leipzig. Bach fell back upon the somewhat dated cantata texts in 1725 for the cantata Tue Rechnung! Donnerwort BWV 168 (Settle the account! Word of thunder), as well as, half a year later, Alles nur nach Gottes Willen BWV 72 (All only according to God’s will). 
  
  Like several other cantata poets of the time, Salomon Franck did not make a particularly close connection to the Gospel reading for the third Sunday after Epiphany. Philipp Spitta, the important Bach biographer of the late nineteenth century, praised Franck’s text for its “blessed satisfaction . . . which arises from the awareness that everywhere one is in the hand of a loving God” and the “trusting, childlike intimacy of poignant power.”¹ 
  
  In fact, there is a certain simplicity in the line of thought found in Franck’s text. Nowhere is complete surrender to God’s will questioned or even troubled by doubt. Instead, the poet merely tries to revive his faith again and again through the change of perspective. At no point is the naive overall character jeopardized. Even in the first movement, he is fixated:

  Alles nur nach Gottes Willen,
  So bei Lust als Traurigkeit,
  So bei gut als böser Zeit.
  Gottes Wille soll mich stillen
  Bei Gewölk und Sonnenschein.
  Alles nur nach Gottes Willen!
  Dies soll meine Losung sein.
  
  All only according to God’s will,
  In joy as well as sorrow,
  In good as well as evil times.
  God’s will shall calm me
  In clouds and sunshine.
  All only according to God’s will!
  This shall be my motto.

  
  The following movement, written by Franck as a recitative and composed by Bach as recitative and arioso, paraphrases the proclamation “Herr, so du willt” (Lord, as you will) from the Gospel reading of the Sunday. The poet finds nine different continuations and interpretations, the last of which reads:

  Herr, so du willt, so sterb ich nicht,
  Ob Leib und Leben mich verlassen,
  Wenn mir dein Geist dies Wort ins Herze spricht.
  
  Lord, if you will, I shall not die,
  Though body and life have forsaken me,
  If your spirit speaks these words to me in my heart.

  
  The ensuing aria speaks of confidence in Jesus to lead one on the right path:

  Mit allem, was ich hab und bin,
  Will ich mich Jesu lassen,
  Kann gleich mein schwacher Geist und Sinn
  Des Höchsten Rat nicht fassen;
  Er führe mich nur immer hin
  Auf Dorn- und Rosenstraßen.
  
  With everything that I have and am,
  I will leave myself to Jesus,
  Though if my weak spirit and mind
  Cannot grasp the highest’s counsel;
  May he lead me only ever onward
  On paths of thorns and roses.

  
  Jesus’s utterance “Ich will’s tun” (I will do it) stands in the center of the last recitative-aria pair. At its beginning the recitative reads:

  So glaube nun!
  Dein Heiland saget: Ich wills tun!
  Er pflegt die Gnadenhand
  Noch willigst auszustrecken,
  Wenn Kreuz und Leiden dich erschrecken.
  
  So now have faith!
  Your savior says: I will do it!
  He is wont to stretch out the hand of grace
  Most willingly
  When cross and suffering terrify you.

  
  But this threat, barely hinted at, is immediately revoked and replaced with the serenity of child-like trust:

  Mein Jesus will es tun, er will dein Kreuz versüßen.
  Obgleich dein Herze liegt in viel Bekümmernissen,
  Soll es doch sanft und still in seinen Armen ruhn,
  Wenn ihn der Glaube faßt; 
  Mein Jesus will es tun!
  
  My Jesus will do it, he will sweeten your cross. 
  Although your heart lies amid much affliction,
  It shall nevertheless rest gently and quietly in his arms
  Whenever faith takes hold of it;
  My Jesus will do it!

  
  The cantata text closes with the first strophe of the hymn Was mein Gott will, das g’scheh allzeit (Whatever my God wills, may that happen always).
  
  The opening movement of the cantata belongs to a relatively small number of choral pieces in Bach’s oeuvre whose structure depends neither on a chorale melody as backbone nor on fugue at one place or another. Here unity is achieved chiefly by two resounding chords that are heard first instrumentally and later attached to the exclamation “Alles.” A similar function is played by hammering tone repetitions, now in this voice, then in that one, or in several voices at the same time, and assigned to the title phrase “Alles nur nach Gottes Willen.” These two elements combine for sufficient stability to contain the various competing centrifugal forces emerging in the course of the movement: the lively virtuosity of the violins, the oboes, and even the basso continuo; the vivid word painting of concepts such as “Traurigkeit” (sorrow), “böse Zeit” (evil time), and “Gewölk und Sonnenschein” (clouds and sunshine); and the affirming canonic structures with “Gottes Wille soll mich stillen” (God’s will shall calm me).
  
  The ensuing complex of movements is given to the alto voice. Beginning with a brief recitative, it intensifies quickly to an expressive arioso on the phrase “Herr, so du willt” and then changes immediately to a fast tempo in order to present “Mit allem, was ich hab und bin, / Will ich mich Jesu lassen.” Although structured overall as a quartet movement, at least half of the aria proves to be an instrumental trio, in which the violins bring their figural agility to full effect, even as the continuo holds its own as much as possible.
  
  The soprano aria, following the brief bass recitative, is delicately worked and discreetly dance-like. Above a texture of the strings that is now chordally grounded, now finely woven, the soprano voice and oboe conduct an expressive dialogue, doing full justice musically to the phrase “Mein Jesus will es tun, er will dein Kreutz versüßen.”
  
  After this flight of fancy, it costs the closing chorale movement some effort to bring us back to the levels of reality.

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. Spitta (1899, 2:415–16).—Trans.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:35:18+00:00 Ihr Menschen, rühmet Gottes Liebe BWV 167 / BC A 176 11 St John's Day. First performed 06/24/1723 in Leipzig (Cycle I). plain 2024-04-24T17:55:53+00:00 1723-06-24 BWV 167 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 02StJohn St John's Day BC A 176 Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Ihr Menschen, rühmet Gottes Liebe, BWV 167 / BC A 176" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 531 Leipzig I

  St. John’s Day, June 24, 1723

  Johann Sebastian Bach’s cantata Ihr Menschen, rühmet Gottes Liebe BWV 167 (You people, extol God’s love) is for St. John’s Day on June 24, which has been celebrated as the birthday of St. John the Baptist since the fourth century. Bach first performed it in 1723, his first year of service as cantor of St. Thomas School in Leipzig, and it was reperformed many times afterward. One of these performances took place in the nearby city of Halle between 1746 and 1764, when Bach’s oldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann, was organist and director of music at the Market Church of Our Dear Lady. The text of this Halle version was paraphrased by someone unknown as festive music for general use; it begins with the words “Auf, Menschen, rühmet Gottes güte” (Arise, people, extol God’s goodness). Further evidence of its dissemination is provided by an entry in a musical supply catalog prepared by a certain Strohbach in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. He owned both the score and the performing parts of Bach’s St. John’s Day cantata—a quite unusual circumstance for the period—so that a performance of the work may conceivably have taken place. The owner was clearly Johann Gottfried Strohbach, who served as cantor of St. John, the city church in Chemnitz, in the last quarter of the eighteenth century; his manuscript collection thus provides remarkable evidence for the dissemination of Bach’s vocal works in southern Saxony.
  
  The text of our cantata, the work of an unknown librettist, hews closely to the Gospel reading for the feast day. Found in Luke 1, it first gives the account of the birth of the son of Elizabeth, whose parents named him John against the suggestions of relatives and neighbors. Zechariah, the father of the child, was mute for a long time because he did not believe the prophecy of the archangel Gabriel that despite his wife’s advanced age, he would have another son with her. Now that the prophecy had been fulfilled, “his mouth and his tongue were opened, and he spoke and praised God” (Luke 1:64). Zechariah’s song of praise forms the second main part of the Gospel reading for St. John’s Day:

  Praised be the Lord, God of Israel! For he has visited and redeemed his people and has raised up for us a horn of salvation in the house of his servant David, as he has said since ancient times through the mouths of his holy prophets: that he would save us from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us, and showed mercy to our fathers and remembered his covenant and the oath he swore our father, Abraham, to grant us that we, having been delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear our entire lives in holiness and righteousness as would please him. And you, little child, will be called a prophet of the highest. You will go before the Lord to prepare his ways to give knowledge of salvation to his people, which is in forgiveness of their sins, through the tender mercy of our God, whereby the dawn from on high has visited us that he may appear to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death and guide our feet upon the way of peace. (68–79)

  
  The unknown librettist adopts the tone of the song of praise in the first aria:

  Ihr Menschen, rühmet Gottes Liebe
  Und preiset seine Gütigkeit!
  Lobt ihn aus reinem Herzenstriebe,
  Daß er uns zu bestimmter Zeit
  Das Horn des Heils, den Weg zum Leben
  An Jesu, seinem Sohn, gegeben.
  
  You humankind, extol God’s love
  And praise his goodness!
  Acclaim him out of pure urgings of the heart,
  Since, at the appointed time,
  The horn of salvation, the way to life
  He has given us in Jesus, his son.

  
  The phrase “Horn des Heils” (horn of salvation) alludes to the passage in the Gospel reading that uses the horn—a symbol of strength, power, and dignity going back to the beginnings of human history—as a metaphor of salvation and applies it to Jesus. Strictly speaking, this runs ahead in the sequence of events, but the recitative that follows immediately fills in what has been skipped over: “Gelobet sei der Herr Gott Israel” (Praised be the Lord God of Israel) it begins, quoting from the Gospel for St. John’s Day, and then continues with regard to sending the son of God as “Welterlöser” (world redeemer). A bit later:

  Erst stellte sich Johannes ein
  Und mußte Weg und Bahn
  Dem Heiland zubereiten;
  Hierauf kam Jesus selber an,
  Die armen Menschenkinder 
  Und die verlornen Sünder 
  Mit Gnad und Liebe zu erfreun
  Und sie zum Himmelreich in wahrer Buß’ zu leiten.
  
  First John appeared
  And had to prepare the way and path
  For the savior;
  Thereupon Jesus himself arrived
  To gladden the poor children of humankind
  And the lost sinners
  With grace and love
  And lead them to the heavenly kingdom in true penance.

  
  The ensuing aria paraphrases the “Eid, den er geschworen hat unserm Vater Abraham” (oath that he swore to our father, Abraham):

  Gottes Wort, das trüget nicht,
  Es geschieht, was er verspricht.
  Was er in dem Paradies
  Und vor so viel hundert Jahren
  Denen Vätern schon verhieß,
  Haben wir gottlob erfahren.
  
  God’s word does not deceive;
  It happens, what he promises.
  What he in paradise
  And so many hundred years ago
  Pledged to our fathers,
  We, praise God, have experienced.

  
  The last freely versified text, a recitative, recapitulates “den Segen, den Gott Abraham, dem Glaubensheld, versprochen” (the blessing that God promised Abraham, the hero of the faith) and the song of praise of Zechariah, mute until now, whose tongue was freed by God’s “Wundertat” (miracle). It closes with these lines:

  Bedenkt, ihr Christen, auch, was Gott an euch getan,
  Und stimmet ihm ein Loblied an!
  
  Consider, you Christians, also what God has done for you,
  And strike up for him a song of praise!

  
  This hymn is the fifth strophe of Johann Gramann’s chorale Nun lob, mein Seel, den Herren (Now praise, my soul, the Lord), which begins:

  Sei Lob und Preis mit Ehren
  Gott Vater, Sohn, Heiligem Geist.
  
  Blessing and praise with honor be
  To God father, son, Holy Spirit.

  
  With its cross-connections of biblical references, the text forms a closed, coherent whole. Its musical utility, however, is another matter. Philipp Spitta, the great Bach biographer of the last third of the nineteenth century, appears to have seen an insurmountable obstacle here. In any case, he made the comment regarding our cantata: “a work of little significance that scarcely merits any particular remark.”¹
  
  Even so, several “particular remarks” seem called for. Contrary to the emphatic admonition “You people, extol God’s love,” the vibrant opening movement, an aria for tenor and strings, is instead filled with an arcadian cheerfulness and serenity. The “complete” calm and self-possessed 12
  8 meter creates an atmosphere of contented tranquility in which musical contrasts are avoided. Hence the main events of this aria consist of a filigree of fine gradations of dynamics and density of texture, as well as subtly employed tone painting for the text “Horn des Heils.” The first recitative is all the more exciting, on the other hand. According to a recent study, its closing arioso portion, “in its unconventional chromaticism, in its free handling of dissonance, seems to contradict the rules of voice leading and resolution of Baroque counterpoint.”² In fact, the tonal freedom here is so extensive that the question of an anticipation of twelve-tone music is entirely apt. The textual grounds are seen in these lines, after Jesus has come:

  Und die verlornen Sünder
  Mit Gnad und Liebe zu erfreun
  Und sie zum Himmelreich in wahrer Buß’ zu leiten.
  
  And the lost sinners
  With grace and love
  And to lead them to the heavenly kingdom in true penance.

  
  The keyword “Buße” (penance) could be seen to justify the intense chromaticism, but Bach’s intentions obviously were aimed at the passage as a whole.
  
  Accordingly, the recitative’s conclusion is designed as a musical labyrinth, very similar to the procedure in a cantata composed several years later,³ where the crucial lines read “Unerforschlich ist die Weise, / Wie der Herr die Seinen führt” (Unfathomable is the way / In which the Lord leads his flock).
  
  In contrast to what has just been experienced, the aria that follows takes a more secure path. The sharp coloration of the obbligato oboe da caccia corresponds to the text statement “Gottes Wort, das trüget nicht” (God’s word does not deceive), as does the steady leading of the voices. Soprano and alto are in either strict parallel or equally strict imitation and scarcely allow themselves to deviate from the prescribed path. The bass recitative, the work’s penultimate movement, makes its call to strike up a song of praise (“Und stimmet ihm ein Loblied an!”), thereby anticipating the closing chorale using the melody Nun lob, mein Seel, den Herren (Now praise, my soul, the Lord). The chorale itself then appears as an expansively designed arrangement. In its performance of the melody in large note values in one of the voices while the others provide motet-like figuration and in its concertante figuration of the preludes and interludes, the chorale anticipates the diversity of forms in Bach’s annual cycle of chorale cantatas, undertaken in his second year of service at Leipzig.

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. Spitta (1899, 2:422).—Trans.↵
  2. “in seiner querständigen Chromatik, in seiner freien Dissonanzbehandlung den Stimmführungs- und Auflösungsregeln barocken Kontrapunkts zu widersprechen” (Gojowy 1975, 43).↵
  3. Ich habe meine Zuversicht BWV 188.—Trans.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:34:19+00:00 Du sollt Gott, deinen Herren, lieben BWV 77 / BC A 126 11 Thirteenth Sunday After Trinity. First performed 08/22/1723 in Leipzig (Cycle I). Text by JO Knauer. plain 2024-04-29T16:05:07+00:00 1723-08-22 BWV 77 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 05Trinity13 Thirteenth Sunday After Trinity BC A 126 Johann Sebastian Bach JO Knauer Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Du sollt Gott, deinen Herren, lieben, BWV 77 / BC A 126" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 392 James A. Brokaw II Leipzig I

  Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity, August 22, 1723

  Johann Sebastian Bach wrote the cantata Du sollt Gott, deinen Herren, lieben BWV 77 (You shall love God, your Lord) for the thirteenth Sunday after Trinity during his first year in office as cantor of St. Thomas School in Leipzig. The beginning of its text refers to the Gospel reading for the Sunday, Jesus’s telling of the parable of the good Samaritan in Luke 10:

  And behold, a scribe stood up, tempted him and spoke: Master, what must I do, that I may inherit eternal life? He however said to him: How is it written in the law? How do you read? He answered and spoke: “You shall love God, your Lord, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your might, and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.” He, however, spoke to him: You have answered correctly: Do that, and you will live. He, however, wanted to justify himself and spoke to Jesus: Who then is my neighbor? Then Jesus answered and spoke: There was a man who went from Jerusalem down to Jericho and fell among murderers; they stripped him and beat him and fled, leaving him half dead. It came to pass by chance that a priest came down the same road; and as he saw him, he passed by. A Levite did the same thing; as he came to the place and saw him, he passed by. A Samaritan, however, was traveling and came to the place; and as he saw him he wept for his sake, went to him, bound his wounds and poured oil and wine in them, and lifted him upon his beast and led him to the inn and took care of him. . . . Which, do you think, among these three may have been the neighbor to the one who had fallen among murderers? He spoke: The one who showed mercy upon him. Then Jesus spoke to him: Then go forth and do likewise. (25–34, 36–37)

  
  Scholars have only recently been able to discover the origins of the cantata text.¹ Bach took it from a collection printed in Gotha with the title GOtt-geheiligtes Singen und Spielen des Friedensteinischen Zions, nach allen und jeden Sonn- und Fest-Tages-Evangelien, vor und nach der Predigt angestellet vom Advent 1720 bis dahin 1721. These texts were distributed fairly widely and enjoyed high regard. The author of the annual cycle of texts was Johann Oswald Knauer, born in Schleiz in 1690 and brother-in-law to the court music director at Gotha, Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel. Bach did not adopt the libretto uncritically. The most obvious difference is that Bach used only the second half of Knauer’s text, which has two sections with many movements. Even there, however, much in Bach’s cantata is rearranged, tightened, or reformulated in comparison to the printed text. 
  
  No change was made to the words of Jesus taken from Luke, which in turn can be traced back to Leviticus and Deuteronomy: “Du sollt Gott, deinen Herren, lieben von ganzem Herzen, von ganzer Seele, von allen Kräften und von ganzem Gemüte und deinen Nächsten als dich selbst” (Deuteronomy 10:12; You shall love God, your Lord, with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your powers and all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself). In Knauer this is followed by “Hier hast du den Gesetz, das Gott dir vorgeschrieben: / Du sollst zuförderst Gott, und dann den Nächsten lieben” (Here you have the law, which God has required of you: / You shall love God above all, and then your neighbor). Bach omits this well-intentioned interpolation, meant as a clarification, and avoids Knauer’s interleaving of aria and recitative. He proceeds directly to the recitative and aria, which focus on the love of God. The recitative begins: “So muß es sein! Gott will das Herz vor sich alleine haben” (So it must be! God will have my heart for himself alone). It closes with the lines:

  Als wenn er das Gemüte,
  Durch seinen Geist entzündt
  Weil wir nur seiner Huld und Güte 
  Alsdenn erst recht versichert sind.
  
  Than when he the mind
  Through his spirit enkindles,
  For we, of his favor and goodness,
  Only then are truly assured.

  
  In Knauer it is more concise but also differently accentuated:

  Als wenn er das Gemüte
  Mit seiner Kraft entzünd,
  Weil wir dann seiner Güte
  Erst recht versichert sind.
  
  Than when he the mind
  With his power enkindles,
  For we then of his goodness
  Truly are assured.

  
  The aria continues this train of thought; its text begins: “Mein Gott, ich liebe dich von Herzen, / Mein ganzes Leben hangt dir an” (My God, I love you with all my heart, / My entire life depends on you).
  
  With the pair of movements that follow, the librettist turns his attention to the love of one’s neighbor while keeping the parable of the good Samaritan in view:

  Gib mir dabei, mein Gott, ein Samariterherz,
  Daß ich zugleich den Nächsten liebe
  Und mich bei seinem Schmerz 
  Auch über ihn betrübe.
  
  Grant me besides, my God, a Samaritan’s heart
  That I may at once love my neighbor
  And, in his pain,
  Also be distressed for him.

  
  At the close, the recitative in Bach’s cantata deviates slightly from Knauer’s text: “So wirst du mir dereinst das Freudenleben / Nach meinem Wunsch, jedoch aus Gnaden geben” (Then you will one day grant me the life of joy / According to my wish, yet out of grace). The ensuing remorseful aria strophe shows that the way there is not smooth but remains rocky and thorny: 

  Ach es bleibt in meiner Liebe
  Lauter Unvollkommenheit!
  Hab ich oftmals gleich den Willen,
  Was Gott saget, zu erfüllen,
  Fehlt mir’s doch an Möglichkeit.
  
  Ah, there remains in my love
  Such glaring imperfection!
  Though I often have the desire,
  What God says, to fulfill,
  Yet I lack the possibility.

  
  In the printed libretto, the conclusion is somewhat vague: “Doch das Gute zu erfüllen / Fehlet mir zu jederzeit” (But to fulfill the good / I am unable at any time). The version composed by Bach is, as elsewhere, more powerful and precise. Knauer’s libretto concludes with the last two strophes from Luther’s 1524 chorale Dies sind die heilgen zehn Gebot (These are the holy Ten Commandments). But remarkably, Bach decided against this plan. His score contains a chorale movement without text as well as the chorale strophe, added by a different hand, “Du stellst, mein Jesu, selber dich / Zum Vorbild wahrer Liebe” (You present yourself, Lord Jesus, / As a model of true love), the eighth strophe from David Denickes’s 1657 hymn Wenn einer alle Ding verstünd (If one understood all things). Long thought to be an unauthorized entry in the score, it has recently been identified as the work of Bach’s second-youngest son, Johann Christoph Friedrich, who may have taken it from the original performance parts.²
  
  More than any other part of Bach’s composition, the opening chorus has inspired analysts and exegetists to ever newer and bolder interpretations.³ These proceed from the fact that the words of Jesus at the beginning, given to the chorus in a dense, motet-like texture, are framed by a canonic cantus firmus, performed by the trumpets in small note values and by the bass in long notes. Musically, this recalls the opening chorus of the cantata Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott BWV 80 (A mighty fortress is our God), in which the four-part, motet-like arrangement is bordered by an instrumental canon between the oboes and the bass. In the cantata Du sollt Gott deinen Herren, lieben, this appears to be motivated in several respects. First, the Luther hymn about the holy Ten Commandments belongs to the de tempore hymns for the thirteenth Sunday after Trinity and is called for in Knauer’s libretto; Bach thus had several reasons to compensate for his avoidance of this conclusion for the cantata. Second, a concordant understanding of the Bible in Bach’s era can be assumed,⁴ which means that the Sunday Gospel reading and parallel passages can be understood side by side. In Matthew it reads, regarding the commandments of love of neighbor and God, “In diesen zwei Geboten hanget das ganze Gesetz und die Propheten” (The entire law and the prophets depend upon these two commandments). The two-part canon could thus be understood to symbolize the two commandments, whereby “canon” is understood literally as “law” and “regulation.”
  
  But rash conclusions can set in all too easily here. Philipp Spitta, the unerring nineteenth-century biographer and analyst of Bach, had already recognized that

  a working out in strict canon form between the instrumental bass and trumpet was inadmissible, since, in the first place, neither the value of the notes nor the intervals are the same; and, in the second place, the trumpet repeats the first line after each of the others in order to emphasise very expressly the words “These ten are God’s most holy laws”; finally, the whole melody is repeated once more straight through above an organ point on G. This playing with fragments of the melody, so to speak, rather points to the influence of the Northern school.⁵

  
  There is little to be added: few options were open to Bach other than to repeat the upper voice, moving in short note values, several times in order to even out the lead gained by the cantus firmus bass part, moving in large note values. But he made good use of the leeway he thus gained: a combination of luck and skill allowed the count of repetitions to equal exactly ten, so that the phrase “heilgen zehn Gebot” received symbolic emphasis. It does not follow from this, however, that this integration of number symbolism is natural and immanent in music. Achieving a particular numeric level is normally bound with curtailing purely musical aspects. In any case, this is how Philipp Spitta’s gentle criticism of the first movement’s structure is to be understood.
  
  The remaining cantata movements are easily characterized. The aria for soprano and—perhaps—two oboes is characterized by the constant parallel voice leading in sixths and thirds in the instruments, which, with its absolute rigor, is meant to embody the permanence of God’s love. However, the aria for alto and obbligato slide trumpet, “Ach es bleibt in meiner Liebe / Lauter Unvollkommenheit!” remains ruminative and self-tormenting. The surprising answer is provided by the simple concluding chorale on the melody Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein (Ah, God, look down from heaven), with its keyword connection: “Du stellst, mein Jesu, selber dich / Zum Vorbild wahrer Liebe” (You present yourself, my Jesus, / As a model of true love).

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. Krausse (1981).↵
  2. Wollny (2001a).↵
  3. Schering (1925); Dadelsen (1983). For criticism, see Schulze (2001), Schulze (2002c).↵
  4. Petzoldt (2004), as well as numerous individual studies by the same author.↵
  5. Spitta (1899, 2:429–31).—Trans.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:33:55+00:00 Erfreut euch, Ihr Herzen BWV 66 / BC A 56 11 Second Day of Easter. First performed 04/10/1724 in Leipzig (Cycle I). plain 2024-04-24T16:28:03+00:00 1724-04-10 BWV 66 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 21Easter1 Second Day of Easter BC A 56 Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Erfreut euch, Ihr Herzen, BWV 66 / BC A 56" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 181 James A. Brokaw II Leipzig I

  Easter Monday, April 10, 1724

  The cantatas Der Himmel lacht, die Erde jubiliert BWV 31 (Heaven laughs, the earth rejoices), Erfreut euch, ihr Herzen BWV 66 (Rejoice, you hearts), and Ein Herz, das seinen Jesum lebend weiß BWV 134 (A heart that knows its Jesus to be alive) constitute a group of compositions for the first, second, and third days of Easter, and they were heard in this order at least three times in Leipzig on the three holidays in 1724, 1731, and 1736. The three works have in common that they are not products of Bach’s Leipzig period but come from older stock. The cantata for the first day of Easter originated in Weimar, and the two others go back to secular works from Bach’s time in Köthen, around 1720. The origin of the cantata for the third day of Easter was easily discovered in the nineteenth century when Bach’s own copy of the secular original came to light.
  
  The situation was different for the cantata meant for the second day of Easter, Erfreut euch, ihr Herzen. In this case, no early version was known at first. However, Philipp Spitta, the great Bach expert of the nineteenth century, was so struck by what he called the work’s “pleasing character” (gefällige Charakter) that he felt compelled to search for the reasons for it. He thought he had found these reasons in the vicinity of the cantata for the third day of Easter, which could be shown to go back to a Köthen version, prompting him to hypothesize an attempt at assimilation by Bach. Spitta wrote:

  Bach had the gift of throwing himself, up to a certain point, into various kinds of styles, whether those of other persons or his own in his earlier phases. Careful comparison will at once show that there is a relation between the occasional cantata “Erfreut euch ihr Herzen” and the same in its remodeled form. A pleasing character, aiming rather at breadth than at depth, is not the only characteristic that is common to both. The first chorus of the earlier composition agrees exactly in its plan with the last chorus of the later work, and even the passages set as duets, especially those of the middle movement, which in the occasional compositions were necessitated by the text, were copied in their setting in the Easter cantata. Both are full of genius and elegance, although they cannot lay claim to a prominent place among Bach’s Easter compositions.¹

  
  In light of our current knowledge, Spitta’s description of stylistic and compositional attributes hits the mark, but his suggestion of a deliberate assimilation on Bach's part took him down the wrong track. Thus the relationship of Erfreut uns, ihr Herzen to a vanished Köthen homage cantata escaped Spitta, even as he investigated its text after the second volume of his monumental Bach biography was published. Spitta had discovered that Christian Friedrich Hunold, born in Thuringia, a few years older than Bach, active as a poet at the court of Köthen for several years, had settled in nearby Halle, where he held readings on poetry and jurisprudence and supplemented his income by writing occasional poetry. Among the printed collections of poetry by Hunold, who adopted the pen name Menantes, Spitta stumbled upon the text for a serenata on the birthday of Prince Leopold of Köthen in 1718—but he let the matter rest with a short description and the carefully expressed doubt that Bach, overburdened with work during the period in question, could have composed the text at all. 
  
  From this point forward, the case of the Köthen serenata remained closed for half a century until Friedrich Smend, one of the most important Bach researchers of the twentieth century, took up the matter again. Smend showed convincingly that the Easter cantata Erfreut euch, ihr Herzen, except for its closing chorale, goes back to the Köthen serenata of 1718, even though only the text of this secular predecessor survives, its musical sources deemed entirely lost or destroyed. Hunold’s serenade text appeared under the title Das frolockende Anhalt (Anhalt rejoicing) in honor of Prince Leopold’s birthday on December 10, 1718. Hunold arranged the text itself as a dialogue, the interlocutors being “Die Glückseligkeit Anhalts” (The happiness of Anhalt) and “Fama,” the goddess of fame. The serenade included eight movements: four recitatives, two arias, a duet, and a concluding ensemble. The first four movements, as well as the closing ensemble, were adopted in the church cantata. The fact that the last movement became the opening movement of the church piece made the discovery of the connection somewhat more difficult. With one exception, the music of the other three movements of the original secular version left behind no trace among the compositions of J. S. Bach known today. 
  
  As Bach set about preparing church music for the Easter holidays, at the very latest in early 1724, and decided to revise two Köthen secular cantatas that had originated only three weeks apart as church cantatas, he must have been sure that he had available a text poet who was up to the task. For this person had to solve the problem not only of providing the arias, with their relatively regular strophic forms, with new text but also of accomplishing the same with the largely heterogeneous lines of the recitatives. The results of such a labor-intensive effort could turn out in very different ways: satisfaction of the composer and audience or extensive disapproval due to lack of quality, and the two might lie very close to one another. The prevailing view of older scholars, that such cases of retexting generally involve the mediocre stencil work of a mediocre poet, must be revised in the light of more recent findings that this work was often performed under more stringent standards. If an acceptable level of quality were to be achieved, the author of the new text needed, in addition to the previous text, a copy of the score or at least information regarding the layout of the composition, movement character, and the musical emphasis of individual words, thoughts, or entire movements.²
  
  The unknown poet contracted by Bach who was to transform the 1718 serenade into a cantata for the second day of Easter also had to struggle with the dialogue character of several movements in the secular early version. He addressed this point of view in part by neglecting it and in part by introducing a dialogue in his revision between “Zuversicht” (Faith) and “Schwachheit” (Weakness). In a later reperformance, Bach changed these personifications to “Hoffnung” (Hope) and “Furcht” (Fear). Overall, an acceptable text underlay was achieved, if restricted to the death and resurrection of Jesus and without any clear relationship to the Gospel reading of the Sunday, the journey of the disciples to Emmaus in the twenty-fourth chapter of Luke. 
  
  The opening movement of the church cantata, whose early version was the concluding movement of the Köthen serenade, provides a good example of the nature of the retexting. In the secular version it reads:

  Es strahle die Sonne,
  Es lache die Wonne, 
  Es lebe Fürst Leopold ewig beglückt.
  Ach Himmel, wir flehen,
  Dies holde Licht sechzigmal wiederzusehen.
  Gib, Höchster, was unsern Regenten erquickt.
  
  May the sun shine,
  May delight laugh,
  May Prince Leopold live ever fortunate.
  O heaven, we plead,
  To see this sweet light sixty times again.
  Give, Most High, that which our regent refreshes.

  
  In the Easter cantata, this became:

  Erfreut euch, ihr Herzen,
  Entweichet ihr Schmerzen,
  Es lebet der Heiland und herrschet in euch.
  Ihr könnet verjagen
  Das Trauren, das Fürchten, das ängstliche Zagen,
  Der Heiland erquicket sein geistliches Reich.
  
  Rejoice, you hearts,
  Vanish, you sorrows,
  The savior lives and reigns in you.
  You can drive away
  The mourning, the fears, the anxious dismay,
  The savior fortifies his spiritual realm.

  
  Even in its altered form and despite the chance provided by the new text to revisit the musical substance, Bach’s composition allows its original essence to show through in many ways. This is particularly true of the dance-like first and last sections of the opening movement, which pose no serious problems for the chorus but include all sorts of tricky passages for the instruments. In none of the cantatas he composed for Leipzig did Bach allow the second violin to climb to an a′′′ in thirty-second-note motion—but as a relic of a virtuoso piece for the Köthen court, he retained it in the Easter cantata. Whether the agonizingly chromatic middle section with its long duet between alto and bass was brought over from the secular version must be left open; the relatively neutral text “Ach Himmel, wir flehen” (O heaven, we plead) speaks against such a possibility. The third movement, an aria for bass whose text originally began with “Traget, ihr Lüfte, den Jubel von hinnen” (Carry, you breezes, the reveling from afar), now “Lasset dem Höchsten ein Danklied erschallen” (Let to the Most High a song of thanks resound), points to the court of Köthen not only with its dance-like character but also with its considerable length at more than 330 measures. The actual dialogue movements—the fourth and fifth movements—prove to be equally demanding, with an extended concerted passage in the middle of the recitative as well as an obbligato violin part with relentless figuration in the duet between “Furcht” and “Hoffnung.” The concluding chorale seems a little out of place in this setting, the third strophe of the ancient Easter hymn Christ ist erstanden.

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. Spitta (1899, 3:68–69).—Trans.↵
  2. Schulze (1989).—Trans.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:36:44+00:00 Kommt, eilet und laufet, ihr flüchtigen Füße BWV 249 / BC D 8 10 Easter. First performed 04/06/1738 at Leipzig. Text by CF Henrici (Picander)?. plain 2024-04-24T14:42:39+00:00 1738-04-06 BWV 249 Leipzig 20Easter Easter BC D 8 Johann Sebastian Bach CF Henrici (Picander)? Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Kommt, eilet und laufet, ihr flüchtigen Füße, BWV 249 / BC D 8" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 651 James A. Brokaw II Leipzig

  Easter Sunday, April 6, 1738

  Compared to its well-known sibling work, the Christmas Oratorio (BWV 248.2), the Easter Oratorio BWV 249.4/5 is clearly less popular with the public. The reasons for this certainly do not lie with the music and its quality. With its catchy freshness of invention, it lacks nothing in comparison to its younger but much better known sibling. The text, however, poses problems, if only at first glance. It certainly found no favor with the classic Bach biographer of the nineteenth century, Philipp Spitta: “It cannot but surprise us to find that Bach could have been satisfied with such a text,” reads the summary from his rather unsympathetic overview:

  The text, of which the author is unknown . . . begins with a duet between John and Peter, who are informed of Christ’s resurrection by the women, and who run joyfully to the sepulcher to convince themselves ( John 20, 3 and 4). There Mary the mother of James, and Salome, reproach them with not having also purposed to anoint the body of the Lord and thus testifying their love for Him. The men excuse themselves, saying that their anointing has been “with briny tears, and deep despair and longing.” Then the women explain that these, happily, are no longer needed, since the Lord is risen. They gaze into the empty tomb; John asks where the Saviour can be, to which Mary Magdalene replies what the men have long known: “He now has risen from the dead. / To us an angel did appear, / Who told us, lo He is not here.” Peter directs his attention to the “linen cloth,” and this leads him to recall the tears he had shed over his denial of Jesus, a very tasteless episode. The women next express their longing to see Jesus once more; John rejoices that the Lord lives again, and the end is a chorus: “Thanks and praise / be to Thee for ever, Lord! / Satan’s legions now are bound, / his dominion now hath ceased, / let the highest heaven resound / with your songs, ye souls released. / Fly open, ye gates! / Open radiant and glorious! / The Lion of Judah comes riding victorious.”¹

  
  Spitta and others were prevented from issuing a more just assessment of the Easter Oratorio by what they could not know, namely, its origin as a secular cantata, a Tafelmusik (banquet music) of 1725 for Duke Christian of Saxe-Weissenfels. This was discovered in about 1940, when Friedrich Smend came across evidence of a relationship between the Easter music and a lost “shepherds’ colloquy” (Schäfergespräch) by Christian Friedrich Henrici. Even so, at first the knowledge of the Easter Oratorio’s secular parentage was hardly useful. The persistent prejudice against anything resulting from what is called “parody procedure”—supplying existing music with a new text— simply opened the libretto to further criticism. It was seen as reflecting a profoundly meaningful event for the church, but without Gospel narratives or chorale strophes, and thus it was reduced to an intermediate text prepared with nonchalance and without sympathy in order to make good use of an elaborate composition that would otherwise have lain idle.
  
  More recently, theological studies have highlighted how the new text, focused on the feast of the Resurrection, draws upon the centuries-old tradition of Easter plays in many ways and perhaps in all of its aspects.² In doing so, it consciously avoids any attempt at a dramatic fiction: neither angels nor the Risen One are included in the action. Even so, the play is at once a dramatic realization and a proclamation of praise. Thus the first vocal movement takes up the race between Peter and John to the grave of Jesus from the book of John; but with its text beginning “Kommt eilet und laufet” (Come, make haste and run) it also functions as an appeal to meditatio, comparable to the opening of the St. Matthew Passion’s opening chorus, “Kommt, ihr Töchter hilft mir klagen” (Come, you daughters, help me lament). The tone of the “mysticism of the bride,” going back to the Song of Songs, is hard to ignore in the recitatives (the first, in particular), as well as in Maria Jacobi’s aria “Seele, deine Spezereien” (Soul, your spices [shall no longer be myrrh]). The connection to medieval traditions is particularly strong in Peter’s aria and its associated recitative, whose meditations include Jesus’s cast-off grave clothes and mention his shroud in particular. The linkage of the stories of the disciples at the grave of Jesus and the awakening of Lazarus in John 11 and 20, respectively, follow ancient tradition. The account of Lazarus was understood as an anticipation of the Resurrection of Jesus and the reawakening of the dead and thus symbolizes the hope for a resurrection to eternal life. In this sense, the cast-off grave clothes in Peter’s aria become recognized as a sign of the Resurrection of the Lord and convey the certainty that one’s own death will be but a sleep.
  
  On the whole, the unidentified librettist deserves every recognition for his work to appropriately transform the arias and ensembles of the secular original into the subject matter of Easter with verbal skill and fealty to content.
  
  In 1725 Bach’s efforts were confined to the composition of recitatives and the arrangement of the voices in the arias and ensemble movements. At first probably designated as a cantata for Easter (BWV 249.3), the work was reperformed in 1738 (BWV 249.4) with minor alterations but with the title Oratorio.³ Whether the role designations Maria Jacobi, Maria Magdalena, Petrus, and Johannes were still used at this time cannot be known for certain, but they were certainly omitted in the final performances in 1745 and April 1749 (BWV 249.5).
  
  Significantly, in this late version the original duet for Peter and John was refashioned as a four-part chorus, so that the motif of the disciples’ race recedes even further behind the invitation to contemplation.
  
  Otherwise, there was little change to the core musical substance, which goes back to the Weissenfels Tafelmusik of 1725. The work begins with two instrumental movements: a cheerful concertante Allegro that exploits timbral contrasts between instrumental groups (trumpets and drums, oboes with bassoon, and string instruments), as well as a mournful Adagio with an expressive solo for oboe (flute in a later version). Both movements may go back to an earlier instrumental concerto. This is perhaps also true of the first vocal movement, which seems to have an unusually robust instrumental accompaniment for a duet. The later transformation to a four-part chorus mitigates this discrepancy somewhat. In the soprano aria, voice and flute compete in a vivid representation of love for Jesus. Peter’s slumber aria unfolds in beguiling coloration, with layered timbres of string instruments and recorders in octaves, radiating a heavenly serenity. The alto aria is situated between energetic focus and sensitive encouragement. The work concludes with an ensemble that, by combining a solemn, hovering opening with a brisk fugal ending, follows the model of the Sanctus of 1724 (232.1), later incorporated in the Mass in B Minor (BWV 232.4).
   

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. Spitta (1899, 2:591).—Trans.↵
  2. Steiger and Steiger (1983).↵
  3. Peter Wollny has identified a copyist previously known as Anonymous Vj, who participated in preparing the sources for the Easter Oratorio BWV 249.4, as Johann Wilhelm Machts; Wollny (2016, 91) proposes April 6, 1738, as the date of its first performance.—Trans.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:36:44+00:00 Jauchzet, frohlocket, auf, preiset die Tage BWV 248 I / BC D 7 I 9 Christmas Day. Part of Christmas Oratorio. First performed 12/25/1734 at Leipzig. plain 2024-04-24T14:47:14+00:00 1734-12-25 BWV 248 I Leipzig 11Christmas Christmas Day BC D 7I Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Jauchzet, frohlocket, auf, preiset die Tage, BWV 248 I / BC D 7I" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 632 James A. Brokaw II Christmas Oratorio Leipzig

  Christmas Day, December 25, 1734

  The cantata Jauchzet, frohlocket, auf, preiset die Tage BWV 248 Part I (Exult, rejoice, arise, praise the days) is for the first day of Christmas and was first performed on December 25, 1734, in St. Nicholas, the main church of Leipzig. With it, Johann Sebastian Bach began to realize his plan to provide a musical arrangement for the first of the three high feasts of the church year: instead of single cantatas independent of one another, a complete cycle for the longer period from Christmas to Epiphany. The models for such an ambitious sequence of cantatas—aside from Bach’s own works, such as the chorale cantata annual cycle, composed in 1724 and 1725—include the multipart Lübeck Abendmusiken, as well as other Passion cantata series and multipart Passion oratorios whose performances since the end of the seventeenth century are documented at the Thuringian court of Gotha in particular.
  
  Whether Bach intended at the outset to call his cycle of six cantatas an oratorio is open to question. The original numbering in his autograph scores only begins with the third cantata. The reason for Bach’s momentary uncertainty can be seen clearly in the original print of the text of 1734. Its title unmistakably reads: ORATORIUM, Welches Die heilige Weyhnacht über In beyden Haupt-Kirchen zu Leipzig musicieret wurde (ORATORIO, which was set to music over holy Christmas Night in both main churches in Leipzig).¹ However, it is clear from the headings in the individual cantatas that one can speak of a cyclical performance only within certain limitations. According to the traditional schedule for concerted music at the main churches, St. Nicholas and St. Thomas, the St. Nicholas congregation heard the first, third, and fifth cantatas in the main worship service in the mornings and the other cantatas at vespers on the second day of Christmas, New Year’s Day, and Epiphany. Worshipers at St. Thomas, on the other hand, were able to hear only the first, second, fourth, and sixth cantatas. There was, therefore, a good bit of artistic idealism lurking in Bach’s conception of performing the Christmas story from the birth of Christ to the appearance of the wise men from the East.
  
  Even so, long-term planning can be assumed here, although it remains unclear that Bach considered every detail well in advance. In addition to the arrangements for performance just described, with their unavoidable preference for St. Nicholas Church, the treatment of the Gospel narratives raises several questions. Bach allocated the text belonging to the first day of Christmas in equal parts to the first two cantatas and the text for the second day to the third cantata. In similar fashion, the last two cantatas share the Gospel text for Epiphany, while the account of the flight to Egypt, expected on the Sunday after New Year’s Day, is missing entirely. It would appear that Bach managed the specific layout of the 1734–35 end-of-year season rather idiosyncratically: there was no Sunday after Christmas but a Sunday between New Year’s Day and Epiphany.
  
  What is the earliest evidence of Bach’s plan to structure the cantata cycle later called the Christmas Oratorio? The question is of some importance because its answer could help to clarify the classic question of how the parody procedure, which Bach turned to so frequently in the Christmas Oratorio, should be assessed from Bach’s perspective as well as that of later generations. Since before 1850 Bach scholarship has been aware that the majority of the arias and choral movements come from secular festive cantatas and are simply supplied with new text. Although scholars had to take this into account relatively early, it has often proven difficult for them to come to terms with this knowledge. In 1880 Philipp Spitta hoped to solve the question by maintaining that Bach was scarcely able to write anything outside of a religious context: “His secular occasional works were, rather, nonsecular, and as such they did not fulfill their purpose. The composer returned them to their true home when he transformed them to church music.”² Later, Albert Schweitzer complained that through retexting, word and tone had become alienated from one another at many points. In contrast, more recent Bach scholarship has shown with many examples how sensitively and conscientiously Bach and his librettists proceeded in most cases, even if the results might differ in quality. Accordingly, the richness and complexity of Bach’s music produce a “musical surplus” that allows the individual movement to be open to very different texts. As Ludwig Finscher wrote in 1969, “The musical greatness of Bach’s works is the prerequisite of their suitability for parody.”³
  
  It is worth asking whether Bach’s Christmas Oratorio owes its origins to the composer’s more or less coincidental recourse to several congratulatory cantatas, as well as to a church cantata of unknown purpose from 1733–34, or whether in conceptualizing those works Bach did so with their reuse in mind as part of a larger cantata cycle. Since Bach began relying on parody frequently and deliberately no later than the start of his tenure at Leipzig, he can hardly have begun considering the future uses of works for one-time occasions only after he had finished composing them.
  
  With regard to the Christmas Oratorio, this could mean that the cantatas Laßt uns sorgen, laßt uns wachen BWV 213 (Let us care for, let us watch) and Tönet, ihr Pauken, erschallet, Trompeten BWV 214 (Sound, you drums, ring out, trumpets) were designed with their reusability in mind. However, one objection would be that even if Bach thought through a secular work’s reuse, he prepared it only in a generalized sense. Even when setting the text for a one-time performance for a specific occasion, Bach did so with all his powers and artistic acumen. That the high compositional standard accommodated other and partially divergent text relationships was desirable, but ultimately it was a side benefit.
  
  The first cantata of the oratorio demonstrates in exemplary fashion what obstacles were still to be overcome in spite of all Bach’s foresight. Bach composed the movement “Tönet, ihr Pauken” from the 1733 cantata for the queen of Poland (BWV 214) with its use as an opening movement in mind. His librettist, unfortunately unknown, skillfully prepared a new version in which the triad “tönet,” “erschallet,” “erfüllet” (sound, ring out, fill) is replaced by “jauchzet,” “preiset,” “rühmet” (exult, praise, extoll). What could not be repaired was the deep beginning of the vocal part with what had been an imitation of drum beats. A second problem arose from the adoption of the alto aria from the cantata Herkules auf dem Scheideweg BWV 213 (Hercules at the crossroads), also of 1733. The brusquely defensive “Ich will dich nicht hören, ich will dich nicht wissen, verworfene Wollust, ich kenne dich nicht” (I will not hear you, I will not recognize you, depraved Pleasure, I know you not) was replaced with “Bereite dich Zion, mit zärtlichen Trieben, den Schönsten, den Liebsten bald bei dir zu sehn” (Prepare yourself, Zion, with tender urges, to see the most beautiful, the dearest beside you). This required a change in instrumental accompaniment as well as numerous performance markings in order to alter the character of the aria radically without touching the compositional substance. The adoption of the aria “Fama” from the queen’s cantata was less difficult. The original “Cron und Preis gecrönter Damen” (Crown and trophy of royal ladies), gleaming with the sound of trumpets, could be recycled with a clear conscience to “Großer Herr, o starker König” (Great Lord, O powerful king) in praise of the savior. Newly composed, therefore, were the evangelist’s role, the accompanied recitatives, and the chorales. In this effort, Bach had to keep in mind the existing material, taken from the secular first version, as he sought to integrate it within the new composition. The success of this comprehensive awareness remains undisputed over generations.

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. “Weyhnacht” is singular.—Trans.↵
  2. Spitta (1899, 2:576–77).—Trans.↵
  3. “Die musikalische Größe der Bachschen Werke ist die Voraussetzung ihrer Parodierbarkeit.” Finscher (1969, 105).↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:37:44+00:00 Non sa che chia dolore BWV 209 / BC G 50 9 Solo cantata. Various occasions. First performed in Leipzig after 1729. plain 2024-04-24T14:58:12+00:00 BWV 209 Leipzig BC G 50 Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Non sa che chia dolore, BWV 209 / BC G 50" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 732 James A. Brokaw II after 1729

  For an Unknown Occasion, after 1729

  The cantata Non sa che sia dolore BWV 209 (He knows not what sorrow is) is among the most puzzling compositions that bear the name Johann Sebastian Bach. For more than a century, scholars have sought with greater and lesser degrees of persuasive power to illuminate the darkness that envelops its origins, its source transmission, and, above all, its authenticity. The first to attempt to blaze a trail through this thicket was that classic Bach biographer of the late nineteenth century, Philipp Spitta. His assertion that the Italian text, despite several poetic commonplaces, is linked to an actual event has not been refuted to this day. Admittedly, according to Spitta, this occasion

  can, however, only be made out dimly from the text, which is evidently put together by a German and consists of awkward and sometimes incorrect and meaningless Italian, with the admixture of scraps extracted from original Italian poetry. A friend wishes to return to his native country, that is, from Germany into Italy. He is supposed to have been resident for some time in Anspach and to congratulate himself on being once more able to be of service to his country, the more so that his work in foreign lands has not met with due recognition and support. But the poet tells us that the favorable opinion of some illustrious personage that he has gained while in Anspach will assist him in achieving great things in his own country. Personal circumstances in connection with Bach seem to play some part in this.¹

  
  A half century later, Arnold Schering, as chronicler of the music history of Leipzig and one of the most important Bach scholars of his era, attempted to pick up the thread left by Spitta and pursue it further.² According to Schering, the person celebrated in the cantata was a young married professor who was highly respected at the court of Ansbach, although his scholarship stood in opposition to traditional views. When he returned to Italy, he followed, as the text has it, a “sign from heaven” (cenni del cielo)—hence, in all probability, an appointment to a post. He completed the trip by water, at least in part, since the poem describes him as displaying courage during a sea voyage. With respect to the mention of Ansbach, Schering thought a connection to Bach by way of Johann Matthias Gesner to be possible. Like Bach, Gesner (six years Bach’s junior) was active in Weimar after completing his education in Ansbach and also had to leave his post because of strained relations with the reigning duke there, twelve years after Bach did. For a short time, Gesner worked near his hometown as rector of the Gymnasium in Ansbach before he took over the rectorship at Leipzig’s St. Thomas School and thus became Bach’s superior there for four years. According to Schering, the cantata could have been a commissioned work with which Gesner bid farewell to an Italian known to him from his time in Ansbach. Gesner himself may therefore have been the hitherto unknown librettist who made good and bad use of the Italian language. 
  
  In about 1950 Italian scholars criticized the poet’s poor mastery of the Italian language. At the same time, they corroborated the suspicion expressed by Spitta that certain parts of the text were borrowed from contemporary writers. However, only recently have we learned more precisely where these quotations come from. In 1981 Reinhard Strohm, one of the foremost authorities on Italian opera of the eighteenth century, identified a place in Pietro Metastasio’s opera libretto Semiramide riconosciuta (Semiramis recognized) as the source of the final aria of the cantata ascribed to Bach.³ The second act in Metastasio’s libretto contains the aria “Il pastor, se torna Aprile” (The shepherd, if April returns), whose middle section, beginning “Il nocchier, placato il vento” (The helmsman when the wind has calmed), is otherwise identical to the cantata:

  Qual nocchier, placato il vento
  Più non teme o si scolora,
  Ma contento in su la prora
  Va cantando in faccia al mar.
  
  Like the helmsman when the wind drops
  No longer fears nor turns pale
  But is content in his prow
  And goes singing in the face of the sea.

  
  In 1729 Metastasio’s opera text was set by Leonardo Vinci and Nicola Porpora in short order and then later by Geminiano Giacomelli and Giovanni Battista Lampugnani; after 1740 it was set by Johann Adolph Hasse, Christoph Willibald Gluck, and Baldassare Galuppi; and still much later it was set by Antonio Salieri and Giacomo Meyerbeer. In view of the astonishing vitality of this libretto, it is rather amazing that it took so long for the connection to Bach’s cantata to be discovered. However, it should be mentioned that the line beginnings in the cantata and the opera aria are often different and hence do not invite a systematic comparison. The situation is different with the cantata’s prominent beginning, “Non sa che sia dolore.” In 1990 Klaus Hofmann was able to show that the first two lines go back to a poem by Giovanni Battista Guarini printed in 1598 and entitled “Partita dolorosa” (Sorrowful departure).⁴ “Non sa che sia dolore,” it reads there, and continues, “Chi da la Donna sua parte, e non more” (Who parts from his beloved and does not die). The cantata librettist changed this to “Chi dell’amico suo parte, e non more” (Who parts from his friends and does not die).
  
  It is only the Metastasio text that provides a single clue as to the cantata’s genesis. Considering the opera libretto’s first performances in Rome and Venice, Bach’s composition cannot have originated before 1729. The question whether the proposed connections from Bach to Gesner—who served as rector of St. Thomas School from 1730 to 1735, very close to 1729—actually played a role must be left aside. Other considerations focus on Lorenz Christoph Mizler. Born in Franconia in 1711 and a member of Bach’s circle of students, Mizler studied in Leipzig until 1731. In the autumn of 1734 he traveled back to his hometown, perhaps hoping to establish a career in Ansbach. Admittedly, the question as to who might have commissioned the farewell cantata remains open. That Bach of his own volition might have offered a cantata in honor of a young scholar who, while certainly promising, was not exactly suffering from a lack of self-confidence is not quite the first supposition that comes to mind.
  
  Other things need to be reconsidered. The work’s source transmission is another reason that scholars have had such a hard time clarifying the genesis of this cantata. The only manuscript that preserves this work for posterity comes from the collection of the Göttingen music historian Johann Nikolaus Forkel, who spent the last three decades of his life searching out every possible trace of Bachiana. The copy of the cantata Non sa che sia dolore may have been commissioned by him and prepared in his presence because he himself entered the rather problematic Italian text. The question arises whether Forkel stumbled across the exemplar for his copy—unnamed by him and not preserved—or whether he found it after a deliberate search. His systematic research would have brought together names and branches of tradition known from the Bach biography or to Forkel himself. Such persons might have included Johann Matthias Gesner, Lorenz Christoph Mizler, or the Ansbach-born Johann Georg Voigt, one of Bach’s last students. On the other hand, a chance discovery would obviate premises such as these.
  
  All of these considerations have to do with the musical material and call for an explanation, directly or indirectly, for Bach’s composition “alla maniera italiana,” or perhaps just the extent of his revision of a foreign original. In Bach’s time at Leipzig, his engagement with Italian vocal music ranged from a copy of the solo cantata Armida abbandonata by Georg Friedrich Händel, about 1730, to his late recasting of the Stabat Mater by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi as the cantata Tilge, Höchster, meine Sünden BWV 1083. The cantata Non sa che sia dolore belongs to this context—presuming the work’s authenticity as a composition by Johann Sebastian Bach.
  
  Several factors speak in favor of Bach’s authorship: above all, the unusual prominence of the instrumental component in the arias and the extensive opening sinfonia, which, as a concerto movement in three-part da capo form, is entirely attuned to the cantata’s basic melancholic affect. In many aspects that are consistent with Bach’s concertos known to have originated in the 1730s, such as the Concerto in D Minor for Two Violins BWV 1043, the sinfonia anticipates the stylistic devices of later decades, such as the fragmented sigh motives. The first aria, “Parti pur e con dolore” (Go, then, and with sorrow), seems less ambivalent, at first devoting itself entirely to the pain of farewell, the voice rising to the point of sobbing, undeterred by the tendril-like figuration of the accompanying flute and only in the consoling middle section allowing the soprano to be carried away by the nimble coloratura of the instrument. In contrast to this wealth of expression and the form that is just as concentrated as it is convincing (with regard to its stylistic integration with the Bachian oeuvre), the happy final movement of the cantata seems to have been produced with somewhat too light a hand. The quick dance tempo of the final aria can certainly be reconciled with our understanding of Bach’s writing style; further, there are many parallels in Bach’s works after about 1730 for the syncopated rhythms of the “Lombardian taste” found here, whose qualities of expression Johann Joachim Quantz called “lively and fresh” (lebhaft und frech). Admittedly, the remarkable ninth chord in the theme of the final aria remains quite singular; thus not all doubt as to the authenticity of the composition can be resolved.

  Addendum

  In 2010 Schulze revisited the questions of the cantata’s date as well as the name of its dedicatee. In addition to the candidates identified in his 2006 essay (Johann Matthias Gesner, Lorenz Christoph Mizler, and Johann Georg Voigt the Younger), Schulze investigated several others with associations to Ansbach and J. S. Bach. He noted that in addition to the libretto’s quotation from Metastasio’s Semiramide, the third movement also contains a quote from Metastasio’s 1722 Naples libretto, Galatea. A setting of Metastasio’s Semiramide by J. A. Hasse was performed in Leipzig on May 6 and 9, 1746, by Ensemble Mingotti. Exactly half a year later, Georg Scheufer offered Galatea for the first time. Performances lasted into the following year, very close to a performance of Hasse’s Semiramide in Dresden.
  
  These dates, together with the clues in the text, provided Schulze the parameters he needed to develop a profile of the cantata’s dedicatee:
  • born in Franconia or, rather, Ansbach;
  • reputation dependent not on any “blue-blooded” heritage but on his own achievements; 
  • intended to return to his home in Ansbach in late 1746 at the earliest;
  • in Ansbach a quick ascent awaited him assisted by significant personages whose advocacy he had earned;
  • not a native Italian, who would have looked with bemusement upon the libretto if not taken offense at its inadequacies;
  • moreover, the dedicatee as well as those initiating the homage would have been aware that in Ansbach Italian had recently supplanted French as the preferred language for public discourse.
  
  Schulze selected all students at the University of Leipzig from 1729 to 1750 who listed their hometown as Ansbach and then compared them to various reference works, the most important of which was Johann August Vocke’s almanac of births and deaths of scholars, writers, and artists in Ansbach.⁵ 
  
  Schulze found a single candidate who matched all the criteria: Lorenz Albrecht Beck, listed in the calendar under his birthdate, December 30, 1723. His date of death, October 2, 1768, is also given: “Beck, Lorenz Albrecht. 1723. (from Ansbach) court government and justice councillor there, took public and special education at the Gymnasium of his hometown, studied from 1743 on for three and a half years in Leipzig, returned in 1746, and became justice councillor in 1747 and court and government councillor in 1752.”⁶ University of Leipzig matriculation records provided Schulze with Beck’s date of enrollment, baccalaureate, and master’s graduations: “Beck, Laurent. Albert. Al Beckius o. Becquius Onoldin. B.i. 24.V.1743, b.a. in December 1744, m. 16.II.1747.” Thus Beck completed his studies in early 1747; the date 1746 in Vocke may be based on a print of his dissertation. 
  
  Abraham Kriegel, tertius of Leipzig’s St. Thomas School, provided more detail about Beck’s academic career in an almanac he maintained regarding activities of scholars in Leipzig,⁷ though without saying anything about the position awaiting him in Ansbach. The court and state calendar shows, however, that he must have assumed it in 1747: although the 1747 edition, printed in advance, does not mention Beck, he is listed as a member of the judicial council in 1748.
  
  Schulze concluded that Lorenz Albrecht Beck (1723–68) of Ansbach must be regarded as the one to whom a circle of friends offered the cantata Non sa che sia dolore as a farewell performance shortly after February 16, 1747. Unfortunately, the questions of who prepared the problematic Italian text, whether the text was circulated in print, and what may have happened to the performing parts all must be left open. Bach would have retained his score; it may have been the exemplar from which Johann Nikolaus Forkel had a copy prepared for his collection of Bachiana. The question whether Bach may have composed all the movements new or relied on existing materials cannot be answered unless the score turns up. The same is true of the question whether he may have received assistance from his circle of students, perhaps from his student and later son-in-law, Johann Christoph Altnikol, in composing—perhaps—the final aria. 

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. Spitta (1899, 2:639).—Trans.↵
  2. Schering (1933, 60 ff.).↵
  3. Strohm (1976, 206, 232); Strohm (1981, 81-99, esp. 84).↵
  4. Hofmann (1990).↵
  5. Vocke (1796).—Trans.↵
  6. “Beck, Lorenz Albrecht, 1723 (aus Ansbach) Hof- Regierungs- und Justizrath allda, genoss des oeffentlichen und besondern Unterrichts auf dem Gymnasium seiner Vaterstadt, studierte von 1743 an 3 1/2 Jahrein Leipzig, kehrte 1746 zurueck, und wurde 1747 Justizrath und 1752 Hof- und Regierungsrath.”—Trans.↵
  7. Kriegel (1747, 237, 242 ff.).—Trans.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:36:44+00:00 Und es waren Hirten in derselben Gegend BWV 248 II / BC D 7 II 7 Second Day of Christmas. Part of Christmas Oratorio. First performed 12/26/1734 at Leipzig. plain 2024-04-24T14:46:36+00:00 1734-12-26 BWV 248 II Leipzig 11Christmas1 Second Day of Christmas BC D 7 II Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Und es waren Hirten in derselben Gegend, BWV 248 II / BC D 7 II" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 635 James A. Brokaw II Christmas Oratorio Leipzig

  Christmas Oratorio II, December 26, 1734

  
  The second cantata of the Christmas Oratorio, Und es waren Hirten in derselben Gegend BWV 248 II (And there were shepherds in the same area), shares with its five sibling works the genesis, performance history, and other aspects of the entire cycle. The cantata was performed for the first time on December 26, 1734, early in the day at St. Thomas Church; it was repeated in the afternoon at St. Nicholas. This cantata is peculiar in that instead of the Gospel reading of the day, the account of the shepherds at the manger in Bethlehem in Luke 2, it presents the second half of the reading from the first day of Christmas, also from Luke 2:

  And there were shepherds in the same area on the fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night. And behold, the angel of the Lord approached them, and the brilliance of the Lord illuminated them, and they were very fearful. And the angel spoke to them: Do not be afraid, behold, I announce to you great joy, which will affect all people. For unto you today the savior is born, who is Christ, the Lord, in the city of David. And this is the sign to you: you will find the child wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. And at once there was beside the angel a multitude of heavenly hosts, who praised God and spoke: Honor to God in the highest and peace on Earth and goodwill to everyone. (8–14)

  
  This Gospel reading is presented in four sections of varying lengths within the cantata, each time either answered by a chorale strophe or commented upon with free poetry in the form of a recitative and aria. The appearance of the angel is followed by the ninth strophe from Johann Rist’s hymn Ermuntre dich, mein schwacher Geist (Take courage, my weak spirit), whose text begins, “Brich an, o schönes Morgenlicht, / Und laß den Himmel tagen” (Break forth, O fair morning light, / And let the heavens dawn). The reference to the manger is followed by the eighth strophe from Paul Gerhardt’s hymn Schaut, schaut, was ist für Wunder dar (Look, look, what sort of wonder is this), whose text begins, “Schaut hin, dort liegt im finstern Stall” (Look, there lies in the dark stable). The cantata closes with the second strophe from Gerhardt’s hymn Wir singen dir, Immanuel (We sing to you, Immanuel):

  Wir singen dir in deinem Heer
  Aus aller Kraft Lob, Preis und Ehr,
  Daß du, o lang gewünschter Gast,
  Dich nunmehr eingestellt hast.
  
  We sing to you within your host
  With all our power: blessing, praise, and honor,
  That you, O long-desired guest,
  Have finally revealed yourself.

  
  The elements of free poetry do not seem as compellingly motivated as the interpolated chorale strophes, at least as far as the second aria is concerned. As early as 1880, Philipp Spitta took note of the incongruity and was not at a loss for a quick explanation. Referring to the folk-like features of the musical parts of the Christmas Oratorio, he remarked:

  Wherever it was possible, reference has been had in the words as well as in the music to the traditional ceremonies connected with the Christmas plays and hymns. The custom of cradling the Child was reflected in the cradle song of part II, “Slumber, beloved,” a composition of enchanting grace and the sweetest melody. It does not certainly fill its proper place, which is in part III; but musical considerations must have prevented Bach’s inserting it there. In part II its introduction is led up to by a bass voice, which delivers the call to the shepherds and charges them when they are come to Bethlehem to sing “in sweet harmonious tone and all with one accord”; the following song, however, is certainly not appropriate in any way for choral singing. The only thing needed here was to supply a reason for its introduction; Bach has by preference given the song itself to the Virgin Mary, since it is written for an alto voice.¹

  
  More recent research no longer agrees with this allocation of roles but sees the alto as representative of the “the voice of the Holy Spirit speaking within faithful hearts.”²
  
  The first aria is better suited. According to Spitta, “In the Christmas dramas and pastorals it was a stereotyped detail that after the appearance of the angels the shepherds should be encouraged to go to Bethlehem. . . . If we compare these with the text of the tenor aria: ‘Haste, ye shepherds, haste to meet him, / Why should you delay to greet him? / Haste the gracious Child to see,’ we cannot doubt their association.”³ However, Spitta views the associated bass recitative critically: 

  
  Was Gott dem Abraham verheißen,
  Das läßt er nun dem Hirtenchor 
  Erfüllt erweisen. 
  Ein Hirt hat alles das zuvor
  Von Gott erfahren müssen.
  Und nun muß auch ein Hirt die Tat,
  Was er damals versprochen hat,
  Zuerst erfüllet wissen.
  
  What God to Abraham revealed,
  He now lets the choir of shepherds
  Be shown to be fulfilled.
  A shepherd was certainly first of all
  To learn all this from God.
  And now as well, the act 
  That God had once promised
  A shepherd must be first to see fulfilled.

  
  According to Spitta, “This text also seems to contain an obscure reference. The insipid antithesis of Abraham as a shepherd and the shepherds of Bethlehem can hardly have been the whole motive of the poem; the author must rather have had in his mind an idea of praising the shepherd’s calling generally.”⁴Once again, folk traditions are invoked for a justification (the boastful self-congratulation of the shepherds at particular points of repose in the action of the Christmas play), yet it remains unclear that reference to these traditions brings us any closer to resolving the riddle of what is in fact peculiar recitative poetry.⁵
  
  Musically, on the other hand, the cantata’s outward appearance is unproblematic. Except for two arias, all vocal movements are newly composed: the evangelist recitative, together with the angel’s announcement, given to the soprano; the densely worked chorus of angels that concludes it; the three bass recitatives; the chorales. Both arias come from secular cantatas. The tenor aria with obbligato flute comes from the Queen’s Cantata (Tönet ihr Pauken BWV 214 [Sound, you drums]) of 1733; the movement, very similar to the minuet dance type, was there set for oboe d’amore and alto to be performed by Pallas Athena, the guardian of the arts. The alto aria “Schlafe, mein Liebster” (Sleep, my beloved) goes back to the Hercules Cantata (Laßt uns sorgen BWV 213 [Let us care for]), also of 1733, where it was set for soprano and accompanied only by strings. 
  
  Our cantata begins with a work of singular rank, a sinfonia in G major, which introduces the nighttime scene with shepherds in the fields, and the angel’s proclamation. Here, in a realism that approaches the naive, the elated music of the angel, with violins and flutes in a 12
  8 meter symbolizing completeness, alternates with the reed instruments in timid stepwise descending tones evoking shepherds’ pipes. This constant interchange of light and shadow becomes increasingly interwoven, with both instrumental choirs ultimately uniting in a sublime eight-part texture. This movement has no peer anywhere in music literature. In view of this work’s intensity and inwardness, it is difficult to avoid making comparisons: were it possible to compare all the movements of the Christmas Oratorio, newly composed and repurposed, with one another, the shepherds’ sinfonia would have to take the crown.

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. Spitta (1899, 2:577–78).—Trans.↵
  2. “im glaubenden Herzen sprechenden Stimme des Heiligen Geistes” (Koch 1995).↵
  3. Spitta (1899, 2:578).—Trans.↵
  4.  Spitta (1899, 2:580).—Trans.↵
  5.  Markus Rathey argues that “the purpose of the allusion comes in sharper relief if we consider the understanding of the shepherds in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century religious discourses. The text follows the theological model of promise and fulfillment. The new covenant (with Christ) is understood as the fulfillment of the old covenant (beginning with Abraham)” (Rathey 2016a, 220).—Trans.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:34:21+00:00 Ich glaube, lieber Herr, hilf meinem Unglauben BWV 109 / BC A 151 6 Twenty-first Sunday After Trinity. First performed 10/17/1723 in Leipzig (Cycle I). plain 2024-04-24T17:22:19+00:00 1723-10-17 BWV 109 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 08Trinity21 Twenty-first Sunday After Trinity BC A 151 Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Ich glaube, lieber Herr, hilf meinem Unglauben, BWV 109 / BC A 151" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 466 James A. Brokaw II Leipzig I

  Twenty-First Sunday after Trinity, October 17, 1723

  This cantata, Ich glaube, lieber Herr, hilf meinem Unglauben BWV 109 (I believe, dear Lord, help my unbelief), originated in Bach's first year in office at Leipzig and is for the twenty-first Sunday after Trinity. The Gospel reading for the Sunday is found in John 4 and tells of the healing of the son of a royal official:

  And there was a royal official whose son lay ill at Capernaum. He heard that Jesus came from Judea into Galilee and went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son, for he was deathly ill. And Jesus said to him: When you do not see signs and miracles, then you do not believe. The royal official spoke to him: Lord, come down before my child dies! Jesus said to him: Go on your way, your son lives! The man believed the word that Jesus had said to him and went on his way. And as he left, his servants met him and announced to him and spoke: Your son lives. Then he inquired of them the hour when he began to improve. And they said to him: Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him. Then the father noticed that it was at the same hour in which Jesus had said to him: Your son lives. And he believed, with his entire house. That is now the second sign that Jesus did as he came from Judea to Galilee. (47–54)

  
  The unidentified librettist of our cantata addresses the situation depicted here between fear and hope. However, he begins his libretto with a biblical passage taken not from the Sunday Gospel reading but from a parallel place in Mark 9, the account of the healing of one possessed: “Alle Dinge sind möglich dem, der da glaubt” (23; All things are possible for the one that believes). In reaction, the father of the sick boy cries: “Ich glaube, lieber Herr, hilf meinem Unglauben!” (24; I believe, dear Lord, help my unbelief!). The first recitative speaks of this plea for help, proceeding from a passage from Numbers 11, “Ist denn die Hand des Herrn verkürtzt?” (23; Has the Lord’s hand grown short?), and flows into an allusion to the song of thanksgiving by healed King Hezekiah in Isaiah 38: “Siehe, um Trost war mir sehr bange. Du aber hast dich meiner Seele herzlich angenommen, daß sie nicht verdürbe; denn du wirfst alle meine Sünden hinter dich zurück” (17; Behold, I was very anxious for consolation. You, however, have taken my soul warmly, that it not be corrupted, for you will cast all of my sins behind your back). The recitative text vividly formulates gnawing doubt; the thrice-repeated “Ach nein” lends it the sense of inner dialogue:

  Des Herren Hand ist ja noch nicht verkürzt,
  Mir kann geholfen werden.
  Ach nein, ich sinke schon zur Erden
  Vor Sorge, daß sie mich zu Boden stürzt.
  Der Höchste will, sein Vaterherze bricht.
  Ach nein! Er hört die Sünder nicht.
  Er wird, er muß dir bald zu helfen eilen,
  Um deine Not zu heilen.
  Ach nein, es bleibet mir um Trost sehr bange;
  Ach Herr, wie lange?
  
  The Lord’s hand indeed has not grown short,
  I can be saved.
  Ah no, I already sink to the earth
  From worry that casts me down to the floor.
  The Most High is willing, his fatherly heart breaks.
  Ah no! He does not hear the sinners.
  He will, he must soon hasten to help you
  In order to cure your distress.
  Ah no, I remain very anxious for comfort;
  Ah Lord, how long?

  
  The associated aria intensifies this sequence of ideas and enriches it with a verse about the Messiah from Isaiah 42: “Das zerstoßene Rohr wird er nicht zerbrechen, und den glimmenden Docht wird er nicht auslöschen. Er wird das Recht wahrhaftig halten lehren” (3; The bruised reed he will not break, and the smoldering wick he will not quench. He will bring forth judgment in truth). However, in the aria text this promise is virtually turned into its opposite: 

  Wie zweifelhaftig ist mein Hoffen,
  Wie wanket mein geängstigt Herz!
  Des Glaubens Docht glimmt kaum hervor.
  Es bricht dies fast zustoßne Rohr,
  Die Furcht macht stetig neuen Schmerz.
  
  How full of doubt is my hope,
  How flutters my anxious heart!
  The wick of faith barely smolders.
  This bruised reed nearly breaks,
  Fear continually creates new pain.

  
  The faith described here, while weak, visibly gains the upper hand in the ensuing recitative-aria movement pair, first and foremost through the miraculous healing described in the Sunday Gospel reading:

  O fasse dich, du zweifelhafter Mut,
  Weil Jesus itzt noch Wunder tut!
  Die Glaubensaugen werden schauen
  Das Heil des Herrn;
  Scheint die Erfüllung allzufern, 
  So kannst du doch auf die Verheißung bauen.
  
  O compose yourself, you doubt-filled spirit,
  For Jesus even now performs miracles!
  The eyes of faith will see
  The salvation of the Lord;
  If its fulfillment seems all too distant,
  You can indeed build upon the promise.

  
  The aria confirms:

  Der Heiland kennet ja die Seinen,
  Wenn ihre Hoffnung hilflos liegt. 
  Wenn Fleisch und Geist in ihnen streiten,
  So steht er ihnen selbst zur Seiten, 
  Damit zuletzt der Glaube siegt.
  
  The Savior indeed knows those who are his
  When their hope lies helpless.
  When flesh and spirit struggle within them,
  He himself stands at their side,
  So that at last faith is victorious.

  
  In a catechetical manner, a strophe from Lazarus Spengler’s 1524 chorale Durch Adams Fall ist ganz verderbt, previously published as Ein geistlich Lied Vom Fall und Erlösung des menschlichen Geschlechts (A sacred hymn of the fall and redemption of the human race), summarizes what has been said:

  Wer hofft in Gott und dem vertraut,
  Der wird nimmer zuschanden,
  Denn wer auf diesen Felsen baut,
  Ob ihm gleich geht zuhanden
  Viel Unfalls hie, hab ich doch nie
  Den Menschen sehen fallen,
  Der sich verläßt auf Gottes Trost; 
  Er hilft sein’ Gläubgen allen.
  
  Whoever hopes in God and trusts in him,
  He will never be put to shame,
  For whoever builds upon this rock,
  Though many accidents 
  May befall him here, I have never
  Seen the person fall
  Who relies upon God’s consolation;
  He helps his faithful all.

  
  In his Bach monograph of 1880, Philipp Spitta calls the opening movement of our cantata a “quite remarkable chorus”: “It expresses the sentiment of doubt and wavering in a way which is as unmistakable as it is masterly, for the parts wander about separately and, as it were, aimlessly, and only combine into compact figures now and then, and for a short while.”¹ Little needs to be added to this, even if one need not necessarily share Spitta’s understanding of a mere “feeling” for wavering and doubt. In fact, closed musical developments have a certain value owing to their scarcity, at least as far as the vocal part is concerned. The apprehensive entry of individual voice parts predominates, to be joined by the others, which for the most part just as soon fall silent and await the next appeal. The orchestral part strives for a certain coherence, with its characteristic motives dominated by yearning leaps of the sixth. Bach may have noticed afterward that because of the deliberate instability of the vocal part and its high technical demands, the instrumental component of the texture could use an additional revaluation. He therefore added a part for French horn, which is useful for stabilization, although it causes headaches for scholars even today because it still remains unclear how the demanding pitch sequences are to be mastered using a valveless natural horn.
  
  Of the two arias, the first, for tenor and strings, is characterized by jagged rhythms and harmonic progressions that seem to search in vain for a solid foothold. Key concepts of the text—fear and pain, anxiety and doubt—dominate the entire movement and do not allow the music’s flow a moment’s rest. On the other hand, calm and certainty radiate from the second aria, whose setting for alto and two oboes, simply with regard to timbre, draws the strongest possible contrast to the first aria. The steady quarter-note motion of the basso continuo emphasizes the minuet character and allows the three upper voices complete freedom to develop. “Lombard rhythm” syncopations are fairly evenly divided across the movement and create a sense of animation to which the basso continuo must occasionally adapt.
  
  The cantata does not close with the usual four-part chorale but rather with a wide-ranging chorale arrangement. With its independent, motivically unified instrumental part and chorale melody presented in large note values by the soprano, supported harmonically by the other voices, this movement anticipates the annual cycle of chorale cantatas, begun in 1724.

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. Spitta (1899, 2:468).—Trans.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:34:21+00:00 Nur jedem das Seine! BWV 163 / BC A 158 5 Twenty-third. Sunday After Trinity. First performed 11/24/1715 at Weimar. Text by Salomo Franck. plain 2024-04-24T18:09:42+00:00 1715-11-24 BWV 163 Weimar 50.979493, 11.323544 10Trinity23 Twenty-third. Sunday After Trinity BC A 158 Johann Sebastian Bach Salomo Franck Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Nur jedem das Seine!, BWV 163 / BC A 158" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 484 James A. Brokaw II Weimar as concertmaster

  Twenty-Third Sunday after Trinity, November 24, 1715

  The cantata Nur jedem das Seine! BWV 163 (Only to each what is his!) originated during Bach’s Weimar period and was first performed on November 24, 1715. It was Bach’s first performance of church music following the extended national period of mourning decreed upon the death of the nineteen-year-old Prince Johann Ernst of Saxe-Weimar, which silenced all music nationwide, including church music. The text of our cantata follows the Gospel reading for the twenty-third Sunday after Trinity, found in Matthew 22, which relates the parable of the tribute money:

  Then the Pharisees went and held a counsel, as they might ensnare him in his talk. And they sent their disciples to him together with the servants to Herod. And they said: Master, we know that you are honest and properly teach the way of God in truth and you ask after no one: for you do not care about the appearance of people. Therefore tell us: Is it proper to pay tribute to Caesar or not? As Jesus noticed their wickedness, he said: You hypocrites, why do you tempt me? Show me the tribute money! And they brought him a penny. And he said to them: Whose image is this, and the superscription? They said to him: Caesar’s. Then he said to them, Therefore give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s! When they heard this, they marveled and left him and went their way. (15–22)

  
  Especially at the beginning, the cantata text addresses with particular intensity the conceptual realm of taxes, interest, submissions, and the hard cash they require. This should not come as a surprise: Salomon Franck, who published the libretto in his 1715 annual text cycle, Evangelisches Andachts-Opffer (Protestant devotional offering), was secretary of the Weimar Upper Consistory; but among his additional responsibilities was oversight of the royal numismatic collection. He found himself quite within his métier, then, as he began his text with this aria:

  Nur jedem das Seine!
  Muß Obrigkeit haben
  Zoll, Steuern und Gaben,
  Man weigre sich nicht
  Der schuldigen Pflicht.
  Doch bleibet das Herze dem Höchsten alleine.
  
  Only to each what is his!
  If authorities must have
  Duties, taxes, and gratuities,
  One may not avoid
  One’s due obligations.
  Yet the heart remains for the Most High alone.

  
  A view of the authorities as articulated in Romans 13 resonates here unmistakably. Yet the strict boundary between the justifiable monetary demands of worldly rulers and the heart as the metaphorical dwelling place of God is established right away in this first movement. It is unquestioned in the second movement, a recitative that begins by praising God as the giver of all gifts, illustrating their wealth in the manner typical of Salomon Franck, a sequence of nouns: “Geist, Seele, Leib und Leben, / Und Hab und Gut und Ehr und Stand” (Spirit, soul, body, and life, / And property and goods and honor and station). But what can be given to God, asks the librettist, if all possessions come from God anyway? He then names the solution:

  Doch ist noch eins, das dir, wohlgefällt:
  Das Herze soll allein,
  Herr, eine Zinsemünze sein.
  Ach, aber ach, ist das nicht schlechtes Geld?
  Der Satan hat dein Bild daran verletzt, 
  Die falsche Münz ist abgesetzet.
  
  Yet there is still one thing that pleases you well:
  The heart alone,
  Lord, shall be your coin of tribute.
  Ah, but ah, is that not worthless money?
  Satan has marred your image on it,
  The counterfeit coin is written off.

  
  The second aria strives for a solution to this conflict so unexpectedly encountered. Here the process of minting coinage is compared to achieving purity of the human heart:

  Laß mein Herz die Münze sein,
  Die ich dir, mein Jesu, steure!
  Ist sie gleich nicht allzu rein,
  Ach so komm doch und erneure,
  Herr, den schönen Glanz bei ihr, 
  Komm, arbeite, schmelz und präge,
  Daß dein Ebenbild bei mir
  Ganz erneuert glänzen möge.
  
  Let my heart be the coin
  That I pay you, my Jesus, as tax!
  If it is now not entirely pure,
  Ah, but come and restore,
  Lord, the beautiful gleam upon it.
  Come, work, melt down and stamp,
  That your likeness
  May gleam in me, entirely renewed.

  
  But such a success is not to be achieved directly. The ensuing recitative speaks of reluctance, of the heart’s imprisonment in the world; at its close it formulates its matter of concern as follows:

  So mache doch mein Herz mit deiner Gnade voll,
  Leer es ganz aus von Welt und allen Lüsten
  Und mache mich zu einem rechten Christen.
  
  So make my heart full with your grace,
  Empty it entirely of the world and all its pleasures
  And make me a true Christian.

  
  The last freely versified movement, again an aria, draws upon a formulation of Erdmann Neumeister’s, word for word, with its first verse, “Nimm mich mir und gib mich dir” (Take me from myself and give me to you), but it continues in a way that sounds completely different:

  Nimm mich mir und gib mich dir;
  Nimm mich mir und meinem Willen,
  Deinen Willen zu erfüllen;
  Gib dich mir mit deiner Güte,
  Daß mein Herz und mein Gemüte
  In dir bleibe für und für,
  Nimm mich mir und gib mich dir.
  
  Take me from myself and give me to you!
  Take me from myself and my will
  Your will to fulfill;
  Give yourself to me with your goodness,
  That my heart and my spirit
  May abide in you forever.
  Take me from myself and give me to you!

  
  In closing, the last strophe from Johannes Heermann’s 1630 chorale Wo soll ich fliehen hin summarizes the flow of ideas:

  Führ auch mein Herz und Sinn
  Durch deinen Geist dahin,
  Daß ich mög alles meiden,
  Was mich und dich kann scheiden,
  Und ich an deinem Leibe
  Ein Gliedmaß ewig bleibe.
  
  Lead my heart and mind
  There through your spirit,
  That I might avoid everything
  That can separate me and you,
  And I, of your body,
  May ever remain a member.

  
  It is well worth noticing how the Weimar court concertmaster analyzed this problematic text musically—it was undoubtedly imposed upon him—and how he extracted its few suitable pages. Bach illustrates the statutory character of “Nur jedem das Seine” in a tenor aria filled with intense gravity, in which the head motive, derived from the beginning of the text, is heard in nearly every measure. It seems remarkable that almost no use is made of the possibility of using direct and retrograde motion to set the obligations articulated in the text that point in different directions. It remains an open question whether one must agree with Philipp Spitta’s 1873 Bach biography that the movement is to be understood as a self-characterization on the part of Bach, particularly with regard to its “steadfastness, morality and a marvelous sense of order.”¹ On the other hand, the same author describes the second aria as unsurpassed; it compares the overdue renewal of the human heart to melting and reminting in a coinage workshop. According to Spitta, this text “gave direction to the bold imagination of the master; the bass voice . . . carries on its earnest daily toil, while two busily working violoncellos cast a twilight effect over the piece.”²
  
  A radical change of register characterizes the ensuing movement pair: soprano and alto take the lead, first in a recitative duet that moves from an imitative texture to wandering arioso coloraturas and then in an aria movement in which the “Nimm mich mir und gib mich dir” is enthusiastically savored. Even so, an unexpected formal rigor predominates here: the violins and violas in unison play the melody Meinen Jesum laß ich nicht in sections, so that the movement overall can be understood as a broadly conceived chorale arrangement. Instead, the composer spared himself the trouble of writing a polyphonic chorale at the end of the score; he simply notated the bass part and added the note “Choral. Simplice stylo” (Chorale. Simple style). It should be recognized that a melody used in Thuringia and used by Johann Pachelbel and Bach’s first father-in-law, Johann Michael Bach, is called for here—but whether conceived in two, three, or four parts Bach left for posterity to determine. In Leipzig he quite possibly had no reason to flesh out what was missing. Either he did not reperform the cantata there at all or instead of the Thuringian chorale melody he supplied another movement entirely, of which no trace has come down to us.

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. Spitta (1899, 1:556).—Trans.↵
  2. Spitta (1899, 1:557).—Trans.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:37:44+00:00 Amore traditore BWV 203 / BC G 51 5 Solo cantata. Various occasions. First performed before 1730, possibly in Köthen. plain 2024-04-24T15:23:10+00:00 BWV 203 Köthen BC G 51 Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Amore traditore, BWV 203 / BC G 51" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 736 James A. Brokaw II 1718-1719

  For Various Occasions: Köthen, 1718 or 1719

  According to long-standing tradition, the cantata Amore traditore BWV 203 (Treacherous love) is the work of Johann Sebastian Bach. But the reliability of this attribution is by no means undisputed. Style analysts struggle with the question of authorship, and source studies run up against obstacles that are insurmountable at the moment. A copy from the first half of the nineteenth century refers to an “old handwritten notebook with cantatas by various composers” as its exemplar; another transmission names “an old notebook at Breitkopf & Härtel in which cantatas by Heinichen, Conti, Telemann, Linicke are to be found.” This notebook, of indeterminate age, was last documented in 1861; its contents can be described only hypothetically. The constellation of composer names—Johann David Heinichen, Francesco Bartolomeo Conti, Georg Philipp Telemann, and Johann Georg Linicke—points to the period around 1715 and thereby raises the question whether the cantata ascribed to Johann Sebastian Bach should be placed near this time period. Moreover, a connection was recently found between Conti and a copy/arrangement by Bach of a solo cantata with Latin text by Conti; the copy bears the date 1716. Thus the suspicion cannot be entirely discounted that the “old notebook” that once was owned by Breitkopf could indeed go back to a source written out by Bach but might not actually contain a work composed by him.
  
  The Italian text of our cantata offers scarcely any clues to the answers of these questions. The author is unknown. Its content concerns a rejection of the chains of love, a healing of the deadly pain that vain hope has inflicted on one’s heart. The rhyme scheme is skillfully devised; only the title line lacks a rhyme partner. Among the works found in the library collection of the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin after its repatriation from Kiev in 2001 is a parallel composition by a contemporary of Bach in Naples, Francesco Nicola Fago. This would indicate that the text, often disparaged because of perceived linguistic inadequacies, actually does come from Italy after all.¹
  
  With its movement sequence aria–recitative–aria, the cantata adheres to principles that Johann Christoph Gottsched, in his Versuch einer Critischen Dichtkunst, would have found acceptable:

  A cantata must properly begin and end with an aria, so that it may be heard in a good manner at the beginning, and also make a good impression at the end: however, one finds many in Italian that have a recitative right at the beginning. The shortest of these have only a recitative in the middle, and thus consist of only three parts. . . . Now, these arias may be iambic, trochaic, or dactylic as the poet finds to be good. However, to make the recitative anything other than iambic is not usual. The poet must, however, take care that he continue the meter with which he begins an aria to the end and not mix short and long lines together, if he wishes to please the composer. Even making the lines in the recitative very unequal, that is, several of two, several of twelve syllables: this is not pleasant. To throw the rhymes too far apart from one another, that is just as bad as making none at all. . . . Indeed, one cannot determine the length of a recitative: but the shorter it is, and the shorter the phrases it contains are, the better it is; because it is often so badly set that one must soon grow weary of it.²

  
  One certainly cannot maintain that the recitative of our cantata is too long; it comprises exactly eight lines of admittedly different lengths, however, with densely layered rhymes. Musically it proceeds without incident. Of the two arias, the first one in A minor approximates Bach’s familiar writing style fairly closely. The opening section is dominated by an expansive theme that provides a perfect example of mastery and use of tonal space, with its subtle and superior handling of alternating rising and falling; diatonic and chromatic passages; quarter, eighth, and sixteenth notes; and scalar motion, leaps, and broken chords. Imitation and other sorts of contrapuntal writing are found in abundance, but the interweaving of voice and continuo is not so extreme that the singer is expected to perform figuration typical of accompaniment in exchange with the instrumental part. The middle section is similar and has no noticeable contrast with the framing sections. Instead, the contrast is essentially limited to the theme’s beginning again in a new key.
  
  In view of these features of style, the final aria seems that much more strange and exceptional. For long stretches it is dominated by a mostly two-part toccata-like obbligato cembalo texture but time and again changes over to a freely voiced accompaniment with full-handed chords. The inconsistent and arbitrary texture of the obbligato cembalo is combined with a bass voice part that is led in a strangely ambitious fashion; it is, so to speak, detached from the course of the instrumental accompaniment. This wayward, idiosyncratic togetherness is hardly enough to decisively dispel the doubts as to the cantata’s authenticity raised at the beginning of this essay. Hypotheses regarding an early or late origin of the work do not lead any further. For the moment, the cantata will preserve its secrets. From today’s perspective we can agree only partly with the overwhelmingly positive view expressed by the Bach biographer Philipp Spitta in 1880:

  In another [cantata], “Amore traditore,” a bass voice is accompanied by the harpsichord, which is treated in parts as an obbligato instrument. This is not, we believe, an innovation of Bach’s, but it is found moderately often both in the Italian composers of that time and in the Germans who formed themselves on the Italian style; thus it occurs in Porpora, Conti, Heinichen, and others. The fact is rather that even Bach appears to form himself on the pattern of the Italians in the harpsichord accompaniment that he appends to the second aria in his cantata. In other circumstances it was not his manner to write an obbligato part chiefly in broken harmonies, nor was he especially fond of using the obbligato treatment except now and then. The breadth of form exhibited in the work points to the time of his fullest maturity; he first came to a thorough knowledge of Italian vocal music through the intercourse that was kept up between Dresden and Leipzig.³

  
  In our view, whether Spitta is right with his “fullest maturity” must be left aside. If there is a kernel of truth in Spitta’s conjecture, which would be no wonder, given his sure sense of style, one could consider the possibility that the second aria might be Bach’s arrangement of a foreign exemplar, for example, perhaps, his adding a voice to an existing composition. The cantor of St. Thomas was not indisposed to projects of this kind in his later years at Leipzig. The supposed early origin of the “lost manuscript” mentioned at the beginning, however, stands in the way of such a hypothesis.

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  Footnotes

  1. Schulze (2002a).↵
  2. “Eine Cantate muß sich ordentlicher Weise mit einer Arie anheben und schließen; damit sie theils im Anfange mit einer guten Art ins Gehör falle, theils auch zuletzt noch einen guten Eindruck mache: doch findet man im italienischen viele, die gleich von Anfang ein Rezitativ haben. Die kürzesten darunter, haben nur ein einzig Rezitativ in der Mitte; und bestehen also nur aus dreyen Theilen. . . . Diese Arien können nun jambisch, trochäisch oder daktylisch seyn, nachdem es der Poet für gut befindet: das Rezitativ aber anders als jambisch zu machen, das ist nicht gewöhnlich. Nur merke sich der Poet, daß es bey der Versart, womit er eine Arie anfängt, bis ans Ende bleibe; auch nicht kurze und lange Zeilen durcheinander menge, wenn er dem Komponisten gefallen will. Selbst die Zeilen im Rezitativ an Länge sehr ungleich, das ist etliche von zwey, etliche von zwölf Sylben zu machen, das ist nicht angenehm. Die Reime gar zu weit von einander zu werfen, das heißt eben so viel, als gar keine zu machen. . . . Die Länge eines Recitativs kann man zwar nicht bestimmen: aber je kürzer es fällt, und je kürzer die Perioden dachrinne sind, desto besser ist es; weil es insgemein so schlecht gesetzt wird, daß man es bald überdrüßig werden muß.”—Trans.↵
  3. Spitta (1899, 2:637 ff.).—Trans.↵