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• 1 2023-09-26T09:38:28+00:00 Vereinigte Zwietracht der wechselnde Saiten BWV 207.1 / BC G 37 9 Congratulatory cantata for Professor of Law Gottlieb Kortte. First performed on December 11, 1726 in Leipzig. plain 2024-04-24T15:04:44+00:00 1726-12-11 BWV 207.1 BC G 37 Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Vereinigte Zwietracht der wechselnde Saiten, BWV 207.1 / BC G 37" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 709 James A. Brokaw II Professor of Law Gottlieb Kortte

  University of Leipzig, December 11, 1726

  It is fairly certain that the homage cantata Vereinigte Zwietracht der wechselnden Saiten BWV 207.1 (Concordant discord of changing strings) owes its existence to a commission from a group of students at the University of Leipzig. The occasion was a promotion in the law faculty of the group’s Leipzig alma mater. Gottlieb Kortte, born in 1698 in Beeskow Lausitz, earned a master’s degree in 1720 after studying theology, philology, and jurisprudence. Four years later he had earned the title of doctor of canon and civil law at Frankfurt an der Oder, and in late 1726 he became a professor at the University of Leipzig. He delivered his inaugural address in Latin on December 11 of that year; it is reported that he must have spoken from memory, because he had been in such a hurry that he left his notes at home. It remains uncertain whether the twenty-eight-year-old actually appeared the absent-minded professor or whether he only faked his forgetfulness in order to display his capabilities in the proper light by delivering his disquisition from memory. Unfortunately, Kortte was granted only a brief period in his new position; death took him in April 1731. It was said that the “beacon of hope” of the faculty was “deeply mourned by the studious young, before whom he had stood to great applause, and all who knew his deep and thorough learning.”
  
  Eleven years after Kortte’s death, a memoir extended to the citizenry of Dresden demonstrated what this loss meant for the university and its law faculty in particular.¹ Under the title Thränen und Seuffzer wegen der Universität Leipzig (Tears and sighs over the University of Leipzig), a private lecturer named Johann Gottlieb Reichel unsparingly criticized everything and everyone and hauled the legal faculty over the coals. Avarice and accumulation of responsibilities—or empire building—were, in his view, the reasons for the virtually unparalleled indifference of the professors and the decline of the faculty. The full professor Carl Otto Rechenberg in particular was shown no mercy. A quarter century earlier, he had attended Bach’s examination of the organ in St. Paul’s Church as representative of the university. Reichel wrote of him:

  Lord Privy Councilor Rechenberg is the chair and full professor of the law faculty and the superior expert on law, indeed, as learned and capable a man as can be found anywhere in the world, a man whom everyone talks about, a respected man who can accomplish more in an hour than others can in an entire day, all of which we must say in his honor. But my God! We could also say that he reads as little as Dr. Börner, and we cannot say which of these is the laziest. Before he became a professor he held a collegium now and then, but afterward, once he had achieved his goal of becoming a full professor, he reads nothing at all; if indeed he starts something, it’s not as if he wants to read seriously but rather only pro forma in front of others, as if he had read it, though he only wanted to do so but did not actually do it, and how does it help us, in the four weeks that he reads, we will certainly not learn very much, and easily one hundred students leave Leipzig having heard him at most only two or three times, others have never had the good fortune to hear him even once. Shall we ask the reason, where indeed this astonishing laziness comes from? There is none other than this, that one has given himself entirely over to salaciousness, and that one views his profession as only a side job that one does not have to attend, and that brings in only six to eight hundred reichsthalers.

  
  It goes on for pages this way. Gottfried Kortte, highly gifted but cut down in his prime, would certainly have been spared a scolding of this sort. The text of our homage cantata gives one a sense in several places what high hopes his colleagues had for him. The unknown librettist is not at all sparing with encomiums, suggestions, and admonitions from the mouths of the allegorical figures Fortune, Gratitude, Industry, and Honor, but only after the customary invitation to a happy gathering:

  Vereinigte Zwietracht der wechselnden Saiten, 
  Der rollenden Pauken durchdringender Knall, 
  Locket den lüstern Hörer herbei,
  Saget mit euren frohlockenden Tönen 
  Und doppelt vermehrendem Schall 
  Denen mir emsig ergebenden Söhnen,
  Was hier der Lohn der Tugend sei.
  
  Concordant discord of changing strings, 
  The rolling drums’ penetrating boom, 
  Entice the pleasure-seeking listener hereby, 
  Tell, with your exultant tones
  And doubly multiplied sound,
  To my sons, diligently devoted to me, 
  What the reward for virtue here shall be.

  
  The phrase “vereinigte Zwietracht” turns out to be the German version of the Latin concordia discors, found in Ovid’s Metamorphoses as discors concordia and, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, widely used as a motto for single compositions or entire work cycles. From this perspective it is not terribly significant that in March 1738, nearly twelve years after the homage cantata for Gottlieb Kortte was first performed, there was a Leipzig musical celebration for the name day of the Saxon prince elector beginning with the words:

  Ergetzender Wohlklang vereinigter Seyten,
  Der wechselnden Töne durchdringender Schall! 
  Locket den lüsternen Hörer herbey.
  
  Delightful euphony of unified strings, 
  The changing tones’ penetrating sound!
  Entice the pleasure-seeking listener hereby.

  
  Even so, the commonalities with the text set to music by Bach can scarcely be denied. When we recall that the author of the more recent libretto, Heinrich Gottlieb Schelhafer, in later life a professor in Hamburg, was studying law in Leipzig at the time in question (1726) and is known to have met the then new professor Kortte, we are tempted to suspect that he may have taken part in the congratulatory cantata, may have known its text, and might even be its author.²
  
  The opening ensemble is followed by an extended recitative and aria voiced by the allegorical figure Diligence, who promises rich rewards for those following the stony path:

  Zieht euren Fuß nicht zurücke, 
  Ihr, die ihr meinen Weg erwählt. 
  Das Glücke mercket eure Schritte, 
  Die Ehre zählt die sauren Tritte,
  Damit, daß nach vollbrachter Straße
  Euch werd in gleichem Übermaße
  Der Lohn von ihnen zugezählt.
  
  Do not draw back your foot, 
  You who choose my path.
  Fortune takes note of your steps, 
  Honor counts the painful treads
  So that, after the road has been completed, 
  ou will be paid in equal superfluity
  The reward for them.

  
  Honor and Fortune join in with a dialogue and then unite their voices in a duet. Thereafter, Gratitude comes into play, first with a verbose recitative and then with an aria:

  Ätzet dieses Angedenken
  In den härtsten Marmor ein! 
  Doch die Zeit verdirbt den Stein. 
  Laßt vielmehr aus euren Taten 
  Eures Lehrers Tun erraten.
  Kann man aus den Früchten lesen, 
  Wie die Wurzel sei gewesen,
  Muß sie unvergänglich sein.
  
  Etch this commemoration 
  In the hardest marble!
  Indeed, time erodes the stone. 
  Instead, let from your deeds 
  Your teacher’s action be divined. 
  If one can tell from the fruit 
  What the root was like,
  It must then be everlasting.

  
  Diligence, Honor, Fortune, and Gratitude each takes the floor in a recitative, after which, all together, a “Kortte lebe, Kortte blühe” (Long live Kortte, may Kortte flourish) introduces the finale. Here again, in the closing ensemble, the four allegorical figures step forward individually, Honor with “den mein Lorbeer unterstützt” (he whom my laurel favors), Fortune with “der mir selbst im Schoße sitzt” (he who sits in my own bosom), Diligence with “der durch mich stets höher steigt” (he who climbs ever higher through me), Gratitude with “der die Herzen zu sich neigt” (he who inclines our hearts to himself ). The one so acclaimed must, as the closing text says,

  In ungezählten Jahren 
  Stets geehrt in Segen stehn
  Und zwar wohl der Neider Scharen,
  Aber nicht der Feinde sehn.
  
  Must for countless years
  Stand ever honored in blessing
  And probably see crowds of the envious 
  But not of enemies.

  
  Unfortunately, Gottlieb Kortte was not granted “countless years,” but the music composed and performed in his honor certainly was. The venture was probably financed by a collection taken among students. The result must have been quite a respectable sum, since otherwise the opulent setting of the opening and closing movements with trumpets, drums, flutes, oboes, and strings could not have been realized. With his strategy in the opening chorus, Bach created a remarkable combination of reduced workload and increased difficulty for himself. Reduced workload, because he brought into the cantata the second fast movement from his F-major concerto, known today as the First Brandenburg Concerto BWV 1046; increased difficulty, because he transposed it to D major, traded the pair of horns for trumpets and drums, and, in particular, with a scarcely imaginable degree of artistic craftsmanship, replaced the solo violino piccolo with a four-part choral texture. (The last word has not yet been spoken with regard to the possibility, occasionally ventured, that the concerto movement was actually the result of the revision of a vocal-instrumental ensemble work and that, in our cantata, Bach simply restored, mutatis mutandis, the original state of affairs.)³
  
  In the middle of the cantata, Bach once again drew upon the concerto previously mentioned. After the duet for Fortune and Honor, represented by soprano and bass, there follows an instrumental postlude entitled “Ritornello.” This turns out to be a variant of the second trio for two horns, three oboes in unison, and basso continuo from the F-major concerto; here the horns are replaced by trumpets, and the piece is transposed from F to D major.
  
  The first of the two arias, for tenor and strings, is rather neutral thematically, a consequence of the didactic nature of its text. The second, for alto and two obbligato flutes, is characterized by the remarkable discrepancy between the broad arabesques of melody for voice and flutes, on the one hand, and the strings in unison, on the other. The goal of the rhythmically emphasized repetitions in the strings is clearly meant to recall the “härtesten Marmor” (hardest marble) alluded to in the text—sculpturally, please note, rather than the poetic paraphrase “Ätzen” (etch) in the text. The closing ensemble presents itself as a comparatively undemanding, harmonious conclusion.
  The echo effects might point to an outdoor performance, perhaps aided by
  relatively mild December weather.
  
  In any case, a march for many instruments from Bach would have sounded well in the open air. Moreover, the organizers would have requested it in order to parade in front of the honoree’s house. And although this sort of thing was not at all uncommon in Leipzig, the procession would have aroused considerable notice, perhaps from “crowds of the envious” as well: at least among those members of the professorship for whom a comfortable life—supported financially by empire building—was more important than the pedagogical instruction expected of them, which should actually have led them to Fortune and Gratitude through Diligence and Honor.

  ---

  Footnotes

  1. Reichel (1929).↵
  2. Schulze (1969, 27ff.).↵
  3. Boyd (1993); Talbot (1999, 271–76).↵