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• 1 2023-09-26T09:32:57+00:00 Christen, ätzet diesen Tag BWV 63 / BC A 8 26 Christmas Day. First performed 12/25/1714 at Weimar. plain 2024-04-24T16:26:25+00:00 1714-12-25 BWV 63 Weimar 50.979493, 11.323544 12Christmas Christmas Day BC A 8 Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Christen, ätzet diesen Tag, BWV 63 / BC A 8" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 25 James A. Brokaw II Weimar as concertmaster

  Christmas Day

  In the cantata Christen, ätzet diesen Tag BWV 63 (Christians, etch this day), we have Bach’s earliest festive cantata for Christmas Day. Judging by the paper and handwriting characteristics in the only original parts that survive, the work originated in Weimar, presumably in 1714 or 1715. The cantata was reperformed in Leipzig on December 25, 1723, undoubtedly early in the day during the main service in St. Nicholas in accordance with local custom and then repeated in the afternoon in St. Thomas in the Vespers service. Other performances may have occurred around 1729 and a later time that cannot be more precisely determined.
  
  The uncertainty as to the cantata’s exact time of origin brings with it a host of further questions. It is tempting to assume a connection to Bach’s promotion to concertmaster of the Weimar court chapel in March 1714, when he incurred the obligation to perform monthly “pieces,” meaning church pieces, or cantatas. If one understands “monthly” to imply a four-week rotation—a premise that researchers have worked under for more than a century—then our cantata doesn’t clearly fit into a correspondingly ordered sequence of works in either 1714 or 1715. The source materials preclude a later date of origin, and composition before 1714 lacks an official occasion. Hence, one might tend to consider a commission sent to the concertmaster from outside Weimar, particularly because the notoriously narrow confines of the Weimar castle church would not have easily accommodated the opulent forces called for by the festive cantata. Delivery of musical materials to outside purchasers was nothing unusual for the period, and even the not exactly generous relations with the Weimar court allowed the organist and later court concertmaster considerable latitude. In February 1709 Bach wrote a cantata for the town council in the imperial city of Mühlhausen and apparently even led its performance. Four years later, he delivered a congratulatory cantata to the court of Saxe-Weissenfels for the birthday of Duke Christian; that cantata was later known as the Hunt Cantata (BWV 208). 
  
  At the end of November or beginning of December 1713, Bach stayed for about two weeks in the city of Halle¹ on the Saale to explore the possibility of a change in the position of organist and music director at the Market Church of Our Lady. On the express wish of the senior pastor, Johann Michael Heineccius, who was very devoted to music, Bach had to compose and perform a cantata in Halle. This guest composition, probably meant for the second Sunday of Advent, unfortunately does not survive. It should not be assumed to be our Christmas cantata. By Christmas 1713, Bach was already active in Weimar again. In his letter of January 14, 1714, to Halle declining the offer, he mentions demands at the moment due to “Church services in themselves”—by which his duties as court organist could be meant—as well as due to “certain obligations at Court in connection with the Prince’s birthday.”² What these sibylline remarks may refer to remains unclear. In any case, “the Prince” refers to the seventeen-year-old Prince Johann Ernst of Saxe-Weimar, a nephew of the reigning duke. Several months before, Johann Ernst had returned from a grand tour of several years through Western Europe. He was a significant lover and connoisseur of music, a violinist, and a composer. It may be that young Johann Ernst was Bach’s most important liaison for musical affairs at the Weimar court. It thus seems likely that the indicated “obligations” for the occasion of his birthday on December 25 had a great deal to do with music. Whether this involved the festive cantata for service in the castle church; whether it involved a composition by the court organist, Bach, and not the court Kapellmeister, Johann Samuel Drese, or his son Johann Wilhelm, active as vice Kapellmeister; and whether, finally, we might consider the cantata Christen, ätzet diesen Tag in this connection: these are all questions that remain unanswerable given the current state of our knowledge.
  
  In light of all this, it is remarkable that the text of our cantata does exhibit a clear connection to Halle, even if all details cannot be conclusively explained. Striking commonalities are found in a cantata text that was performed in the Market Church of Our Lady on October 31, 1717, on the two hundredth anniversary celebration of the Reformation.³ The composition was the work of Gottfried Kirchhoff, who entered service at the church in the summer of 1714 after the withdrawal of J. S. Bach and another candidate. The libretto might be the work of the previously mentioned Johann Michael Heineccius, a circumstance indicated by the fact that his sermon pursues the idea of “the light at evening” (das Licht am Abend) and that the cantata text begins with these lines:

  Christen, ätzet diesen Tag
  In Metal und Marmorsteine!
  Kommt und eilt mit frohen Weise,
  Gott vor sein Huld zu preisen,
  Der aus einen finstern Nacht
  Uns hat das Licht gebracht
  Und zu seinem Gnaden-Scheine.
  
  Christians, etch this day
  In metal and marble stones!
  Come and hurry with joyful songs
  To praise God for his grace,
  Who, in a dark night,
  Has brought to us the light 
  And to his radiant grace.

  
  The beginning and end of this strophe coincide with the text composed by Bach:

  Christen, ätzet diesen Tag
  In Metal und Marmorsteine!
  Kommt und eilt mit mir zum Krippen
  Und erweist mit frohen Lippen
  Euren Dank und euren Pflicht!
  Denn der Strahl, so da einbricht
  Zeigt sich euch zum Gnadenscheine!
  
  Christians, etch this day
  In metal and marble stones!
  Come and hurry with me to the manger
  And show with joyous lips
  Your thanks and your duty!
  For the ray that there breaks in
  Appears to you as radiant grace!

  
  Leaving aside for the moment the fact that the word “ätzet” (etch), here meaning either chemical processing of metal or sculptural work with stone, differs from current usage of the term, the Halle text of 1717 shows itself to be thoroughly superior in coherence and language to the one from Weimar, which is several years older. To “engrave the day” of the bicentennial celebration in metal or marble is an obvious thought that would apply only metaphorically to the birth of Christ. That the better text might have originated through reworking an inferior model is surely not to be ruled out. More likely, however, is the hypothesis that the Reformation text of 1717 composed by Kirchhoff and the Christmas version set to music by Bach in Weimar both go back to a common ancestor whose wording and occasion need to be investigated. Above all, the final movement points to a common origin, since it is entirely and exactly identical in each cantata libretto:

  Höchster, schau in Gnaden an
  Diese Glut gebückter Seelen!
  Laß den Dank, den wir dir bringen,
  Angenehme von dir klingen,
  Lass uns stets in Segen gehn
  Aber niemals nicht geschehen,
  Daß uns Satan möge quälen.
  
  Most High, look with grace upon
  These souls stooped in ardor!!
  Let the thanks we bring to you,
  Sound agreeable to you,
  Let us always go in blessing,
  But never let anything happen
  That Satan might torture us.

  
  The “Glut” (glow) discussed here—clearly in the figurative sense—logically presupposes “flames,” and these are found in both libretti. In the third-to-last place, Kirchhoff’s cantata contains a duet whose text begins:

  Ruft und fleht den Himmel an,
  Kommt, ihr Christen, kommt zusammen,
  Zeiget eure Andachts-Flammen,
  Denkt, was Gott an euch getan.
  
  Call and beseech Heaven,
  Come, you Christians, come together,
  Show the flames of your devotion,
  Consider what God has done for you.

  
  Bach’s cantata has a duet in the same place whose text beginning points more strongly to joyful singing and dancing:

  Ruft und fleht den Himmel an,
  Kommt, ihr Christen, kommt zum Reihen,
  Ihr sollt euch um dem erfreuen
  Was Gott hat anheut getan.
  
  Call and beseech heaven,
  Come, you Christians, come to the dance.
  You should rejoice over that
  Which God has done today.

  
  Clearly, the rationale for the “glow” in the final movement is entirely lost here. But Bach’s text poet knew how to help himself: he inserted it in the recitative transition to the final movement:

  Verdoppelt euch demnach, ihr heißen Andachtsflammen,
  Und schlagt in Demut brünstiglich zusammen,
  Steigt fröhlich himmelan
  Und danket Gott für dies, was er getan.
  
  Redouble yourselves, then, you flames of devotion,
  And fall in humble ardor together.
  Climb joyously to heaven
  And thank God for this, what he has done.

  
  The train of thought in this is not easy to follow, and thus here too it is evident that Bach’s cantata—even if a bit older—can hardly have been the model for the Heineccius text. In spite of this, it remains striking that the two cantatas—one by Bach in Weimar and the other by Kirchhoff in Halle—can be seen in principle to exhibit the same design: free poetry throughout, without biblical passages or chorale strophes; in each case, opening and closing tuttis; and in between, three recitative movements and two arias, in each case, set as duets. 
  
  Whatever a musical comparison of the two works might reveal must remain hidden as long as the composition by Gottfried Kirchhoff remains missing. Bach’s cantata survives only in its Weimar form; it was retouched with very minor changes in Leipzig. As previously indicated, it is difficult to explain the unusually festive forces called for in light of the space limitations of the Weimar castle church: four trumpets with drums; three oboes and bassoon; strings and basso continuo; four voices as well, fortified in the tutti movements by many ripieno parts. A sense of tonal color and a richness of invention that never flags—characteristic of Bach’s Weimar creations—allow a lively, joyously animated, and buoyant making of music to unfold in the opening and closing movements that spares as little of antiphonal elements as virtuoso demands, as matching the rank of court orchestra (Hofcapelle). The first of the two duets is more contemplative: in counterpoint with a lamenting oboe solo, soprano and bass present their grateful “Gott, du hast es wohl gefüget” (God, you have well disposed), whereby the imitative voice leading intensifies the forcefulness of the statement. In the dance-like second duet, “Ruft und fleht den Himmel an,” the same procedure produces a completely different effect: here the imitations prove to be continuous sources of energy for uninterrupted dances of jubilation. In the final movement, fugal work leads twice to musical compression. In this way, musical emphasis is given to the fervent “Höchster, schau in Gnaden an / Diese Glut gebückter Seelen” and, at the close of the middle section, the worry, characterized by harsh chromaticism, “daß uns Satan möge quälen.” 

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  Footnotes

  1. Wollny (1994).↵
  2. NBR, 69 (no. 49).—Trans.↵
  3. Serauky (1939, 500–503).↵