Bach's Orchestral Debut

As part of his new job, the 22-year-old Bach had to provide music for Mülhausen’s city council elections. For the first time, he officially had an occasion to write for a large orchestra: brass, timpani, woodwinds, flutes, strings, two choirs— this is BWV 71, Gott ist mein König. Scoring so largely on the page must have been exciting for the young Bach:

That’s a lot of parts! The first time Bach writes for brass and drums! Notice the ‘J.J.’ in the upper left corner, Jesu Juva, ‘Jesus help me.’ We see it spelled out on the title page and get to see Bach’s fancy handwriting:

I didn’t go into this in the episode, but is there an S.D.G. inside the big G on the title?

Write That Fugue!

One of the most striking features of this cantata are the multiple instrumental ‘choirs,’ the groups of instruments which Bach placed in separate areas of St. Mary’s church to achieve stereophonic effects. Bach, the organist, expands his knowledge of registration onto a full orchestra that required two conductors! To hear this music in quick succession from separate areas must have been thrilling:

Three trumpets and drums! Then immediately:

Woodwinds somewhere else! And then two choirs together, singing from opposite lofts:

Still more groups of instruments follow, now the flutes:

And finally the strings:

What a bold and exciting way for Bach to begin his orchestral career.

Links to the performances: Suzuki and Koopman

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Transcript:

We’ve been tracing the young Bach’s development, writing his very first cantatas. We looked at what may have been his first two, and we heard on quite a few of these recordings that they had only one voice per part. The orchestrations were very small, maybe an oboe, maybe a pair of violins, but things are very neat, very compact. You could put one of these bands in a van, and you should. He’s 22, he’s moving from one — that’s how it begins. A bit different to the last two cantatas, right? Remember the previous two cantatas? They started with these lovely orchestral introductions. The Actus Tragicus, also an early cantata, started with the most wonderful, most inviting introduction. “Christ lag in Todesbanden,” which we will soon cover, also begins with a nice introduction by the orchestra — Bach saying, “Excuse me, I hope you don’t mind if I write a cantata.” But this one is different: Bach is not asking for permission. He’s been asked to write this piece. This is now part of his job to do this. He will not fail the entire city. Everybody at once, go — big chord, big orchestra, no intro, massive sound.

Bach is our new organist. And unlike many cantatas, we have an exact date when this music was first heard: February 4th, 1708. Bach has been the new organist in Mühlhausen for about six months, and there was a recent inauguration of the city council, where the new burgomasters — sort of like the mayors — and the city members are honored. They’re probably given some very official looking clothing, maybe a nice new wig, and there’s a concert in a big church, St. Mary’s, with some required town council music. So all the new city council members, every politician, all the notable persons come to St. Mary’s and hear the world premiere of Bach’s cantata “Gott ist mein König” — God is my king. If today, after elections anywhere in the world, everyone piled into the same room to hear a Bach cantata, why, I dare say the world would be a better place.

Now, St. Mary’s in Mühlhausen has several galleries and lofts in the church, and Bach took advantage of this. I love this image of the 22-year-old getting the commission, knowing that this is part of his job now for the town council music, knowing that it’s going to take place at St. Mary’s. He walks into the church, he sees all the lofts, and he thinks: I can put trumpets up there and drums up there, and I could put the strings over there. I can have the oboes and bassoons over there. Now I’ve got the money to have the instruments I want. I can put recorders over there. I can have two choirs — one over there, the other over there. The organ, in a different place, can have some solos. This is how Bach makes this piece — a 1708 sound bath, if you will. The different movements feature the various choirs, and here I refer to the choirs of instruments as well as the choirs of singers. It has different choirs in different places in the church, so the listener would have just been delighted — Bach was delighted to hear music first coming from the left and then from the right, and then different sounds coming from the back and from the front.

You might ask, but how could Bach conduct two choirs in two different spaces of the church? Well, there were actually two conductors for this cantata — in the original set of parts, there were two conducting scores. I love this idea. You’d think music moves in the direction of small to big — Mozart’s concerti, small ensembles; Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, a bigger orchestra now with a choir; Mahler even bigger. But Bach had two conductors. To quote friend of the show Christoph Wolff, Bach had composed a work of unusual proportions and complexity that make the performances of earlier council pieces pale by comparison, as most everyone would have immediately noticed.

So I like imagining that I’m a parishioner in Mühlhausen at the beginning of the 18th century, and, you know, the last few town inauguration concerts have been a bit dull, but now we’ve got this young whippersnapper, Johann, and boom — “Gott ist mein König,” this chord, this amazing opening. Let me read you from the top to the bottom of the score all the instruments that play. Tromba one, two, three — three trumpets and a timpani as well. That’s the first choir altogether, somewhere separated from the rest of the musicians: three trumpet players and a drummer. Flauto dolce one and two — what is the flauto dolce? It’s the recorder. So two recorders as well as a cellist, in a different area. And yet in a third choir, two oboes and a bassoon. The strings in yet a different choir: violin one, violin two, viola, and violone. Violone is like a fretted bass instrument, like a cello or a bass, but with frets. And then we’ve got the two choirs of singers — soprano, alto, tenor, bass, ripieno, as they say, maybe two voices per part, and then soloists, one voice per part. And on top of all that, the basso continuo, probably more than one player.

So now we’re almost ready to explore the music. We’ve answered one of the two important questions you ask whenever looking at a cantata: when and why was this piece written? 1708, new town council. Now the other important question is, what is the text — what are they singing about? Like the other early cantatas we recently covered, this cantata is mostly a psalm — Psalm 74. If you’re a psalm savant, you might think it begins, “O God, why hast thou cast us off forever? Why doth thine anger smoke against the sheep of thy pasture?” Indeed, this is how Psalm 74 begins, but Bach does not begin this cantata there. He begins at line 12 of the psalm: “God is my king.” The King James Version has it as “God is my king of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth.” The German is more like “God is my king of old that gives help for all that happens on the earth” — hilfe is more like “help” than the word Bach sometimes uses for salvation, which is Erlösung.

So off we go, and I want you constantly to imagine — though it’s sadly not possible to hear even on the most magnificent recording — all these different groups of instruments coming at you from different areas in this space. I will try to guide your ears left and right as best I can, but nothing can possibly beat the experience of hearing two groups of singers above you in different areas singing at each other, brass at the back, oboes somewhere else — just a lovely idea. Off we go: “God is my king.” Then, “my king from olden days,” “my king from long ago” — quite different music from “God is my king.”

What an opening. The first thing to notice is that Bach shows you where the different choirs of instruments are: first brass, then woodwinds, then recorders, then strings, then he moves into the solos, and you heard the soloist singing “from olden days” — they sing in an older style, a more antiquated style, where one part has the cantus firmus, like a Gregorian chant, holding long notes while the other parts move around it. From olden times, Bach goes back, quite literally, to the old musical times.

Bach has shown us the forces at work. He’s pulled out all the stops. In fact, it’s very much like Bach’s organ concertos, which begin with him pulling out every stop on the organ to show the lungs of the instrument. And many of the ideas in the way that Bach orchestrates this cantata come directly from his being an organist — his ability to deal with differentiated patterns of sound, that’s something an organist knows, and he shows it here in his orchestra. So he’s hit us with the full organ, all the stops out. And now, as we well know on this show, Bach will change tempo and mood because there’s a different line of text — these early cantatas go with the text in mood, feeling, and tempo. This line is about God giving help to all that happens on earth — in fact, God giving all the help for all that happens on earth. How will Bach paint the word “all”? Like little separate things — everything that’s going on. The soprano doing a little figure here, the tenor doing something over there. The word “all” is spread out in many places — spread out in all places. “All the help”? Why, help comes together. It’s horizontal sounds for “all” and vertical sounds for “help.” Remarkable — it’s such a simple idea, really, that “all” would be in all places and “help” would come together. It’s almost stupidly literal in a way, and yet when you hear it, it’s ingenious.

Now the text goes on to “on earth” — all the help, all the things going on, on earth. How would you paint “earth”? Well, you certainly wouldn’t want it to go up in the air — that’s how you paint heaven. So it goes down: “auf Erden.” Things are grounded. That is gardening music — pastoral, pleasant. Meanwhile the bass sits there grounding everything, really grounded, while the soprano floats above, beautiful. And then, of course, back to “God is my king,” new tempo, new mood.

Is that the way that young Johann is going to end this first movement — so completely, humbly, so quaint, just like that? Not only in this movement — this will be the end of the entire cantata. Listen to those recorders, how they just, ah, just the teeniest touch, like poof. One of my favorite features of early Bach is that he knows to end pieces with silence — he knows that silence is often more effective than a big drawn-out chord. Can you imagine how much weaker it would be to end with a big chord instead of five eighth-note rests? That’s drama.

Now, I’m mostly going to skip the second movement — sadly, I know it’s a crime, but for time, I can’t spend more than a few minutes on it. I want to mention the text, which is interesting. This being a city council inauguration concert, the old council has to hand over their duties to the new council. It’s amazing that such mundane bureaucracy had such divine music to accompany it — can you imagine that today? So the text reflects ideas about getting old, being an old servant. The second movement is a duet similar to what we saw in BWV 131 in a previous episode, where the tenor sings from the Old Testament, and above him, a soprano sings a Lutheran chorale melody. The tenor below sings, “I am 80 years old,” complaining, “let me die in my own town, don’t let me go where you’re going — I just want to, I’m done, I’m done, basically.” And above the tenor, the soprano sings a Lutheran hymn text from 1630: “If in this world I have to live my life longer, through many a bitter step press on to old age, then give me patience, from sin and shame protect me, so that I may bear with honor my gray hair.” A lovely idea — speaking directly to the old council, saying, you’ve done your service, thank you, and now it’s time for you to get old with dignity.

Sonically speaking, the organ has an obbligato line — a free line, a really composed line probably played on a different instrument from the usual basso continuo setting. This is not very common in Bach’s cantatas, but it’s very exciting when it happens, when Bach writes out the elaborate shapes in the right hand — instead of normally playing figures over the figured bass and improvising, Bach gives specific shapes to play in the right hand.

It’s amazing how living this music was and is — musicians can always find something new in it. What I’m referring to is how contemporary this music was and how there are so many inside references that we might not get today. We’re just barely uncovering some through musicology and scholarship, but so many must also be lost. In particular, in this movement, the mayor was one Adolf Strecker, installed again in 1708 at this very event, when he was in his 80s and probably looked very ill. The Actus Tragicus, the other early cantata we covered some time ago, was possibly the very piece for his funeral, because he died a few months after the premiere of this cantata. So you’ve got this 80-year-old servant from the Bible and this 80-year-old servant right there at the premiere. When you start to look at the cantatas at this level of detail, you stand back and wonder: how could this be packed in there and not make the music suffer? If you sang “lulu lulu” for all the text and played all the instruments on twelve accordions, the music would still be perfect. But to be able to add on top of this perfect architecture biblical references to the aging mayor, references to a solar eclipse, references to fears of an anticipated military aggression from France — these, by the way, are all in this cantata. I won’t go into them because you could spend ages studying this, but it’s there.

On to movement three. From the old council, we move to the new council, with text that says, may your old age be like your youth, and God is with you in everything that you do — and Bach sets a fugue.

Next movement: in this orchestrated organ recital, Bach pulls out two choirs of instruments in a combination we haven’t yet heard — the recorders and cello, one choir, versus the oboes and bassoons, the other choir. Singing is a bass, a bass solo, and he sings “night and day.” How will Bach set the words “night and day”? Well, he’s not going to set them the same. He sees the sun setting — day, the sun is up; night, the sun is down. So the melody is the sun: when the text is “day,” the melody goes up; when the text is “night,” it goes down. How simple, how obvious. I imagine if the words were “night and day” instead, his melody would go the other way.

There, where the music stops, the text changes, and the two instrumental choirs are silent while the bass sings new text. It’s lovely to hear the instruments break apart like that, and sometimes they come together — sometimes apart, sometimes merged and flowing together — and that effect is marvelous.

I’m a bit stumped about the next line of text and what goes on musically. This is what I mentioned with the solar eclipse — there was one in Mühlhausen just a couple of years before the premiere, a near-98%-total eclipse. In the 18th century this must have been frightening, or awesome in the true sense of the word. The text here is, “you make them both — the sun and the stars follow their natural course — and you set boundaries for the land,” or “you set for each land its appointed boundaries,” coming from Psalm 74. It’s beautiful poetry — I don’t exactly know how Bach sets it or what’s going on in his mind, I admit; it’s not obvious to me. The only thing that comes to mind is maybe the appointed course of the stars and the lines of the boundary — thinking in astronomical and geographical lines, boundaries, and so on. On the words “course,” Bach makes a long line. That’s my only idea about this. After this text, it returns to “day and night are yours,” and the choirs of instruments come back for the conclusion of this fourth movement.

Next movement: Bach the organist puts back in those stops that were the oboes and recorders, and pulls out the powerful stops — trumpets and timpani. This is an alto aria, and the text here is “through mighty strength.” For time’s sake I won’t go too deeply into this, but if you just look at the aria on the page it’s very exciting — 3/8 time signature, vivace tempo marking, then a few bars later andante, then one bar of 3/8, then back to a different time signature. It’s like looking at Mahler to see so many time signatures like this — it does not look very Bachian on the page, and yet this is the early Bach. The text is freely composed poetry by the librettist, and this is what I was talking about with the feared military uprising from France. It really talks about the storm of war: “By mighty power you’ve upheld our borders. Here peace must shine when murder and the storm of war rise everywhere. When the enemy, crown, and scepter instill trembling, you bring salvation by your mighty power.” So, on both sides of the poetry, you will hear the mighty power of the trumpets and timpani, and like the movement we just heard, Bach uses this choir of instruments only at the beginning and end of the movement — the middle is just basso continuo and the alto solo.

Next movement, the penultimate one: Bach puts away that very powerful choir of brass and drums and turns to a texture we haven’t yet heard — the full choir of singers, not only soloists but tutti, everybody, maybe both choirs singing. The text, more from Psalm 74, just a few lines down from where we left it. In the New International Version it says, “Do not hand over the life of your dove to wild beasts.” In the King James Version it’s more elaborate: “Oh, deliver not the soul of thy turtledove unto the multitude of the wicked.” So — wild beasts, the wicked — there’s a translation complexity here. Thanks to a native Hebrew speaker who helped with this never-ending study of translating the Hebrew Bible — I received more concerned comments about my Hebrew pronunciation than almost anything I’ve ever done on the show, sorry about that.

The Luther Bible chooses the turtledove as the image, not merely a dove. What’s the difference? Probably a very interesting one, but too deep to discuss here. Luther’s Bible says something like, “May you, I pray you, not give the wild animals the soul of your turtledove, and completely forget your miserable animal, this pure innocent turtledove.” Who’s the enemy here? You imagine, with this political tension happening, it could be a very literal political enemy, or the enemy of the church, those without God, those who revile the church. All summed up: please don’t let the enemy conquer.

Let’s get into the sound world a little. Imagine three choirs of instruments in different places, and for the first time since the first movement, we hear the singers coming from two places — that must have been thrilling to experience, that reunification of the antiphonal choirs. Just overwhelming beauty and power in the way Bach paints the text. First, the enemies — how creepy, so different from us, these enemies, this feels uncomfortable, the half-step to paint the fiends, the enemies. And then you hear, when he says “the soul of the turtledove,” the melody soars there, and it modulates into a major cadence. We could feel our skin crawling when we imagine being handed over to the enemy — oh God, I really don’t want that, please, please. And then, “soul of the turtledove” — watch the soul soar.

Now, when I look at the orchestration of this, I notice that every time Bach speaks of the enemy, the choirs of instruments are pitted against each other. But every time he says “turtledove,” everybody comes together — it’s the only time in this text where all choirs play together, on the words “turtledove.” Think about this: the enemies pitted against each other, but the turtledove — that’s us, that is our innocent congregation, we are all together.

That painting there of “turtledove” is absolutely exceptional — isn’t this captivating music? This could be the finest point in this cantata. I want to draw particular attention to the bass line here, or at least the bass sounds — the continual eighth notes, and the violone, this fretted bass instrument in another choir, doubling the basso continuo. We have these two other bass sounds: the cello playing nice and high, this sort of spinning music, and the bassoon. But there, on the setting of “turtledove,” Bach drops the bassoon — the first time in this movement the bassoon is silent, just for a moment. And here Bach writes in the score two different parts for the soprano, one for the ripieno group, maybe a few per part, and another for the soloist — and you can hear them splitting apart. Can you see the wings fluttering? That image of the dove fluttering is beautiful.

And now we have possibly the most impressive moment of this movement. Bach, a student of music, a student of the Bible, recites the whole line — “don’t let the soul of the turtledove go to the enemy” — and puts the choir together in unison, making them sing a psalm tone, like Gregorian chant. This is very rare — everyone singing a straight, Gregorian-chant-like melody, while the orchestra still does its thing, and then just at the end, the oboes fly around like the turtledove. What a moment in music — everyone there on that one note, psalm tone one. Bach setting a psalm to psalm tone one — this is exceptional.

Now, just to give some idea of how this might have sounded stereophonically: the bassoon and cello in one part, one speaker; add the recorders; and the oboes; pitted against each other like this, one group, the next group, and they all come together. I would just love to go on and on with this movement, but I’ve got about five minutes left for the last movement.

Okay, the last movement — all the forces, the big choir of trumpets and drums are back, and the text is a more or less bland text praising the new government, blessing the new government: “crown them with prosperity, and may they delight you, Joseph.” Who’s Joseph? Well, Joseph is the Holy Roman Emperor. This is the Holy Roman Empire we’re talking about — Mühlhausen was a free imperial city subordinate only to Joseph. And this cantata, when it was printed — something I hadn’t mentioned yet — is the only surviving cantata to have been printed during Bach’s lifetime. These performing parts were symbols of Mühlhausen’s civic pride. Bach did such a good job with this performance that Mühlhausen invited him back twice more to do the same thing, and those parts were also printed, but they’re lost. This is an example of how so much of the vocal music is lost — of the three times Bach did this, we only have this first performance.

The new government, tempo change, in every way — crown them with blessing. New text: peace, rest, and prosperity, tempo change. May they always be by their side, peace and rest. New choir of instruments, that solo organ coming in again. Now here comes good fortune and victory, and a tempo change. The Emperor — we want a fugue for Joseph. Solo voices, very simple: continuo, soprano, alto, still solo voices, tenor, bass, still solo voices, first violin, first oboe, second violin, second oboe, sopranos tutti, every soprano, first recorder, tutti, all the altos now, second recorder, all the tenors now, the cellos in — what are we missing? We’re missing the bass, the bassoon, and the violone. Bring in those trumpets. We’ve got to break it down back to the soloists, in all the lands and places — listen to the tenor singing “continually.” Bring everyone back in for the choir. Solos. Everyone. Oboes. Flutes. That’s it — that’s how this enormous cantata ends, just like the nutmeg dusting on a giant turkey dinner.

Thanks for listening. Hope you enjoyed this.

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