Gott ist mein König

"Gott ist mein König" ("God is My King"), BWV 71, is a cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach.

It was performed for the first time at the inauguration of the new city council at Mühlhausen on 1708-02-04. The librettist is unknown, although it was possibly assembled and partly written by minister Georg Christian Eilmar, who had also commissioned Bach to compose the cantata "Aus der Tiefen rufe ich, Herr, zu dir" which was written around the same time.

In 1708, Bach was the organist of the "Divi Blasii" church, and was composing very few works, although his works from this era prominently featured the organ. This was his first cantata for orchestra with a festive composition, which included trumpets and timpanis. Since Bach was instructed by the council to compose this work, it is also one of his very few paid commissioned works, since most of his other compositions formed part of his office.

It was so positively received that Bach was commissioned to compose another cantata for the next year's council inauguration; however, by 1709 Bach had moved to Weimar and the cantata was never written.

Theme

Even though the cantata was composed for a secular occasion, it is counted under Bach's religious cantatas. Fittingly for the occasion, the texts can be interpreted as a meditation on the transition from old to new, together with freely-composed congratulations for the "new regiment" of office bearers.

The text mostly consists of Bible passages: the text of the first and fourth movements is taken from Psalm 74, the rest from 2 Samuel, Genesis, and Deuteronomy.

The second movement, "Ich bin nun achtzig Jahr" ("I am now eighty years old"), probably refers to Adolf Strecker, the former mayor who had just left office aged 83 years, and was written for solo organ. In the second movement, the Bible quotes are complemented by the sixth verse of Johann Heermann's hymn "O Gott, du frommer Gott".

Scoring

* Vocal soloists: Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass
* Choir: Soprano, Alto, Tenor, Bass
* Instruments (in the non-standard order used by Bach in the score):
** 3 Trumpets, Timpani
** 2 Violins, Viola, Violone
** 2 Oboes, Bassoon
** 2 Recorders, Cello
** Organ obbligato

Importance

"Gott ist mein König" is a significant early work of Bach. With its lack of recitatives, its arias and the short movements that flow into each other, it shows typical characteristics of traditional 17th-century cantatas. It differs from the other extant cantatas from Bach's time in Mühlhausen by its elaborate instrumentation. Very few of the formal characteristics of Bach's Leipzig cantatas (still some fifteen years in the future) are found in this early work. It is the first of Bach's works to be printed (an unusual event paid for by the city council); it is the only cantata to have been printed before the composer's death.

External links

*
* [http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~wfb/cantatas/71.html Text (in German) and instrumentation of individual movements]
* [http://www.uvm.edu/~classics/faculty/bach/BWV71.html English translation of the text]