Town Council inaugurations in Leipzig provided Bach with a lucrative opportunity to write a yearly cantata, over and above his regular duties as Thomaskantor. Five such works have fully survived from the Leipzig years (plus others in fragmentary form), and we also have an early work from Mühlhausen, composed for a similar occasion.
The ceremony for the Council election was called “Ratswahl”, and it was celebrated on the Monday following St. Bartholomew’s Day (August 24), followed by a service in Nikolaikirche (the “Ratswechsel” service). Cantata 29 was written for this purpose in 1731 and was performed on August 27. The piece saw two additional performances in later years – 1739 and 1749.
The unknown librettist for BWV 29 follows the usual pattern for these works: a combination of thanks and praise to God for his protection of the city, and a prayer for his continued blessings of the city and its rulers. In addition to original text, the poet used the second verse of Psalm 75 for movement 2, as well as the fifth stanza of the hymn “Nun lob, mein Seel, den Herren” by Johann Gramann from 1548 for the closing chorale.
For the opening sinfonia, Bach picked up and further refined his prior arrangement of the Prelude to the E minor partita for solo violin, BWV 1006, which he had already used in orchestrated form to open the second part of the wedding cantata BWV 120a. The solo violin line is given to the obbligato organ, and a full orchestration of three trumpets, timpani, strings, two oboes, and continuo is created around it for an imposing opening commensurate with the grandiose occasion.
Following the Sinfonia, the cantata has a symmetrical structure: two outer choral movements (No. 2 and No. 8), then, moving inwards, two arias (No. 3 and No. 7), two recitatives (No. 4 and No. 6), and an aria in the middle (No. 5) which could be construed as the central prayer of the libretto.
The choir is in charge of the second movement, which is a thanksgiving prayer on the Psalm 75 verse. The music is in the style of a solemn motet, a musical form considered old-fashioned at the time (stile antico). It starts as a 4-part fugue with the strings and oboes doubling the voices, but eventually the trumpets and timpani take on independent parts to grow the polyphony to 8 parts. This movement found its final home as the “Gratias agimus tibi / Dona nobis pacem” of the Mass in B minor.
The following tenor aria is set to text that praises God and equates Leipzig with Zion, or Jerusalem. In contrast with the style of the previous movement, this da-capo aria is a bright A major piece accompanied by solo violin and continuo, with long melismas on the word “Hallelujah”.
Next is the bass recitative, full of biblical references, including several from the Psalms. It’s set in simple “secco” style, with a charming little turn of the bass line on the words “Sein Flügel hält” (“his wings hold”).
The aria in the midpoint of the structure, a prayer for blessings on behalf of rulers (and law-abiding citizens!), is a warm siciliana with oboe, strings and continuo accompaniment to the soprano voice. Bach creates different textures by explicitly removing the continuo harmonization (“tasto solo”) whenever the voice enters in the first section, and thinning out the texture to just the oboe and continuo (or specifying “piano” for the strings) in the second section.
The alto recitative that follows is another request for future blessings in exchange for our “offerings and thanks”. It ends with an “Amen” by the choir in unison, and it leads straight into an aria for the alto with organ obbligato and continuo, which is an ingenious reworking of the third movement (tenor aria). Bach took out the instrumental introduction and transposed the material to D major, giving the accompanying line to the organ.
The cantata closes with Johann Gramann’s verse “Sei Lob und Preis mit Ehren” as a closing chorale, with its associated “Nun lob, mein Seel, den Herren” tune. In this case, the setting is truly resplendent – the four voices are doubled by the strings and oboes, and augmented by independent trumpet and timpani parts for an imposing finale to the civic occasion.
