Himmelskönig, sei willkommen

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acoustics, Alfred Dürr, Annunciation, cantata, cantus firmus, chorale, chorus, continuo, dance, Himmelskönig sei willkommen, Jesu Leiden Pein und Tod, John Eliot Gardiner, Konzertmeister, Leipzig, opera, organ, Pachelbel, Palace Church, Palm Sunday, Paul Stockmann, Philipp Spitta, pizzacato, recorder, Salomon Franck, Saxe-Weimar, viola, violin, Weimar

Three hundred years ago, Bach was in Weimar, serving as court organist to Johann-Ernst III of Saxe-Weimar. He had just been promoted to the role of Konzertmeister, a position that required that he lead a monthly performance of a church cantata in the Palace Church.

Alfred Dürr has determined that the first cantata by Bach performed at Weimar on 25 March 1714 was Himmelskönig, sei willkommen (BWV 182). Depicting the Palm Sunday theme of the Entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, Bach’s biographer Philipp Spitta suspects that the poetry was written by the court poet Salomon Franck. The chorale movement near the end of the cantata quotes Paul Stockmann‘s Jesu Leiden, Pein und Tod, originally composed in 1633.

The score of the cantata acknowledges the reverberant acoustic of the church building by directing the divided violas and the continuo to play pizzicato when accompanying a recorder and violin duo. The chorale is arranged in the manner of Pachelbel: every line is first prepared in the lower voices, and then the soprano sings the cantus firmus while the other voices elaborate upon the text. Conductor John Eliot Gardiner describes the closing chorus as “a sprightly choral dance that could have stepped straight out of a comic opera of the period.”

Although church authorities in Leipzig typically forbade the performance of cantatas during Lent, an extraordinary opportunity for Bach to reuse Himmelskönig, sei willkommen occurred shortly after his arrival in Leipzig. On 25 March 1724, the solemnity of the Marian feast of the Annunciation outranked the Palm Sunday observance.

The Year 1714

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autograph manuscript, cantata, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, chorus, Himmelskönig sei willkommen, Konzertmeister, organ, Palace Church, Weimar, Wilhelmsburg Palace

The Wilhelmsburg Palace in Weimar

Three hundred years ago, on New Year’s Day, 1714, Bach was serving as court organist in Weimar, devoting much of his time to composing works for the organ, but then, on 2 March 1714, his duties were dramatically expanded when he was promoted to the newly-created post of Konzertmeister. Now, for the first time in his career, Bach was expected to compose sacred works for groups of virtuoso singers and instrumentalists on a regular basis. Three weeks later, just after the birth of his son Carl Phillip Emanuel, he introduced the cantata Himmelskönig, sei willkommen (BWV 182) at a performance in the Palace Church at the Wilhelmsburg.

The autograph manuscript of this cantata, along with others dated 1714, authenticate important milestones in Bach’s creative life that merit commemoration during the course of 2014.

The Palace Church Is Reconstructed

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acoustics, Bauhaus-University Weimar, cantata, chorus, Florian Scharfe, Himmelsburg, Himmelskönig sei willkommen, Jörg Arnold, Liszt School of Music Weimar, organ, painting, Palace Church, Weimar, Wilhelmsburg Palace

In a joint interdisciplinary research project between The Liszt School of Music Weimar and the Bauhaus-University Weimar, architects, engineers and musicians, using a computer model, have spatially and acoustically reconstructed the Palace Church at Weimar’s Wilhelmsburg that is often referred to as the “Himmelsburg.”

Originally, Bach’s music was performed in an attic room high above the sanctuary, and this sound energy made its way down into the marble-walled nave via a large, rectangular opening in the ceiling. Worshippers described the resulting experience as being “heavenly.” During a fire in 1774, however, the sanctuary and its musicians’ gallery, including the organ that Bach had played from 1708 to 1717, were completely destroyed.

Today, historic building plans, the outer walls of the church and a painting depicting the interior are all that remind us of the Palace Church, but from these architect Florian Scharfe has been able to generate an interactive model of the entire church. Cyber-visitors can visit Bach´s former workplace in the musicians’ gallery and consider how space limitations forced choristers and orchestral musicians to stand shoulder-to-shoulder around a narrow walkway, while facing each other across the opening in the ceiling, during cantata performances.

Computer-assisted calculations by engineer Jörg Arnold indicate that acoustical conditions within the musicians’ gallery itself were not very reverberant and would have enhanced the accurate performance of Bach’s polyphony. Below, in the open volume above the pews and at Duke Wilhelm Ernst’s middle-level balcony at the rear of the church, listeners would have enjoyed a resonance more typical for a church, yet the finest details of the musicians’ performance would have remained audible. The sound quality at the side galleries, however, would have been much less distinct.

Because Bach created a large part of his most important organ works and cantatas for this architecturally unique space, the Palace Church is of special interest to musicians who wish to inform their own interpretations with an understanding of the specific details of Bach’s performance conditions. This seems especially appropriate as the text and musical language of Himmelskönig, sei willkommen (BWV 182), the first of the cantatas that Bach composed during his Weimar period, draws a parallel between its introductory theological theme and the lofty architecture of the Palace Church.

– Neue Musikzeitung