GENERAL NOTE: It is perhaps worth mentioning that this cantata libretto is extraordinarily difficult to translate, as the German text shows all signs of having been written rather hastily and carelessly. Indeed, this is some of the least gratifying poetry to be found in Bach’s music.

¹ It is not entirely clear whether the “auf” (in this context, literally, “up”) is a command to the trumpets or to the “Töne” (“[aggregate] sound qualities [of multiple trumpets],” or “[musical] notes,” or “melodies”). If the latter, which appears syntactically more likely, then the word “auf,” as a command/interjection, is a synonym for “los!” (“go!,” “come on!,” “get going, you!,” or “fire away”) and at the same time a synonym for the convoluted way that the word “erheben” (normally, “to raise [something],” or “to exalt”) is used of the “crack” or “crash” sound that is made when striking the drums, in line 2. If, however, “auf” is a command to the trumpets per se, then the word would yield the following sense: “Lift up the trumpets [from being held idly at one’s side, into the position that music is able to be performed on them].”

² See fn. 27, below.

³ The linden tree was a symbol of Leipzig, whose name means “place where lindens grow.”

⁴ The “Musenchor” is “the choir of [the nine] muses,” lead by Apollo. In this cantata and in the secular cantata BWV 1162 (formerly Anh. 18), the expression “Musenchor” is used as a metaphor for Bach’s own ensembles. BWV 1162 was designed for the reinauguration of the Thomas School, in 1732. Since a school or university was sometimes called a “Musensitz” (“seat of the muses”), it made good sense for the librettist to call Bach’s Thomas-School choir a “Musenchor” in these two works. In Bach’s “Hercules” cantata BWV 213, the closing ensemble aria is in the voice of the “Chor der Musen.”

⁵ The verb “zeigen” (“to show,” or “to display”) takes the accusative, and in modern German, where “Wachstum” (“growth”) is neuter, the line would read “Und will das Wachstum zeigen” (“And wishes to display the/its growth”). In older German, this noun could be neuter but was usually given as masculine, hence here “Und will den Wachstum zeigen.”

⁶ The Pleisse is a small river that flows through Leipzig, a city sometimes known as the “Pleissenstadt” (“city of the Pleisse”).

⁷ When employed where the subject is a body of moving water, the German verb “spielen” is synonymous with “wallen,” just as is the case with their corresponding English verbs “to play” and “to flutter.”

⁸ In older German, the word “Saft” (“juice,” “sap,” or “radical moisture”) was often employed in combination with the word “Kraft” (“power”) to denote health or viridity, hence the collocations “Kraft und Saft” (“power and strength”) and, as here, “Kräfte und Säfte” (“powers and strengths”). That is, “Saft” could refer to not to moisture per se but to vigor and vitality.

⁹ “Moos und Klee” literally means “moss and clover,” but figuratively suggests an ideal bed of green, as in the English expression “to be in the clover.”

¹⁰ Roman goddess of flowers.

¹¹ A “Hain” (“grove”) was a small woodland area or a group of trees planted in honor of pagan deities to serve either as places of worship or for the reception of images. The Luther Bibles of Bach’s day use this word specifically in this way, e.g., in Exodus 34:13.

¹² “Hold” is apparently being used here in one of its older German senses, “inclined to like to see and promote the best of one’s master”; this is the way the word is used in the common older German collocation “treu und hold” (“faithful and loyal”). That is, this line is apparently saying that the grove (see fn. 11, above) is loyal to Pallas, not that the grove is considered lovely or dear or favorable by Pallas.

¹³ Probably Pallas Athena (Minerva to the Romans), Greek goddess of war, wisdom, weaving, and chastity.

¹⁴ Nymphs of a spring at Delphi on mount Parnassus, sacred to the Muses.

¹⁵ Evidently not the Castalians of the previous line, but other nymphs.

¹⁶ Here the separable verb “fortgehen” is apparently being used in its sense of “für sich gehen” (“to take effect”).

¹⁷ Some modern sources give this word as “erklärt” (“clarifies,” “explains”), probably a typographical error.

¹⁸ Saxon Elector Friedrich August II (King August III of Poland); the name day was August 3.

¹⁹ “Verklären” can mean “transfigure,” and often does in religious contexts. But here the verb probably means “light up” or “illuminate,” in keeping with the metaphor of this whole aria.

²⁰ The adjective “fromm” usually means “pious,” and that sense is most likely meant in part here too, but most likely it extends more broadly to mean “good” in the sense, e.g., that American politicians today use this word in such expressions as “I am proud to serve the good people of the state of New York.” Consider, too, e.g., such expressions in older German as “ein frommes Pferd,” which refers not to a pious horse but one that is good for riding.

²¹ “Zimmer” is apparently not being used here in its literal sense as a “room” or “chamber” in the king’s castle or elsewhere, but as a synonym for “Antlitz” (“countenance”), paralleling the use of “Angesicht” (“visage”) in line 2. It was said, e.g., in older colloquial German: “Wieviel wurden in dem oberen Zimmer des Kopfs nur ein Fenster haben?” (“How many [people] would have only one ‘window’ [i.e., eye] in the ‘upper room’ of the head?”). Those knowledgeable in scripture would have recognized a reference here to Matthew 18:9 concerning a person with one eye: “Und so dich dein Auge ärgert, reiss es aus, und wirf es von dir; es ist dir besser, dass du einäugig zum Leben eingehest, denn dass du zween Augen habest, und werdest in das höllische Feuer geworfen” (“And if your eye causes you offence, tear it out, and cast it from you; it is better for you to go into [eternal] life [in heaven] one-eyed, than that you might have two eyes [here on earth], and might be cast [in the end] into the [eternal] fire of hell”).

²² “Malen” (literally, “to paint”), employed in this instance for its rhyme with “Strahlen” (“rays”), is apparently here being used as a synonym for “schildern,” in its sense of “to verbally paint a narration or poetic image”—which is what this very cantata is to be understood as doing.

²³ River in Dresden, seat of Saxony and home of August.

²⁴ “Mavors” was another name for Mars, the Roman god of war.

²⁵ Roman god of commerce, messages, trickery; he was regarded as a patron deity of Leipzig.

²⁶ These sons of the god Mercury are the Lares, protective gods of Roman mythology.

²⁷ “Ton” (plural, “Töne”) means “tone” or “[musical] note” or “sound,” but in older German it can also mean “tune” or “melody.”

²⁸ Irene was the Greek goddess of peace; in ancient Greece, wreaths of honor were made up of foliage from laurel trees.

²⁹ n the lost printed librettos that were distributed to Bach’s original listeners, the four voices of the choir were most likely identified as specific allegorical characters. (They are not identified in his extant performing materials.) The soprano and bass sing this duet aria, and given the content of their poetry elsewhere in this cantata, they might plausibly have been the characters “Irene” (“Peace”) and “Mars” (“War”).

³⁰ It may sound strange for “crops” to “laugh,” but this very expression (“Saaten lachen”) is indeed found occasionally in German poetry, where “lachen” is likewise used of various inanimate objects that appear to be alive with movement, sound, or the play of light and colour, as if expressing joyous feeling. Martin Luther wrote, commenting on Joel 1:10-12, that “die Poeten sagen, die Wiesen und Saat lachen, das ist, sie [als ‘stehende Saaten’] stehen schön; hier aber sagt er das Gegenteil, das Erdreich traure, der Wein stehe beschämt” (“the poets say the hayfields and crop laugh, that is, they [as ‘standing crops,’ i.e., as crops that are not yet cut or felled] grow beautifully; but here he [the prophet Joel] says the opposite: May the soil mourn, may the vine grow in a shamefaced manner”).

³¹ “Gefället” here is the past tense of “fällen” (“to fell”), not a form of the verb “gefallen” (“to please”).

³² In Bach’s day too, “Acker” and “Feld” were often treated as fully synonymous, referring to what in English is called a “field” (of land). Strictly speaking, a field was an “Acker” only if it was cultivated land (even if it was sometimes left fallow), and a field was a “Feld” whether or not its potentially cultivatable land was ever in fact cultivated. Logically, however, special kinds of “Felder”/“Äcker,” such as “Winterfelder” and “Winteräcker” (“winter fields”), or “Weizenfelder” or “Weizenäcker” (“wheat fields”), were indeed fully synonymous.

³³ The uncommon expressions “späte Folgezeit” and “späte Folgezeiten” were essentially synonymous with the more frequently employed expression “späte Nachwelt” (“latter posterity” or “latter generations”).

³⁴ Modern editions do not give the comma here that is found in Bach’s original peforming part, whose verbal text is in his handwriting.

³⁵ “Teils” in modern German means “partly,” which is not quite the sense that the cantata poet seems to be projecting here. One might invent the word “apportionally” to capture the poet’s sense, but perhaps the closest equivalent in actual English usage would be “in due proportion.”

³⁶ “Sarmatia” was the Greek and Roman name for parts of Eastern Europe, used here as a name for Poland. Saxons associated “Sarmatia” with vaguely alien and strange fairy-tale-like customs. This cantata, like several other secular cantatas of Bach’s, reflects and promotes the propagandistic Saxon notion that the supposedly uncouth Poles and purportedly civilized Saxons together both fully welcomed the Saxon August as ruler of Saxony and Poland.

³⁷ “Durch Weisheit die vor uns erlangte Friedensfahne” is presumably to be parsed as “Die durch Weisheit vor uns erlangte Friedensfahne.”

³⁸ “Siegesrater” is not a standard German word. “Sieges” straightforwardly means “of victory,” but “Rater” is ambiguous. “Rater” could, in principle, be a synonym for “Ratgeber” (“adviser”) in the sense of “Bestimmer des zu tuenden” (“determiner of what to do”), or for “Errater” (“diviner,” e.g. of riddles), or for “Vorsorger” (“provider”). The last of these seems to make the most sense for the cantata.

³⁹ “Raute” is the herb known in English as “rue,” and “Rautensäfte” are extracts made from it that were thought to have various protective powers, especially against poisonous-snake bites and the like. The various Saxon coats of arms have traditionally featured depictions of the leaves of rue plants.

⁴⁰ See fn. 27, above.

⁴¹ In the sense of a protective umbra.

⁴² In older German, this noun was usually given as neuter (“das Augenmerk”) but was otherwise, like in this cantata, given as masculine (“der Augenmerk”).

⁴³ The adjective “allerwünscht” refers to the remembrance being “wished-for by all,” not to its being the “wished-for the very most intensely.” The latter sense would require “allererwünscht” rather than “allerwünscht.”

⁴⁴ “Bezeigen” is being used here in its older German sense as a synonym for “Verhalten” (“behavior,” “conduct,” “demeanor,” “bearing”).

⁴⁵ “Es lebe der König” is the expression for the toast “Long live the King!”

⁴⁶ The spelling “Trutz” is employed here to effect a rhyme with “Schutz.” The more common spelling was “Trotz,” a word that had a wide variety of meanings in older German. In this cantata movement, “Trutz” apparently carries the sense of the word “Kränkung” (“mortification”) in its extended use as a synonym for “Beschämung” (“humiliation”). “Trotz” is employed in this same way in a striking passage from Luther’s Table Talk, which states, “Luther hat oft gesagt: wenn er auf dem Bette stürbe, so sei es dem Papst eine grosse Schande und Trotz” (“Luther often said: if he [i.e., Luther] might die on his bed [i.e., as opposed to being capitally punished], then it would be a great shame and mortification to the Pope”).