Bernardo Bellotti, The Fortress of Königstein (156-1758). National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
J. S. Bach’s most famous arias, “Schafe könne sicher weiden” (Sheep may safely graze) projects safety for the governed secured by enlightened leadership.
Above a pulsing B-flat drone whose static harmony conveys contented repose, a pair of pastoral recorders, like shepherds’ pipes, waft over the bucolic landscape—artfully managed nature unthreatened by the wild. No armies mass beyond the hills, no terrorists steal across the borders, no chain-sawing wielding maniacs ready to fell forests of bureaucrats.
When, after two bars of instrumental introduction, the drone breaks into a gentle gait it is not done to worry the listener, but to lift the eyes and ears over pleasant fields. In just four graceful measures Bach has painted an expansive, tranquil sonic canvas. Over these Bachian meadows floats the soprano voice of Pales, the Roman deity of shepherds:
Sheep may safely graze,
When watched over by a good shepherd.
Where rulers govern well
Peaceful calm is to be felt
That makes a country happy.
A monarch’s rule is likened to animal husbandry. Manage the floc; be concerned, competent and watchful. Let your charges nibble and wander, but never allow them to roam too far towards unknown perils.
Bach’s musical pursuit of happiness can easily be transposed from its first performance on February 23rd, 1713 in a castle banqueting hall set in the hills of central Germany to the Land of the Free still in the first 100 Days of Trump 2.0. Heard today, the aria’s comforts unsettle by contrast to the menacing unpredictability of the current ruler. Even if the Old Regime was expert in dirty tricks and targeting opponents, the illusion of mostly happy sheep and reasonable shepherds prevailed.
In the more than three centuries since its premiere, the aria has proliferated in myriad arrangements. Here is one of the worst of them.
Given the work’s graceful beauty, it is not surprising that it has long been a favorite at weddings. Having played my own transcription of the aria countless times for nuptials, I am perhaps allowed to guess that its popularity indicates that security and stability, not passion, are the enduring foundation of the institution of marriage, and, by extension, of American democracy. The aria’s praise of male rule remains unheard in these instrumental transcriptions, and wedding pairs remain blissfully ignorant of it.
This Best-of-Bach number comes from the so-called Hunt Cantata (BWV 208), likely composed for the thirty-first birthday of Duke Christian, potentate at the court of Saxe-Weißenfels that neighbored the Duchy of Weimar where Bach then worked. The Duke loved music almost as much as he loved hunting, a pursuit captured by Bach in his musical tribute. At his own wedding the previous year, Duke Christian’s kinsman, the mighty Saxon Elector and Polish King, Frederick the Strong, had had his jewelers—those miracle workers in precious metals and gems, the Dinglinger brothers—fashion a lavish hunting cup that the Elector presented to the Weißenfels couple and which is now to be marveled at in Dresden’s famous museum, the Grünes Gewölbe (named after its vaulted green ceilings). This sumptuous golden goblet with domed cover is crowned by a miniature statue of the goddess of the hunt Diana riding a chestnut stallion, the elaborate creation held up by the antlers of a stag being devoured by a princely dog. Bach’s music was meant to complement this opulence and artifice.
Hunting was not just a topic for artistic representation at the hands of a Dinglinger or a Bach. It was a dangerous pursuit, especially since prevailing attitudes towards gun control and safety were almost as primitive as those held in America today. Musicians too were put in mortal danger. The Weißenfels male alto and prolific writer on music Johann Beer, who was also among the funniest and most prolific of early German novelists, was killed in a hunting accident while out blunderbussing with one of the dukes. His colleague David Heinrich Garthoff, who must have known Bach, came to the court as an oboist (an instrument often deployed for accompanying the hunt) but got his lower lip shot off while bagging birds. This mishap did in his oboe blowing embouchure, but Garthoff was an adaptable musician and went on to become the court organist.
Lucky for us, Christian didn’t hand Bach a firearm and command him into the fields when the composer visited the court for the Duke’s birthday festivities in late February of 1713. Winter, especially during the Little Ace Age, was no time for hunting: better to sing and play about it indoors before a crackling fire.
In the cantata’s first aria—”Jagen ist die Lust der Götter”— obligatory horns resounded in the banqueting hall in recollection of daring escapades gunning down beasts beaten towards the hunting party so that the Duke could dispatch these trophies-to-be at close range. Then the goddess Diana, sung by the famed German soprano Pauline Kellner (likely Anna Magdalena Bach’s teacher) unleashed her own dazzling vocal firepower, shooting off a coloratura melisma on the very first syllable: “Hunting is the passion of the gods,” she sings, following that blast with a line that would make for a MAGA bumper sticker: “Hunting is for heroes.” In spite of the collateral damage suffered by Weißenfels’ musicians while hunting, there was robust support of through the duchy for guns and game.
Another of the characters in this courtly cantata was Pan, the god of shepherds. He’s a lusty rustic type with hands that grope as greedily as those of the current U. S. President. Bach makes his Pan a fun-loving loose cannon of a bass, who goes off half-cocked claiming that he should be the one to rule. Like so many political megalomaniacs, this libertine boasts of outsized erotic powers and assumes that these will serve him well as head-of-state.
In the introduction to Pan’s first aria pair of brash oboes starts bragging even before the voice enters to make the absurdly self-serving claim that “Ein Fürst ist seines Landes Pan” (A Prince is the Pan of his country). The debauched bass sounds off in a lurching gigue that makes clear he’s had too much to drink but is still not too blotto to deliver his message comparing a ruler-less country to a headless body politic:
Just as the body without the soul
Cannot live or control itself,
So a country is a cave of death
When it no longer has a head and prince
And therefore lacks its best part.
Pan holds resolutely to long notes on “live” and “rule” but then tumbles down as he runs out of breath. On entering the mortal cavern with its minor shadows and chromatic crags, the drunk goes dark, only brightening just before the close when he remembers that he is after all “the best part”—the happy head to the nation’s body. It’s a raucous, rambling speech worthy of our own, more mean-spirited and teetotalling Pan as President.
Sumptuous entertainments like this cantata drained the ducal coffers in Weißenfels to such an extent that many of the court’s musicians—including some of Bach’s in-laws—were eventually owed years of unpaid salary.
As a result of its parlous finances, the duchy was eventually dissolved by the royal rulers higher up the food chain in Dresden. Even the wedding gift of the Hunting Cup was repossessed by the givers. The DOGE in the capital city of Dresden had had enough. But the axe of efficiency was never turned on the royals themselves. They continued to spend uninhibitedly on their favorite pastimes: military, music, hunting, and art (from Chines Porcelain to Old Master paintings). A string of mid-century wars with neighboring Prussia sent Saxon power into a steep decline it never pulled out of.
Sheep may be grazing more safely than ever before on America’s Public Lands, but the headless, brainless ruler stumbles ever deeper into the forest of oblivion, blowing his own flute as his goes.
Bach could have brought all this too to vivid musical life. Indeed, he did already way back in 1713.
