C.P.E. Bach (1714-1788)
Born March 8, 1714, in Weimar, Germany
Died December 14, 1788, in Hamburg, Germany

Heilig, H.775
Composed 1776
Premiered premiered during Michaelmas in 1776
Conducted by C.P.E. Bach
Performance Time: Approximately 8 minutes

Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu, H.777
Composed 1774-78
Premiered March 18, 1778
Conducted by C.P.E. Bach
Performance Time: Approximately 73 minutes

Des Rufs partheyische Posaune,
O Bach! ist für Dein Lob zu klein;
Dein Vater und verklärte Graune
Sehn vom Olymp herab, sich Deines Ruhms zu freun!

(The call of sympathetic trombones, / O Bach, is too small for your praise; / Your father and the transfigured Grauns / Look down from Olympus to rejoice in your glory.)
(Anonymous poem in Hamburgischen unpartheyischen Correspondenten, 16 March 1773)

Carl Philipp Emanuel was born in Weimar in 1714, the second son of Johann Sebastian Bach and Maria Barbara Bach. After training in Leipzig and attending the University at Frankfurt an der Oder, C.P.E. Bach joined the music establishment of Frederick II of Prussia around 1740. In 1768 he succeeded his godfather Georg Philipp Telemann as music director in the city of Hamburg, and died there in 1788. Today C.P.E. Bach is known mostly for his keyboard treatise, Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen (1753–62), and his progressive keyboard music, but for the last two decades of his life in Hamburg, he also wrote a variety of church music and three oratorios before his death in 1788.

Bach first introduced his Heilig mit zwei Chören (H.775) in a cantata for Michaelmas in 1776.¹ Two years later, on 28 July 1778 Bach wrote to his publisher Johann Gottlob Immanuel Breitkopf about publishing the work at his own expense: “In this I have shown the greatest and boldest diligence for a good reception. This shall (perhaps) be the last of its kind, so that I will not be forgotten so soon.”² Two months later, on 16 September 1778, he wrote to Breitkopf again: “This Heilig is an attempt to arouse far greater attention and emotion through quite natural and ordinary harmonic progressions than one is able to do with all anxious chromaticism. It shall be my swan song of this kind, and serve to ensure that I am not forgotten too soon after my death.”³

In the same letter, he explains that the work begins with “an arietta as introduction (eine Ariette zur Einleitung), scored with systems of five staves (strings plus alto solo). Bach had warned Breitkopf that the double choir would require “großes Roÿal-Papier” in order to accommodate the 28 separate parts required for the double choir and orchestra. Each choir, representing the “Angels” (Engel) and the “People” (Völker), calls for soprano, alto, tenor, bass with three trumpets and timpani, oboes, strings, and basso continuo (organ, bassoon, and violoncello). The score was printed on oversize folio paper in an upright format (48 x 31 cm), and laid out in C.P.E. Bach’s typical fashion with trumpets and timpani at the top. On 25 November 1778 Bach sent Breitkopf the copy-text and requested an initial print run of 550 copies. Always the careful editor, Bach emphasizes the need for careful proofreading, “The most exact correction, especially with the Heilig, will be necessary, so that I do not suffer innocently.”⁴

In February and March 1788, Mozart led three performances of Bach’s oratorio, Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu (The Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus) in Vienna. On 4 March, at the palace of Count Esterházy, Bach’s portrait in a copperplate engraving was passed around to the audience, and the Hamburg newspaper reported that “The princesses and countesses and the whole glittering nobility venerated the great composer, and there was a great cheer, and a loud threefold affirmation of applause.”⁵ Bach’s oratorio had been published in 1787 at his own expense (im Verlag des Autors), and the concerts in Vienna were the first performances of the work outside of Hamburg. (Mozart revised the trumpet solo in the tenor aria for flute instead.)

Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu was the third libretto in a trilogy by the poet Karl Wilhelm Ramler. Carl Heinrich Graun, Bach’s colleague in Berlin, wrote a famous setting of Der Tod Jesu (The Death of Jesus), and Telemann wrote settings of all three libretti for Hamburg, including the nativity cantata, Die Hirten an der Krippe zu Bethlehem (The Shepherds at the Manger in Bethlehem).⁶ Bach first performed part I for Vespers of Easter on 2 April 1774 at St. Petri in Hamburg; four years later he completed part II and the Einleitung (instrumental introduction) for a concert on 18 March 1778. It was repeated on 6 April with a keyboard concerto, a trio, and the double-choir Heilig. These performances were given with a chorus of 12 singers (two altos, two tenors, two basses, and four boy sopranos), and less than two dozen instrumentalists.

The composition of Die Auferstehung was spread out over several years. The work is dated 1777–78 in his estate catalogue, but it was begun by 1774 and revisions continued after 1778. Bach wrote to Ramler about writing a substitute aria no. 7, “Wie bang hat dich mein Lied beweint!” to replace the original text, “Sei gegrüßet, Fürst des Lebens!” (The original aria was based on an earlier wedding cantata from Berlin; it is published in an appendix to the edition in CPEB:CW, IV/2.) Two other pieces—the chorus no. 5, “Triumph! Triumph! Des Herrn Gesalbter sieget,” the music of which is repeated in nos. 16 and 19, and the aria no. 9, “Ich folge dir, verklärter Held”—are also based on earlier pieces written for installation cantatas (Einführungsmusik Hornbostel, H 821e, and Einführungsmusik Klefeker, H 821b, respectively).

The correspondence between Bach and Breitkopf provides a window into publishing music in the late eighteenth century. Bach first asked Breitkopf about publishing the oratorio in October 1780, but nothing happened immediately. It was only after the publication of Klopstocks Morgengesang am Schöpfungsfeste (Wq 239) in 1784 that Bach started advertising for prepaid subscriptions to Die Auferstehung. But after almost two years, Bach did not have enough subscribers to cover the printing costs, and he put a hold on the printing and asked Breitkopf to send him the two and half sheets that had already been printed. But the composer was reluctant to give up on a work that he thought deserved to be known. On 21 September 1787 Bach wrote to Breifkopf:

Although this Ramler cantata is my own, I can nevertheless claim, without foolish egotism, that it will survive for many years, because it is a considerable example of my masterpieces from which young composers can learn something. In time it will also sell as well as Graun’s Tod Jesu. Initially, there is a problem with all such things that are written for teaching and not for ladies and musical windbags. My Heilig and my Israeliten are also faltering at the moment, but I am not worried since they will eventually be sought out again.⁷

Thus, like the double-choir Heilig, Bach saw Die Auferstehung as part of his legacy, and the work was published even though it had little chance of making money, in contrast to his six sets of solo keyboard collections for “Kenner und Liebhaber” that were published between 1779 and 1787. Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven (who performed the Heilig at one of his concerts in 1817) all admired C.P.E. Bach and were inspired by, among other passages, the daring modulation in the opening of the Heilig to push the limits of tonality in their own music.⁸

¹ Ulrich Leisinger, “‘Es erhub sich ein Streit” (BWV 19): Carl Philipp Emanuel Bachs Aufführungen im Kontext der Hamburgischen Michaelismusiken,” Bach-Jahrbuch (1999): 105-26. Bach incorporated the chorus into several other of his works; see Paul Corneilson, “Zur Entstehungs- und Aufführungsgeschichte von Carl Philipp Emanuel Bachs ‘Heilig’, ” Bach-Jahrbuch (2006): 273-89. The original ending is given as example 2 on p. 136 of CPEB:CW, V/6.1.

^{2 “}Hierin habe ich den meisten und kühnsten Fleiß bewiesen zu einer guten Ausnahme. Dies soll (vielleichte) in dieser Art das lezte seÿn, damit ich einstens nicht so bald vergeßen werde.” Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. Briefe und Dokumente. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, 2 vols., ed. Ernst Suchalla (Göttingen, 1994), 1:686-87 (hereafter CPEB-Briefe).

^{3 “}dieses Heilig ist ein Versuch, durch ganz natürliche und gewöhnliche harmonische Fortschreitungen eine weit stärke Aufmerksamkeit und Empfindung zu erregen, als man mit aller ängstlichen Chromatik nicht im Stande ist zu thun. Es soll mein Schwanen Lied, von dieser Art, seÿn, und dazu dienen, daß man meiner nach meinem Tode nicht zu bald vergeßen möge.” CPEB-Briefe, 1:694.

^{4 “}Die genaueste Correctur, mahl beÿ dem Heilig, wird nothing seÿ[n], damit ich nicht unschuldig leide.” CPEB-Briefe, 1:709-10.

⁵ Quoted in Annette Richards, The Temple of Fame and Friendship: Portraits, Music, and History in the C.P.E. Bach Circle (Chicago, 2022), 205-6.

⁶ Ramler published the three works in an edition titled Geistliche Kantaten, and Bach himself consistently referred to Die Auferstehung und Himmelfahrt Jesu as a cantata.

⁷“Diese Ramlersche Cantate ist zwar von mir, doch kann ich ohne närrische Eigenliebe behaupten, daß sie sich viele Jahre erhalten wird, weil sie von meinen Meisterstücken ein beträchtliches mit ist, woraus junge Componisten etwas lernen können. Mit der Zeit wird sie auch so vergriffen werden, wie Grauns Tod Jesu. Anfänglich haperts mit allen solchen Sachen, die zur Lehre u. nicht für Damen u. musikalische Windbeutel geschrieben sind. Mein Heilig u. meine Israeliten stocken jezt auch; mir ist aber nicht bange, endlich werden sie wieder vorgesucht.” CPEB-Briefe, 2:1227–30.

⁸ See Richard Kramer, “The New Modulation of the 1770s: C.P.E. Bach in Theory, Criticism, and Practice,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 38 (1985): 551-92.