Bach, Johann Sebastian
Franck Salomon, baptized 6 March 1659 in Weimar, †11 June 1725 in Weimar, German poet. He studied law and theology at the University of Jena. From 1694, he wrote poetry for the ducal court in Weimar, where he was employed in 1701 as a consistorial secretary and administrator of the court library. He belonged to a circle of poets called the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft, where he bore the nickname ‘Der Treumeinende’ (‘the right-minded).
Franck was a typical representative of German poetry at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries; he wrote mainly religious poems, as well as occasional poetry related to the celebrations at the court of Wilhelm Ernst von Sachsen-Weimar and his successor Ernst August. Many of Franck’s works were probably set to music by court kapellmeisters: Johann Samuel Drese and his son Johann Wilhelm; his texts were also used by G.Ph. Telemann, J.B.Ch. Freislich, J.Ch. Bodinus, and, among later composers, M. Reger. Many of Franck’s songs were included in the hymnals of the Evangelical Church and remain in the repertoire to this day.
Franck went down in music history as the most talented and original writer of texts for J.S. Bach’s cantatas, composed mainly during the composer’s stay in Weimar (1714–16). Franck’s collection of cantatas for the 1715 church year, Evangelisches Andachts-Opffer, written especially for services held in the castle chapel in Weimar, proved particularly inspiring for Bach’s work: BWV 12, 31, 72, 80 (Ein feste Burg), 80a, 132, 152, 155, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 168, 185. From Evangelische Sonn- und Fest-Tages-Andachten come the texts of the cantatas BWV 70, 70a, 147, 147a, 186, and 186a, while the second part of Geist- und weltliche Poesien supplied the text for the so-called Hunting Cantata, BWV 208. Based on the characteristics of the poetic style, Franck is also very likely to be the author of the religious cantatas BWV 21, 172, 182, and, controversially, the secular cantata BWV 202 (in the list of J. S. Bach’s compositions in vol. 1 of EM PWM, Franck is also incorrectly listed as the librettist of cantatas BWV 52 and 180, whose author is unknown). Franck’s cantata works can be divided into: 1. the old cantata type, with a strophic structure and a preference for biblical texts, 2. the so-called transitional type, usually beginning with a choral part, containing several successive arias of varying meter, devoid of free recitatives, in which words from the Bible appear less frequently (e.g., BWV 12), 3. a type modeled on E. Neumeister’s cantatas, based on the interweaving of arias and recitatives, without biblical text (e.g., BWV 161). Paraphrasing themes taken from the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Old Testament, Franck imbued his poetry with an element of subjectivity and emotionalism foreign to Pietist works; an example of this is Komm, du süsse Todesstunde (BWV 161), a piece imbued with an ardent longing for death.
Literature: L. Hoffmann-Erbrecht Bachs Weimarer Textdichter Salomon Franck and A. Bach Salomon Franck als Verfasser geistlicher Dichtungen, in: Johann Sebastian Bach in Thüringen, eds. H. Besseler and G. Kraft, Weimar 1950; I.F. Finlay Bach’s Secular Cantata Texts, “Music & Letters” XXXI no. 3 (1950), pp. 189–195; L. Tagliavini Studi sui testi delle cántate sacre di Johann Sebastian Bach, Padua 1956; F. Zander Die Dichter der Kantatentexte Johann Sebastian Bachs, “Bach-Jahrbuch” LIV, 1968; A. Dürr Die Kantaten von Johann Sebastian Bach, 2 vols., Kassel 1971; M. Maul „Alles mit Gott und nichts ohn’ ihn – Eine neu aufgefundene Aria von Johann Sebastian Bach, “Bach – Jahrbuch” XCI (2005); D. Hakelberg Salomon Franck und der „Treumeinende“, “Wolfenbütteler Barock-Nachrichten” XXXIV (2007), pp. 153-158, e-book www.freidok.uni-freiburg.de; A. Dürr, S.J. Herold entry Franck, Salomon in MGG Online 2018.