¹ This little musical drama, whose plot is from Ovid’s Metapmorphoses, is cast in the familiar Classical conceit of a competition, in this case a musical contest between Phoebus Apollo (here in his association with the lyre, fine music, and poetry) and Pan (here representing rustic music making). Other characters include Momus (censor or critic), Midas (King of Phrygia), the mountain god Tmolus (said to have judged this contest), and Mercury (a patron of music).

² “Geschwinden” is sometimes a substitute for “schwinden,” with the sense of “diminish.” Given that these are the strong winds that belong back in the cave, it is possible that this sense is intended as well.

³ The reference here is to the cave on the island of Aeolia where the wind god Aeolus kept strong winds locked up.

⁴ A nymph, in love with Narcissus, who must repeat the last words she hears. According to the 2nd-century Greek writer Longus, Echo rejected the advances of the god Pan.

⁵ “Doch” (“yet”) in some places among the original sources.

⁶ “Zu tanzen” (“to dance”) in some places among the original sources.

⁷ That is, Pan’s instrument, the “pan flute,” made up of bundled pipes of progressively greater lengths, is designed to produce a scale of musical “steps” (in German, “Stufen”).

⁸ “Schlecht” is apparently used here in the older German sense of “schlicht” (“plain and simple,” “artless”).

⁹ In older German, “Ton” had many meanings, including “melody” or “tune.”

¹⁰ In the Hebrew Bible, mountains are often said to tremble, whether in fear or joy, before God; in Psalm 114:6-7, the Luther Bibles of Bach’s day read “Was war . . . ihr Berge, dass ihr hüpftet wie die Lämmer? . . . Für dem HERRN bebete die Erde” (“What was [it that alarmed you so], you mountains, that you leaped like lambs? . . . In the face of the LORD, the earth trembled”).

¹¹ The German word “Patron” has a variety of applicable senses here: “patron,” “sir,” “lord,” “master,” “protector,” “advocate,” “tutelary god.”

¹² With, of course, a pun on the “Winds” of the first movement. “Windmacherei” was a contemporary synonym for “Prahlerei” (“boasting,” bragging,” “showing off”).

¹³ German adage: “Prahlen ist kein Geld” (“showing off is not money”); possibly also Cicero, “iactantem esse in pecunia” (“mit seinem Geld prahlen” [“showing off about his money”]).

¹⁴ Possibly a reference to “Augen lügen nicht” (“eyes do not lie”)?

¹⁵ German adage: “Das Glück ist blind” (“fortune is blind”); Latin, “fortuna caeca est.”

¹⁶ The original sources variously provide a period or a comma at the end of this line, or give a punctuation mark that might be read as a comma or a period.

¹⁷ A young man beloved of Phoebus Apollo, who caused his death with a discus, either accidentally or by the intervention of one of the jealous wind gods.

¹⁸ Morning stars are planets like Venus—note that Amor, the Roman god of love, is the son of Venus—which rise before the sun does.

¹⁹ Usually it was God’s word, or Jesus, that was called “der Seelen Sonne” (“the sun of the soul”).

²⁰ Here probably with double meaning of “Kehle” as “throat” (Pan’s voice) and as “pipe” (Pan’s “flute”); “Luftröhre” (the “windpipe” within the throat, the instrument for singing and speaking) could be used as a synonym for “Kehle.”

²¹ “Wohlgestimmt” can mean “well-tuned” (i.e., producing pitches accurately) or “blessed with lovely voice” (i.e., producing sounds beautifully), or both.

²² In older German, “Falten” or “Faltungen” was sometimes used as a synonym for “Nuancen” (“nuances”).

²³ See fn. 9, above.

²⁴ Perhaps with a pun on the “gebundene Schreibart” (“strict/bound [contrapuntal] style [of music]”), especially given the likelihood that this would all have been heard as an allegory of high and low poetic/musical styles.

²⁵ The logic of “so schön als Phoebus Klang erschallt” (on the face of it: “as beautifully as Phoebus’s sound rings out”) is apparently to be read as “als Phoebus Klang so schön erschallt” (“when Phoebus’s sound rings out so beautifully”).

²⁶ “Melodei” (“melody”) is most probably the subject and “Anmut” (“charm”) the object; but grammatically, at least, “Anmut” could be the subject and “Melodei” the object.

²⁷ See fn. 9, above.

²⁸ Here “im Grünen” apparently means “im grünen Wald” (“in the green forest,” “in the greenwood,” i.e., in a forest that is in leaf).

²⁹ In older German, “lernen” (strictly speaking, “to learn”) was sometimes used colloquially in place of “lehren” (“to teach”). For example, in Exodus 4:15 some Luther Bibles have God saying to Moses, “Ich will euch lernen, was ihr tun sollt,” whereas the standard reading was “Ich will euch lehren, was ihr tun sollt” (“I will teach you [Moses and Aaron] what you shall do”).

³⁰ Midas will imitate Orpheus, who enchanted the trees and animals with his lyre-playing.

³¹ See also lines 1–2 of movement 14.

³² Crows and ravens were associated with Apollo.

³³ In contest, Apollo had demonstrated the adaptability of his instrument, the lyre, by turning it around and playing it backwards; when Marsyas, a satyr, was unable to do the same on his instrument, the aulos (a woodwind instrument of ancient Greece, formerly thought to be a kind of flute, but now known to have been a kind of oboe), he was flayed alive.

³⁴ “Fiel” (“fell”) here is apparently a clipped version of “befiel” (“befell”).

³⁵ Alluding, presumably, to the saying “Auf fremden Schultern ist leicht tragen” (“On another person’s shoulders is easy carrying”).

³⁶ In Bach’s day, the colloquial expression “Grütze im Kopfe haben” (literally, “to have groats/wheat in the head”) was applied to people deemed smart, whereas the expression “Spreu/Häckerling im Kopfe haben” (“to have chaff in the head”) was applied to people deemed stupid.

³⁷ Revisions in some of the original sources point to a (planned) reperformance with a slightly altered text in this movement. In the original performing part, the last four lines at first read as given above, but were later changed to: “Verdopple, Phoebus, nun / Musik und Lieder, / Tobt gleich Hortens[ig] und ein / Orbil darwider” (“Redouble, Phoebus, now [your] music and songs; even though immediately Hortensius and an Orbilius rants against them]”). In a 1749 handwritten libretto, the last three lines at first read as given above in the main text, but then were changed by Bach to “ . . . tobt gleich Hortensig und ein Orbil darwider,” and later this revision was changed further to “ . . . tobt gleich Borilig [revised in turn to “Birolig”] und ein Hortensig darwider” (“even though immediately Birolius and a Hortensius rants against them”); this second layer of revision was not carried over into Bach’s performing part, whose musical setting would have required changes to accommodate the new wording. Hortensius was a great orator, a contemporary of Cicero; and Orbilius [given here as “Birolius”], the grammarian, was a teacher of Horace.