Monthly Archives: June 2016

No cantata for Trinity 5 or 6

25 Saturday Jun 2016

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Bach wrote a small-scale special cantata for Johannis (St. John, the feast celebrating the birth of St. John the Baptist) and performed it on the feast day, Thursday June 24, 1723. Read about the beautiful cantata in my post about St. John.

The next week, on Friday July 2, 1723, he performed an elaborate, two-part cantata on the feast of Mariä Heimsuchung (feast celebrating Mary visiting Elizabeth, or Visitation).

No cantatas survive for Trinity 5 and Trinity 6, the two Sundays that fall within these two special holiday weeks in 1723, which would have been June 27 and July 4 that year, June 26 and July 3 this year (2016).

Perhaps both these cantatas got lost. It would be a strange coincidence, since only one other cantata from 1723 is missing: the one for Trinity 18, which was right around the feast day of St. Michael.

So we can wonder: did the cantata from Thursday June 24 get repeated on Sunday June 27? And did the same happen the next week: did the cantata from Friday July 2 get repeated on Sunday July 4?

Or, did Bach get dispensation from the Council for the two Sundays since he needed time to rehearse the elaborate cantata for the feast of the Visitation on July 2 with choir and orchestra?

If you don’t want to miss an episode of this 1723 Trinity season series, please consider signing up  to receive an email every time I’ve posted a new story.

Please feel free to share this on Facebook, or forward to anyone you think might enjoy coming along for this ride. Thank you!

Wieneke Gorter, June 23, 2016

 

June 24 = Feast of St. John

23 Thursday Jun 2016

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Pontormo,_natività_del_battista

Birth of St. John the Baptist, Zechariah writing “His name is John,” by Jacopo Pontormo, c. 1526. Uffizi, Florence, Italy.

In Bach’s time, June 24 was an important feast day, celebrating the birth of John the Baptist. In the Lutheran faith, it is believed that John the Baptist paved the way for Jesus to come into the world, and his birthday was thus dated exactly six months before Jesus’ birthday. Many paintings from the 16th century onward show Mary with a baby Jesus in her lap, while John the Baptist, or St. John, usually depicted as an already standing infant, is looking on or playing with Jesus.

It means that on this day, June 24, 1723, the Leipzig congregation got to hear a new cantata already on Thursday: cantata 167, Ihr Menschen, rühmet Gottes Liebe.

My favorite recording of this cantata is the one by Montreal Baroque, with terrific singing especially by tenor Charles Daniels and soprano Suzie Leblanc.

Listen to this recording on YouTube or on Spotify.

Find the text here, and the score here.

A little more than a week later, on July 2, the church would celebrate the feast of the Visitation (Mary visiting her relative Elizabeth), strongly related to St. John. (Another wonderful cantata for that coming up next week!)

So let’s imagine two consecutive weeks of festival buzz in Leipzig, since both these holidays were important. Thanks to Gardiner’s research, we know that during trade fairs, the Leipzig population would grow to 30,000, and that Bach would often have extra students and colleagues visiting. The feasts of St. John and the Visitation did not fall during a trade fair, but we can assume that there were nonetheless a few hundred, or maybe even a few thousand visitors in Leipzig  for these holidays.

And it really looks and sounds to me as if Bach is showing off to his fellow musicians in the writing of this St. John cantata from 1723. While it is a small-scale and intimately scored work, it showcases impressive composition talent and skills: a lovely tenor aria with wonderful melismas on the word “preiset” (praise), brilliant meter changes in the already striking soprano-alto duet, a bass recitative which gives the listeners a “sneak peek” at the melody of the closing chorale, and a terrific setting of the closing chorale.

The Gospel reading for this day is the declamation by Zechariah from Luke 1: 57-80. Zechariah, the father of St. John the Baptist, has been made mute by Gabriel because he didn’t believe Gabriel’s announcement that he and his wife Elisabeth would have a son. At the time of his son’s birth, Zechariah carves a sign to tell the community “His name is John,” and as soon as he has done this, he regains his voice, and praises God. The unknown librettist of this cantata reworks this song of praise (also known as the Benedictus) into the text for the tenor aria as well as the alto recitative in this aria, sometimes quoting directly from the Gospel.

This past Sunday, in cantata 24, Bach decided to let a recitative blossom out into an arioso at the end, probably to emphasize the text. It was not a new thing, as he had actually often written recitatives this way in Weimar and Köthen. But it created a wonderful effect in cantat 24, and he must have liked it himself, because he uses the same “trick” in this cantata, at the end of the alto recitative as well as at the end of the bass recitative.

The exquisite soprano-alto duet, which at times sounds more like a motet than an aria, moves into a 4/4 canon on the text “was er in dem Paradies,” and then–still within that middle-part–moves smoothly back into 3/4, so when music and text goes back to the beginning, as if it were a standard “da capo” aria, the meter has already been back to 3/4 for a while.

In the bass recitative the Weimar/Köthen characteristic feature of letting a recitative blossom out into an arioso Bach already played with in cantata 24 gets even better: The call to action to see Zachary as an example and now also praise God is illustrated by musically quoting the closing chorale on the words “und stimmet ihn ein Loblied an” (and sing praise unto him). It is a witty joke, which, just like the clever move with the meter in the duet, only fellow musicians would have fully appreciated. But that is just my own humble opinion …

The impressive features of this cantata are more obvious in the closing chorale. As Gardiner points out, and as those who remember cantata 75 might have already heard: Bach wrote the closing chorale of this cantata 167 in the same way he wrote the closing chorales for cantatas 22 (the cantata which he performed as part of his audition in Leipzig in February 1723) and 75 (his debut piece on Trinity 1). While the chorus sings a “standard” chorale setting, the orchestra parts, moving to a walking bass, are completely separate, and form another piece of music around the chorale, just like a beautifully ornamented Baroque frame around an already great painting. In this case the frame is a golden one, because of the extra luster the trumpet part brings to the music.

Wieneke Gorter, June 23, 2016

 

Trinity 4: Two cantatas make one

18 Saturday Jun 2016

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Brueghel_the_Blind

Pieter Brueghel the Elder: The Parable of the Blind Leading the Blind, 1568

Previously on Weekly Cantata: For his first three Sundays in Leipzig, Bach presented ambitious, two-part cantatas, the first part before the sermon, the second part after.  On this Trinity 4, June 20 1723, the congregation and the musicians in Leipzig may still have had the trumpets and timpani from the impressive closing chorus of last week’s Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis going through their heads.

Up until now, it seems to all have been part of a plan: Bach probably wrote his cantatas for Trinity 1 (cantata 75) and Trinity 2 (cantata 76) while still living in Köthen, and most likely had also been planning all along to perform cantata 21 on Trinity 3. *

But now what to do for Trinity 4? In his stack of Weimar cantata manuscripts there was a nice one, very closely referring to the Gospel for the day (Luke 6: 36-42), but it was too short, and not very impressively scored.

So, it was time to write a new cantata that could function as Part I, the part before the sermon, and then present the one from Weimar after the sermon, as part II. This newly composed piece became cantata 24 Ein ungefärbt Gemüte. Only four weeks into his new post at Leipzig,  and possibly up to his ears in getting things organized at the St. Thomas School, Bach had not had the time (or the social intelligence, we don’t know) to find a librettist, so for this cantata he used a pre-existing text by Erdmann Neumeister, a Leipzig-trained theologian, who was preaching at the St. Jacob church in Hamburg from 1715 to 1756. Bach may very well have met him there, since this was the same church where he applied for the post of cantor and organist in 1720. Neumeister’s many volumes of cantata texts were published in the early 1700s, and through the excellent library at the castle in Weimar Bach might have had access to these too, as he already used a Neumeister text for his Weimar Advent cantata 61 from 1714.

The recording of cantata 24 Ein ungefärbt Gemüte I like the best is Bach Collegium Japan’s recording, with beautiful singing by countertenor Robin Blaze and tenor Gerd Türk in the arias. Listen to this cantata on Spotify, or purchase the album on Amazon. Read the German texts with English translations here.

Though on a much smaller scale than cantata 75 from three weeks ago, this cantata 24 again displays a wonderful symmetry: Bach emphasizes that the main message “Everything that you want other people to do to you, you should do yourself for them” is at the center of the cantata text. He sets that part of the text to an intricate choral piece with the fullest instrumentation of the entire cantata, including trumpet, and scores the arias and recitatives around this main message much more soberly. In the two recitatives, Bach accentuates the words at the end of each by letting the music blossom out into an arioso in those spots. This happens on this text in the tenor recitative:

Mach aus dir selbst ein solches Bild (Make yourself such an image)
Wie du den Nächsten haben willt! (As you want your neighbour to have)

and in the bass recitative on these words:

So geht es dort, so geht es hier. (These things go on here, there and everywhere.)
Der liebe Gott behüte mich dafür! (That the dear God preserve me from this!)

Then comes Part Two, cantata 185 Barmherziges Herze der ewigen Liebe, written in Weimar in 1715. For this 1723 Leipzig re-creation of it, Bach transposed it from F sharp minor to G minor, since the tuning in Weimar was different than in Leipzig, and had a trumpet play the chorale tune in the opening duet, instead of an oboe.

Of all the recordings I listened to, only Gardiner brings to life the opening duet of this Leipzig version of cantata 185, with a trumpet playing instead of an oboe. Listen to a recording of that first movement by Gardiner, with soprano Magdalena Kozena and tenor Paul Agnew, on YouTube. However, for the wonderful alto rectitative and aria that come next, as well as the bass recitative and aria, I feel the need to switch to Koopman’s recording, with countertenor Kai Wessel and bass Klaus Mertens. Listen to this recording on YouTube, starting with the alto recitative (when you click on this link, it starts at 4m1s into the cantata).

I am too much of a countertenor lover to pass up this heavenly singing by Kai Wessel for Nathalie Stutzmann on the Gardiner recording, but I realize others might prefer it the other way around. I’m also not completely convinced by Gardiner’s argument that Bach is imitating an irritating Weimar preacher in the bass recitative and aria, so while Gardiner’s bass soloist Nicolas Testé very skillfully portrays this interpretation, it is a bit overdone to my taste.

So why not listen to the entire Koopman recording of this cantata?  Well, there’s the strange opening duet: Koopman makes the surprising choice to have the choir sopranos sing the chorale melody with text instead of having an oboe (per the Weimar version) or a trumpet (per the Leipzig version) play that part. This decision is not explained in their liner notes. And while I like soprano Barbara Schlick’s and tenor Guy de Mey’s individual voices, I feel that Schlick’s voice outbalances De Mey’s on this recording.

One wonders: was the new job as teacher at the St. Thomas School and director of the choir a bit overwhelming for Bach, or was he by this time already getting frustrated with the lack of skill and talent among the choir boys? A few years later, he would complain to the council that there weren’t enough strong voices, and that he needed the good instrumentalists among them to fill the many vacant seats in the orchestra, and could thus not use them in the choir. It is interesting to see how, after the many challenging choral pieces in cantata 21 last week, there is only one polyphonic chorus part in the  combined cantatas for today, and only an embellished chorale in the cantata for the feast of St. John the Baptist Bach was preparing for June 24.

Wieneke Gorter, June 18, 2016

*Please note: the numbers we use now for these cantatas are a product of the 19th and 20th century. Bach never gave his compositions numbers, and he must have referred to the cantatas by title only.

Trinity 3: from Weimar, with love

12 Sunday Jun 2016

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Roman de la Rose, Netherlands (Bruges), c. 1490-c. 1500

Only three episodes into this special 1723 Leipzig Trinity season series,  I’m already taking a detour to Weimar. It’s Bach’s fault, because, after the two newly written cantatas he presented on May 30 and June 6, 1723, he “recycled” his Weimar cantata for this third Sunday after Trinity: cantata 21 Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis, written in 1714, or possibly in 1713.

We dont’ know for sure why Bach chose to use an “old” composition this early in his first season (though probably nobody except his own family knew it was not new), but  I think that he couldn’t wait to impress the Leipzig Council and congregation with a composition that was one of his all-time favorites. He had written and performed it at least twice in Weimar, then presented it in Hamburg or Köthen in 1720* and would perform it many more times in Leipzig on future third Sundays after Trinity. Another reason I believe  it was Bach’s plan all along to present this cantata 21 on Trinity 3 in Leipzig: it seems to me that when writing the masterful fugue in the opening chorus of cantata 76, Bach must have had the fugue in no. 6 of cantata 21 on his mind.

Whether it was thanks to the multiple performances during Bach’s lifetime, or to Mattheson mentioning it (however unfavorably!) in his writings, cantata 21 was known among Bach’s colleagues and students throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, and is still one of the most well-known and most frequently performed cantatas today.

Instead of talking about the music, I would like to shine some light on the history of this cantata, and show you that it was not a stand-alone masterpiece that Bach created out of nothing. Most of the findings here below are from  books by Alfred Dürr and Christoph Wolff.

There are parts of this cantata that fit extremely well within the style of the 1714 Weimar cantatas. To hear cantata 21 in this context, if you have time, before you listen to the sinfonia (no. 1) of cantata 21, I invite you to first listen to the sinfonia of cantata 12. They are remarkably similar. Next, just for the fun of it, you might want to listen to the “love” duet from Weimar Pentecost cantata 172 (beautifully sung by soprano Dorothee Mields and countertenor Alex Potter during a streamed concert from 2021)

 Soprano (Soul)

Komm, laß mich nicht länger warten,
Come , let me wait no longer,
Komm, du sanfter Himmelswind,
come, you gentle wind of heaven,
Wehe durch den Herzensgarten!
blow through the garden of my heart

  Alto (Holy Spirit)

Ich erquicke dich, mein Kind.
I refresh you, my child

Liebste Liebe, die so süße,
Dearest love, who are so delightful,
Aller Wollust Überfluß,
abundance of all joys,
Ich vergeh, wenn ich dich misse.
I shall die, if I have to be without you

Nimm von mir den Gnadenkuß.
Take from me the kiss of grace.

Sei im Glauben mir willkommen,
Welcome in faith to me,
Höchste Liebe, komm herein!
Highest love, come within!
Du hast mir das Herz genommen.
You have taken my heart from me

Ich bin dein, und du bist mein!
I am yours, and you are mine!
and compare it to the “love” duet from cantata 21:

Soprano (Soul):

Komm, mein Jesu, und erquicke,

Bass (Jesus):

Ja, ich komme und erquicke

Come, my Jesus, and restore

Yes, I come and restore

Und erfreu mit deinem Blicke.

Dich mit meinem Gnadenblicker,

and rejoice with your look

you with my look of grace

Diese Seele,

Deine Seele,

This soul

Your soul

 Die soll sterben,

 Die soll leben,

that must die

that must live

Und nicht leben

 Und nicht sterben

and not live

and not die

 Und in ihrer Unglückshöhle

Hier aus dieser wunden Höhle

and in its den of misfortune

here from this den of wounds

Ganz verderben.

Sollst du erben

wholly perish.

 you shall be given

 Ich muß stets in Kummer schweben,

Heil! durch diesen Saft der Reben,

I must always be suspended in misery

Salvation! throught this juice of the grape

Ja, ach ja, ich bin verloren!

Nein, ach nein, du bist erkoren!

Yes, oh, yes, I am lost

No,oh, no, you are chosen

 Nein, ach nein, du hassest mich!

Ja, ach ja, ich liebe dich!

No, ah, no, you hate me!

Yes, oh, yes,I love you!

 Ach, Jesu, durchsüße mir Seele und Herze,

Entweichet, ihr Sorgen, verschwinde, du Schmerze!

Jesus, sweeten my soul and heart.

Give way, worries, vanish, pain!

Komm, mein Jesus, und erquicke

Ja, ich komme und erquicke

Come, Jesus, and restore

Yes, I come and restore

Mit deinem Gnadenblicke!

Dich mit meinem Gnadenblicke

 with your look of grace

 you with my look of grace.

Of course none of these are officially  meant to speak of earthly love. But still, both these duets are extremely cute, musically completely similar to opera love duets from that time, and their texts could at least partly be interpreted as such love duets, so I can imagine the Weimar poet and the young Bach must have enjoyed writing these.

To really appreciate “the making of” the opening chorus (no. 2) of cantata 21, it’s worth listening to a magnificent Vivialdi violin concerto and one of Bach’s lesser known organ prelude and fugues, to hear where Bach found the theme for the Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis fugue:

In the spring of 1713, the half-brother of Bach’s employer in Weimar, prince Johann Ernst, “a great lover of music and an incomparable violinist” (according to a testimony by Philipp David Kräuter, a student of Bach in Weimar) went on a study trip, and spent a long time in the Netherlands. Upon his return, he had brought “much fine Italian and French” music with him. One of the pieces was Vivaldi’s Concerto in D minor Opus 3, no. 11  for two violins from Book II of L’Estro armonico (RV 565), published in Amsterdam in 1711.

Listen to this Vivaldi concerto in the award-winning interpretation by the fabulous Rachel Podger with Brecon Baroque on Spotify, or on YouTube

Maybe Bach, an accomplished violinist himself, and the prince played this together after the prince returned in July 1713. Bach rewrote this Vivaldi concerto into an organ concerto (BWV 596), but also used the theme in his organ prelude and fugue in B minor, BWV 544,  written in Weimar as well.  It is in this piece in particular that I can hear the relation with cantata 21 Dürr wants to point out in his book.

About recordings of cantata 21: While Bach Collegium Japan deserves a medal for  taking the trouble to research all the different versions and record the ones from 1720 and 1714 on their volume 6 , and the true 1723 Leipzig version (with trombones added in no. 9 and solo/tutti distinctions in the choruses) on their volume 12, I still like Herreweghe’s recording of this cantata the best, mainly because of the strong, crisp choruses and the music always having long lines and strong sense of direction. Listen to Herreweghe’s interpretation of  this cantata on Spotify or on YouTube.

Update from 2021: find an absolutely stunning performance of the 1720 version (with only soprano and bass soloists) on the YouTube channel of the J.S. Bach Foundation here.

Read the German text with English translations of cantata 21 here, and find the score here.

If you don’t want to miss an episode of this 1723 Trinity season series, please consider signing up to receive an email every time I’ve posted a new story.

Please feel free to share this on Facebook, or forward to anyone you think might enjoy coming along for this ride. Thank you!

Wieneke Gorter, June 12, 2016. Updated June 19, 2021.

*Bach visited Hamburg in November 1720, to apply for an organist and cantor post there. It turned out, however, that the post needed to be “bought” and the job went to a lesser talented but wealthy candidate. Most scholars are confident there was a performance of this cantata in 1720 in either Köthen or Hamburg, based on the surviving manuscripts of the parts. Because it was the Hamburg-based writer Mattheson who criticized the cantata in a letter  in 1725, it is probable that the performance took place in Hamburg during Bach’s visit there.

According to Bach Collegium Japan’s leader Masaaki Suzuki, the 1720 performance featured only a soprano and a bass, with the soprano also singing all the arias and recitatives we know nowadays as written for tenor.

Season 1, episode 2

04 Saturday Jun 2016

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Brunswick_Monogrammist_Great_Banquet

The Parable of the Great Supper / the Great Banquet, by anonymous Dutch painter “the Braunschweig (Brunswick) Monogrammist,” ca. 1525

Trinity season in the Lutheran Church year means no feast days until Christmas, no stories about Jesus’ life in the Gospel texts, and no Vox Christi bass recitatives. To still keep this blog exciting for myself and you loyal readers, I decided to make it into a true weekly series, and will be following all of Bach’s 1723 Leipzig cantatas until Advent, without taking any detours to his Weimar cantatas or later Leipzig cantatas.

A few things that make it irresistible for me to try this: Bach started working  in Leipzig  on the first Sunday after Trinity in 1723 (see last week’s blog post); the dates of the Lutheran Church year in 2016 are practically the same as in 1723 – off by only one day; and I believe that by following this 1723 sequence, we can better imagine how it must have been for the Leipzig audiences (congregation) to hear one cantata after the other, and perhaps get a little insight in how it must have been for Bach himself to write one after the other.

So, here we go with season 1, episode 2:

Previously on Weekly Cantata: Bach arrived in Leipzig on Saturday May 22, 1723,, and made his debut with cantata 75 Die Elenden sollen essen in the Nicolaikirche (St. Nicholas Church) on Sunday May 30, the first Sunday after Trinity.

The second Sunday after Trinity in 1723 marked Bach’s debut in the Thomaskirche (St. Thomas Church). On Sunday June 6, he performed cantata 76 Die Himmel erzählen die Ehre Gottes there, and this one is even more impressive than 75, and includes a festive opening chorus which makes me think of Bach’s later Ascension Oratorio.

There are many similarities between cantata 75 and 76, the most obvious one being that they share the ambitious length of 14 movements in total, divided over two parts. From a superficial point of view, both cantatas start with a psalm text in the opening chorus, have challenging soprano arias, feature bass arias with trumpet, and -never seen again in later cantatas- an instrumental sinfonia at the start of the second part (after the sermon). However there are more (hidden) similarities and cross-references between the two, so that one could almost think about these two first cantatas of the 1723/1724 cycle as a diptych.

I appreciate Gardiner’s interpretation of cantata 76 the most of all recordings I listened to. And the universe will have it that this one was recorded in the Basilique de Saint-Denis (directly north of Paris), which was my subway stop for four fabulous music-filled months in 1994. In his journal from 2000, Gardiner writes that they were very concerned about the enormous size of this Gothic cathedral, and feared that a large audience (needed to balance out the acoustics) wouldn’t show up because it was the night of the France-Italy final in the Euro soccer competition. But everything turned out fine: there were more than 1200 people in the audience, and France won.

Listen to Gardiner’s recording of cantata 76 Die Himmel erzählen die Ehre Gottes on Spotify  or on YouTube, or buy this recording on Amazon.

Cantata 76 starts with a text about heaven: the first and third verse of Psalm 19, Die Himmel erzählen die Ehre Gottes. To illustrate this, the heavenly trumpet (in cantata 75 not introduced until the start of the second half) is heard right away. The fugue on the text “Es ist keine Sprache noch Rede, da man nicht ihre Stimme höre” is fantastic, Bach at his best in my opinion.

After this, the text of the cantata refers to the Gospel reading of the day: the parable of the Great Supper from Luke 14: 16-24 about a man who has invited many guests to a Dinner/Supper/Banquet, receives one cancellation after the other, after which he decides to invite all the beggars and cripples his servant can find, and serves them the dinner instead, not leaving one place open for any of the previously invited guests. All this combined with the “Brotherly love” theme from the Epistle reading of the day: 1 John 3: 13-18.

Another example, though through a completely opposite story as the one from cantata 75, of why it is good to share food and love with others.

Besides the incredible opening chorus, the highlights of this cantata for me are: the soprano aria with violin/cello accompaniment (no. 3), the bass aria with trumpet (no. 5), the incredible sinfonia for oboe d’amore and viola da gamba at the start of the second half (no. 8),  the dramatic, operatic tenor aria (no. 10, fabulously performed by James Gilchrist, including the “shake” Bach wrote on the word “Hasse”), and the alto recitative with viola da gamba (no. 11).

For those who have extra time: listen to the violin/cello duet in the soprano aria accompaniment in an unrivaled (as far as I am concerned) interpretation by Alice and Nikolaus Harnoncourt on their recording from 1976 (scroll to 06:11)

e1712a1a564449d6c9c7a2aad5045250

Nikolaus & Alice Harnoncourt, 1951, before they were married, on tour with the Vienna Chamber Orchestra

Read the German text with English translations of this cantata here, and find the score here.

If you don’t want to miss an episode of this 1723 Trinity season series, please consider signing up  to receive an email every time I’ve posted a new story.

Please feel free to share this on Facebook, or forward to anyone you think might enjoy coming along for this ride. Thank you!

Wieneke Gorter, June 4, 2016, links updated June 12, 2021.