Weekly Cantata

~ Memories, musings, and movie script fantasies inspired by Bach cantatas, along with recommendations for recordings

Weekly Cantata

Monthly Archives: October 2016

1723 Trinity Special Series: the Final Weeks!

30 Sunday Oct 2016

Posted by cantatasonmymind in 1723 Trinity season special series, Cantatas, Leipzig, Trinity

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95thesen_facsimile_colour

Luther’s Theses, marking the start of the Reformation on October 31 in 1517.

Fear not: I am by no means announcing the end of this blog and am very much looking forward to sharing Bach’s beautiful Advent and Christmas cantatas with you starting on Sunday November 27.

This is just a heads-up about the impending end of my Trinity 1723 Special Series. Bach made his 1723 Trinity Season go out with a bang, and I plan to do the same! Spectacular (and somewhat crazy) cantatas are coming up in the next three weeks, but there’s no cantata from 1723 for today, so this is your chance to catch up on the previous episodes of this special series, which started on Sunday May 29 of this year with this post.  If you don’t have time to read all the episodes, I recommend these two highlights: cantata 147 for the Feast of the Visitation, and cantata 105 for Trinity 9.

Why is there no cantata for today from 1723? It was October 31, also known as Reformation Day, the day on which the Lutheran Church celebrates Martin Luther publishing his 95 Theses against the Catholic Church in 1517. It wasn’t until 1725 that Bach wrote a cantata for that particular day.

Wieneke Gorter, Sunday October 30, 2016.

A pretty soprano aria for Trinity 22

23 Sunday Oct 2016

Posted by cantatasonmymind in 1723 Trinity season special series, Cantatas, Leipzig, Trinity

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Bach, Leipzig, Nuria Rial

parable_of_the_unfaithful_servant

Parable of the Unmerciful Servant by an unknown master from Northern Germany, ca. 1560. Gemäldegalerie, Berlin.

For this 22nd Sunday after Trinity, October 24 in 1723, Bach wrote cantata 89 Was soll ich aus dir machen, Ephraim?

Apart from providing you with the title of the cantata, the stunning painting, and a pretty YouTube video, you’re on your own this week for reading and listening more about this, as I’ve been busy producing these two fabulous concerts.

To find an overview of the recordings, links to the text & translations, and links to the score of this cantata, please visit this page of the “Bach Cantata Bible” by Aryeh Oron.

For a very beautiful interpretation of the soprano aria (fifth movement) from this cantata, please watch this video of the Bach Stiftung, with soprano Nuria Rial, in Trogen, Switzerland. I first heard the fabulous Nuria Rial sing on the German radio in December 2010 and have been a fan since. Watch her sing Cavalli arias at the Utrecht Early Music Festival in the summer of 2016.  I’ll talk about her again on the first Sunday of Advent, in about a month 🙂

Wieneke Gorter, October 23, 2016

Tenor drama

16 Sunday Oct 2016

Posted by cantatasonmymind in 1723 Trinity season special series, Cantatas, Leipzig, Trinity

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Bach, Damien Guillon, Dorothee Mields, John Eliot Gardiner, La Petite Bande, Leipzig, Paul Agnew, Peter Kooy, Phlippe Herreweghe, St. John Passion, Thomas Hobbs

bwv109_tenormanuscript

Excerpt from the start of the tenor recitative from cantata 109, with “piano” and “forte” marked. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preußischer Kulturbesitz

For this 21st Sunday after Trinity, Bach wrote cantata 109 Ich glaube, lieber Herr, hilf meinem Unglauben! in 1723.

For overall best performance, I recommend Herreweghe’s recording from 2013, with counter-tenor Damien Guillon and tenor Thomas Hobbs.

Listen to this recording on YouTube. To support the artists, please consider purchasing the entire album on Amazon — a good deal if you like this blog, as it also includes three cantatas I discussed here earlier this year: cantata 44, cantata 73, and cantata 48.

Read the German texts with English translations here, and find the score here.

I love Herreweghe’s interpretation of  the opening and closing chorus as well as Damien Guillon’s singing in the alto recitative and aria.

However, there is an extremely dramatic and unusual recitative and aria for tenor in this cantata which I like better on the Gardiner recording. The recitative is unusual because Bach has two voices/persons speak: the uncertain/fearful voice, marked “piano” in his manuscript (see picture above), and the certain/faithful voice, marked “forte” in the manuscript. According to Gardiner, this feature never appears anywhere else in Bach’s recitative writing.

Just as with the “Storm on the lake” aria from cantata 81, only Gardiner and the fabulous Paul Agnew are able to properly convey the drama of the text and context of this tenor recitative and aria. If at first you think this might be a bit over the top, it is most probably exactly what Bach had in mind. A bit of opera to properly bring out the agony of the text.

Listen to these two movements by Gardiner and Agnew on YouTube: the recitative here, and the aria here.

Bach might have been preparing the Leipzig congregations for the St. John Passion he was planning for Good Friday 1724, as this tenor aria is very similar in dramatic intensity and music to the Ach mein Sinn aria from that passion. Those who know the St. John Passion well might hear other resemblances in this cantata 109.

 

Wieneke Gorter, October 16, 2016

A Weimar cantata for Trinity 20

09 Sunday Oct 2016

Posted by cantatasonmymind in 1723 Trinity season special series, Cantatas, Leipzig, Trinity

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Bach, Bach Collegium Japan, Leipzig, Peter Kooy, St. Matthew Passion

Vornehme Hochzeitsgesellschaft

Vornehme Hochzeitsgesellschaft (Distinguished Wedding party) by Wolfgang Heimbach, 1637. Kunsthalle Bremen, Germany.

I’m in the middle of St. Matthew Passion concert weekend now with California Bach Society. If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area, please come to Hertz Hall in Berkeley today, Sunday October 9, at 3:30, you will be glad you did. We have excellent vocal and instrumental soloists, the Baroque orchestra and 40-voice choir sound wonderful, and the exquisite treatment of the chorales by our director Paul Flight is not to be missed. As a cherry on the cake, we have a children’s choir joining us for the opening and closing choruses of the first half. To read more about the connection between this blog and the Great Passion, please see my post from last week.

This week, while doing dishes, packing dinners, promoting our concerts on Facebook, and making spreadsheets for the youth choir logistics, I listened to several recordings of the 1723 cantata for this Sunday: cantata 162 Ach! ich sehe, itzt, da ich zur Hochzeit gehe, and can safely say I recommend Bach Collegium Japan’s recording of this cantata. It has the most sensitive playing in the instrumental opening and the best interpretation of the bass aria and the soprano aria in my opinion.

Listen to the recording of cantata 162 by Bach Collegium Japan on Spotify. Soloists: Soprano: Yumiko Kurisu, Counter-tenor: Yoshikazu Mera, Tenor: Makoto Sakurada, Bass: Peter Kooy.

Read the text here, and find the score here.

Bach wrote this cantata in Weimar, and performed it there on October 25, 1716. For the performance in Leipzig on October 10, 1723, he added a corno da tirarsi to the instrumentation (the Bach Collegium Japan recording is based on the Weimar version, and thus doesn’t feature the corno da tirarsi).

A very short explanation of the cantata, thanks to Eduard van Hengel: Cantata 162 is based on the Gospel text for this Sunday: Jesus compares the heavenly kingdom with the wedding of a King’s son. Many guests decline the invitation, and several of those who do come are sent away because they are not properly dressed. Since the relationship between Jesus and the soul of the believer is compared to the bond between groom and bride, the believers will be at first concerned that they will not be allowed to join the wedding (cantata movements 1-3), but can then rejoice in their conviction that Jesus, through his suffering, will provide the proper dress for them (cantata movements 4-6).

To read more in Dutch, please go to Eduard van Hengel’s website; to read more in English, find Gardiner’s notes about this cantata here.

Wieneke Gorter, October 9, 2016

The Opening Chorus’ Silver Lining

01 Saturday Oct 2016

Posted by cantatasonmymind in 1723 Trinity season special series, Cantatas, Leipzig, Trinity

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19th Sunday after Trinity, Bach, BWV 48, Collegium Vocale Gent, Damien Guillon, Leipzig, Philippe Herreweghe, Thomas Hobbs, Trinity 19, tromba da tirarsi, trumpet

genezing_lamme_masolino

Healing of the Cripple (on left) and Raising of Tabitha (on right) by Masolino da Panicale, 1424-25. Fresco in the Brancacci Chapel, Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence, Italy.

My head has been in the St. Matthew Passion. For a few weeks already. Yes, that is pretty strange for me, having grown up in a house where Bach’s music was played often, but only on the Sundays and holidays for which it was written (read more about that in this blog post). However, it can happen when one sings in a Bach Choir in the United States. While in The Netherlands all 180 (!) St. Matthew Passion concerts happen in the weeks before Easter, here in the USA the piece is presented much less often, and the only classical music performances with a strong seasonal tie are those of Handel’s Messiah in the weeks before Christmas.

But working on the St. Matthew Passion and this Weekly Cantata blog at the same time has been a blessing, as the two areas of study influence each other. Nine months of research for this blog have inspired me to read more about the St. Matthew Passion and study the music in more detail. In that process I have learned many new things about the piece I thought I already knew so well. And experiencing the composition Bach’s sons referred to as their father’s Great Passion on a deeper level has, I believe, improved my understanding of Bach’s cantata writing.

Let’s just look at the opening chorus of this week’s cantata 48 Ich elender Mensch, written for the 19th Sunday after Trinity (October 3 in 1723).

I listened to Bach Collegium Japan (with Robin Blaze and Gerd Türk), Koopman (with Bernhard Landauer and Christoph Prégardien), Gardiner (with William Towers and James Gilchrist), Harnoncourt (with Paul Esswood and Kurt Equiluz), and Herreweghe (with Damien Guillon and Thomas Hobbs), and find Herreweghe’s interpretation the most moving. Herreweghe is also the only one who uses a tromba da tirarsi in the opening chorus, and I  love that sound. Listen to Herreweghe’s recording on YouTube or on Spotify. Please consider supporting the artists by purchasing the recording on Amazon: click here for USA, here for UK, here for Germany, or here for France.

Please find the German text with English translation here and the score here.

The main music is hauntingly beautiful (It’s not just the Herreweghe sopranos that give me goose bumps this time – the altos and tenors move me to tears, and none of this could happen without the basses providing that wonderful foundation for everyone to build on) but extremely downcast. It is clearly full of Elend (misery), in reference to the Gospel text of the day.* The same holds for the main music and words of the opening chorus of the St. Matthew Passion. It is clearly full of klagen (lamenting), and paints the picture of the Via Crucis, Jesus on his way to the cross.

However, in the midst of all the misery, a J.S. Bach opening chorus almost always provides a preview of the salvation that is to come later in the piece, or that is implied in the Gospel. In the opening chorus of the St. Matthew Passion he does this by superimposing the German Agnus Dei – the chorale O Lamm Gottes Unschuldig (O Lamb of God, unspotted), sung by a treble choir in G major, over the lamenting E minor of the two other choirs and orchestras. The repeated  auf unsre Schuld (for our sins) of Choir I is answered by the treble chorus with: All Sünd hast du getragen (you took away all sins).

The congregation in Leipzig, where the St. Matthew Passion was first performed on the afternoon of Good Friday in 1727, would have sung this German Agnus Dei earlier that day at the conclusion of the morning service. Back to this week’s cantata for October 3, 1723: in that Sunday service, the congregation might have sung the chorale Herr Jesu Christ, ich schreie zu dir:

Herr Jesu Christ ich schreie zu dir
Mit ganz betrübter Seele:
Dein Allmacht laß erscheinen mir
Und mich nicht also quäle.
Viel grösser ist die Angst und Schmerz.
So anficht und turbirt mein Herz,
Als daß ich kan erzählen.
Lord Jesus Christ, I cry to you
With a soul that is wholly troubled:
Let your almighty power appear to me
And do not punish me in this way.
Far greater is the anguish and pain
That challenge and confuse my heart
Than I can explain

The congregation might thus have heard those words in their head, when two bars after the soprano entrance the tromba da tirarsi starts playing this melody, later followed by two oboes in unison. In this way, these three instruments accompany every choral passage with a new line from the chorale, and the chorale thus starts forming the frame of the opening chorus.

After this preview message in the opening chorus that Jesus might be able to offer salvation, we have to wait until the tenor aria for the all-around convincing message that everything will be OK, in music as well as in text:

Vergibt mir Jesus meine Sünden,

If Jesus forgives me my sins,
So wird mir Leib und Seele gesund.
then my body and soul will become healthy.
Er kann die Toten lebend machen
He can make the dead live
Und zeigt sich kräftig in den Schwachen,
and shows himself to be mighty in those who are weak,
Er hält den längst geschloßnen Bund,
he keeps the covenant made long ago
Daß wir im Glauben Hilfe finden.
that in faith we find support.

Wieneke Gorter, October 1, 2016, links updated October 15, 2020.

* The Gospel story for this 19th Sunday after Trinity was the miracle of Jesus healing a cripple. From the time the Gospel was written through Bach’s time, unfortunately, having a disability or illness was seen as carrying a sin. When Jesus heals the man, he also takes his sins away.

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