The Annunciation, aka The Cestello Annunciation, 1489, by Botticelli. Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy.
In 1714, Palm Sunday fell on the same day as the Annunciation of Mary, March 25. The Annunciation was one of the three Marian feast days Luther kept on the calendar (the other two being the Purification of Mary, February 2, and the Visitation of Mary, July 2).
Thus it happened that in that year, in Weimar, Bach wrote a cantata that is mostly a Palm Sunday cantata, but can also work for the feast of the Annunciation, since that also celebrates the coming of Christ. I squeezed this cantata 182 Himmelskönig, sei willkommen into my post about Bach in Weimar I wrote last year. As I mentioned there, the cantata was repeated a few times in Leipzig, but never on Palm Sunday, as the Leipzig rules dictated that no music was performed during the period of Lent (the 40 days before Easter).
However, the Leipzig council made an exception for the Annunciation, so in 1724 Bach could perform this cantata during Lent, eight days before Palm Sunday, on Saturday March 25. As so often on holidays, there were two cantatas this day, one before the sermon, and one after. The other, newly written, piece for Saturday March 25, 1724, was more literally about the Annunciation: Siehe, eine Jungfrau ist schwanger (Behold, a Virgin is pregnant). The text of this cantata survived, and can be found here, but unfortunately the music is lost.
I still recommend the recording of cantata 182 by Montreal Baroque, but since I wrote my post last year, a terrific live video of the Sonata (instrumental opening) of this cantata has come out on the YouTube channel of Voices of Music, with two fabulous soloists: Hanneke van Proosdij on recorder and Rachel Podger on violin, so I would love to share that here as well. You can find that video here.
Find the text of cantata 182 here, and the score here.
my mother with my daughter, The Hague, summer of 2009
This year, on March 24, my mother would have turned 71. Sadly, she left us on November 19, 2010, after a tragic illness we only understood to be a terminal one on September 5 of that same year. To say that those months were an emotional roller coaster for all involved is an understatement. Normally very liberal and progressive in her Christianity, my mother turned very pious in her last weeks, and during that time she didn’t really let any persons in anymore, only music.
One of the major reasons I started this blog in January 2016 was to continue my mother’s legacy of playing the cantata for the appropriate Sunday every week, but also to remember the joy of going to concerts with my mother and listening to recordings together with her.
So I would like to think of this post as a short radio program with beautiful Bach music, featuring three soprano arias I strongly associate with my mother, sung by singers she and I adore(d).
A fond childhood memory is my mother, my sister, and I taking the bus from the little town where we lived to a town 15 kilometers (9 miles) away, where my mother was going to sing a solo in a wedding service. I remember what she wore: a light blue dress with tiny white and red flowers on it, a narrow red belt, and red sandals with heels. The solo she was singing was the aria “Sehet in Zufriedenheit” from cantata 202. I remember being in awe that she was standing there on the organ loft and singing it so beautifully. A gorgeous example of this aria, in the exact tempo in which my mother liked to perform it, is this recording of Nancy Argenta with Ensemble Sonnerie under the direction of Monica Huggett:
Sehet in Zufriedenheit See in contentment Tausend helle Wohlfahrtstage, a thousand bright and prosperous days, Dass bald bei der Folgezeit so that soon as time passes Eure Liebe Blumen trage! your love may bear its flower!
Much later, my parents had a subscription to the series of cantata performances by the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra with Ton Koopman, and there they got to see and hear many different soprano soloists. I remember them being impressed with Caroline Stam. Hear her sing the aria “Es ist und bleibt der Christen Trost” from cantata 44, one of my mother’s favorite Bach cantata arias of all time, with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra under the direction of Ton Koopman.
Es ist und bleibt der Christen Trost, The consolation of Christians is and remains Dass Gott vor seine Kirche wacht. God’s watchful care over his church. Denn wenn sich gleich die Wetter türmen, For even though at times the clouds gather, So hat doch nach den Trübsalstürmen yet after the storms of affliction Die Freudensonne bald gelacht. the sun of joy has soon smiled on us.
We felt extremely blessed that Caroline Stam agreed to sing at my mother’s funeral service. We asked her to sing Purcell’s “Evening Hymn,” since that had been in the top 5 on my mother’s iPod in her last weeks. But for the Bach aria, we let Caroline pick what she would like to sing. I am still very grateful for that decision. Always very conscious of texts, Caroline chose the hauntingly beautiful “Die Seele ruht” from cantata 127. For years, I have not been able to listen to this aria, but now I can again, though it still makes me cry a little. Hear Dorothee Mields sing this aria with Collegium Vocale Ghent under the direction of Philippe Herreweghe:
Die Seele ruht in Jesu Händen, My soul rests in the hands of Jesus, Wenn Erde diesen Leib bedeckt. Though earth covers this body Ach ruft mich bald, ihr Sterbeglocken, Ah, call me soon, you funereal bells, Ich bin zum Sterben unerschrocken, I am not terrified to die Weil mich mein Jesus wieder weckt. Since my Jesus will awaken me again.
If you would like to read more, here are five posts from 2016 in which I talk about my mother a lot or a little bit:
Parable of the workers in the vineyard by Salomon Koninck. Between 1647 and 1649. Hermitage Museum.
On the third Sunday before Lent in 1724, Bach performed Cantata 144 Nimm, was dein ist, und gehe hin. Read all about this short but wonderful work in my blog post from 2016, in which I discuss an unrivaled recording by Gardiner with mezzo soprano Wilke te Brummelstoete and soprano Miah Persson.
In that cantata from 1724 Bach wrote one soprano aria on the concept of “Genügsamkeit” (being satisfied with what you have), but three years later, he dedicated an entire solo work for soprano to this theme: Cantata 84 Ich bin vergnügt mit meinem Glücke (I am content in my good fortune), featuring the delightful aria Ich esse mit Freuden mein weniges Brot(It is with joy that I eat my meager piece of bread). We can probably take this as proof that Genügsamkeit was very important to Bach.
Find the German texts with English translations of Cantata 84 here, and the score here.
Dorothee Mields
I myself count among my blessings that Herreweghe’s recording of this cantata features one of my favorite sopranos, Dorothee Mields. Read more about her in my post about the Herreweghe sopranos.
I listened to many recordings of this cantata, and I still (2020) love this interpretation the best. Mields is a terrific chamber musician together with the instrumentalists throughout this cantata, listen to the interplay between her and oboist Marcel Ponseele. I feel her voice sounds the most natural in aria “Ich esse mit Freuden mein weniges Brot.” The way she starts “Ein ruhig gewissen” the first time that comes around is just to die for as far as I’m concerned. I also like Herreweghe’s tempos the best of all the recordings I’ve listened to.
Enjoy Dorothee Mields’ singing and her being a terrific chamber musician together with the instrumentalists on Herreweghe’s recording of cantata 84 Ich bin vergnügt mit meinem Glücke on YouTube or on Spotify. The cantata appears on Herreweghe’s album Christus der ist mein Leben from 2007, which also includes two other fabulous cantatas: 95 and 161. If you like these recordings, please consider purchasing (the MP3 of) this album on Amazon.de or on Amazon.com. Or purchase the album on iTunes or whatever platform you prefer. Thanks for supporting the artists!
Wieneke Gorter, February 18, 2017, last updated January 27, 2024.
There is no cantata left to us for this Sunday, Epiphany 5. So I decided it was the perfect time to fix something that had been bothering me for a while: my post about cantata 148 from September 2016.
Sitting in the music library this week, doing research for cantata 83, I was very excited. At first it was the sheer pleasure of being in that building and feeling like a musicology student again, but while reading, I realized that Dirksen’s article is an excellent argument for my hypothesis that Bach had guest musicians playing in his Leipzig orchestra around feast days. And what is more, I was now convinced cantata 148 was written in 1725 and not in 1723. So I decided to completely revise my post from September 2016 about the cantata with the violin solo that moved me to tears. Read it here.
Presentation in the Temple (1640/1641) by Simon Vouet (1590-1649). Musée du Louvre, Paris.
In many traditions, from pre-Christian European to contemporary American, February 2 marks the end of the dark part of the winter. Feasts on this day celebrate the daylight, looking ahead to spring, and the start of new things. Growing up in a Calvinist protestant culture in the Netherlands, I wasn’t aware of any of these holidays.
Let’s start with the silly American holiday on February 2: Groundhog Day. If the groundhog (some sort of marmot) comes out of her hole on this day while it is cloudy, spring will be early; if it is sunny and the groundhog will thus see her own shadow when she comes out of her hole, she will be scared and go back inside and spring won’t start for another six weeks. Grown men actually observe the groundhogs on February 2.
People from Celtic cultures celebrate Imbolc or Brigid’s Day on February 2 because it is the midway point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. The holiday is a celebration of the lengthening days and the early signs of spring. The lighting of candles and fires represented the return of warmth and the increasing power of the Sun over the coming months.
The Catholic feast of Candlemas also originates in pre-Christian times, and originally marked the end of a period of light feasts which started around mid November. After the early Christians established that Jesus was born on December 25, it was easy to declare Saint Martin (Nov 11, 40 days before Christmas) the start of the great Christmas season and February 2 (40 days after Christmas) the end of it. I read that in some countries people leave their Christmas decorations up until Candlemas. I would have loved to have that tradition in the Netherlands too, because I had serious trouble with the bleak, grey, uneventful month of January there. And all procrastinators are now absolved: you didn’t know it, but you were doing the right thing to leave those lights up until February!
The Catholic Church merged Candlemas with the feast of the Purification of Mary and the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple. In the Jewish tradition, a new mother was “unclean” for the first 40 days after giving birth. On the 40th day, she would have to visit the temple for a purification ceremony, and to present her son to the priests. Luther kept this Catholic feast on the calendar, but focused much more on the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple than on the Purification of Mary. What is more, he turned Simeon’s song of praise into a message of “Now I can die in peace.” This is why all five cantatas (BWV 82 (the famous Ich habe genug), 83, 125, 157, and 158) Bach wrote for this holiday are mostly about the joy of dying. But not to worry, the cantata from 1724 is actually very festive.
Listen to/watch cantata 83 Erfreute Zeit im neuen Bundeby the Netherlands Bach Society on YouTube. Shunske Sato, violin and direction; Robin Blaze, alto; Daniel Johannsen, tenor; Stephan MacLeod, bass. I prefer this recording because this cantata is a violin concerto and here we can see one of the best Baroque violinists and Bach interpreters, Shunske Sato, at work.* However for the most magical rendition of the second movement please also listen to the Bach Collegium Japan recording (Natsumi Wakamatsu, violin; Robin Blaze, alto; James Gilchrist, tenor; Peter Kooij, bass)
Find the German text with English translations of Cantata 83 here, and the score here.
The first and third movement are written like a violin concerto and celebrate the “new” era. According to an excellent study by Dutch musicologist Pieter Dirksen, presented at a Bach Symposium in Germany in 2000, the impressive violin part was most likely written for violin virtuoso Johann Georg Pisendel from Dresden. Dirksen makes a very convincing case that Bach wrote this past Sunday’s operatic cantata 81 and this cantata 83 (both from the same week in 1724) specifically to please musicians and perhaps also dignitary guests from Dresden, giving them the two musical forms the Dresden court favored most: an opera in the form of cantata 81 and a concerto in the form of cantata 83. There are no documents supporting the suggestion that Pisendel was in Leipzig around the time this cantata was played. However, as I have mentioned before in this blog, it seems evident from Bach’s writing around special holidays that there were either guest musicians or colleagues to impress in those weeks. Also, Dirksen gives many plausible examples of links to Dresden in the style and instrumentation of these compositions, and argues that Bach had no other violinist available, including himself, who would have been able to play this and that this is why he didn’t write virtuoso violin solos in any cantatas from the first Leipzig cycle.
The second movement symbolizes the “old” tradition Simon stands for in the Gospel story. In a way he has never done this in any other cantata, Bach sets Luther’s translation of Simeon’s words (“Herr, nun lässest du deinen Diener in Friede fahren …”) to the old Gregorian psalmtone for Nunc Dimittis, which was the Roman version of Simeon’s words. It is likely he wanted to show the Catholic guests from Dresden he was familiar with their tradition too, or perhaps he wanted to honor the Catholic history of this feast day. The very best rendition of this movement is sung by Peter Kooij on the Bach Collegium Japan recording of this cantata. My late mother used to say: “Peter Kooij must have a special line with God.” He definitely has a special line with Bach.
Wieneke Gorter, February 2, 2017, updated February 2, 2020 and February 2, 2023.
*read how Shunske Sato’s playing made me want to write for this blog again in this post
If I would have to come up with a “top 5” of blog posts, the one about cantata 81 for today, the fourth Sunday after Epiphany, is definitely one of them. There is lots to read and learn, and a marvelous tenor aria to listen to. You can find that post here.
I’ve created a Google calendar for the upcoming Sundays and other holidays. You can find that here. When you click on the Sunday or holiday, you will find a link to the blog post connected to that day.
There are four Bach cantatas for this Sunday, the third after Epiphany. Last year I wrote about two of them: cantatas 72 and 73. You can read that post here.
This year I’d like to share a little bit about cantata 156 Ich steh mit einem Fuß im Grabe. I did not grow up with this cantata, my mother didn’t play this one for us. Whether this was because the Harnoncourt recording of this cantata is not very satisfying, or because she liked the three other cantatas for this Sunday much better, I don’t know.
I heard cantata 156 for the first time around 2008 or so, on a recording by American Bach Soloists from 1992, and was blown away by the rich sound of the strings and by the “groove” the ensemble finds so easily, it seems, in the opening movement and in the tenor aria. I have not heard such comfort with the rhythm in any other recording of this cantata. It is also a historic recording: it is one of the few ABS cantata recordings on which director Jeffrey Thomas sings the tenor arias himself. While Thomas’ voice is perhaps not as full as Gerd Türk’s on the recording by Bach Collegium Japan, I enjoy the music-making in this movement so much that it was comfort-music for me in the weeks and months after my mother passed away in 2010, and it is still one of my favorite Bach cantata recordings.
Other soloists on this recording:
oboe: John Abberger; violin: Jörg-Michael Schwarz; counter-tenor: Steven Rickards; bass: James Weaver. Choir sopranos singing in the tenor aria: Julianne Baird, Christine Earl, and Claire Kelm.
Find the German text with English translations here, and the score here.
You might recognize the opening movement of this cantata as the second movement of Bach’s harpsichord concerto, BWV1056. However, Bach based both the cantata movement and the harpsichord concerto movement on an oboe concerto from Köthen which is now lost.
The Marriage at Cana, c. 1500, by Gérard David. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Mary pleads and worries, but Jesus says: “Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come.”
This week, I watched a very good video by the Swiss Bach Foundation (Bachstiftung) about today’s cantata 155 Mein Gott, wie lang, ach lange? I found it very insightful, helpful, and even entertaining, but was struck by its Calvinist character and was a bit disappointed by the director’s statement that he doesn’t know why this cantata starts with a movement for solo soprano. When reading Gardiner’s and Van Hengel’s discussions of this cantata, I liked their suggestions that the soprano lament refers to Mary’s role in the Bible story of this Sunday, the Marriage at Cana. It made sense to me. This cantata, from 1715 and repeated in 1724, contains references to the wine as well as to the fact that Jesus says to his mother: “my time has not come yet.”
While the Lutheran church in Bach’s time did not regard Mary as a saint, let alone a mediator between God and the people, she was still an important person in the faith, and thus probably also for Bach. The three Marian feast days* Luther kept on the calendar were important holidays and Bach wrote cantatas for all of them. Also, Bach wrote this cantata 155 in his Weimar years, when he explored a large number of works by (Catholic) Italian composers.
Listen to Montreal Baroque’s recording of cantata 155 on YouTube through a playlist I created. With Monika Mauch, soprano; Franziska Gottwald, alto; Charles Daniels, tenor; Harry van der Kamp, bass; Anna Marsh, bassoon. If you prefer to watch a live recording, you can find the live performance by the J.S. Bach Foundation here, with Julia Neumann, soprano; Margot Oitzinger, alto; Julius Pfeifer, tenor; and Raphael Jud, bass.
Read the German text with English translation of this cantata here, and find the score here.
The cantata is not so much a musical play with the soprano taking the role of Mary, but more a reference to her role in the Gospel story and an exploration of that theme: try to trust that everything will be okay in the end, try to not be in control all the time. The first movement has the character of a lament in music and text, you can picture the hand-wringing, the desperation. There is also the steady pedal point in the bass, similar to what Bach will use later in the opening chorus of the St. Matthew Passion.
However it is the second movement, not even sung by the soprano, and with text that is trying to urge her to “let go,” that secretly is the true lament, in the music that is. To hear or see this, the video by the Swiss Bach Foundation is terrific. Rudolf Lutz explains extremely well (with music examples) how the notes of the solo bassoon part form in fact a lament for three voices. This video has English subtitles. watch from 12:10 By the way: the composition I had to think of when hearing the “lamento bass” was Monteverdi’s Lamento della Ninfa
If you would like to explore other cantatas for this second Sunday after Epiphany, I invite you to read my post about cantata 3 from 1725 here. It is all about hidden messages in the music of a an extremely beautiful composition with an equally heart wrenching—but completely different—opening movement as this cantata 155.
Wieneke Gorter, January 14, 2017, links updated January 31, 2020. Link for the score updated January 16, 2021, link for the J.S. Bach Foundation video with English subtitles updated January 15, 2022.
*The Purification of Mary on February 2, The Annunciaton of Mary on March 25, and the Visitation of Mary on July 2.
The Weekly Cantata blog is one year old this weekend! When I started on January 6, 2016, I was not sure I could actually write a post every week, but thanks to the support of my wonderful family, the encouragement of so many readers, and the inspiring music and research, I made it, and am happy to continue.
While I celebrate the blog’s anniversary with my family this weekend, I invite you to read my post for Epiphany/Three Kings Day (January 6) here, and my post for the first Sunday after Epiphany here.
Weekly Cantata 