Weekly Cantata

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

Weekly Cantata

Monthly Archives: March 2018

Good Friday in 1725

30 Friday Mar 2018

Posted by cantatasonmymind in Bach's life, Cantatas, Chorale cantatas 1724/1725, Leipzig

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Andreas Scholl, Cecile Kempenaers, Collegium Vocale Gent, Dominik Wörner, Malcolm Bennett, Mark Padmore, Michael Volle, Philippe Herreweghe, Sebastian Noack, Sibylla Rubens, St. John Passion, St. Matthew Passion

IMG-4407

Detail of The Arrest of Christ by Hieronymus Bosch, ca. 1515. San Diego Museum of Art.

As I’ve mentioned over the past few months, Bach might have initially been planning to perform a St. Matthew Passion on Good Friday in 1725 in Leipzig.

If he was indeed planning that, he didn’t finish it in time. Did he run out of time, did he have a conflict with the Leipzig City Council, or did he change his mind? We don’t know. Fact is that on Good Friday 1725 he performed a new version of his St. John Passion from the year before. The most notable difference is the new opening chorus: O, Mensch, bewein dein Sünden groß instead of the Herr, unser Herrscher from the year before.

Find Herreweghe’s recording from 2001 of that 1725 St. John Passion here on YouTube.

Soloists are: Tenor [Evangelist, Arias]: Mark Padmore; Bass [Jesus]: Michael Volle; Soprano: Sibylla Rubens; Counter-tenor: Andreas Scholl; Bass [Arias, Pilatus]: Sebastian Noack; Bass [Petrus]: Dominik Wörner; Tenor [Servus]: Malcolm Bennett; Soprano [Ancilla]: Cecile Kempenaers

But let’s just leave the St. Matthew / St. John discussion for what it is, and just look at that opening chorus. Having followed Bach’s 1724/1725 chorale cantatas in the order he wrote and performed them, it is not a stretch to consider that Bach might have been working up to this elaborate chorale fantasia since February 2. I mentioned in my post for that day that it felt as if something new was coming.

When you look at Cantatas 125, 126, 127, and 1, the four cantatas Bach wrote and performed between February 2 and March 25, you see a beautiful line-up of chorale fantasias, one even more special than the other. So perhaps there was no stress or doubt at all in Bach’s mind about what to write for Good Friday 1725, at least not as far as the opening chorus was concerned. He might have been planning for O, Mensch to open his Good Friday passion since the end of January, and might have been doing studies for it in Cantatas 125, 126, 127, and 1.

Wieneke Gorter, March 30, 2018

The cantata that started my music writing career

24 Saturday Mar 2018

Posted by cantatasonmymind in Cantatas, Chorale cantatas 1724/1725, Leipzig

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Annunciation, Charles Daniels, Eric Milnes, Harnoncourt, Matthew White, Monika Mauch, Montreal Baroque, Palm Sunday, Stephan MacLeod

1024px-pietro_di_giovanni_d27ambrogio-_entry_into_jerusalem-_1435-40-_pinacoteca_stuard2c_parma

Entry of Christ into Jerusalem by Pietro di Giovanni d’Ambrogio, 1435-1440. Pinacoteca Stuard, Parma, Italy.

Following Bach’s cantata writing in 1725, we have now come to Cantata 1 Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, an oh so pretty composition with two horns in the orchestra, also the very last of Bach’s 1724/1725 cycle of chorale cantatas. And Bach probably knew that when he was writing it. It is based on the chorale about the Morning Star, a metaphor for Christ.

The recording of this cantata I like best is the one by Montreal Baroque, with soprano Monika Mauch, counter-tenor Matthew White, tenor Charles Daniels, and bass Stephan MacLeod. Please find it here in my playlist on Spotify. If you don’t have access to Spotify, you can purchase the album here on Amazon or listen to Harnoncourt’s recording on YouTube.

Find the text here: http://bach-cantatas.com/Texts/BWV1-Eng3P.htm

Find the score here: http://bach-cantatas.com/BGA/BWV001-BGA.pdf

This cantata was the first I ever wrote about. It was in college, as an assignment for Frits de Haen: we had to compare a modern-instrument and a period-instrument recording of a piece of our choice. I don’t remember why I selected this cantata. At the time the only period-instrument recording I had was the one by Harnoncourt. Frits loved the review I wrote (in Dutch) and kept giving me nudges to write more. For several years in a row after that first review I wrote for his class, I would run into him at the Utrecht Early Music Festival or at another concert, and he would always ask “are you still writing?” or “why aren’t you writing?” and told me that I should really write every day or every week. His words have always stayed with me and are one of several reasons why I started writing this blog in January 2016.

You might think it is because of Palm Sunday that there was music in the Leipzig churches again on this Sunday. However, in Leipzig Palm Sunday was firmly part of Lent (the 40 days of introspection before Easter): no thinking beyond the crucifixion until Good Friday, and thus not celebrated with music. Or was it?

An exception was always made for the Annunciation of Mary: if that day, March 25, fell within Lent, it would still be celebrated, an thus Bach could write a cantata for that day.

The only surviving Bach cantatas for the Annunciation of Mary, Cantata 182 Himmelskönig, sei wilkommen from 1714** and Cantata 1 Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern from 1725 were written for days when this holiday fell on Palm Sunday. And perhaps not surprisingly, both these cantatas are also very much Palm Sunday cantatas, or at least Bach’s librettist interprets the Annunciation as yet another announcement of the arrival of Christ. The references to the coming of Christ outnumber the references to Mary, in the text as well as in the music.

I think it is striking that in Cantata 1 Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern Bach uses a chorale that was so strongly associated with the Christmas season, and writes music that is festive and perhaps even regal, but at the same time humble, with horns in the orchestra instead of the trumpets and timpani he would have used for a bigger holiday. Whether he was indeed illustrating the Palm Sunday story (a humble king entering Jerusalem, riding on a donkey) I don’t know, but it is very well possible.

Wieneke Gorter, March 23, 2018.

**Read more about Cantata 182 in this post.

 

Passion stress for Bach plus two more cantata movements disguised as organ works

05 Monday Mar 2018

Posted by cantatasonmymind in Bach's life, Cantatas, Chorale cantatas 1724/1725, Leipzig

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Amsterdam Baroque Choir, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, Bach, Bine Katrine Bryndorf, Bogna Bartosz, Copenhagen, Garnisons Kirke, Grote Kerk Leeuwarden, Jörg Dürmüller, John Eliot Gardiner, Leeuwarden, Leipzig, Margaret Faultless, Schübler, St. John Passion, St. Matthew Passion, St. Thomas Church, Ton Koopman

Bach_house_Leipzig

On the left the rebuilt Thomas School Anno 1732. The apartment of the Bach family was on the left of the building. On the right is “a part of the Cather(ine) Street”. Zimmermann’s Café which hosted Bach’s Collegium Musicum was located in the center building labeled “2”.

Around this time in 1725, Bach was still on a break from writing cantatas (they were not to be performed in Leipzig during the 40 days before Easter), but was by no means resting. On the contrary, he was likely rather stressed out about his passion music for Good Friday 1725.

We know that on Good Friday 1725, Bach performed a revised version of his St. John Passion from 1724. We don’t know why he revised it, and some scholars such as John Elliot Gardiner even suggest that Bach had been planning to perform a St. Matthew Passion instead.*

If we could only travel back in time and find out what happened. If it was indeed Bach’s plan to perform a completely new composition, why did he not perform it until 1727? Did he simply run out of time, or did the Leipzig city council not approve of the piece? And why exactly did he revise the St. John Passion? Did he want to change it himself, or had the presentation of Jesus as victor** in the original 1724 version irked the city council?

Now for some music, related to my previous blog post, but completely unrelated to the passion stress story above:

Following up on my post from two weeks ago, there are two more cantata movements that show up in Bach’s “Schübler” organ chorales:

The fifth movement of Cantata 10 Meine Seele erhebt den Herren (live performance in the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig by alto Bogna Bartosz, tenor Jörg Dürmüller, and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra under the direction of Ton Koopman) disguised as organ chorale BWV 648 (Ton Koopman on the historic Müller organ (1724) of the Grote Kerk in Leeuwarden, The Netherlands) with the same title. Click on the links to watch and listen on YouTube.

Also: the second movement of Cantata 137 Lobe den Herren, den mächtigen König der Ehren from 1725 (violinist Margaret Faultless with all the altos of the Amsterdam Baroque Choir under the direction of Ton Koopman), transformed into organ chorale BWV 650 Kommst du nun, Jesu, vom Himmel herunter (Bine Katrine Bryndorf on the historic organ (1724) of the Garnisons Kirke in Copenhagen, Denmark). Click on the links to listen on YouTube.

Wieneke Gorter, March 5, 2018

*In his book Music in the Castle of Heaven, John Elliot Gardiner makes a strong case that Bach might have initially planned to have the St. Matthew Passion ready for Good Friday 1725. Read this blog post to find out why that is not an unlikely scenario at all.

**Read more about this in this blog post

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