Author Archives: cantatasonmymind

Easter in Weimar 1715

27 Sunday Mar 2016

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The interior of the St. Peter & Paul or city church in Weimar: much more room on this organ loft than on the one in the castle’s chapel

While most of Bach’s cantatas in Weimar were performed in the castle’s chapel, the Himmelsburg, sometimes the Duke would visit the St. Peter und Pauli (St. Peter and Paul) church, also called the Stadtkirche (city church), and nowadays also called the Herder Kirche. It might have been for political reasons, or because of wanting to hear a certain preacher. Whatever the Duke’s motivation was on Easter 1715, it is clear from the orchestration of cantata 31 Der Himmel Lacht, die Erde Jubilieret that it cannot have been performed on the small organ loft of the castle’s chapel. (Lucky for all those musicians, they didn’t have to climb the 65 feet / 20 meters Bach climbed every day to play organ there).

Listen to cantata 31 by Harnoncourt on YouTube

Listen to cantata 31 by Harnoncourt on Spotify

Please find the German text of this cantata with English tranlations here and please find the score here.

After the first performance in Weimar on April 21, 1715, Bach performed this cantata at least two more times in Leipzig. This might have been because of writing or revising the Passions for Good Friday, he didn’t have time to write something new (he also recycled cantata 4 a couple of times), but let’s just say he really liked them.

In the fabulous opening sinfonia, one can clearly hear that Bach had been studying Vivaldi’s music and also that the start of the Christmas Oratorio (written much later, in Leipzig) was conceived already here in Weimar. At one point in the cello part, there is a reference to the brilliant writing in cantata 18 from two months earlier that same year.

Whether the sinfonia was meant to function as an “entrada” for the Duke and his entourage into the church or not, it needs to be that slow for me, that I can at least picture a ceremonial entrance happening while this music is being performed. That desire combined with strong nostalgic emotions I have when listening to this cantata, I can only recommend the Harnoncourt recording of this.

The nostalgia is of course not for  the sometimes struggling brass instruments in the opening movement. (It was not easy in the early 70s to play  historic trumpet. But those guys paved the way. And who knows, maybe that’s why Harnoncourt takes the tempo so much slower than Historical Performance conductors do that nowadays). The nostalgia is for the fabulous Peter Jelosits. In my memory this cantata got played  more often in our house than just on Easter Sunday and I truly grew up with his voice. In this cantata he gets to sing the soprano part in the five-part (!) opening chorus by himself for several measures, which is pure heaven, and he sings a fabulous aria as well. In the liner notes it only says “soloist of Wiener Sängerknaben,” but if you compare it with this recording, it is clearly him.

About the aria (the before-last movement of the cantata): after the super-happy opening chorus celebrating the resurrection and -in the subsequent movements- reflections on what Christ’s passion and resurrection mean for man, it is by now time  to turn back to the always present death, and the trust that Jesus will not leave the believer’s side. By this time Bach had already buried two of his children, and his employer was also a very devout Lutheran, so this was entirely appropriate, as dark and heavy as it might seem to us today.

So Bach already presents a “deathbed chorale” in this aria, in the melody of the upper strings, while of course the soprano voice part sings different words.  We can assume that the congregation at this church in Weimar as well as Duke Wilhelm-Ernst knew this chorale so well they could hear these words in their head:

Wenn mein Stündlein vorhanden ist,
und ich soll hinfahren meine Strasse,
geleite mich, Herr Jesu Christ,
mit Hilf mich nicht verlasse :
den Geist an meinem letzten End
befehl ich, Herr, in deine Händ ;
du wirst ihn wohl bewahren.

 

When the hour of my death is at hand
And I must travel on my way
Accompany me, Lord Jesus Christ,
With your help do not abandon me:
At my final end my spirit
I entrust, Lord, in your hands;
You will preserve it well.

This same tune then comes back in the closing chorale, using the original text, albeit the very last verse of it.

Wieneke Gorter, March 27, 2016, updated April 3, 2021.

Bach in Weimar (and a cantata for Palm Sunday)

27 Sunday Mar 2016

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Abbildung zu Objekt Inv.Nr. 5 a V 2241 von Stadtmuseum Weimar im Bertuchhaus
The “Wilhelmsburg” of Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Saxony-Weimar. The footbridge goes to the “Rote Schloss” (the Red Palace) of Whilhelm’s nephew Ernst August. This drawing is from 1774, only a few months before the entire Wilhelmsburg, including the music archives, would go up in flames. The Red Palace was not affected by the fire, and part of it still exists today.

From 1708-1717, Bach worked at the court of the Dukes of Saxony-Weimar. Two dukes, an uncle and his nephew, co-reigned the Duchy and the town, each from their own castle: the uncle, Wilhelm Ernst, from his impressive Wilhelmsburg (pictured above); the nephew, Ernst August, from his Rote Schloss (Red Palace, so called for the red window frames in the otherwise grey colored castle). The uncle was a devout Lutheran and amateur preacher, while the nephew was much more interested in chamber music. Though the complex of buildings seems quite isolated in the image above, it was actually in town.

The “Red Palace” (Rote Schloss) of Ernst August. Bach lived around the corner.

Bach moved to Weimar from Mühlhausen with his wife Maria Barbara. They lived in an apartment on the town square, a short walk from the Wilhelmsburg, but directly around the corner from the Red Palace. Their first child was born that same year, and Maria Barbara’s older, unmarried sister Friedelena Margaretha joined them a year later, in  1709, probably to help run the household. As far as we know she stayed with the Bach family until her death in 1729 (see my post about the Bach family in Leipzig).

At first, from 1708 to 1714, Bach worked as a chamber musician for both the uncle and the nephew, but also as organist in the beautiful chapel in the Wilhelmsburg, the castle of the older Duke. The chapel was called the Himmelsburg for a painting depicting the “opening of the heavens” in the ceiling of the chapel, right above the organ loft.  The organ loft was about 65 feet (or 20 meters, or four two-story houses) above the floor of the chapel (!).

The chapel in the Wilhelmsburg complex, also called the “Himmelsburg” (Heaven’s castle)

It was here in Weimar that Bach perfected his organ playing skills and that he started studying Vivaldi’s music and incorporating Italian and French composition styles into his instrumental music. Bach was also good friends with the organist of the St. Peter und Pauli (St. Peter and Paul) church, also called the Stadtkirche (town church), and nowadays known as the Herderkirche. So while he must have practiced on the organ every day, it is possible that he did not have to climb all those stairs to the organ in the Himmelsburg every time, but also used the organ in the Peter and Paul church. For a picture of the inside of this church, see my post Easter in Weimar 1715.

In 1713 Bach went to advise the city of Halle regarding the building of a new organ, and was informally offered the post of organist there. Upon his return to Weimar, he told the Duke that he was in negotiations with Halle. When he finally received the official offer from the city of Halle, he didn’t like the terms and rejected it. The Halle authorities then got so angry, suggesting that he had led them on all that time, that they wrote to Duke Wilhelm Ernst, that Bach probably had only applied for the post in Halle so he could get a raise in Weimar. Wilhelm Ernst’s response to this was to not only double Bach’s salary, but also offer him the position of Konzertmeister (leader of the orchestra). They agreed that Bach would write a church cantata every month, for which he could use any musician from either palace.**

Whenever these cantatas were performed in the Himmelsburg, all musicians would have to stand in the small organ loft. It was a pretty small space, that only fit 7 singers and 5 instrumentalists.***

A beautiful example of the cantatas written for this space is cantata 182 Himmelskönig, sei wilkommen!  (written for March 25, 1714, when Palm Sunday and the feast of the Annunciation fell on the same day). I recommend the recording by Montreal Baroque of this cantata. Listen here on Spotify, or here on YouTube. Their one-on-a-part performance features fabulous singing all around (soprano Monika Mauch, countertenor Matthew White, tenor Charles Daniels, bass Harry van der Kamp). This cantata was repeated a couple of times in Leipzig, but never on Palm Sunday, as the Leipzig rules dictated that no music was performed on that day, it still being within the period of Lent (the 40 days before Easter).

Find the text of cantata 182 here, and the score here.

Many of Bach’s Weimar cantatas (for example cantata 21 Ich hatte viel Bekummernis, 18 Gleichwie der Regen und Schnee vom Himmel fällt, and 61 Nun Komm der Heiden Heiland) start with an elaborate instrumental ouverture or sinfonia. This is probably not just because Bach was eager to try out the Italian and French composition styles he had studied, but also for the simple reason that while these cantata openings were being performed, the Duke and his entourage would slowly walk into the chapel and take their seats.

When the post of  Kapellmeister (head of the court musical establishment) opened up in 1716, Bach was passed, in favor of an incompetent candidate. It is possible that Wilhelm Ernst had done this on purpose, to punish Bach for spending too much time with his nephew in the Red Palace. Furious, Bach asked to be dismissed. (When in the employment of royalty, one couldn’t just quit). In turn, Wilhelm Ernst had Bach jailed for four weeks in a fortress before he accepted his dismissal and Bach could move to Köthen.

Wieneke Gorter, March 26, 2016, updated April 5, 2020.

** There were two boy sopranos, one male alto, two tenors, and two basses on the list of musicians employed by the Dukes, but Bach could also use boy singers from the local gymnasium, where his own former principal from Ohrdruf was now the rector.

*** On feast days the cantatas were sometimes performed in the town church, see my post about Easter in Weimar 1715.

R.I.P. Nikolaus Harnoncourt

06 Sunday Mar 2016

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harnoncourt

Yesterday evening, Saturday March 5, 2016, conductor and cellist Nikolaus Harnoncourt left this world. He was an important part of the Sunday Bach cantata tradition my mother started in our family, and she was a great admirer of him. Even though my mother passed away more than five years ago, I feel she died a little more for me today, now that I know Harnoncourt is gone.

Sometime in the late 1980s, with my parents and my sister, I attended a performance of Bach’s Passion according to St. John which Harnoncourt directed in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. We had seats in the section behind the orchestra and choir, so that we could watch him communicate with the players and singers. I will never forget that. Afterwards, my mother–who was singing in a Bach choir herself at the time–said that it would mean the world to her if she could ever sing in a choir conducted by Harnoncourt. It never happened for her, but the combination of her saying this and me seeing Harnoncourt at work inspired me to join a Bach choir in my first year of college.

Even though Harnoncourt made an incredible amount of recordings (see his timeline for a list of all of them), there is nothing like seeing (an) excellent artist(s) live on stage. To see them work, interact, and to feel their energy is an experience you’ll never forget and which is worth so much more than earthly possessions. So if there is someone you admire but only know from recordings, go hear and see them live while they’re still alive! Make the effort. You will be glad you did.

Watch Harnoncourt conduct Bach’s Passion according to St. John on this video recorded in Graz, Austria, in 1985. It is a terrific example of the world class conductor he was. Don’t be put off by  the 30-year-old sound quality, especially noticeable in the oboes in the opening chorus. It is only that bad in the beginning, the rest of the recording is a feast for the ears and eyes, not in the least because of the excellent performance (and singing technique!) by Kurt Equiluz as evangelist.

Listening to the Passion according to St. John is also appropriate in the order of things on this blog, since Bach was working on this passion during Lent in 1724, and revising it in 1725. And this way, come Good Friday (March 25, 2016), I can perhaps talk about the other passion 🙂

Wieneke Gorter, Sunday March 6, 2016.

Watch a video while you wait

03 Thursday Mar 2016

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My apologies for not posting anything this past weekend. The other aspects of my life need(ed) my attention, time, and energy.

While you wait for my future posts, please watch this video about Bach’s life and work. It’s a BBC documentary, aka the film version of Gardiner’s book about Bach, with Gardiner actually visiting all the villages and cities where Bach lived and worked, and showing lots of historical documents in the Bach Archives in Leipzig.

To come later this month:

Sunday March 20: Palm Sunday: Cantata 182 Himmelskönig, sei willkommen

Sunday March 27: Easter Sunday: Cantata 31 Der Himmel lacht! Die Erde jubilieret

Wieneke Gorter, March 3, 2016

Bach in Leipzig

21 Sunday Feb 2016

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From left to right, the St. Thomas School in Leipzig, where the Bach family lived in a large apartment on the left side (or front, seen like this, with a view over the park), the St. Thomas Church right next to the School (with such a high roof and spire it could be seen from all over the city), and the St. Nicholas Church at walking distance. Bach’s cantatas were performed in both churches.

No discussion of Bach cantatas until Easter, because Bach did not write any cantatas for Lent (the 40 days before Easter). Read more about this in my post from last week.

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) wrote most of his cantatas, motets, masses, and passions in Leipzig. He moved there on Saturday May 22, 1723.

Christoph Wolff includes this account of the event by a Hamburg newspaper in his The New Bach Reader: “This past Saturday at noon, four wagons loaded with household goods arrived here from Köthen; they belonged to the former Princely Kapellmeister there, now called to Leipzig as Cantor Figuralis. He himself arrived with his family on two carriages at 2 o’clock and moved into the newly renovated apartment in the St. Thomas School.”

By that time, Bach’s family consisted of:

his wife Anna Magdalena (he married her in Köthen in 1721 when she was 20 years old),

four children from his first wife Maria Barbara (she died in 1720).

one child from Anna Magdalena,

and most probably his sister-in-law Friedelena Margaretha Bach  (sister of his first wife Maria Barbara, who -according to Wolff- lived in the Bach household from at least 1709 at age 34 to her death in 1729. I will probably write an entire post about all the stories and non-stories about Bach’s wives soon, but let’s just leave it at this for now, here :-)). That her last name is also Bach is because these sisters were Bach’s second cousins.

Until 1742, Anna Magdalena and Johann Sebastian would have 12 more children in Leipzig, of which they would lose six. They would also take some nephews under their wings (a normal thing to do in the extended Bach family—Bach himself had lived with a relative after his parents died) and have a mind-boggling number of private students.

Leipzig was a bustling town, the second largest in the region, with a highly regarded university as well as three annual trade fairs, which brought merchants, artists, and tourists from all over Europe to the city. It happened most probably during one of these fairs that Leipzig instrument maker J.H. Eichentopf came into contact with some eastern instruments on which he based the concept of the oboe da caccia he developed around the time of Bach’s arrival in the city, and which Bach used in many compositions, such as cantata 65. The only thing the city didn’t have was an opera house. The one in Dresden was about 112 kilometers, or 70 miles, or a day’s travel away. The other famous one, in Hamburg, was almost three times as far away.

In addition to teaching the boys of the St. Thomas School in music and many other subjects, Bach was to supply music for all Sundays and church feast days in both the St. Thomas and St. Nicholas churches. No-one had specified that these had to be cantatas. A simpler form of composition would probably have suited the council better, as many of the members opposed the Italian, operatic style of some of the arias, or the French character of many of the opening sinfonias. If Bach would sometimes have programmed music by other composers, that would not have been a problem either.* It was his own choice to write a new cantata for every Sunday, most probably driven by a strong desire, a promise to himself (or “life goal,” as he calls it when moving from Mühlhausen to Weimar) to change the concept of church music, glorifying God but also educating the congregation in Lutheran theology. And as far as we know now, he kept that promise, writing a new cantata every week, for almost three full years.

The churches would be full, with one to three thousand (!) people attending the services. But however large in number, the congregation did not necessarily form a captive audience. Many of them, especially the women, seated in the main, “ground floor” section of pews, would arrive late and make quite an entrance, taking time to greet their neighbors, and making sure to get the attention of the men who were sitting in the balconies. The men would sometimes throw the 18th-century equivalent of paper airplanes to the women to catch their attention. Upper class families had their own boxes, or “chapels” in the church, and were often laughing and talking very loudly in them.

In another part of his Leipzig life, Bach had more attentive audiences in “Zimmermann’s,” one of the six coffee houses in Leipzig, where he lead the Collegium Musicum of the university in performances of instrumental music and secular cantatas. They performed at least once a week on Wednesdays, and twice a week during the three annual trade fairs. At first Bach was principal guest conductor, from 1729 he was the director of this elite ensemble of virtuoso instrumentalists. It is safe to say that even though he owned an entire library of theological books and was committed to teaching his “neighbor” through his church music, he composed and performed as much (and maybe more!) instrumental and secular music in Leipzig as he did sacred music.

To read more, I highly recommend Christoph Wolff’s The New Bach Reader and John Eliot Gardiner’s Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven.

Wieneke Gorter, February 21, 2016, updated February 20, 2021

*After a while, Bach did indeed perform music by other composers. Read more about this in a background article I wrote for California Bach Society’s blog, here.

The order of things

13 Saturday Feb 2016

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My mother, Weia Gorter-Assink (1946-2010) with my first-born, December 2002

One of the main reasons I started this blog was to honor my late musician/teacher mother, and to continue her legacy of playing the appropriate Bach cantata every Sunday. In the church newsletter she would look up what Sunday it was, and then she would open the little red book by Alfred Dürr (it actually consisted of two Deutsche Taschenbuch Verlag books at the time, nowadays available as one single book in English or in German), and look up which cantatas Bach wrote for that Sunday. Then she would look through her collection of Leonhardt/Harnoncourt LPs (vinyl records), and if she had a recording, she would put it on the turn table, and read along in the score that came with the LP/vinyl record.

My mom’s routine of checking the church newsletter or doing her own calculations *before* she checked the Dürr book is crucial here. Because there are three Sundays before Lent (Septuagesima, Sexagesima, and Quinquagesima/Estomihi), and they override the Sundays after Epiphany. If Easter is late, there can be as many as six Sundays after Epiphany (though we only have surviving Bach cantatas for the first four of those), if Easter is early (as is the case this year) there are only two Sundays after Epiphany.

This means that my post this year about cantata 3 was still correct, my next two posts (about 72 & 73, and about the operatic cantata 81) were irrelevant for this year, I should have posted about cantata 144 on Sunday January 24 instead of last week, and in the two weeks between then and now I should have introduced you to the fantastic portrayal of rain and snow in cantata 18, followed by some of Bach’s most magnificent choral writing in cantata 23.

Wieneke Gorter, February 13, 2016

Dutch memories, Dutch discoveries

06 Saturday Feb 2016

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Opnamedatum: 2012-04-06
Parabel of the Laborers in the Vineyard by Jan Luyken, print, 1703

A number of Dutch things converged for me when writing this post. Whenever I think about the parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard, the Bible story for this Septuagesima Sunday, or the third Sunday before Lent, I see the windows of my 3rd or 4th grade classroom.* I also have to think of my late grandfather reading this story from the Bible.  Quickly summarized, this story is: A landlord pays all his laborers equally, no matter how many hours they worked. Those that worked all day object.

My favorite recording of cantata 144 Nimm, was dein ist, und gehe hin (first performed on Sunday February 6, 1724) turns out to have two connections to my home country: It was recorded in the Grote Kerk in Naarden, during the Bach Pilgrimage tour of Gardiner/English Baroque Soloists, and it features Dutch singer Wilke te Brummelstoete as alto soloist. Counter-tenor fan that I am, I can safely state that I will mention no more than a handful of female altos on this blog each year, so this is pretty special.

Naarden, The Netherlands

The icing on the cake is the illustration I discovered when searching for a good picture to go with this blog post: an etching by Haarlem artist Jan Luyken as published in the Amsterdam Mortierbijbel (Bible published by Pieter Mortier) in 1703, from the collection of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.

Listen to John Eliot Gardiner’s recording of cantata 144 on Spotify

Listen to John Eliot Gardiner’s recording of cantata 144 on Youtube

Soloists: Miah Persson, soprano; Wilke te Brummelstroete, alto;
James Oxley, tenor; Jonathan Brown, bass.

As I’m updating this post on February 8, 2020, the J.S. Bach Foundation has just released their entire live video recording of this cantata, and that one is wonderful too, especially because Nuria Rial sings the soprano aria. Find that video here on YouTube. Soloists are Nuria Rial, soprano; Markus Forster, alto; Raphael Höhn, tenor.

Read the German text with English translation of cantata 144

Find the score of cantata 144 here

What to listen for in cantata 144 Nimm, was dein ist, und gehe hin:

In the opening chorus: the illustration of the text gehe hin, gehe hin! (off you go!) with ascending figures, each gehe hin “retaken” so that the text really leaps off the page, more on the Gardiner recording than on other ones. Also listen how beautifully the sopranos and violins enhance each other’s sound in this movement. That happens too on the J.S. Bach Foundation recording.

In the alto aria:  The illustration of the grumbling workers by the repeated 8th-notes in the strings. The music on the text “Murre nicht” (Don’t grumble) is always low, the music with the text “Lieber Christ” (please note that this means “dear Christian,” not “dear Christ”) always goes up. Very well done in an appropriate style by Wilke te Brummelstoete on the Gardiner recording.

In the soprano aria: the glorification of the “Genügsamkeit” (being satisfied with what you have, a concept that must have been very important to Bach), and the wonderful voice of soprano Miah Persson on the Gardiner recording or the always radiant Nuria Rial on the J.S. Bach Foundation recording. Read more about Miah Persson in my blog post about cantata 179 and those about cantatas 186 and 186a. Read more about Nuria Rial in my posts about Cantata 36 and Cantata 89.

Thank you for reading! Please leave your email address in the “follow this blog” section on the left side of this blog post. You will receive an email by WordPress whenever I have posted a new story. Please note that the choice of words and spelling in their confirmation email is by WordPress, not me. My apologies for that, and many thanks to you for your patience while I work on a more elegant solution!

To support this blog, please consider purchasing Gardiner’s album featuring cantata 144 on Amazon. I receive a small percentage of every sale made through this link. And it would be so fun if someone would actually buy a CD through this link. So far (February 13, 2020), it hasn’t happened 😉 Thank you!

Wieneke Gorter, February 6, 2016, updated January 27, 2024.

*Though a protestant school, it was pretty moderate in its teachings, and I don’t really remember Bible reading in the classroom. However, we learned a hymn every week and the reason I have to think of the classroom when reading this parable probably has to do with the hymn “De eersten zijn de laatsten” (The first will be the last) which is based on this same story.

To the Opera!

31 Sunday Jan 2016

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Rembrandt_Christ_in_the_Storm_on_the_Lake_of_Galilee
The Storm on the Sea of Galilee by Rembrandt van Rijn, 1633. Formerly at the Isabella Stuart Gardner Museum, Boston, USA. Stolen in 1990.

Cantata 81 Jesus schläft, was soll ich hoffen? from 1724 closely follows the reading for the 4th Sunday after Epiphany: the story of Jesus calming the storm on the sea of Galilee.

In combining masterful text illustration with his theology, Bach presents a powerful drama rivaling a Handel opera. And I was lucky to find two conductors especially not shy of the opera-element in this cantata: Harnoncourt and Gardiner. The recording from 1978 directed by Harnoncourt has a great sense of drama as well as good singing in all the movements. For me it is the most “overall” satisfying recording of this cantata. It was not an easy decision though this week, and the fact that I grew up with the Harnoncourt recording might of course have influenced my choice. Soloists: Paul Esswood, counter-tenor; Kurt Equiluz, tenor; Ruud van der Meer, bass.

Listen to Harnoncourt’s recording of cantata 81 on Spotify

Listen to Harnoncourt’s recording of cantata 81 on YouTube

Read the full German text with English translation of cantata 81

Find the score of cantata 81 here

If you have time to listen some more: The absolute best rendition of the spectacular tenor aria in my opinion appears on the Gardiner recording, with very convincing “waves” in the orchestra (at an even higher tempo than Harnoncourt) and truly marvelous singing by Paul Agnew. Listen to this aria on Spotify.

What to keep in mind when listening:

The reading for this 4th Sunday after Epiphany, from Matthew 8:

23. Und er trat in das Schiff, und seine Jünger folgeten ihm.

[23] And when he entered into a ship, his disciples followed him.

24. Und siehe, da erhub sich ein groß Ungestüm im Meer, also daß auch das Schifflein mit Wellen bedeckt ward; und er schlief.

[24] And, behold, there arose a great tempest in the sea, insomuch that the ship was covered with the waves: but he was asleep.

25. Und die Jünger traten zu ihm und weckten ihn auf und sprachen: HERR, hilf uns, wir verderben!

[25] And his disciples came to him, and awoke him, saying, Lord, save us: we perish.

26. Da sagte er zu ihnen: Ihr Kleingläubigen, warum seid ihr so furchtsam? Und stund auf und bedräuete den Wind und das Meer; da ward es ganz stille.

[26] And he saith unto them, Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith? Then he arose, and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a great calm.

27. Die Menschen aber verwunderten sich und sprachen: Was ist das für ein Mann, daß ihm Wind und Meer gehorsam ist?

[27] But the men marvelled, saying, What manner of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him!

In Western Europe at Bach’s time, there was probably no insight yet that the “sea” in this bible story was actually a large sweet-water lake. Bach’s Lutheran bible talked of a sea, not a lake, and most paintings from the 16th and 17th centuries depict seagulls, cliffs, or port cities in the distance. Of course a storm can also develop on a large lake, but we have to assume that Bach and his librettist had a full-blown storm at sea in mind when writing this. Bach probably never witnessed one, but Gardiner says that one of the theologian books in Bach’s library featured a vivid commentary on this part of the gospel. That book’s author, Heinrich Müller, lived in Rostock, on the Baltic sea. And who knows what interpretations of a “tempesta di mare” by other composers Bach had heard at the opera in Hamburg or seen on copied music which traveling colleagues and students might have brought with them.

Already in the opening aria Bach combines opera with theology. The recorders illustrate the “sleeping” Jesus, but also the loneliness of a life without Jesus/without faith (Bach uses recorders for this purpose more often, for example in the O Schmerz tenor-aria from the St. Matthew Passion (when for a moment Jesus feels he has lost faith), as well as in the Sanfte soll mein Todeskummer tenor-aria from the Easter Oratorio). There is also some hint in the orchestra of the calm before the storm, underlining the anxiety of the question “Was soll ich hoffen?”

The big storm at sea manifests in the tenor aria, equal to a “rage” aria by Handel, with the orchestra and the singer imitating the rolling waves and wind.

Then enters Jesus in the bass arioso, asking his disciples, but also the believers in general, why they didn’t have faith. Dürr remarks that the music is like an “Invention” and is practically a bass duet, with the other “singer” being the continuo. This is also a pivotal point in the cantata, moving from the part without Jesus/faith (nos 1-3) to the part with Jesus/faith.

Another “storm aria” follows, sung by the bass, but this time the storm is somewhat quieting down, and the oboe lines paint a quieter mood. All this to illustrate that Jesus is calming the storm. The alto recitative states/confirms that Jesus has calmed the storm, and is with us, and the chorale (second verse of the beautiful Jesu meine Freude) is the final affirmation:

Unter deinen Schirmen
Beneath your protection
Bin ich für den Stürmen
I am free from storms
Aller Feinde frei.
and all enemies.
Laß den Satan wittern,
Let Satan sniff around,
Laß den Feind erbittern,
let the enemy be exasperated
Mir steht Jesus bei.
Jesus stands by me.
Ob es itzt gleich kracht und blitzt,
Though there is thunder and lightning,
Ob gleich Sünd und Hölle schrecken,
though sin and hell terrify,
Jesus will mich decken.
Jesus will protect me.

Thank you for reading! Please leave your email address in the “follow this blog” section on the left side of this blog post. You will receive an email by WordPress whenever I have posted a new story. Please note that the choice of words and spelling in their confirmation email is by WordPress, not me. My apologies for that, and many thanks to you for your patience while I work on a more elegant solution!

Wieneke Gorter, January 31, 2016, links updated February 2, 2020

72 and 73

24 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by in Cantatas, Epiphany, Leipzig

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ChristCleansing

Christ cleansing a leper, Jean-Marie Melchior Doze, 1864

For this third Sunday after Epiphany, we find no less than four gems in Bach’s treasure trove: cantatas 73, 111, 72, and 156. I decided to highlight 73 and 72, because of the interesting references between the two. As far as we can tell, Bach loved these cantatas too: He performed cantata 73 at least one more time, and transcribed the opening chorus of cantata 72 into the Gloria of his Mass in G minor.

From the chronology of performances in Leipzig, it looks as if Bach wrote cantata 73 in 1724 and cantata 72 two years later. However, some scholars argue that (a large part of) cantata 72 was probably already written around 1715, since most of the poetry is from a collection Bach used when working in Weimar at that time. But whether 72 was first or 73 was first, it doesn’t matter that much for the appreciation of these two beautiful cantatas.

I have a soft spot for cantata 73 because I love the way Herreweghe performs this, have listened to the 1990 recording many times since it came out, and then to the (better!) 2013 recording. The best parts are the opening chorus and the bass aria (sung by Peter Kooy on both recordings) and I’m grateful for Eduard van Hengel’s Bach website (in Dutch) where I learned a lot about the many possible bits of reference in this cantata to other works.

Listen first to Cantata 72 Alles nur nach Gottes willen by Bach Collegium Japan/Masaaki Suzuki on Spotify

soloists: Rachel Nicholls (one of the most “boy soprano”-like voices of the soprano soloists in that series, I love it), Robin Blaze (counter-tenor), Peter Kooy (bass)

If you only have access to YouTube, you could listen to Montreal Baroque’s recording or to Gardiner’s recording instead.

What to listen for in cantata 72:

The most important words from the Bible text for this third Sunday after Epiphany (the story of Jesus cleansing a leper, from the gospel of Matthew):

Da er aber vom Berg herabging, folgte ihm viel Volks nach. Und siehe, ein Aussätziger kam und betete ihn an und sprach: Herr, so du willst, kannst du mich wohl reinigen. Und Jesus streckte seine Hand aus, rührte ihn an und sprach: Ich will’s tun; sei gereinigt!

(When He had come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed Him. And behold, a leper came and worshiped Him, saying, Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean. Then Jesus put out His hand and touched him, saying, I am willing; be cleansed.)

In the opening chorus: The illustration of the word “Alles” (Everything): one can hear all the instruments in the orchestra, and when the voices come in, they first jump an octave over two quarter notes, signifying all the possible notes in the chord, and then run up in 16th notes, singing every single note in the chord.

In the alto aria: nine times the words “Herr, so du willt” – make sure to remember this melody!

In the bass aria: the text is set in the third person, but it is almost as if Jesus himself is speaking here, and this is where the text moves to the “Ich will’s tun” (I will do it / I am willing) words from the gospel.

In the soprano aria*: the happy and sweet elaboration on the “Ich will’s tun” – which here turns into “my Jesus will do it!”

The closing chorale: the same text and tune Bach uses throughout cantata 111 for this same Sunday in 1725, as well as in the St. Matthew Passion (but in that case with different harmonies in the last four lines!)

***

Next, listen to cantata 73 Herr, wie du willt, so schick’s mit mir in a fantastic recording by Collegium Vocale Gent/Philippe Herreweghe, from 2013, on Spotify soloists: Dorothee Mields (soprano), Thomas Hobbs (tenor), Peter Kooy (bass)

or their 1990 recording here on YouTube soloists: Barbara Schlick (soprano), Howard Crook (tenor) and Peter Kooij (bass).

Please note: these are two different Herreweghe recordings. The newest one, on Herreweghe’s own label, features a different soprano and tenor soloist than on his earlier recording of this same cantata (Virgin Classics, 1990, with soprano Barbara Schlick and tenor Howard Crook). I like this new one better. The entire CD is wonderful, and also features fabulous counter-tenor Damien Guillon in the other cantatas on the disc. If you like this recording, please consider supporting the artists by purchasing it on Amazon.

What to listen for in cantata 73:

In the opening chorus: the first four notes of the original chorale Herr, wie du willt, so schick’s mit mir in Leiden und Sterben, used as a four-note “Leitmotiv,” first appearing staccato in the horn in the orchestra:

Screenshot 2016-01-22 23.47.40
and at the very end of the movement, homophonically in the choir, repeated three times, not something Bach normally does in cantata opening choruses:
Screenshot 2016-01-22 23.54.06

In the bass aria: now the “Herr, wie du willt” from the chorale text turns in to “Herr, so du willt” from the gospel text. And to accentuate this, Bach again gives this text its own “Leitmotiv”-like melody. However, it might not have been a new melody. It is very similar to “Bist du bei mir” from Anna Magdalena’s music book. She wrote this aria in her book much later, but it was copied from an opera aria by Stölzel from 1717. Perhaps this opera aria was already being hummed in the Bach household in 1724, we will never know. Later in the bass aria in cantata 73, the “Herr, so du willt”-melody from the alto aria of cantata 72 returns!

What I love especially in this bass-aria is the illustration of “Leichenglocken” (death bells) by pizzicato strings and a somewhat “tolling” movement in the vocal part. My mother (a walking Bach encyclopedia who played a cantata on the turntable / CD player every Sunday) would always point features like this out to me. Bach used it in many other cantatas, for example in (cantata number/movement number): 8/1, 95/5, 105/4, 127/3, 161/4, 198/4. [Thanks again to Eduard van Hengel, I didn’t have to look this up myself].

* While overall I like Bach Collegium Japan’s recording of cantata 72 best, and I love how Rachel Nicholls sings the soprano aria, I would like to mention that on Montreal Baroque’s recording of this work, the soprano aria by Monika Mauch is excellent and worth listening to. How she makes everything calm on the words “sanft und still” is very special.

More links:

Wieneke Gorter, January 24, 2016; links updated January 25, 2020, and January 23, 2021.

Hidden messages

16 Saturday Jan 2016

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

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marten_de_vos_004_le_nozze_di_cana_1597
Marriage at Cana by Marten de Vos, 1597. Cathedral of Our Lady, Antwerp, Belgium.

Judging by the text and lamenting style of their opening choruses or opening arias, all cantatas for this Sunday (155, 3, and 13) are very sad at first glance. Which seems strange, since the reading for the day is the miracle of Jesus turning water into wine at the Marriage at Cana. So let’s dig a little deeper in the cantata for this Sunday that I love the most, Cantata 3 Ach Gott, wie manches Herzeleid, from 1725.

My favorite interpretation of this cantata the one by Bach Collegium Japan. The choir sopranos (including Dorothee Mields) sing a truly heavenly “zum Himmel” in the opening chorus,  bass soloist Peter Kooy does an excellent job in his on purpose difficult aria and doesn’t hold back in the chorale tune in the opening chorus, and last but not least: fabulous singing by soprano Dorothee Mields and counter-tenor Pascal Bertin in the duet.

Listen to Bach Collegium Japan’s recording of Cantata 3 on Spotify

If you can’t listen on Spotify or prefer not to, you can find Gardiner’s recording here on YouTube. Soprano: Joanne Lunn; Counter-tenor: Richard Wyn Roberts; Tenor: Julian Podger; Bass: Gerald Finley.

Find the text of Cantata 3 Ach Gott, wie manches Herzeleid here, and the score here.

Bach was not just a strong believer but also a self-taught theologian, and stated several times that his church music was intended for the glorification of God and to instruct his “neighbor.” On this day of the Marriage at Cana reading, he might have been compelled to illustrate the deeper meaning of the Bible story: earthly troubles can turn into heavenly bliss if you are patient and believe strongly enough that Jesus will lead you. So either he himself or his librettist decided not to mention the Bible story at all in the the text of this cantata.*

It is then not so strange anymore that in the music of this cantata Bach keeps, brilliantly, combining the struggle and the salvation in almost every part of the work.

The achingly beautiful opening chorus at first just sounds like a lament, but has some hidden messages which reveal the salvation. First, in the instrumental introduction,  there is an ascending (the way to salvation/heaven) line in the violins at the same time as there is a chromatic descending line (the struggle/affliction) in the oboes, illustrating the last two lines of the text of that chorus:

Der schmale Weg ist trübsalvoll, (The narrow way is full of affliction)
Den ich zum Himmel wandern soll. (by which I must travel to heaven.)

Click here to see that visualized by Thomas Braatz on the Bach Cantatas website.

While the Leipzig congregation might have missed this first hidden message, they would have gotten the second: the text communicated through the well-known chorale tune. The same way my Dutch calvinist great-grandmother had all the verses of all the Psalm texts memorized, the Lutherans in Bach’s time knew all their chorales and would immediately think of the text when hearing the tune. For this opening chorus, Bach chose the tune of O Jesu Christ mein’s Lebens Licht, so there was some glorification of Jesus right there amidst the lamentation:

O Jesu Christ mein’s Lebens Licht
Mein Hort, mein Trost, mein Zuversicht
Auf Erden bin ich nur ein Gast
Und drückt mich sehr der Sünden Last.

O Jesus Christ, light of my life,
my refuge, my comfort, my reassurance,
on earth I am only a guest
And the burden of sin presses down heavily upon me.

And to make this stand out, Bach uses his “pay attention!” trick again, letting this chorale melody appear in a for him very unusual place: the vocal bass line. To emphasize it, he doubles it with a trombone (which is probably also the reason why this cantata is almost never performed today, because who is going to hire an expensive trombonist just to play along with the choir in one part of the cantata?).

In the other outstanding part of this cantata, the soprano/alto duet, this is all reversed: the music sounds absolutely happy, but if you look at the score, you see a visual illustration of the text in the middle section:  Mein Kreuz hilft Jesus tragen (Jesus helps to bear my cross). When the oboe line goes up, the continuo line goes down, and when one vocal line goes up, the other vocal line goes down. On top of that, there are four sharps in the key signature (in Bach’s manuscript this would look like four crosses and a sharp is also called a “cross” in German). We know from other works that hidden messages like this are not a coincidence in Bach’s writing.

Wieneke Gorter, January 16, 2016.  Links updated January 10, 2018 and January 31, 2020.

*Seen in the context of the chorale cantata series of 1724/1725, this is not unusual at all. On Several occasions before this Sunday in 1725, Bach had decided to focus more on the text of the chorale he had chosen for the cantata than on the Gospel reading for that day. See for example my post about December 31, 1724 and January 1, 1725.