Six weeks ago, it was easy to guess why there was a cantata missing from Bach’s collection of all-new chorale cantatas he wrote in the summer of 1724. Bach had probably been granted a short leave of absence because his presence was required in Köthen. But for today’s missing cantata there doesn’t seem to be a logical reason.

After his death, Bach’s compositions were divided over his sons. Most of them took care of these manuscripts, but apparently Wilhelm Friedemann often sold his father’s music to supplement his income. And of course it was always possible that the score and parts were at one point used by a colleague or relative and got displaced, or burnt in a fire.

While we don’t know how Bach’s cantata for the 12th Sunday after Trinity in 1724 disappeared, I can assure you all the other cantatas he wrote for the fall of 1724 as well as the 1724/1725 Christmas season did survive, so please keep following this blog. There are many cantatas coming up that I am not familiar with, so it will be a great journey of discovery for me, and it is great to know that I have so many readers traveling with me 🙂

For another cantata for this 12th Sunday after Trinity, please visit my post from last year about cantata 69a.

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Wieneke Gorter, September 3, 2017

In the spring of 1724, Bach had flutes* doubling oboe or violin parts for the first time. For the first Sunday after Easter that year, he wrote a separate part for flute, in cantata 67. It is a pretty part, but not extremely challenging. In cantata 107 things get more serious for the flute players. If Bach was trying out a new player, he has now passed the test. So now, two weeks later, it is time for a truly virtuoso flute part. Bach goes all out in this cantata 94 Was frag ich nach der Welt for the 9th Sunday after Trinity, writing the opening chorus as a flute concerto, and including an exquisite aria for alto and flute. The cantata also includes a fabulous tenor aria with full string accompaniment, and a pretty soprano aria with oboe.

I recommend Bach Collegium Japan’s recording of this cantata, with Kiyomi Suga, Baroque flute; Yukari Nonoshita, soprano; Robin Blaze, counter-tenor;  Jan Kobow, tenor; and Peter Kooy, bass. Listen here on YouTube via a playlist I created.

If Bach was trying out a new flute player, scholars think this must have either been Friedrich Gottlieb Wild (1700–1762), or Johann Gottlieb Würdig. Wild studied Law at the University of Leipzig, and thanks to a letter of recommendation Bach wrote for him on May 18, 1727, we know that he studied with Bach at least from 1723 to 1727 and also played the flute and the harpsichord in some of his cantatas. Bach writes:

“… during the four years that he has lived here at the University, [he] has always shown himself to be diligent and hardworking, in such manner that he not only has helped to adorn our church music with his well-learned accomplishments on the Flaute traversiere and Clavecin but also has taken special instruction from me in the clavier, the thorough bass, and the fundamental rules of composition based thereupon, so that he may on any occasion be heard with particular approval by musicians of attainment.”

Wild didn’t get the job of Kantor at the Jacobikirche in Chemnitz in 1727, but was appointed organist of the St. Peter’s Church in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1735. It is thus assumed that he continued as a student of Bach’s until 1735.

Würdig was a flute player at the Köthen court, and it has been suggested (by William Scheide, Bach Jahrbuch 2003) that Bach convinced him to travel back to Leipzig with him when he visited Köthen in July 1724. If that was the case, Würdig stayed in Leipzig for a few months, because until November 19, 1724, there would be an almost weekly flute solo in Bach’s cantatas.

Wieneke Gorter, August 13, 2017.

*not to be confused with recorders, which Bach had included in his cantatas many times before. Watch this All of Bach video in which Marten Root explains the development of the flute in 18th century Germany, and Bach’s use of the instrument in his cantatas (click on “interview flute player Marten Root” in the middle of the screen). A good video explaining this instrument is also this one by Lisa Beznosiuk of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment.

Today is a day of packing and organizing for our trip back “home” to California. I only have a little bit of time and very slow internet. So you’ll understand I was glad to realize (thanks to Eduard van Hengel) that for a discussion and recommendation of this Sunday’s cantata, I can refer you to The New York Times 🙂

In an article of January 27, 1991, reviewing Harnoncourt and Leonhardt’s entire series of cantata recordings, Richard Taruskin highlights Harnoncourt’s interpretation of cantata 178 Wo Gott der Herr nicht bei uns hält (8th Sunday after Trinity, 1724).

Find the Harnoncourt recording (with Panito Iconomou, alto; Kurt Equiluz, tenor; and Robert Holl, bass) here on YouTube. Find the text and translations here, and the score here.

Last week, for whatever reason, Bach didn’t use a librettist, and set the entire chorale text, every verse, to music. He either really enjoyed writing a chorale cantata that way, or his librettist was still a little bit under the weather, because for this cantata 178 Wo Gott der Herr nicht bei uns hält he used no less than six of the eight verses of the chorale verbatim.

Richard Taruskin’s entire review from 1991 can be found here. For your convenience, I’m directly quoting the excerpt that talks about cantata 178 here below:

“It feels not only invidious but ridiculous to be singling out one recording from a yard-high stack. But in Volume 41, released in 1988, the essential Bach speaks through Mr. Harnoncourt with a special vehemence. Cantata No. 178, “Wo Gott der Herr nicht bei uns halt,” begins with a French overture straight from hell, a portrait of a world without God in which (as Dostoyevsky later noted) all things are possible and there is no hope. Mr. Harnoncourt applies to the dotted rhythms the awful “gnashville” sound he has gradually developed for such occasions, the strings of the Concentus Musicus hurling their bows at their instruments from a great height, producing as much scratch as tone.

The “chorale-recitative” that follows illustrates the futility of human effort with a bass that is continually and arbitrarily disrupted. It is played with greatly exaggerated dynamics to underscore — needlessly, most proper authenticists would insist — the bare message of the notes. After an aria depicting a Satan-engineered shipwreck with nauseous melismas and a chorale verse evoking persecution with a crowd of discomfitingly close and syncopated imitations, we reach the heart of the cantata.

A glossed chorale verse about raging beasts finally dispenses with word-painting, which depends on mechanisms of wit and can be taken as humor. It harks back instead to the wellsprings of the Baroque in grossly exaggerated speech contours, something akin to wild gesticulation.

Now Bach the anti-Enlightener comes into his own, with a frantic tenor aria, “Shut up, stumbling Reason!” (“Schweig nur, taumelnde Vernunft!”). Past the first line the message of the text is one of comfort: “To them who trust in Jesus ever, the Door of Mercy closes never,” to quote the doggerel translation in the program booklet. But Bach is fixated on that fierce and derisive opening line — indeed, on just the opening word. Out of it he builds practically the whole first section of his da capo aria, crowding all the rest into a cursory and soon superseded middle. Over and over the tenor shrieks, “Schweig nur, schweig!,” leaping now a sixth, now a seventh, now an octave. Meanwhile, the accompanying orchestra, reason’s surrogate, reels and lurches violently.

This one is not for you, Dr. Burney. Hands off, Maestro Norrington. There is no way this music can be fun. In fact, it is terrifying — perhaps more now than in Bach’s own time, since we have greater reason than Bach’s contemporaries ever had to wince at the sound of a high-pitched German voice stridently shouting reason down.”

Wieneke Gorter, August 5, 2017, links updated August 1, 2020.