Category Archives: Trinity

Trombones and altos from heaven (a guide to BWV 2)

26 Thursday Mar 2020

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

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Ceiling painting installed around 1700 in Christian V’s Hall in Rosenborg Castle, Denmark. Possibly by Reinhold Timm, ca. 1620, originally for for a music pavilion in Kongens Have. *

Yesterday, Wednesday March 25, 2020, the J.S. Bach Foundation published their live video recording of Cantata 2 Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein (Please God, look down from Heaven) on their YouTube channel. I thought it might be nice to provide a listening guide to go with this performance.

I love this cantata because it has trombones in the orchestra, doubling the choir parts, and because the altos have the cantus firmus (=they sing the chorale melody in long notes) in the opening chorus, which sounds incredibly good, and is unique within Bach’s writing.

Find the video recording by the J.S. Bach Foundation here on YouTube. Soloists are Alex Potter, alto; Georg Poplutz, tenor; and Markus Volpert, bass.

Find the German texts with English translations here, and the full score here.

This cantata was the second in Bach’s 1724 series of Chorale Cantatas. He most probably intended for the first four cantatas in that series to form a set, or at least to present some kind of order,  if you look at the composition form of the opening movement, and which voice has the cantus firmus of the chorale tune in that chorus:

  1. Cantata 20 O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort: French Overture, with cantus firmus in the soprano (find my blog post about this cantata here)
  2. Cantata 2 Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein: Chorale motet, cantus firmus in alto (the cantata discussed here)
  3. Cantata 7 Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam: Italian concerto, cantus firmus in tenor. (find my blog post about this cantata here)
  4. Cantata 135 : Ach Herr, mich armen Sünder: Chorale fantasia, cantus firmus in bass. (find my blog post about this cantata here)

We know that Bach liked to use order and symmetry when he wanted to impress other people with a composition. But perhaps he was also thinking of his legacy. When he started composing cantatas at the Weimar court in 1714, albeit on a monthly instead of weekly basis, his first four cantatas formed a similar portfolio of composition styles in the opening choral movements:

  1. Cantata 182 Himmelskönig, sei wilkommen: Choral fugue
  2. Cantata 12 Weinen, klagen, sorgen, zagen: Passacaglia
  3. Cantata 172 Erschallet, ihr Lieder, erklinget, ihr Saiten!: Concerto
  4. Cantata 21 Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis: Motet.

Back to this Cantata 2 Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein (Please God, look down from Heaven), and what to listen for.

Opening chorus:

The chorale, based on Psalm 12, is by Luther. For an idea what Luther’s original song would have sounded like, you can watch this video. For readers who understand German: Eduard van Hengel’s website (in Dutch) has a very insightful overview of the original German text of Psalm 12, the text of Luther’s chorale, and how Bach’s librettist changed that into the text for the cantata.  You can find it here.

Whenever Bach uses a chorale by Luther in a cantata, he often demonstrates his reverence for the father of his faith by using the archaic form of chorale motet as opening chorus combined with the equally archaic trombone quartet (1 cornetto and 3 trombones) to double the choir parts.

Giving the cantus firmus to the altos is however not something Bach does very often. If only he had! In this case it is especially wonderfully orchestrated, with doubling by one trombone, two oboes, and all second violins. Both on this video recording by the J.S. Bach Foundation as well on the Herreweghe audio recording I recommended back in 2017, Alex Potter’s voice significantly enhances this winning blend of alto voices and instruments, and on this J.S. Bach Foundation video recording he also sings the beautiful alto aria. It definitely made my day yesterday.

Alto aria:

Bach alto and tenor arias are at their prettiest, I find, when they are written as a trio sonata, and the alto aria Tilg, o Gott in this cantata is a beautiful example of that. Wonderful singing and playing by alto Alex Potter and violinist Renate Steinmann. The aria is a plea for help in fighting the “Rottengeister,” or the sectarians amidst the Lutherans. When the alto starts singing the word “Rottengeistern,” we realize we had heard this word already many times in the triplets of the violin part. As Eduard van Hengel says, it is the “popular easy talk of the sectarians, and that is also the reason why the other two parts don’t have this motive” [to further illustrate the schism].

Renate Steinmann, violin and Alex Potter, alto. Photo of Alex Potter by Annelies van der Vegt.

Bass recitative:

Definitely keep the text & translations handy for this one, because this movement contains a wealth of text illustrations in the music. On the word Armen  (the poor) sounds a sorrowful diminished seventh, the word seufzend (sighing) has a rest/sigh in the middle of the word, and more such things happening on the words Ach (sighing) and Klagen (complaining). In contrast to this, a few lines later, the chord on the word Gott (God) sounds open and liberating, after which God himself gets to speak, and the music turns to an arioso (similarly to how Bach does that in his much earlier Cantata 18 when God speaks). At the word heller Sonnenschein (bright sunshine) the light gets turned on in the music too: the harmony changes to C Major.

Tenor aria:

Here we have arrived at the solution/salvation part of the cantata, and so this music is more pleasant, easier to listen to. But Bach is still preaching: there are some crossing (!) lines in the music, and in the middle section, which tells the listeners to be patient (sei geduldig) and Bach stresses the words Kreuz und Not.

With many thanks to Eduard van Hengel and Rudolf Lutz for their explanations of this cantata,

Wieneke Gorter, March 26, 2020.

*more information about this painting and the other objects in Christian V’s Hall in Rosenborg Castle can be found here.

The Shining Star of the Netherlands Bach Society

04 Wednesday Dec 2019

Posted by in Advent, Cantatas, Leipzig, Trinity, Weimar

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Shunske Sato, concertmaster since 2013 and artistic director since 2018 of the Netherlands Bach Society. Photo by Dana van Leeuwen.

To find the Weekly Cantata Advent Calendar, please click here.

Several people have asked me what made me start writing for this blog again. The answer is simple: Shunske Sato’s violin playing in the “Mein Verlangen” tenor aria from Cantata 161 Komm, du süsse Todesstunde. I had already heard that Sato was “a good one” from people with authority on the matter, and had enjoyed listening to his recordings, but it took these live concerts to experience the magic that happens when he is a soloist in a Bach aria.

During a visit to my home country, the Netherlands, I attended the Netherlands Bach Society’s “All Souls” concerts on October 31 in the Grote Kerk in Naarden and on November 3 in the Nieuwe Kerk in The Hague. I had been unsure how to talk about these concerts in the framework of this blog, especially now that it’s more than a month ago and we’re in Advent already (yes there is Advent music in this post, please keep reading) and there is no recording of these concerts.

Solo sonatas and partitas on All of Bach

But it turns out that this week is the perfect time for a spotlight on Shunske Sato, because this Thursday December 5, 2019, the Netherlands Bach Society will publish the final episode of his series of solo violin sonatas and partitas on All of Bach, their online video archive of Bach performances. Just click on this link and the entire series is right there, under “recently added.”

Sato was appointed concertmaster of the Netherlands Bach Society in 2013, and became their artistic director in June 2018. For the concerts I attended, he was concertmaster only, having invited alto Alex Potter to program and lead this production. (Alex Potter deserves a blog post too, but that will come later). By inviting a different guest director for each program, Sato has breathed fresh air into the he group of musicians I feel.

Instead of the standard biographies, the program booklet featured personal stories from Sato and the four vocal soloists. As a person who’s produced many program books in her lifetime, I felt this was a breath of fresh air too. And as a mom of two teenagers who are finding their way through school and life, I especially liked this part from Sato’s story:

“Things got tricky in my teens: I began spending lots of time away from school playing concerts, and my grades at school were impressively low (except for French and Maths).  Giving up on school, I often spent my weekdays at my favorite bookstore instead and read about history, computer programming and linguistics, and composed string quartets.  Saturdays always came as a relief: classes and lessons at the Juilliard School in New York, where hung out with my “real” friends.”

Playing Weimar style

Back to what happened in the concert in Naarden on October 31. For this entire program, the violinists were playing one-on-a-part, the same way it was probably done in Weimar, where Bach first performed Cantata 161 on the small organ loft in 1716. This meant that Sato was thus the instrumental soloist in the tenor aria “Mein Verlangen,” and with the rest of the ensemble completely in sync with him, he could truly do his own thing.

And then there was light

Shunske Sato in Naarden, October 31, 2019. Photo by Hans van der Woerd, courtesy of The Netherlands Bach Society.

And boy, did he do that! Every time he played the “Mein Verlangen” theme, he stretched the tempo just a little bit, every time slightly differently. It created a halo over the entire aria. Even though the tenor wasn’t singing yet, the text was already there: the longing (“Verlangen”) but also the pure radiance (“reiner Schein”) of the soul and the image of angels. He truly brought light into the music, and also for me personally into my heart and mind. It made all my frustrations and worries melt away, and it made the other instrumentalists play and tenor Thomas Hobbs sing with even more inspiration than they already had in this concert.

“The more I let go, the more I risk, the more I dare to really tell the story”

Witnessing Sato communicate the text of the aria before the singing started, I was immediately reminded of this wonderful interview with him for All of Bach. It is specifically about the “Erbarme dich” aria from the St. Matthew Passion, but his message “The more I let go and the more I risk, the more I dare to really tell the story…” applies just as well to this aria that I saw him play.

I went to the “All Souls” concert again three days later in the beautiful concert venue the Nieuwe Kerk has become. Sato’s playing there was possibly even more moving and the effect on those on stage and in the audience possibly stronger too. Several people had tears in their eyes.

Watch for yourself in this Advent aria

See the “Sato magic” happen in the soprano aria from Cantata 36 Schwingt freudig euch empor on All of Bach, with soprano Zsuzsi Tóth. Never did I enjoy a “da capo” this much. To read more about this cantata, the third one Bach wrote (or adapted) for the first Sunday of Advent, read my blog post from 2017 here.

With special thanks to Marloes Biermans and Annelie Bulsing of the Netherlands Bach Society for their generosity in providing photos and copy for me to use,

Wieneke Gorter, December 3, 2019.

To find the Weekly Cantata Advent Calendar, please click here.

Weekly Cantata is back!

15 Friday Nov 2019

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

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The Servant Sending his Fellow Servant to Prison, from The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant, bound in Thesaurus Sacrarum historiarum Veteris et Novi Testamenti, 1585.
Anonymous, Netherlandish. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (not on view).

I’m back! I’m starting with a small step, but stay tuned … a more considerable post is coming next week.

For this coming Sunday, the 22nd Sunday after Trinity, Bach wrote Cantata 89 in 1723, Cantata 115 in 1724, and Cantata 55 in 1726. Two years ago I wrote about the soprano aria from Cantata 115, not really being able to choose between Susanne Rydén with Bach Collegium Japan or Dorothee Mields with Herreweghe. I also included a link to the soprano aria from Cantata 89. Read that post here.

I still recommend the Herreweghe recording from 2017 for an overall recording of this cantata. However, sometimes it is nice to *see* a performance, and I would like to celebrate an important event in the world of Bach Cantata recordings that happened in the past year: The J.S. Bach Foundation in Switzerland (Bachstiftung) decided to make all their live video recordings of their Bach cantata performances available on YouTube, in full length. Previously, they had only made one movement of each cantata available on YouTube, and one would have to purchase the DVD or buy a live stream subscription in order to see the rest of the cantata.

So in this post I would like to share the Bachstiftung recording of Cantata 115. It was recorded on October 21, 2016, and published to YouTube on October 26, 2018.

Find the German texts with English translations here and the score here.

What is so special about this video recording is that you can see wonderful flutist Marc Hantaï at work in the opening chorus and in the soprano aria. He doesn’t appear on video that often, and they made a good choice to put him in front, so you can see his playing, and of course this way also the microphones pick up his sound better. (to hear more of what I believe is his playing, go to this post).

corno da tirarsi


Other instrumentalists to watch in this video: Olivier Picon on corno da tirarsi, and Balázs Máté on violoncello piccolo. Only three cantatas (46, 162, and 67) show the full name corno da tirarsi written in the manuscript, but there are 27 cantatas from Leipzig requiring a corno in which that part is not playable on a natural horn, so must have been written for this corno da tirarsi as well. Cantata 115 is included in that group. Bach is the only composer who ever mentioned this instrument in writing, and most probably his principal brass player Gottfried Reiche was the only one who ever played it. After Reiche’s death in 1734 Bach did not write for this instrument anymore, and for repeat performances of any cantatas containing a corno da tirarsi part, Bach rewrote it for other instruments. Read more about this in Olivier Picon’s article on the “corno da tirarsi” from 2010. The 27 cantatas are mentioned on page 22 of the article.

To find more of the Bachstiftung videos, search their Archive on their Bachipedia.org website. Most of the videos are “unlisted” on YouTube, so you won’t find them by doing a search within YouTube. Or, for the Dutch readers of this blog, you can use Eduard van Hengel’s new website (another terrific event of this past year!) and click on the links for all YouTube recordings he conveniently provides at the top of each page under the header “Beluister” (for an example, see the one for Cantata 115 here).

Wieneke Gorter, November 15, 2019.

The last weeks of Trinity = bass aria time for Bach (Trinity 23 & 24 in 1724)

26 Sunday Nov 2017

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

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Jacob Isaacksz van Ruisdael, ‘Landscape with a waterfall’, circa 1668, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

Last week it was the 7th anniversary of my mother’s passing. I wasn’t sure what to write about that, so ended up not posting that day. If you would like to read more about the woman who still is my main inspiration for this blog, you can read my tribute to her here.

But as it turns out, it is not a bad thing to combine the cantatas Bach wrote for Trinity 23 & 24 in 1724 in one and the same blog post, since they both stand out for their bass arias. It is noteworthy that Bach ended both his 1723 and 1724 Trinity seasons in Leipzig with cantatas featuring impressive bass arias*. That the “End of Life/End of Time/Judgement Day” theme was on every Protestant’s mind in the 18th century around this time of year of course had a lot to do with this. Bach often associates the bass voice with this theme, see for example Cantata 20 O Ewigkeit du Donnerwort, discussed here on this blog.

Regarding Cantata 139 Wohl dem, der sich auf seinen Gott, for the 23rd Sunday after Trinity (which was last week), I prefer the recording by the J.S. Bach Foundation (Bachstiftung). Especially the tenor aria is very well done by tenor Johannes Kaleschke and violinists Renate Steinmann and Martin Korrodi. Update from 2019: when I first wrote about this performance in 2017, the cantata was not available on YouTube in full length, but now it is! You can find it here. For those who can understand (a little) German, there is also a terrific explanation by conductor Rudolf Lutz of everything that happens in the cantata available on YouTube here. You can even download the same worksheet (“Lutzogramm”) as the audience is looking at here.  Rudolf Lutz is at his best here, very clever, witty, and informative. He spent a lot of time prepping for this workshop, including entering entire orchestrations into his “Lady Yamaha,” which is very effective for understanding Bach’s incredible composition. Soloists are Susanne Frei, soprano; Antonia Frey, alto; Johannes Kaleschke, tenor; Ekkehard Abele, bass.

However, since the subject of this post is bass arias … the best interpretation of the extremely unusual bass aria appears on the Bach Collegium Japan recording. Peter Kooy does a fabulous job bringing out the different character for the 11 (!) different sections of the aria. I created a playlist on Spotify of this Bach Collegium Japan recording here. Soloists are Yukari Nonoshita, soprano; Robin Blaze, countertenor; Makoto Sakurada, tenor (he doesn’t convince me or capture my attention, and I find his pronunciation of the word “getrost” a bit distracting); Peter Kooy, bass.

Find the text of Cantata 139 here, and the score here.

peterkooyklein

Peter Kooy

Peter Kooy/Bach Collegium Japan again wins “best interpretation of the bass aria” in Cantata 26 Ach wie flüchtig, ach wie nichtig for the 24th Sunday after Trinity in 1724. Listen to Bach Collegium Japan’s recording via a playlist I created here on Spotify. This cantata was released on the same album as Cantata 139, so the soloists are again Soloists are Yukari Nonoshita, soprano; Robin Blaze, countertenor; Makoto Sakurada, tenor; and Peter Kooy, bass. 

Find the text of Cantata 26 here, and the score here.

And what a bass aria this is! The calmly babbling brook from the lovely tenor aria earlier in the cantata has become a white water river in this bass aria. And the combination of bass voice with the oboes makes me think of Hades in Monteverdi’s Orfeo. Peter Kooy is great and my mother loved him very much, but in my humble opinion, the luckiest people today are those attending the cantata service in the Kloosterkerk in The Hague, Netherlands, where my good friend and favorite Bach bass Marc Pantus will be singing this aria. The Kloosterkerk was also my mother’s church for the last decade of her life, so I have now successfully circled back to her in this post, and miss her much more today than I did last week.

Wieneke Gorter, November 26, 2017, updated November 21 & 24, 2019.

*The first cantata Bach ever wrote for this particular time of year was Cantata 163 in Weimar. It contains a bass aria accompanied by two cellos, an instrumentation Bach never ever used after that.  The last two cantatas of the 1723 Trinity season were Cantatas 90 and 70. Read my post about Cantata 90 for the 25th Sunday after Trinity here and my post about Cantata 70 for the 26th Sunday after Trinity here.

A good problem to have: Dorothee Mields or Susanne Rydén (cantata 115 for Trinity 22 in 1724)

11 Saturday Nov 2017

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Susanne Rydén. Photo by Elin Ericsson/Sveriges Radio.

About a decade ago, I first heard the soprano aria from Cantata 115 sung live in a concert. It took my breath away. The next day, I started looking for recordings of the aria, and decided that my favorite was the one by Susanne Rydén with Bach Collegium Japan, with Liliko Maeda on transverse flute, and Hidemi Suzuki on violoncello piccolo. I purchased only that movement on iTunes and played it many times. However, I never listened to the rest of the cantata …

It took me until this past week to realize that the entire cantata is beautiful, also contains a fabulous alto aria, and …. that this year, Herreweghe released a recording of it, with Dorothee Mields singing the soprano aria and Damien Guillon singing the alto aria. For those of you who know how much I love Dorothee Mields (read more about that here) you will understand I now had a problem: Susanne Rydén or Dorothee Mields? I feel that within the framework of the rest of the movements of Herreweghe’s recording, Mields’ interpretation of the soprano aria fits perfectly, is very moving, and extremely well done. But as a stand-alone aria, I still love Susanne Rydén’s the best, because of the quality of her voice on that recording, and because her ability to blend so perfectly with the flute.

For the entire cantata, I recommend Herreweghe’s 2017 recording. This recording is not available on YouTube, but you can find it here on Spotify. Please consider supporting the artists by purchasing the entire album here on Amazon.

Find the German texts with English translations here and the score here.

Herreweghe is the best at  giving the music direction, always focusing on the phrasing. In addition to all of that, there is a wonderful expansiveness, freedom in the sound and the musical lines present in almost all of the movements. Also, Peter Kooy’s singing in the bass recitative/arioso is much more lively and adventurous than on the Bach Collegium Japan recording, and then there’s of course counter-tenor Damien Guillon. I was smiling the whole time when I first listened to his aria. How he can move from a low, full note to a clear, spot-on high note is just so good.

If you would like to hear more beautiful music for this Sunday, or are wishing for a more upbeat soprano aria, there is a terrific rendition of the soprano aria from cantata 89 Bach wrote for this same Sunday in 1723 here on Youtube, sung by the incomparable Nuria Rial with the J.S. Bach Foundation.

Wieneke Gorter, November 11, 2017, updated November 15, 2019.

A modest Reformation Day in 1724

04 Saturday Nov 2017

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Bachs-Calov1

Bach’s Calov Bible after Luther, with Bach’s comment in the right margin of 2 Chronicles 5,13: “NB. Bey einer andächtigen Musiq ist allezeit Gott mit seiner Gnaden Gegenwart” (NB. Where there is devotional music, God with his grace is always present.)

This past October 31 marked the 500 anniversary of the Reformation: Luther posting his 95 theses on the door of the church in Wittenberg. Without Luther making the Bible available in German and making music an integral part of faith, Bach would probably not have felt as driven to educate his fellow believers through his music. Without Luther, there might not be any Bach cantatas, and definitely not this special cycle of chorale cantatas I’ve been discussing on this blog since June of this year.

It is interesting to me that when using one of Luther’s original chorales, Bach gives it an “old-fashioned” treatment, with the 16th-century brass quartet of one cornetto and three sackbutts (early trombones) doubling the vocal parts, as if wanting to confirm the timeless character of Luther’s chorales. A good example of this technique is Cantata 25 from 1723 and Cantata 2 from earlier in 1724. If this was Bach’s preferred way of honoring Luther, he did it again on October 29 in 1724, two days before Reformation day, with this Cantata 38 Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir for the 21st Sunday after Trinity. Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir is on one of Luther’s very first chorales, and was also sung at his funeral.

I prefer Herreweghe’s recording of this cantata. It is available here on YouTube, or please consider supporting the artists by purchasing the entire album “Weinen, Klagen …” here on Amazon. The album also contains my preferred recordings of Cantata 12 (see my post about that here) and Cantata 75 (see my post about that here). Soloists are Carolyn Sampson, soprano; Daniel Taylor, countertenor; Mark Padmore, tenor, and Peter Kooy, bass.

Please find the German text with English translations here, and the score here.

If you have time, it is worth it to first listen to the opening chorus of cantata 2 Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein from June 18, 1724, also based on one of Luther’s own chorales. Make sure you stop after the opening chorus, and then start listening to today’s Cantata 38 here, and hear how similar Bach’s setting of the chorale melody is. I don’t think it is a coincidence.

My favorite part of this cantata is the tenor aria: it is a beautiful piece of music, a quartet really, between the two oboe parts, the tenor voice, and the continuo, the way tenor arias often are with Bach, and I appreciate the text “Ich höre mitten in den Leiden
ein Trostwort, so mein Jesus spricht” (In the midst of my sufferings I hear
a word of consolation spoken by Jesus). I listened to this aria many times in the weeks after my mother passed away (seven years ago this month), Bach’s music being my “Trostwort.”

I also very much like the before-last movement of the cantata, the trio between soprano, countertenor, and bass. Excellent motet writing by Bach, and beautifully sung on the Herreweghe recording. Again this is a nod from Bach to older composition styles, linking back to the opening chorus, and perhaps an additional tribute to Luther.

Wieneke Gorter, November 4, 2017.

Wedding music for the 20th Sunday after Trinity, with a gorgeous soprano aria

30 Monday Oct 2017

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Bachsaal_Schloss_Koethen

The mirror-hall, now called “Bach hall” in Köthen, where Bach worked from 1717 to 1723.

A concert weekend, successful, but fueled almost exclusively by adrenaline; the overwhelming fatigue thus following; my favorite breakfast cook/violin practice coach/morning chauffeur/bedtime enforcer away on a business trip all week; much needed family hike on Saturday; me not being superwoman: It sometimes leads to a late blog post 🙂 Thank you for understanding.

The 1724 cantata for yesterday, Cantata 180 Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele (Adorn yourself, beloved soul) is full of luster, with an opening chorus, a tenor/flute aria and a soprano/orchestra aria that make me think of the orchestral suites Bach wrote at the court of Köthen between 1717 and 1723. With all this joy already from the beginning, it sounds like a wedding cantata.

The recording I appreciate most is the one by the Swiss J.S. Bach Foundation, because I feel they bring the most light into the opening chorus and the soprano aria, illustrate the “knocking” the best in the tenor aria, and the singers do a great job bringing out the text. Soloists: Maria Christina Kiehr, soprano; Jan Börner, counter-tenor; Julius Pfeifer, tenor; and Fabrice Hayoz, bass.  The entire recording is only available on Amazon, but worth the extra trouble to get it. This is not a plug for Amazon at all, but for the artists. It was their choice to make their recordings available this way, and not offer them on Spotify or YouTube (except for one single track per cantata).

If you prefer to listen on YouTube, this recording by McCreesh/Gabrieli Consort & Players is a good alternative. (Ann Monoyios, soprano; Angus Davidson, counter-tenor; Charles Daniels, tenor; Peter Harvey, bass). The soprano aria on this recording is fabulous, but because of some–to me–distracting issues with pronunciation and text-expression in other movements, I prefer the Bach Foundation recording overall.

Find the German text with English translation here, and the score here.

Why all this luster in this cantata? In Bach’s time, the Gospel reading for this Sunday, the parable of the Wedding Banquet (Matthew 22: 1-14) was seen in relation to the union of the faithful with Christ, both during communion as well as during the heavenly banquet in the afterlife. If you then realize that that union between the soul of the faithful and Christ was in that time often compared to the marriage between bride and groom, it was not unusual to present something that sounds like wedding music on this communion Sunday.  Expressing the love-like relationship of Jesus and the soul was not a foreign concept for Bach. He did it beautifully in the duet in Cantata 21 from Weimar (read my post about that cantata here) and later also in Cantata 140 Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme.**

In addition to this important link to the Bible texts, I think Bach might have an ulterior motive to bring so much splendor in a cantata for a Communion Sunday. On those Sundays, the congregations in the Leipzig churches would have been larger, and more prominent (read: wish-to-be-seen) families would have been present. Having followed Bach’s cantata compositions in the order he wrote them in Leipzig for almost two years now, I am seeing this pattern around large events in Leipzig: important audience = time to show off his star players and singers and his composition skills.

In his lecture (in German, but the music examples are universal), Rudolf Lutz, the director of the J.S. Bach Foundation, points out all the musical elements that make the opening chorus so utterly joyful and full of splendor. If you start watching at 19 minutes, you can see/hear how he shows that the bass notes are already signs of happiness, similar to the way how Bach expresses that in his Magnificat from 1723 and his Cantata 140. He then goes on to explain how the recorders build a “dome” over all of it, and the unisono violins and viola express the utter pleasure of lovers, or as Lutz says: “I love you, I love you, I say it to you again! Oh! Ah!”

In the tenor aria Christ is knocking on the door of the believer. This is a reference to the Revelations chapter from the Bible. When Bach received the libretto for this cantata, he must have thought back to an earlier cantata in which this Bible text was quoted literally: Cantata 61 Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland from Weimar. In that cantata, the “Vox Christi” bass sings:

Siehe, ich stehe vor der Tür und klopfe an.
So jemand meine Stimme hören wird und die Tür auftun,
zu dem werde ich eingehen
und das Abendmahl mit ihm halten und er mit mir.

See, I stand before the door and knock.
If anyone will hear my voice
and open the door
I shall go in
and have supper with him and he with me.

This recitative/arioso is accompanied by staccato continuo, illustrating the knocking. Bach uses this feature again in the continuo for this tenor aria from Cantata 180. Except this Christ is more impatient than the one from Cantata 61. For the rest it is pure blissful music, again putting Bach’s fabulous flute player in the spotlight. The theme of the flute part is likely based on the first three notes of the chorale melody. Julius Pfeifer does a great job singing this on the Bach Founation recording. Another fabulous recording of this aria is the one by Cristoph Prégardien on the Christophe Coin CD. Listen to it here.

Christophe Coin is, by the way, also the guest artist on the Bach Foundation recording of this cantata, doing a fabulous job playing violoncello piccolo in the soprano chorale.  If you really can’t or don’t want to listen to that recording on Amazon, you can still catch a bit of it on Youtube: their video of the soprano aria only, with Maria Christina Kiehr. Sublime interpretation by all, with levity, freedom, and abandon in the orchestra and superb singing by Kiehr. If you wonder where you know here voice from: she appears on many Savall recordings alongside Montserrat Figueras.

Wieneke Gorter, October 30, 2017

** Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme was really also a Trinity, almost Advent, cantata, but is nowadays better known as “The Wedding Cantata” (incorrectly suggesting that Bach wrote only one Wedding cantata) because of that subject matter.

Bass arias with trumpet

22 Sunday Oct 2017

Posted by in Cantatas, Leipzig, Trinity

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Excerpt from the trumpet part of Cantata 5 Wo soll ich fliehen hin? copied out by J.A. Kuhnau, Bach’s principal copyist, a nephew of Bach’s predecessor at Leipzig. Bach-Archiv Leipzig/Bach Digital.

The cantata from 1724 for this Sunday, the 19th after Trinity, is terrific, with a beautiful tenor aria with viola (or violin on some recordings) and rousing bass aria with trumpet. I prefer Bach Collegium Japan’s recording of this Cantata 5, Wo soll ich fliehen hin? because of Peter Kooy’s singing in the bass aria, Azumi Takada’s viola playing in the tenor aria, and the many colors of Susanne Rydén’s voice. Listen to it on YouTube via a playlist I created. Soloists are Susanne Rydén, soprano; Pascal Bertin, countertenor; Gerd Türk, tenor; Peter Kooij, bass.

Koopman’s recording of this cantata is good too, with perhaps a nicer tempo in the opening chorus, fabulous trumpet playing by Stephen Keavy in the bass aria, and good singing by Christoph Prégardien in the tenor aria. Listen to Koopman’s recording here. Soloists on this recording are Sybilla Rubens, soprano; Annette Markert, alto; Christoph Prégardien, tenor; Klaus Mertens, bass.

Find the German text with English translation here, and the score here.

Bach’s principal trumpet player, Gottfried Reiche, was an excellent musician, probably famous in the entire region, and apparently the only one who could play the tromba da tirarsi (slide trumpet) or corno da tirarsi (read more about that instrument in this post). And since Anna Magdalena’s father and all her three brothers-in-law were trumpet players at the regional courts, Bach knew their world well, and was most likely very well connected to many excellent players and their students. Around the feast of St. Michael’s (September 29), thousands of visitors from all over Europe would come to the Fair in Leipzig, and stay for a bit. Did Bach want to show Reiche off to all these visitors on September 29 (for Cantata 130, see below) and again this time on October 15, 1724, or were the trumpeter and/or bass singer themselves guests from out of town?

Bach paired the trumpet most often with the bass voice when writing arias. The most impressive bass arias with trumpet the Leipzig congregations would have heard between June 1723 (when Bach started working in Leipzig) and October 1724 are:

July 2, 1723: “Ich will von Jesu Wundern singen” from Cantata 147 (Bach Collegium Japan recording from 1999 with Peter Kooy, bass; Toshio Shimada, trumpet)

August 1, 1723: “Dein Wetter zog sich auf von weiten” from Cantata 46 (Herreweghe recording from 2012 with Peter Kooy, bass; Alain De Rudder, Tromba da tirarsi).

November 14, 1723: “So löschet im Eifer der rächende Richter” from Cantata 90 (Bach Stiftung video with Klaus Häger, bass; Patrick Henrichs, trumpet)

May 28, 1724: “Heiligste Dreieinigkeit” from Cantata 172 (Leonhardt recording from 1985 with Max van Egmond, bass; Friedemann Immer, Klaus Osterloh, and Susan Willems, trumpets)

June 11, 1724: “Wacht auf, wacht auf, verloren Schafen” from Cantata 20 (Gardiner recording from 2000 with Dietrich Henschel, bass; Mark Bennett, Tromba da tirarsi)

September 29, 1724, feast of St. Michael’s: “Der alte Drache brennt vor Neid” from Cantata 130 (Koopman recording from 2007 with Klaus Mertens, bass; Stephen Keavy, Jonathan Impett, and Michael Harrison, trumpets)

Wieneke Gorter, October 22, 2017.

If you don’t want to miss an episode of this 1724/1725 chorale cantata exploration, please consider signing up  to receive an email every time I’ve posted a new story. How to do this: If you are on a desktop computer, look to the left of this text, where it says “Follow Blog via Email,” enter your email address, and press the “Follow” button. If you are reading this on a smartphone, keep scrolling down until you find the same text.

 

Starlight shining on a Trinity cantata

15 Sunday Oct 2017

Posted by in Cantatas, Epiphany, Leipzig, Trinity

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threekings

The Three Kings, on one of four panels of an altar from Rottweil, Germany.

I would like to dedicate this post to my friends in the Santa Rosa, Napa, and Mendocino areas who are living with enormous stress and challenges due to the fires raging up there. They can all use a silver lining, and the cantata from 1724 for this 18th Sunday after Trinity has an abundance of it.

All this time in the summer and fall of 1724, Bach was writing chorale cantatas, meaning that each cantata would be based on a hymn, if possible one of the ones associated with that particular Sunday in the church year.  For this reason he chose Herr Christ, der einige Gottessohn (Lord Christ, the only son of God) for this cantata with the same title.

Overall, I prefer Ton Koopman’s recording of this cantata 96 Herr Christ, der einige Gottessohn. Listen to that recording here on YouTube, or here on Spotify. Soloists are Deborah York, soprano; Franziska Gottwald, alto; Paul Agnew, tenor; Klaus Mertens, bass; Heiko ter Schegget, sopranino recorder; and Wilbert Hazelzet, transverse flute.

Find the German text with English translation here.

In the Lutheran Church the chorale Herr Christ, der einige Gottessohn, one of the oldest Protestant hymns, was not so much associated with this Sunday, but more with Epiphany/Three Kings, January 6, for its reference to the Morning Star. Bach brings the luster of the Christmas season into this cantata in the most beautiful way. He gives the opening chorus a dusting of starlight by writing a part for flauto piccolo, or sopranino recorder, over the rest of the vocal and instrumental parts. Because in this opening chorus the altos have the chorale melody (doubled by a cornetto, on this recording played by Arno Paduchn), Bach can create an ethereal link between the chorus and the flauto piccolo by way of the soprano part in the chorus. In the fifth line of the text, Er ist die Morgensterne (he is the Morning Star), he modulates to the brilliant key of E Major on the word Morgensterne.

The alto recitative and tenor aria that follow refer to the fact that Jesus is God’s son, not David’s son. This is the only direct reference to the Gospel reading for this Sunday: Jesus giving the Jewish elders a hard time when they claimed that he was only David’s son, not God’s son (Matthew 22: 34-46).  In the tenor aria, fabulously sung by Paul Agnew, Bach features his flute player again.

The soprano recitative moves the focus to Jesus as guiding light, referring to the “he is the Morning Star” text from the chorale. The soprano’s statement that it can be hard to stay on the “right path” is illustrated in the bass aria.

Please listen to Peter Kooy’s interpretation of this aria on the Bach Collegium Japan recording, here on YouTube. We have heard faltering steps in Bach cantatas before (read my post about that here), but this time Bach offers a more theatrical illustration. In the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig a visual and aural effect would have made this even stronger: the violins, at least in the beginning playing when the bass sings “zu rechten” (now to the right), would have stood on the right-hand balcony, the oboes, playing when the bass sings “zu linken” (now to the left) would have stood on the left-hand balcony. Also, in Bach’s rhetoric, right meant good and high, left meant bad and low.

The middle part of this cantata, with the text “Gehe doch, mein Heiland, mit” (My saviour please come with me) always moves me. I hope that the people affected by the California fires will continue to reach out and that the concerned and caring community will continue to offer support in the weeks and months to come, because this will be a long haul.

 

Wieneke Gorter, October 15, 2017.

If you don’t want to miss an episode of this 1724/1725 chorale cantata exploration, please consider signing up  to receive an email every time I’ve posted a new story. How to do this: If you are on a desktop computer, look to the left of this text, where it says “Follow Blog via Email,” enter your email address, and press the “Follow” button. If you are reading this on a smartphone, keep scrolling down until you find the same text.

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Instrumental solos that bring me to tears and a bit of farmers’ music

07 Saturday Oct 2017

Posted by in Cantatas, Leipzig, Trinity

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feudalism

Six weeks ago, I noticed that Bach’s cantatas for the 11th Sunday after Trinity all give me a good kind of stomach ache. This week, it seems that all instrumental solos for the 17th Sunday after Trinity make me cry. It happened last year when listening to the violin solo in cantata 148, and it happened to me again with the hauntingly beautiful flute solo in the tenor aria of cantata 114 Ach, lieben Christen, seid getrost.

It is an exceptional aria, ten minutes long, and extremely demanding for the tenor as well as the flutist. The first recording I listened to set the standard for the rest: a fabulous flutist, most probably Marc Hantaï, and tenor John Elwes on a live audio recording from 1988 by La Chapelle Royale under the direction of Gustav Leonhardt.  I absolutely adore Frans Brüggen’s flute playing on the Leonhardt recording from 1980, but don’t enjoy Kurt Equiluz’ singing as much. Mark Padmore’s singing on the Gardiner recording is to die for, but flutist Rachel Beckett’s decisions on where to breathe are not as sensitive as Marc Hantaï’s, and with Hantaï’s interpretation already in my head, I found it distracting. The same goes for Wilbert Hazelzet’s playing on the Koopman recording, with tenor Christoph Prégardien.

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John Elwes

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Marc Hantaï

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This La Chapelle Royale/Gustav Leonhardt recording is also a nice monument from the past for me, since it has all the soloists I was in love with at the time: soprano Agnès Mellon, countertenor Gérard Lesne, and bass Peter Kooy. When you watch the YouTube recording on a screen, you can read along in the score. And that is interesting in this case, especially in the opening chorus and the soprano aria.

Find the German text with English translation of this cantata here.

Reading along with the opening chorus, you can see that the joyful figure that is at first only in the continuo (orchestra bass) part, spreads through all the other parts, a message from Bach that the consolation in the text of the chorale is more important than the punishment. The punishment is still present though, in the repeated staccato notes in some of the instrumental parts, and, at 2 minute 24 seconds, visually only, in the score: there are the three whip lashes diagonally from top to bottom over the page in the instrumental parts, illustrating the word “Straf” (punishment) the chorus sings there. Or see this image, courtesy of Eduard van Hengel:

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When reading along with the soprano aria, at 15 minutes 5 seconds, you can see or hear how in the continuo part, Bach illustrates the flick of the wrist of the farmer who sows the seeds.  If you have time, I encourage you to also listen to Gardiner’s remarkable take on this soprano aria. In his notes accompanying his live recording, he explains that the text “The grain of wheat will bear no fruit unless it fall into earth” can be seen as a warning to the farmer to get his timing right when sowing his winter cereals. Gardiner, a sheep farmer in his spare time and always eager to point out connections to the seasons in Bach’s music, is obviously really excited to bring out this text: he has the entire soprano section sing it, with much more fervor and much better enunciation than Agnès Mellon on the Chapelle Royale/Leonhardt recording. He also explains in his notes that they took Bach’s indication “continuo unisono” to mean that the organ should double the cello part. Since they always use church organs for their recordings, it sounds impressive. I truly appreciate hearing this movement performed this way.

Then go back to the Chapelle Royale/Leonhardt recording, and listen to Gérard Lesne, my first countertenor love*, spookily illustrating the approach of death, with similar chromatic lines as in last week’s arias.

Wieneke Gorter, October 6, 2017.

 

*After having been introduced to Gérard Lesne’s Vivaldi CD at the Utrecht Early Music Festival in 1992, I became a fan, and my sister and I saw him live in the actual Chapelle Royale of Versailles, singing music for Holy Week by Charpentier, in 1994.