Category Archives: Weimar

The Annunciation of Mary, March 25

25 Saturday Mar 2017

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The Annunciation, aka The Cestello Annunciation, 1489, by Botticelli. Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy.

In 1714, Palm Sunday fell on the same day as the Annunciation of Mary, March 25. The Annunciation was one of the three Marian feast days Luther kept on the calendar (the other two being the Purification of Mary, February 2, and the Visitation of Mary, July 2).

Thus it happened that in that year, in Weimar, Bach wrote a cantata that is mostly a Palm Sunday cantata, but can also work for the feast of the Annunciation, since that also celebrates the coming of Christ. I squeezed this cantata 182 Himmelskönig, sei willkommen into my post about Bach in Weimar I wrote last year. As I mentioned there, the cantata was repeated a few times in Leipzig, but never on Palm Sunday, as the Leipzig rules dictated that no music was performed during the period of Lent (the 40 days before Easter).

However, the Leipzig council made an exception for the Annunciation, so in 1724 Bach could perform this cantata during Lent, eight days before Palm Sunday, on Saturday March 25. As so often on holidays, there were two cantatas this day, one before the sermon, and one after. The other, newly written, piece for Saturday March 25, 1724, was more literally about the Annunciation: Siehe, eine Jungfrau ist schwanger (Behold, a Virgin is pregnant). The text of this cantata survived, and can be found here, but unfortunately the music is lost.

I still recommend the recording of cantata 182 by Montreal Baroque, but since I wrote my post last year, a terrific live video of the Sonata (instrumental opening) of this cantata has come out on the YouTube channel of Voices of Music, with two fabulous soloists: Hanneke van Proosdij on recorder and Rachel Podger on violin, so I would love to share that here as well. You can find that video here.

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

Wieneke Gorter, March 24, 2017.

Mary’s lament

14 Saturday Jan 2017

Posted by in Cantatas, Epiphany, Weimar

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The Marriage at Cana, c. 1500, by Gérard David. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Mary pleads and worries, but Jesus says: “Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come.”

This week, I watched a very good video by the Swiss Bach Foundation (Bachstiftung) about today’s cantata 155 Mein Gott, wie lang, ach lange? I found it very insightful, helpful, and even entertaining, but was struck by its Calvinist character and was a bit disappointed by the director’s statement that he doesn’t know why this cantata starts with a movement for solo soprano. When reading Gardiner’s and Van Hengel’s discussions of this cantata, I liked their suggestions that the soprano lament refers to  Mary’s role in the Bible story of this Sunday, the Marriage at Cana. It made sense to me. This cantata, from 1715 and repeated in 1724, contains references to the wine as well as to the fact that Jesus says to his mother: “my time has not come yet.”

While the Lutheran church in Bach’s time did not regard Mary as a saint, let alone a mediator between God and the people, she was still an important person in the faith, and thus probably also for Bach. The three Marian feast days*  Luther kept on the calendar were important holidays and Bach wrote cantatas for all of them. Also, Bach wrote this cantata 155 in his Weimar years, when he explored a large number of works by (Catholic) Italian composers.

Listen to Montreal Baroque’s recording of cantata 155 on YouTube through a playlist I created. With Monika Mauch, soprano; Franziska Gottwald, alto; Charles Daniels, tenor; Harry van der Kamp, bass; Anna Marsh, bassoon.

Read the German text with English translation of this cantata here, and find the score here.

The cantata is not so much a musical play with the soprano taking the role of Mary, but more a reference to her role in the Gospel story and an exploration of that theme: try to trust that everything will be okay in the end, try to not be in control all the time. The first movement has the character of a lament in music and text, you can picture the hand-wringing, the desperation. There is also the steady pedal point in the bass, similar to what Bach will use later in the opening chorus of the St. Matthew Passion.

However it is the second movement, not even sung by the soprano, and with text that is trying to urge her to “let go,” that secretly is the true lament, in the music that is. To hear or see this, the video by the Swiss Bach Foundation is terrific. They explain extremely well (with music examples) how the notes of the solo bassoon part form in fact a lament for three voices. watch from 12:10  By the way: the composition I had to think of when hearing the “lamento bass” was Monteverdi’s  Lamento della Ninfa

If you would like to explore other cantatas for this second Sunday after Epiphany, I invite you to read my post about cantata 3 from 1725 here. It is all about hidden messages in the music of a an extremely beautiful composition with an equally heart wrenching—but completely different—opening movement as this cantata 155.

Wieneke Gorter, January 14, 2017

*The Purification of Mary on February 2, The Annunciaton of Mary on March 25, and the Visitation of Mary on July 2.

Another boy soprano hero: Sebastian Hennig

17 Saturday Dec 2016

Posted by in Advent, Cantatas, Weimar

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Sebastian Hennig

I remember some of the cantatas my mother played on the turntable in our house more vividly than others. One of those is cantata 132 Bereitet die Wege, bereitet die Bahn!, written for the fourth Sunday of Advent in Weimar in 1715.

To understand this, it helps to know how the Christmas season was celebrated  in our household in The Netherlands in the 70s and 80s. Christmas didn’t feature in store windows or on television until after St. Nicholas (December 5). We would not have a Christmas tree in our house until December 16. And while at school we would sing Christmas carols in the last week before the break and have a “Christmas breakfast” on the last Friday, at home we would not have any real Christmas music, including Bach’s Christmas Oratorio until Christmas Day (more about this next week). Until then it was Advent cantatas only as far as Bach’s music was concerned. And since my mother was also a fan of Sebastian Hennig, the soprano soloist in the Leonhardt recording of cantata 132, she probably played this cantata pretty frequently in the last week before Christmas.

(for other boy sopranos from the Leonhardt/Harnoncourt recordings my mother admired, see my posts about Seppi Kronwitter in cantata 61, Peter Jelosits in cantata 44 and Peter Jelosits in cantata 59)

Listen to the Leonhardt recording of cantata 132 Bereitet die Wege, bereitet die Bahn! on Youtube. Find the text here, and the score here.

As a child, I was very impressed by the soprano aria at the start of this cantata too, but I also remember the “Wer bist du” words in the bass aria very well, sung by Max van Egmond on this Leonhardt recording. Except for the tenor aria (sung by Marius van Altena, qualified by my sometimes pretty judgmental mother as a “squeaky door tenor”) their recording of this cantata is unrivaled as far as I’m concerned. For a prettier sound in the tenor recitative, listen to Christoph Prégardien on the Koopman recording.

Wieneke Gorter, December 17, 2016

Third Sunday in Advent: Two adorable infants and a reconstruction of cantata 186a

10 Saturday Dec 2016

Posted by in Advent, Cantatas, Weimar

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Madonna with the Christ Child and St. John the Baptist, also known as Madonna of the Meadow, by Raphael, 1506. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

For those of you who already saw this on the third Sunday of Advent 2016: please keep reading, because I considerably revised this post, clarifying the information about the reconstruction and including one more painting 🙂

Growing up, I had a cousin. She was almost exactly six  months older than me. My baby photo album holds several pictures of the two of us together, me a helpless baby, her an infant who could already sit up by herself. I’m always touched by those photos. Not just because they make me think of the cousin I lost when we were both 19, but also because they represent how fast a baby grows up, and how soon the “older” baby can be of help and entertainment for the younger one, and how adorable it is to see that.

Many painters were aware of this cuteness factor too. Especially in the Renaissance, the concept of a one-year-old John playing with or helping a six-month-old Jesus in Madonna and Child paintings became an extremely popular subject, starting with  Leonardo da Vinci. Raphael in particular painted several variations on this theme, including the Alba Madonna, La belle jardinière, Aldobrandini Madonna, Madonna della seggiola, and the Madonna dell’Impannata. The tradition continued well into the 17th century, see this beautiful example from 1658 by Francisco de Zurbarán in the San Diego Museum of Art:

Zurbaran_Madonna_and_Child

Why is all this relevant to Advent? Well, on this third Sunday of Advent, many Christian churches read about John the Baptist, as they believe John was Jesus’ forerunner. Because of a mention in the Gospel of Luke, the Catholic church in the very early Middle Ages determined that St. John’s birthday must have been exactly six months before Christmas — and decided to celebrate this on June 24th.*  You can read more about this in my post about the Feast of St. John.

As far as we know, Bach wrote only one cantata for this Sunday, the third Sunday of Advent. It is the one listed in the BWV catalog as Cantata 186a, Ärgre dich, o Seele, nicht, first performed in Weimar on Sunday December 13, 1716. No original music score is left of this cantata. However, thanks to Bach’s librettist, Weimar court poet Salomo Franck, who published the full libretto for this cantata in a poetry volume in 1717, we do have the original text of 186a.

And, it is not hard to make an educated guess as to what the music would have been.

On July 9, 1723, for the 7th Sunday after Trinity in Leipzig, Bach expanded the music of the 1716 Weimar cantata with four additional recitatives and two chorales (per his usual template for reviving Weimar cantatas for Leipzig), and we do have that music: it is Cantata 186, also with the title Ärgre dich, o Seele, nicht.**

To reconstruct the original 1716 Weimar Advent version, or Cantata 186a, one would have to eliminate all the recitatives Bach added in 1723 as well as both chorales, superimpose different texts on some of the arias, and select alternative music for the original closing chorale. There have been a few performances of these kind of reconstructions, but unfortunately there are no recordings of those.

So I invite you listen to Bach Collegium Japan playing this music via my playlist on Spotify. To imagine the original texts superimposed over this music, and learn why I selected this particular closing chorale, please keep reading.

Opening chorus: This has the same text in 1716 as in 1723. We should imagine a smaller ensemble singing this though, as the maximum number of singers in the Weimar chapel was 7. This opening chorus is again a beautiful example of how Bach provides an “entrada” for the Duke as well as an opportunity for himself to show off his skills with the “fashionable” music, the way he almost always did in the Weimar cantatas.***

Ärgre dich, o Seele, nicht,
Daß das allerhöchste Licht,
Gottes Glanz und Ebenbild,
Sich in Knechtsgestalt verhüllt,
Ärgre dich, o Seele, nicht!		 Do not be confounded, o soul,
because the all-highest light,
God’s radiance and very image,
is concealed in the form of a servant;
do not be confounded!

For the Bass aria, imagine this Advent text instead of the Trinity 7 text you hear (changes in bold type):

Bist du, der da kommen soll,
Seelen-Freund, in Kirchen-Garten?
Mein Gemüt ist Zweifels-voll,
Soll ich eines andern warten!
Doch, o Seele, zweifle nicht.
Lass Vernunft dich nicht verstricken,
Deinen Schilo, Jacobs Licht,
Kannst du in der Schrift erblicken!		 Are You He, who should come,
Friend of souls, to the Church’s garden?
My spirit is full of doubt,
perhaps I should wait for someone else!
Yet, o soul, do not doubt.
Do not let reason beguile you.
Your Messiah, Jacob’s light,
is visible to you in the scripture.(translation of original text by me, unchanged words courtesy of bach-cantatas.com website)

For the Tenor aria,  imagine this Advent text instead of the Trinity 7 text you hear (changes in bold type):

Messias läßt sich merken
Aus seinen Gnaden-Werken.
Unreine werden rein.
Die geistlich Lahme gehen,
Die geistlich Blinde sehen
Den hellen Gnaden Schein.		 The Messiah lets Himself be seen
in His works of grace.
The impure become purified.
Those lame of spirit will walk,
Those blind of spirit will see
the clear brilliance of the mercy.(translation of original text by me, unchanged words courtesy of bach-cantatas.com website)

There is only one word change in the Soprano aria: In the last line the 1716 text is “des Lebens Wort” instead of “das Lebenswort” from 1723.

Die Armen will der Herr umarmen
The Lord will embrace the poor
Mit Gnaden hier und dort;
With his mercy here and there;
Er schenket ihnen aus Erbarmen
Out of his compassion he sends to them
Den höchsten Schatz, das Lebenswort.
His greatest treasure, the word of life.

Enjoy Miah Persson’s beautiful voice and interpretation. If you would like to hear and more about her, read my post about cantata 179. Cantata 179 appears on the same album by Bach Collegium Japan as this cantata 186.

Soprano-alto duet: This is the original text from 1716, unchanged in 1723. The text promises the believer the crown (die Krone) of the everlasting life, but only if he stays faithful (getreu) and only in the afterlife, when free of the body (wenn des Leibes frei).

Laß, Seele, kein Leiden
My soul, let no sorrow
Von Jesu dich scheiden,
Separate you from Jesus
Sei, Seele, getreu!
Be faithful, my soul!
Dir bleibet die Krone
The Crown weight you
Aus Gnaden zu Lohne,
Is your reward through grace
Wenn du von Banden des Leibes nun frei.
When you will be free from the body’s prison.

In Weimar in 1716, for the closing chorale Bach used the 8th verse of Von Gott will ich nicht lassen from 1563, based on the French tune Une jeune fillette from 1557. Since this is not the same melody as Es ist das Heil uns kommen her Bach used in 1723 it is very plausible that both chorales from the 1723 version are new, in text as well as in music. So in an effort to reconstruct the 1716 version,  we need to think of a different solution for the music than the tune from 1723. A good fit would be a simple setting of the Von Gott will ich nicht lassen chorale, the way Bach would set for example verse 5 of this chorale as closing movement of cantata 73 in 1723 or 1724. So that’s why, for now, I’ve included that music (from a Herreweghe recording) in the Spotify playlist. The text would be this:

Darum ob ich schon dulde
Hie Wiederwärtigkeit,
wie ich auch wohl verschulde,
kommt doch die Ewigkeit,
ist aller Freuden voll,
die ohne alles Ende,
dieweil ich Christum kenne,
mir widerfahren soll.		 Therefore, even if I endure
unpleasantness here,
as I have well deserved,
eternity is coming
filled with all joy;
this for ever
will befall me
while I acknowledge Christ.

All translations of existing text and closing chorale courtesy of bach-cantatas.com website, translations of changed texts by me.

© Wieneke Gorter, December 10, 2016, revised December 15, 2017.

* Luke 1:36 (about the Annunciation) mentions that the angel Gabriel also informed Mary that her cousin Elizabeth was already six months pregnant. The June 24 date was most probably also chosen to give a Christian meaning to already existing Pagan Midsummer celebrations. The Feast of St. John being celebrated on June 24 shows up in records as early as the year 506.

**I discussed this 1723 version of the cantata here, and recommended the recording by Bach Collegium Japan with soprano Miah Persson, alto Robin Blaze, tenor Makoto Sakurada, and bass Peter Kooij.

***Read more about Bach’s Weimar cantatas in my posts about cantata 182, 12, 147, and 21

 

 

 

Many things to be proud of

26 Saturday Nov 2016

Posted by in Advent, Cantatas, Leipzig, Weimar

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giotto-entry-into-jerusalem

The Entry into Jerusalem by Giotto, ca. 1305. Fresco in the Scrovengni Chapel, Padua, Italy.

If you only have a bit of time but are  yearning for some pretty music for the first Sunday of Advent, listen to the soprano aria from cantata 61 by Seppi Kronwitter (soprano) and Nikolaus Harnoncourt (cello), and then to the soprano aria from cantata 36 by Nuria Rial (soprano) and John Holloway (violin). The aria from cantata 61 was one of my mom’s favorites and she must have played this recording every year on the first Sunday of Advent. I have fond memories of listening to it with her.

Bach performed this cantata 61 Nun komm der Heiden Heiland in Leipzig on November 28, 1723, as a “rerun” of the first performance in Weimar in 1714. Why did he not write a new cantata? The prevailing scholarly answer is that Bach was giving himself a break from composing in between the three-week frenzy of cantatas 60, 90, and 70 and the new works (including a Magnificat) he was planning for the Christmas days.  I think Bach was proud of his Weimar cantatas, and I believe he wanted to show off the special features in this cantata to his colleagues and to the thousands of Lutherans that he knew would flock to the Leipzig churches on holidays.

I myself am proud of having followed Bach’s cantata writing of 1723 every week for the entire Trinity season. After all this listening and reading, I see a pattern in Bach reviving some of his Weimar cantatas on Leipzig feast days*, and I now look at cantata 61 Nun komm der Heiden Heiland in a new way.

This cantata had already been in my top five because of the incredible interpretation of the soprano aria by Seppi Kronwitter (soprano) and Nikolaus Harnoncourt (cello) on the Harnoncourt recording from 1976. I had always found the bass recitative that precedes it very charming, with the musical illustration of the knocking on the door, but not more than that.  I had seen this recitative in the context of all the Bach cantatas and passions that I knew, and had compared it with other typical Bach “Vox Christi” writing for bass. But those were all written after November 28, 1723.  So now, after having tried to place myself in the shoes of the Leipzig congregations for the entire 1723 Trinity season, I am fully aware that they had not heard a “Vox Christi” at all in any of the cantatas leading up to this one.** And thus I finally realize how it must not have been charming, but truly moving to them to hear this announcement presented in this way, on the first Sunday they started looking forward to the birth of Christ.

In the text of the recitative, Jesus says: “See, I am in front of your door! I’m knocking!” The librettist means the door of the believer’s heart, in which he’s planning to live. The pizzicato in the strings, as well as the staccato and the intervals in the voice part illustrate the knocking, and the dissonances at the beginning only resolve until the final “klopfe an.” The form of this recitative is highly unusual, and perhaps also something Bach wanted to show off in Leipzig.

However Bach’s greatest source of pride was probably the opening chorus of this cantata. To understand this, we need to do a mini music history class. First, in the 4th century, Ambrosius created the hymn Veni Redemptor Gentium, beautifully sung here on this video by Giovanni Vianini, director of the Schola Gregoriana Mediolanensis in Milan, Italy. Then, in 1524, Luther turned that hymn into Nun komm der Heiden Heiland, which sounds like this and which all Lutherans in Bach’s time knew very well.

In Weimar Bach had come into contact with French and Italian court music, and had adopted the habit of writing almost every opening chorus or opening sinfonia of his cantatas as a royal “entrada,” to show off his skills in French ouverture writing as well as to please the Duke.

So now Bach needed/wanted to merge the timeless hymn with a fashionable French ouverture. And the result is stunning. Or, as Eduard van Hengel says: Bach wrote “brilliant fusion” at the age of 29. Listen to this in the recording by Philippe Herreweghe on YouTube (Sybilla Rubens, soprano; Christoph Prégardien, tenor; Peter Kooij, bass).

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

The first line of the hymn is sung one voice part at a time, an illustration of the Bible reading for this Sunday: the people greeting the messiah who is riding into Jerusalem. The second line is then sung as a simple four-part hymn, while the instrumental parts keep playing the first part of the ouverture. The third line becomes a mini motet in the fast and happy (“Gai”) middle part of the ouverture, in 3/4. See this illustration by Eduard van Hengel:
thema regel 3

 

 

 

 

The fourth line of text is then again a simple four-part setting on the third part of the ouverture.

For the closing chorale, Bach chose the last two lines of Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern as melody. And again he marries the chorale tune beautifully with the instrumental writing.

Wieneke Gorter, November 26, 2016.

 

*Read more about this in my post about the feast of St. John the Baptist on June 24, The Visitation on July 2, and last week’s post about cantata 70. Read how proud Bach was of his Weimar cantatas in this post about cantata 12.

** appropriately so, because stories about Jesus’ life or literal speech by Jesus are absent from the Bible readings during the Trinity season.

July 2: Feast of the Visitation

02 Saturday Jul 2016

Posted by in 1723 Trinity season special series, Cantatas, Leipzig, Trinity, Weimar

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The Visitation, by Jacopo Pontormo, ca. 1528, at the Church of San Francesco e Michele, Carmignano, Italy.

On July 2, eight days after Johannis (St. John, the birthday of John the Baptist), the churches in Leipzig celebrated Mariä Heimsuchung (or Visitation of Mary, celebrating the story of a newly pregnant Mary going “back home” to visit her relative Elizabeth, who was six months further along, carrying John the Baptist). It is one of the few Marian feast days the Lutheran Church kept on their calendar, and which is still celebrated on July 2.*

For this holiday in 1723, Bach reworked a short Advent cantata from Weimar into a longer, two-part cantata, with a chorale at the end of each half. This cantata 147, Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben is a truly beautiful and memorable cantata, and for many more reasons than just the famous closing chorale Jesus bleibet meine Freude. What actually stands out the most for me is the incredible trumpet part in the opening chorus and the bass aria, and the beautiful violin accompaniment of the gorgeous soprano aria. All these movements are from the original Weimar composition, which contained only the arias,  the opening chorus, and a different closing chorale (we don’t know which one). For the Leipzig performance, Bach changed the order of the arias, added recitatives to reflect the Gospel reading of the story of the visitation and Mary’s praise to God (the Magnificat), and added a new closing chorale at the end of each half of the cantata.

I recommend the recording by Bach Collegium Japan of this cantata 147 Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, with wonderful singing by soprano Yukari Nohoshita, countertenor Robin Blaze, tenor Gerd Türk, an excellent performance by bass Peter Kooy, and fabulous playing by Toshio Shimada (trumpet) and Ryo Terakado (violin). Listen to this recording on Spotify.

Support the artists and purchase this CD on Amazon.

Follow the German text with English translations here.

Continuing on the path of the wild hypothesis I made last week, that many of Bach’s colleagues and students would be in town for these two weeks of holidays, let’s now imagine that many of these visitors were playing in the orchestra for this week’s cantata, thus creating a situation where all orchestra seats were filled, and the musically gifted among the choir boys could actually sing in the choir. Of course I don’t know if this is what happened, and if Bach maybe even planned it this way, but I hope you’ll allow me this indulgence. (We do know from later letters that choir members often had to fill the many vacancies in the orchestra).

Several scholars have suggested that Bach recycled/reworked so many of his Weimar cantatas in the first months in Leipzig because he was overwhelmed. But what if he just really wanted to show off these Weimar cantatas to the Leipzig congregation? Especially the ones originally written for Advent, since he knew he would not be able to perform those in Leipzig at all. (No figural music was allowed during Advent in Leipzig). What if he hadn’t found a librettist yet in Leipzig who matched the talent of Weimar court poet Salomo Franck? What if he wanted to show off the talent and skills of his first trumpet player in Leipzig, the famous Gottfried Reiche, to all the visitors who were in town for this holiday? When we see cantata movements returning in the form of movements of his Lutheran Masses, his Mass in B minor, and repeat performances in Leipzig, we say “he must have been proud of that piece.” Well, when I hear the opening chorus and the arias of Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben, I can understand why the Duke in Weimar didn’t want to let Bach go. Those movements already composed in Weimar are exciting and deeply moving at the same time. Definitely something to be proud of.

We don’t know who the librettist of the new recitatives was, but he or she did a good Lutheran job of teaching the congregation that even though they were celebrating a Marian feast day, they should really not praise her too much, but praise Jesus instead. Bach did an even better job setting these recitatives to music. Listen to all the word painting in the bass recitative, and the musical illustration of the text Er wird bewegt, er hüpft und springet (he is moved, he leaps and jumps) in the alto recitative, describing how John moved in Elizabeth’s womb upon hearing Mary talk of Jesus. The other remarkable thing about this alto recitative is that it has an accompaniment by two oboi da caccia, as Bach would later use in his St. Matthew Passion.

Gottfried_reiche

Gottfried Reiche, principal trumpeter in Leipzig until 1734.

Wieneke Gorter, July 2, 2016.

*In 1969, the Catholic Church moved this day to May 31, after they realized that it is strange to celebrate a mother (Elizabeth) being pregnant after celebrating the birth of her son (John the Baptist), but the Lutheran Church has kept the feast day on July 2.

Trinity 4: Two cantatas make one

18 Saturday Jun 2016

Posted by in 1723 Trinity season special series, Cantatas, Leipzig, Trinity, Weimar

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Brueghel_the_Blind

Pieter Brueghel the Elder: The Parable of the Blind Leading the Blind, 1568

Previously on Weekly Cantata: For his first three Sundays in Leipzig, Bach presented ambitious, two-part cantatas, the first part before the sermon, the second part after.  On this Trinity 4, June 20 1723, the congregation and the musicians in Leipzig may still have had the trumpets and timpani from the impressive closing chorus of last week’s Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis going through their heads.

Up until now, it seems to all have been part of a plan: Bach probably wrote his cantatas for Trinity 1 (cantata 75) and Trinity 2 (cantata 76) while still living in Köthen, and most likely had also been planning all along to perform cantata 21 on Trinity 3. *

But now what to do for Trinity 4? In his stack of Weimar cantata manuscripts there was a nice one, very closely referring to the Gospel for the day (Luke 6: 36-42), but it was too short, and not very impressively scored.

So, it was time to write a new cantata that could function as Part I, the part before the sermon, and then present the one from Weimar after the sermon, as part II. This newly composed piece became cantata 24 Ein ungefärbt Gemüte. Only four weeks into his new post at Leipzig,  and possibly up to his ears in getting things organized at the St. Thomas School, Bach had not had the time (or the social intelligence, we don’t know) to find a librettist, so for this cantata he used a pre-existing text by Erdmann Neumeister, a Leipzig-trained theologian, who was preaching at the St. Jacob church in Hamburg from 1715 to 1756. Bach may very well have met him there, since this was the same church where he applied for the post of cantor and organist in 1720. Neumeister’s many volumes of cantata texts were published in the early 1700s, and through the excellent library at the castle in Weimar Bach might have had access to these too, as he already used a Neumeister text for his Weimar Advent cantata 61 from 1714.

The recording of cantata 24 Ein ungefärbt Gemüte I like the best is Bach Collegium Japan’s recording, with beautiful singing by countertenor Robin Blaze and tenor Gerd Türk in the arias. Listen to this cantata on Spotify, or purchase the album on Amazon. Read the German texts with English translations here.

Though on a much smaller scale than cantata 75 from three weeks ago, this cantata 24 again displays a wonderful symmetry: Bach emphasizes that the main message “Everything that you want other people to do to you, you should do yourself for them” is at the center of the cantata text. He sets that part of the text to an intricate choral piece with the fullest instrumentation of the entire cantata, including trumpet, and scores the arias and recitatives around this main message much more soberly. In the two recitatives, Bach accentuates the words at the end of each by letting the music blossom out into an arioso in those spots. This happens on this text in the tenor recitative:

Mach aus dir selbst ein solches Bild (Make yourself such an image)
Wie du den Nächsten haben willt! (As you want your neighbour to have)

and in the bass recitative on these words:

So geht es dort, so geht es hier. (These things go on here, there and everywhere.)
Der liebe Gott behüte mich dafür! (That the dear God preserve me from this!)

Then comes Part Two, cantata 185 Barmherziges Herze der ewigen Liebe, written in Weimar in 1715. For this 1723 Leipzig re-creation of it, Bach transposed it from F sharp minor to G minor, since the tuning in Weimar was different than in Leipzig, and had a trumpet play the chorale tune in the opening duet, instead of an oboe.

Of all the recordings I listened to, only Gardiner brings to life the opening duet of this Leipzig version of cantata 185, with a trumpet playing instead of an oboe. Listen to a recording of that first movement by Gardiner, with soprano Magdalena Kozena and tenor Paul Agnew, on YouTube. However, for the wonderful alto rectitative and aria that come next, as well as the bass recitative and aria, I feel the need to switch to Koopman’s recording, with countertenor Kai Wessel and bass Klaus Mertens. Listen to this recording on YouTube, starting with the alto recitative (when you click on this link, it starts at 4m1s into the cantata).

I am too much of a countertenor lover to pass up this heavenly singing by Kai Wessel for Nathalie Stutzmann on the Gardiner recording, but I realize others might prefer it the other way around. I’m also not completely convinced by Gardiner’s argument that Bach is imitating an irritating Weimar preacher in the bass recitative and aria, so while Gardiner’s bass soloist Nicolas Testé very skillfully portrays this interpretation, it is a bit overdone to my taste.

So why not listen to the entire Koopman recording of this cantata?  Well, there’s the strange opening duet: Koopman makes the surprising choice to have the choir sopranos sing the chorale melody with text instead of having an oboe (per the Weimar version) or a trumpet (per the Leipzig version) play that part. This decision is not explained in their liner notes. And while I like soprano Barbara Schlick’s and tenor Guy de Mey’s individual voices, I feel that Schlick’s voice outbalances De Mey’s on this recording.

One wonders: was the new job as teacher at the St. Thomas School and director of the choir a bit overwhelming for Bach, or was he by this time already getting frustrated with the lack of skill and talent among the choir boys? A few years later, he would complain to the council that there weren’t enough strong voices, and that he needed the good instrumentalists among them to fill the many vacant seats in the orchestra, and could thus not use them in the choir. It is interesting to see how, after the many challenging choral pieces in cantata 21 last week, there is only one polyphonic chorus part in the  combined cantatas for today, and only an embellished chorale in the cantata for the feast of St. John the Baptist Bach was preparing for June 24.

Wieneke Gorter, June 18, 2016

*Please note: the numbers we use now for these cantatas are a product of the 19th and 20th century. Bach never gave his compositions numbers, and he must have referred to the cantatas by title only.

Trinity 3: from Weimar, with love

12 Sunday Jun 2016

Posted by in 1723 Trinity season special series, Cantatas, Leipzig, Trinity, Weimar

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Roman de la Rose, Netherlands (Bruges), c. 1490-c. 1500

Only three episodes into this special 1723 Leipzig Trinity season series,  I’m already taking a detour to Weimar. It’s Bach’s fault, because, after the two newly written cantatas he presented on May 30 and June 6, 1723, he “recycled” his Weimar cantata for this third Sunday after Trinity: cantata 21 Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis, written in 1714, or possibly in 1713.

We dont’ know for sure why Bach chose to use an “old” composition this early in his first season (though probably nobody except his own family knew it was not new), but  I think that he couldn’t wait to impress the Leipzig Council and congregation with a composition that was one of his all-time favorites. He had written and performed it at least twice in Weimar, then presented it in Hamburg or Köthen in 1720* and would perform it many more times in Leipzig on future third Sundays after Trinity. Another reason I believe  it was Bach’s plan all along to present this cantata 21 on Trinity 3 in Leipzig: it seems to me that when writing the masterful fugue in the opening chorus of cantata 76, Bach must have had the fugue in no. 6 of cantata 21 on his mind.

Whether it was thanks to the multiple performances during Bach’s lifetime, or to Mattheson mentioning it (however unfavorably!) in his writings, cantata 21 was known among Bach’s colleagues and students throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, and is still one of the most well-known and most frequently performed cantatas today.

Instead of talking about the music, I would like to shine some light on the history of this cantata, and show you that it was not a stand-alone masterpiece that Bach created out of nothing. Most of the findings here below are from  books by Alfred Dürr and Christoph Wolff.

There are parts of this cantata that fit extremely well within the style of the 1714 Weimar cantatas. To hear cantata 21 in this context, if you have time, before you listen to the sinfonia (no. 1) of cantata 21, I invite you to first listen to the sinfonia of cantata 12. They are remarkably similar. Next, just for the fun of it, you might want to listen to the “love” duet from Weimar Pentecost cantata 172 (expertly sung by soprano Barbara Schlick and counter-tenor Kai Wessel, accompanied by organist Ton Koopman)

 

 Soprano (Soul)

Komm, laß mich nicht länger warten,
Come , let me wait no longer,
Komm, du sanfter Himmelswind,
come, you gentle wind of heaven,
Wehe durch den Herzensgarten!
blow through the garden of my heart

  Alto (Holy Spirit)

Ich erquicke dich, mein Kind.
I refresh you, my child

Liebste Liebe, die so süße,
Dearest love, who are so delightful,
Aller Wollust Überfluß,
abundance of all joys,
Ich vergeh, wenn ich dich misse.
I shall die, if I have to be without you

Nimm von mir den Gnadenkuß.
Take from me the kiss of grace.

Sei im Glauben mir willkommen,
Welcome in faith to me,
Höchste Liebe, komm herein!
Highest love, come within!
Du hast mir das Herz genommen.
You have taken my heart from me

Ich bin dein, und du bist mein!
I am yours, and you are mine!
and compare it to the “love” duet from cantata 21:
 

Soprano (Soul):

Komm, mein Jesu, und erquicke,

  

Bass (Jesus):

Ja, ich komme und erquicke

Come, my Jesus, and restore

Yes, I come and restore

Und erfreu mit deinem Blicke.

Dich mit meinem Gnadenblicker,

and rejoice with your look

you with my look of grace

Diese Seele,

Deine Seele,

This soul

Your soul

 Die soll sterben,

 Die soll leben,

that must die

that must live

Und nicht leben

 Und nicht sterben

and not live

and not die

 Und in ihrer Unglückshöhle

Hier aus dieser wunden Höhle

and in its den of misfortune

here from this den of wounds

Ganz verderben.

Sollst du erben

wholly perish.

 you shall be given

 Ich muß stets in Kummer schweben,

Heil! durch diesen Saft der Reben,

I must always be suspended in misery

Salvation! throught this juice of the grape

Ja, ach ja, ich bin verloren!

Nein, ach nein, du bist erkoren!

Yes, oh, yes, I am lost

No,oh, no, you are chosen

 Nein, ach nein, du hassest mich!

Ja, ach ja, ich liebe dich!

No, ah, no, you hate me!

Yes, oh, yes,I love you!

 Ach, Jesu, durchsüße mir Seele und Herze,

Entweichet, ihr Sorgen, verschwinde, du Schmerze!

Jesus, sweeten my soul and heart.

Give way, worries, vanish, pain!

Komm, mein Jesus, und erquicke

Ja, ich komme und erquicke

Come, Jesus, and restore

Yes, I come and restore

Mit deinem Gnadenblicke!

Dich mit meinem Gnadenblicke

 with your look of grace

 you with my look of grace.

Of course none of these are officially  meant to speak of earthly love. But still, both these duets are extremely cute, musically completely similar to opera love duets from that time, and their texts could at least partly be interpreted as such love duets, so I can imagine the Weimar poet and the young Bach must have enjoyed writing these.

To really appreciate “the making of” the opening chorus (no. 2) of cantata 21, it’s worth listening to a magnificent Vivialdi violin concerto and one of Bach’s lesser known organ prelude and fugues, to hear where Bach found the theme for the Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis fugue:

In the spring of 1713, the half-brother of Bach’s employer in Weimar, prince Johann Ernst, “a great lover of music and an incomparable violinist” (according to a testimony by Philipp David Kräuter, a student of Bach in Weimar) went on a study trip, and spent a long time in the Netherlands. Upon his return, he had brought “much fine Italian and French” music with him. One of the pieces was Vivaldi’s Concerto in D minor Opus 3, no. 11  for two violins from Book II of L’Estro armonico (RV 565), published in Amsterdam in 1711.

Listen to this Vivaldi concerto in the award-winning interpretation by the fabulous Rachel Podger with Brecon Baroque on Spotify, or on YouTube

Maybe Bach, an accomplished violinist himself, and the prince played this together after the prince returned in July 1713. Bach rewrote this Vivaldi concerto into an organ concerto (BWV 596), but also used the theme in his organ prelude and fugue in B minor, BWV 544,  written in Weimar as well.  It is in this piece in particular that I can hear the relation with cantata 21 Dürr wants to point out in his book.

About recordings of cantata 21: While Bach Collegium Japan deserves a medal for  taking the trouble to research all the different versions and record the ones from 1720 and 1714 on their volume 6 , and the true 1723 Leipzig version (with trombones added in no. 9 and solo/tutti distinctions in the choruses) on their volume 12, I still like Herreweghe’s recording of this cantata the best, mainly because of the strong, crisp choruses and the music always having long lines and strong sense of direction.

Listen to Herreweghe’s interpretation of  this cantata on Spotify or on YouTube.

Consider purchasing this album on Amazon, as it also features the wonderful cantata 42.

Soloists: Barbara Schlick, soprano; Gerard Lesne, countertenor; Howard Crook, tenor, Peter Harvey, bass (on 21); Peter Kooij, bass (on 42).

Read the German text with English translations of cantata 21 here, and find the score here.

If you don’t want to miss an episode of this 1723 Trinity season series, please consider signing up to receive an email every time I’ve posted a new story.

Please feel free to share this on Facebook, or forward to anyone you think might enjoy coming along for this ride. Thank you!

Wieneke Gorter, June 12, 2016

 

*Bach visited Hamburg in November 1720, to apply for an organist and cantor post there. It turned out, however, that the post needed to be “bought” and the job went to a lesser talented but wealthy candidate. Most scholars are confident there was a performance of this cantata in 1720 in either Köthen or Hamburg, based on the surviving manuscripts of the parts. Because it was the Hamburg-based writer Mattheson who criticized the cantata in a letter  in 1725, it is probable that the performance took place in Hamburg during Bach’s visit there.

According to Bach Collegium Japan’s leader Masaaki Suzuki, the 1720 performance featured only a soprano and a bass, with the soprano also singing all the arias and recitatives we know nowadays as written for tenor.

Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen

16 Saturday Apr 2016

Posted by in After Easter, Cantatas, Weimar

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WeinenKlagen

Fragment from Bach’s manuscript of cantata 12 in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz

For this third Sunday after Easter, I’m jumping back in time to Weimar, 1714, and Bach’s monthly cantata cycle there. Cantata 12 Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen was the second cantata Bach wrote in Weimar after having been promoted to Konzertmeister in 1714. (The first one was cantata 182 Himmelskönig, sei wilkommen for Palm Sunday.)

Bach repeated this cantata in Leipzig in 1724.

There are several very good recordings of this cantata, but I would recommend listening to the one by Collegium Vocale/Herreweghe, or to the one by Cantus Cölln/Konrad Junghänel, and then listen again to the tenor aria on the American Bach Soloists recording (keep reading until the end to learn why).

I love the Collegium Vocale/Herreweghe recording for the excellent timing and phrasing, the sound of the alto section in the choir, and Marcel Ponseele’s oboe playing. Listen to cantata 12 by Herreweghe on YouTube

Buy this recording on Amazon

Cantus Cölln/Konrad Junghänel’s recording is one on a part, more similar to what it would have sounded like from the small organ loft in the Himmelsburg, and soprano Johanna Koslowsky’s singing always gives me goose bumps, no matter how many times I’ve listened to it. Listen to cantata 12 by Cantus Cölln (scroll to 48’40”)

Buy this recording on Amazon

The complete German text with English translations of this cantata can be found here.

The beautiful but sad opening sinfonia would probably have served as an “entrada” for the Duke and his entourage. It is very similar to the one of cantata 21 Ich hatte viel bekümmernis, also written in Weimar.

Several of Bach’s Weimar cantatas were lost when the castle’s chapel burnt down in 1774. Most of the Weimar cantatas we still have today “survived” only because Bach performed those again in Leipzig, sometimes several times. If he did this because he was proud of these cantatas, then  Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen must have been his greatest pride, since he later transformed its opening chorus into the Crucifixus for his Mass in B Minor.

Both the sinfonia and opening chorus convey enormous sadness, while it is “Jubilate” Sunday, and only three weeks after Easter. This has to do with the Gospel reading for this Sunday: Jesus’ speech to his disciples explaining that he will leave them, that they will go through immense suffering, but that their sorrow will turn into joy, comparing it to a woman going through childbirth.

So this cantata first conveys the feelings of the disciples, knowing they will soon be without Jesus, and the “tribulations” Jesus predicts for them. But then it explores the journey “from sadness to joy.”

First of all, the entire score can be seen as  uplifting, even though the general atmosphere is downcast. As many scholars have pointed out, the score ascends, movement by movement, in intervals of a third, alternating a minor key with its relative major: f, A flat, c, E flat, g, B flat. Gardiner says that this is the “escape ladder” Bach lowers into the pit of sorrow.

The “sorrow to joy”-theme is also cleverly portrayed in the texts, thanks to Salomo Franck, the Duke’s librarian, acting as librettist for all cantatas Bach wrote in Weimar. Many consider Franck’s poetry superior to most of the texts Bach had to work with in his Leipzig years. The alto aria is a good example: after the Gospel quote in the recitative “Wir müssen durch viel Trübsal” (we have to go through tribulation) comes an upbeat aria illuminating how “Kreuz und Krone” (cross and crown) and “Kampf and Kleinod” (conflict and jewel) are always connected.

While I love everything about this cantata, my absolute favorite part is the tenor aria Sei getreu.

The text of the tenor part refers to the Gospel text “A little while, and ye shall not see me: and again, a little while, and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father” and plays on that concept of “little while” – Franck decided it was not any longer than a period of rainy weather (which in Germany can be a few weeks in a row of course) …

Sei getreu, alle Pein
Be faithful, all pain
Wird doch nur ein Kleines sein.
will only be a little while.
Nach dem Regen
After the rain
Blüht der Segen,
blessing blossoms,
Alles Wetter geht vorbei.
all bad weather passes by.
Sei getreu, sei getreu!
Be faithful, be faithful!

And it gets better! Bach offers additional consolation by way of his music: through this aria, a trumpet plays the melody of “Jesu, meine Freude.” Everyone in attendance in the Himmelsburg would immediately have recognized the melody, and would have heard these words in their head:

Jesu, meine Freude,
Jesus, my joy,
Meines Herzens Weide,
My heart’s delight
Jesu, meine Zier,
Jesus, my treasure
Ach wie lang, ach lange
Ah how long,ah how long
Ist dem Herzen bange
must my heart be anxious
Und verlangt nach dir!
And full of longing for you!
Gottes Lamm, mein Bräutigam,
Lamb of God, my bridegroom
Außer dir soll mir auf Erden,
Besides you there is in on earth
Nichts sonst Liebers werden.
Nothing else that is dearer to me.

My all-time favorite recording of this particular aria is the one by American Bach Soloists, with Benjamin Butterfield singing tenor, and Stephen Escher playing the chorale melody on a cornetto. On most recordings (Herreweghe, Cantus Cölln, Gardiner) the part is played on a Baroque trumpet, on some (Koopman) on a Baroque oboe. The softer, more human sound of the cornetto combined with Escher’s fabulous playing makes this the most moving interpretation of this aria I’ve ever heard. Listen for yourself: find American Bach Soloists’ recording of Sei getreu on YouTube.

cornettplayer with singer

singer with cornetto player, anonymous, 16th century

Wieneke Gorter, April 16, 2016