01 Friday Sep 2023
Posted in Cantatas
Since I’m away at a choral workshop this weekend, and I’ve written extensively about all cantatas for this Sunday in the past, I gladly refer you to the overview in my blog post from 2020. Happy reading!
Wieneke Gorter, September 1, 2023.
27 Sunday Aug 2023
Posted in 1723 Trinity season special series, Bach's life, Cantatas, Leipzig, Trinity
Tags
Alex Potter, BWV 69, BWV 69a, Christ healing a deaf mute, Dominik Wörner, Eduard van Hengel, J.S. Bach Foundation, J.S. Bach Stiftung, Karl Graf, Michael Maul, Miriam Feuersinger, Mirjam Berli, Peter Kooij, Raphael Höhn, Rudolf Lutz, Thomas Hobbs, Trinity 12, trumpets
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For this Sunday in 1723, the 12th after Trinity, Bach wrote Cantata 69a Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele. In my post from 2016 I remarked how unusual it was for Bach to use trumpets on such a “normal” Sunday, and imagined his father-in-law being in town for a visit. But this week I heard two better arguments.
In his podcast, Bach scholar Michael Maul suggests that after the incredibly serious and sad music of the past three Sundays, Bach might have realized that the Leipzig churchgoers needed to hear something more upbeat. This might sound trivial, but if you look at Bach’s passions, he knew very well when a change in mood was needed and mastered that skill like a great opera composer or playwright. In addition to this good reason, I was also convinced by theologian Karl Graf in the J.S. Bach Foundation’s lecture about Cantata 69a, because he reminded me that the Bible story on which this cantata is based is that of Christ healing a deaf mute. Graf points out that in the time of the Bible, but also still in Bach’s time, a deaf mute would not only have been excluded from society, but would also have been considered a person without faith. Thus, the rejoicing by chorus and trumpets is not only an illustration of the praise the crowd gives after witnessing the miracle, but especially of this person finding faith.
A quarter century later, in 1748, Bach recycled this cantata during the same time of year, but for a completely different occasion: the installation of the new Town Council, or “Ratswahl.” The “Ratswahl” was always on the first Monday after August 24 (the feast of St. Bartholomew); which in 1748 fell on Monday, August 30. Bach must have written about 27 Ratswahl cantatas, but only six have survived.
I have listed Bach’s changes in 1748 here below, expanding on a table created by Eduard van Hengel. I’ve included links for live video recordings of both cantatas (just click on the link at the top of each column).
| Cantata 69a for Trinity 12 1723 Live video recording by the J.S. Bach Foundation, Rudolf Lutz, conductor. With Mirjam Berli, soprano; Alex Potter, alto; Raphael Höhn, tenor; Dominik Wörner, bass. | Cantata 69 for Ratswechsel 1748 Live recording by the Netherlands Bach Society, Peter Dijkstra, conductor. With Miriam Feuersinger, soprano; Alex Potter, alto; Thomas Hobbs, tenor; Peter Kooij, bass. |
| Please find the German texts with English translations here, and the score here | Please find the German texts with English translations here, and the score here |
| Opening Chorus | Opening Chorus, unchanged |
| Soprano recitative, 11 measures Ach, dass ich tausend Zungen hätte! Ach wäre doch mein Mund Von eitlen Worten leer! Ach, dass ich gar nichts redte, Als was zu Gottes Lob gerichtet wär! So machte ich des Höchsten Güte kund; Denn er hat lebenslang so viel an mir getan, Dass ich in Ewigkeit ihm nicht verdanken kann. | Soprano recitative, 18 measures Wie groß ist Gottes Güte doch! Er bracht uns an das Licht, Und er erhält uns noch. Wo findet man nur eine Kreatur, Der es an Unterhalt gebricht? Betrachte doch, mein Geist, Der Allmacht unverdeckte Spur, Die auch im kleinen sich recht groß erweist. Ach! möcht es mir, o Höchster, doch gelingen, Ein würdig Danklied dir zu bringen! Doch, sollt es mir hierbei an Kräften fehlen, So will ich doch, Herr, deinen Ruhm erzählen. |
| Tenor aria in C Major with recorder and oboe da caccia Meine Seele, Auf, erzähle, Was dir Gott erwiesen hat! Rühmet seine Wundertat, Laßt ein gottgefällig Singen Durch die frohen Lippen dringen! | Alto aria in G Major with violin and oboe Meine Seele, Auf! erzähle, Was dir Gott erwiesen hat! Rühme seine Wundertat, Laß, dem Höchsten zu gefallen, Ihm ein frohes Danklied schallen! |
| Alto recitative with continuo only, 18 measures Gedenk ich nur zurück, Was du, mein Gott, von zarter Jugend an Bis diesen Augenblick An mir getan, So kann ich deine Wunder, Herr, So wenig als die Sterne zählen. Vor deine Huld, die du an meiner Seelen Noch alle Stunden tust, Indem du nur von deiner Liebe ruhst, Vermag ich nicht vollkommnen Dank zu weihn. Mein Mund ist schwach, die Zunge stumm Zu deinem Preis und Ruhm. Ach! sei mir nah Und sprich dein kräftig Hephata, So wird mein Mund voll Dankens sein. | Tenor recitative with strings 26 measures Der Herr hat große Ding an uns getan. Denn er versorget und erhält, Beschützet und regiert die Welt. Er tut mehr, als man sagen kann. Jedoch, nur eines zu gedenken: Was könnt uns Gott wohl Bessres schenken, Als dass er unsrer Obrigkeit Den Geist der Weisheit gibet, Die denn zu jeder Zeit Das Böse straft, das Gute liebet? Ja, die bei Tag und Nacht Vor unsre Wohlfahrt wacht? Laßt uns dafür den Höchsten preisen; Auf! ruft ihn an, Dass er sich auch noch fernerhin so gnädig woll erweisen Was unserm Lande schaden kann, Wirst du, o Höchster, von uns wenden Und uns erwünschte Hilfe senden. Ja, ja, du wirst in Kreuz und Nöten Uns züchtigen, jedoch nicht töten. |
| Bass aria | Bass aria, unchanged |
| Closing chorale with instruments doubling the vocal lines Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan, Darbei will ich verbleiben. Es mag mich auf die rauhe Bahn Not, Tod und Elend treiben: So wird Gott mich Ganz väterlich In seinen Armen halten. Drum lass ich ihn nur walten. | Closing chorale with separate parts for trumpets and timpani Es danke, Gott, und lobe dich Das Volk in guten Taten. Das Land bringt Frucht und bessert sich, Dein Wort ist wohl geraten. Uns segne Vater und der Sohn, Uns segne Gott, der Heilge Geist, Dem alle Welt die Ehre tut, Für ihm sich fürchten allermeist, Und sprecht von Herzen: Amen! |
Wieneke Gorter, August 27, 2023.
About Weekly Cantata
I am a bilingual writer, publicist, choral singer, art and nature lover, happy wife, and blessed mother of two. I started this blog in 2016, inspired by my late mother’s love for Bach’s cantatas. After 23 years in the San Francisco Bay Area, I’m now back in the Netherlands.
If you are on social media, please follow me:
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Please join my readers from all over the world and subscribe to this blog! Simply fill in your email address and you’ll receive an email every time I’ve published a new post. Thank you so much / Vielen Dank / Merci mille fois / 감사합니다 / 谢谢 / ありがとう / Mille grazie / Muchas gracias / Muito obrigado / Takk / Terima kasih / Dankuwel!
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24 Thursday Aug 2023
Posted in 1723 Trinity season special series, Bach's life, Cantatas, Köthen, Leipzig, Trinity
Tags
Berlin, BWV 179, BWV 872, Charlottenburg Castle, Christine Schornsheim, Eduard van Hengel, fugue, harpsichord, Köthen, Leipzig, Michael Mietke, Netherlands Bach Society, Richard Atkinson, Trinity 11, Well Tempered Clavier
This past Sunday was the 11th Sunday after Trinity, for which Bach wrote Cantata 179 Siehe zu, daß deine Gottesfurcht nicht Heuchelei sei (See that your fear of God is not hypocrisy) in 1723 in Leipzig.
Much has been written about the stunning fugue in the opening chorus of this cantata, and I happily refer you to my posts from 2016 and 2020 for more information and a link to my favorite recording. But last week I learned something completely new about this opening chorus, thanks to yet another fabulous video series that saw the light during the pandemic: Richard Atkinson’s Bach Analyses. Since I’m a visual learner, I truly love watching videos like these. At first I merely started watching Richard’s video on the opening chorus of Cantata 179 to see if it would perhaps make the complex structure of the composition a bit easier to understand than Eduard van Hengel’s written explanation I had discussed in 2016.
And indeed it really helped me understand the music better! But what’s more, in that video Richard points out that the fugue from Cantata 179 shares some unusual composition techniques as well as themes with another mind boggling fugue by Bach, namely that of his Prelude and fugue no. 3 in C-sharp major (BWV 872) from the Well Tempered Clavier, Book II. As far as I know, no other Bach scholar or commentator ever mentioned this. Listen to that fugue here, played by Christine Schornsheim. We don’t know when exactly Bach wrote the keyboard piece, because we only have the publication date of the collection in which it appeared (Well Tempered Clavier Book II, 1740). It is possible that the cantata came first, but it is just as likely that Bach would have written the keyboard work before the cantata, while still employed at Köthen.
Thinking of Bach playing with fugues on the harpsichord in Köthen brings me to another bit about Bach’s life I learned last week, while watching the interview with Christine Schornsheim by the Netherlands Bach Society (with good English subtitles): that we actually know what kind of harpsichord Bach played in Köthen, from 1719 to 1723. To be clear: most harpsichord players and all harpsichord builders already know this, but I didn’t, and I thought it worth mentioning here.
Historical records show that the Prince of Köthen allowed Bach to order a harpsichord from the famous builder Michael Mietke in Berlin sometime in 1718, and got to pick it up in March 1719.
On March 1, 1719, the accounts read: “To the Capellmeister Bach for the Berlin-made harpsichord and travel expenses 130 Thaler”. On March 14, Gottschalk, the chamber servant, also received eight thalers in “wages for transporting the Berlin harpsichord.”
The instrument remained in the princely music chamber; Bach did not get to take it with him when he moved to Leipzig in May 1723. In 1784, the instrument is still mentioned: “The large harpsichord or grand piano with 2 manuals, by Michael Mietke in Berlin, 1719, defect.”
Many harpsichord builders have created copies of Bach’s “Mietke harpsichord.” In the video registration of the Prelude and fugue no. 3 in C-sharp major (BWV 872), Christine Schornsheim plays a terrific copy by Bruce Kennedy. The Köthen Castle had a copy made in 1992 by Martin-Christian Schmidt, pictured here:
For the picture at the top of this blog post I chose one of the very few original Mietke harpsichords that have survived to this day, the “White Mietke” at the Charlottenburg Castle in Berlin. It was built almost two decades earlier than Bach’s harpsichord, it only has one single keyboard, and it was decorated by the court painter at Charlottenburg.
Wieneke Gorter, August 23, 2023.
*manual = keyboard
About Weekly Cantata
I am a bilingual writer, publicist, choral singer, art and nature lover, happy wife, and blessed mother of two. I started this blog in 2016, inspired by my late mother’s love for Bach’s cantatas. After 23 years in the San Francisco Bay Area, I’m now back in the Netherlands.
If you are on social media, please follow me:
Please subscribe!
Please join my readers from all over the world and subscribe to this blog! Simply fill in your email address and you’ll receive an email every time I’ve published a new post. Thank you so much / Vielen Dank / Merci mille fois / 감사합니다 / 谢谢 / ありがとう / Mille grazie / Muchas gracias / Muito obrigado / Takk / Terima kasih / Dankuwel!
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11 Friday Aug 2023
Posted in 1723 Trinity season special series, Bach's life, Cantatas, Leipzig, Trinity
Tags
Dresden, J.S. Bach Foundation, Jan Dismas Zelenka, Karl Graf, Philippe Herreweghe, Rudolf Lutz, Trinity 10, Zelenka
Continuing with Bach’s 1723 cantata cycle, next up is Cantata 46 Schauet doch und sehet, ob irgend ein Schmerz sei, written for the 10th Sunday after Trinity (August 1st in 1723).
My favorite recording of this cantata is still the one by Herreweghe from 2012, which you can find here on YouTube via a playlist I created. However if you’d like to see all the special instruments in action, I highly recommend the J.S. Bach Foundation’s live video registration, with a tromba da tirarsi (slide trumpet) and recorders* in the opening chorus, a Baroque trumpet in the bass aria, and an oboe da caccia (hunting oboe, also new for Bach in Leipzig) as well as the recorders in the alto aria.
Please find the text here, and the score here.
Scholars agree that last week’s Cantata 105 and this week’s Cantata 46 Schauet doch und sehet, ob irgend ein Schmerz sei, can be seen as a pair within Bach’s works from that first summer in Leipzig. Here’s why:
I have written about some of these aspects of Cantata 46 before, but I never really paid much attention to the text. I needed Karl Graf, the theologian participating in the lecture about this cantata by the J.S. Bach Foundation**, to point out that the text of this cantata refers to two destructions of Jerusalem, in 586 BC by the Babylonians, and in 70 AD by the Romans.
Jeremiah the Prophet laments the 586 BC massacre in his Lamentations of Jermiah, a collection of poetry from the Old Testament, from which Bach’s librettist takes the words for the opening chorus.
Jesus predicts the destruction by the Romans in 70 AD, and weeps about it, in Luke 19: 41-48, which was the official reading for this 10th Sunday after Trinity in Bach’s church. Bach and his librettist mix the two parts of the Bible, because in their minds it is all the same, history unfortunately repeats itself. The bass aria paints one of the most dramatic pictures ever in a Bach cantata, and the text of the alto recitative warns that Leipzig could be next! Fortunately, as usual in a Bach cantata, there’s the promise of salvation, and a lightening of the mood in the music as well, this time in the form of the pastoral alto aria.
Throughout the Renaissance and Baroque, Catholic and Anglican composers have set the Lamentations of Jeremiah to music for the Tenebrae services of Holy Week. A notable example are those by Jan Dismas Zelenka, Bach’s colleague at the Catholic court in nearby Dresden. Zelenka wrote his Lamentations of Jeremiah the Prophet for Holy Week in 1722, so roughly 1,5 years before Bach wrote his Cantata 46. While Bach and Zelenka knew each other and Bach had friends in the Dresden court orchestra, I truly don’t know if Bach was aware of Zelenka’s setting of the Lamentations prior to August 1st 1723. There are some interesting similarities between the compositions, for example Zelenka also opting for a pastoral scene towards the end, but that’s food for another blog post! For now I just like to think that Bach wrote his own Lutheran version of the Lamentations with this Cantata 46.
Wieneke Gorter, August 11, 2023.
*It is the first time Bach uses recorders in Leipzig, but it is an instrument he often uses to portray sorrow.
**If you understand German or don’t mind automatically generated subtitles on YouTube, you can watch the extremely informative lecture about Cantata 46 here. It doesn’t just feature Rudolf Lutz and Karl Graf, but also Bach Scholar Michael Maul from the Bach-Archiv Leipzig.
06 Sunday Aug 2023
Posted in 1723 Trinity season special series, Bach's life, Cantatas, Leipzig, Trinity
Tags
Anneke Scott, Bachstiftung, BWV 105, BWV 24, California Bach Society, Caspar Wilcke, corno da tirarsi, Egger, Gottfried Reiche, J.S. Bach Foundation, Olivier Picon, Rudolf Lutz, Stadtpfeiffer, Todd Williams, Trinity 4, Trinity 8, Trinity 9
I’m in movie script mode again and jumping back 300 years, to the summer of 1723 in Leipzig. I believe that when moving to Leipzig, Bach couldn’t wait to meet the town’s famous brass player, Gottfried Reiche (1667-1734). I imagine that throughout the summer of 1723, these two creative geniuses would have frequently been “geeking out” about Reiche’s exciting innovation in brass instruments: the corno da tirarsi (or slide horn, on the right in the picture above), for which Bach most probably started writing around Trinity 4 in 1723 (about a month before today’s cantata).
As far as we know Reiche owned the one and only specimen and was the only one who knew how to play it. Scholars consider it very likely that he had the instrument specially made for him, in order to play more complicated music on a horn than one could at the time on a natural horn.
I have written about the corno da tirarsi before. However, I never fully realized how incredibly special that instrument must have been at the time, what the exact difference was with regular horns at the time, and how it works. Ironically, as a result of musicians being stuck at home during the pandemic, there are now some excellent educational videos on youtube, which explain all of this much better than I could ever do in writing.
So here goes with the lesson:
For an excellent demonstration of the limitations of natural horns before 1750, please watch the first three and a half minutes of this video by Todd Wiliams from the USA.
Then watch this video by Anneke Scott from the UK, about the corno da tirarsi as reconstructed by Egger.
Thank you Todd Williams and Anneke Scott! If you would like to show your appreciation for Anneke’s efforts, you can buy her a coffee on this website.
There is no doubt in my mind that Bach had already heard about Leipzig’s highly skilled senior Stadtpfeiffer (town piper) Gottfried Reiche before moving to Leipzig in May of 1723. Bach came from a family of town pipers, and in 1721 he married into a family of which every male member was a trumpet player (just sit with that for a few seconds). Reiche was of the same generation as Bach’s father-in-law Johann Caspar Wilcke (c. 1660–1733), and both had been trained in Weissenfels, which Olivier Picon qualifies as “probably the most important city in trumpet playing tradition in Germany at that time” in his 2010 thesis about the corno da tirarsi. I can imagine the animated discussions at both the Bach and the Wilcke family gatherings. Reiche’s virtuosity as well as his unusual instruments* must have been a frequent subject!
Now we come to today’s Cantata 105 Herr, gehe nicht ins Gericht mit deinem Knecht. (Enter not into judgement with Thy servant, O Lord.) It is one of my favorite cantatas, and Bach’s first** Leipzig cantata with a significant solo part for the corno da tirarsi, in the tenor aria. For the educational purpose of this blog as well as for the excellent rendition of the tenor aria I would like to feature the live video by the J.S. Bach Foundation, with Olivier Picon (pictured at the top of this post) playing the corno da tirarsi in the opening chorus, the tenor aria, and the closing chorale. Other soloists are Sibylla Rubens, soprano; Jan Börner, alto; Bernhard Berchtold, tenor; and Tobias Wicky, bass.
Picon initiated the reconstruction of the corno da tirarsi by the Swiss brass instrument firm Egger, which Anneke Scott also refers to in her video. Picon’s thesis from 2010, documenting the reconstruction as well as meticulously analyzing all cantatas that might have possibly been written for this instrument, is still the main source for scholars when discussing the corno da tirarsi. In this work, Picon also shares that Cantata 105 is his favorite cantata to play on the instrument.
Read the German text with English translations of Cantata 105 here, and find the score here.
Of course there’s much more to this cantata than just the unusual instrumentation. In 2021, also as part of a pandemic project, I wrote a post for California Bach Society highlighting all the ways in which this cantata foreshadows the St. Matthew Passion. Please find that post here.
I welcome your questions, comments, or words of encouragement below in the comment-section.
Wieneke Gorter, August 6, 2023.
*Reiche apparently was also the owner and player of another unique instrument, the tromba da tirarsi, or slide trumpet.
**Cantata 24 for the 4th Sunday after Trinity 1723 also features a solo part that might have been meant for the instrument, but opinions about this vary, and even Picon suggests the opening chorus might be played on a tromba da tirarsi (slide trumpet) and the closing chorale on a natural horn.
18 Monday Apr 2022
Since I arrived in Arnstadt yesterday (Easter Sunday) around 5 pm, I have had so many experiences and met so many people that I cannot believe it’s only been 30 hours. Tonight I am exhausted from all the driving and the busy program I made for myself, but everything has been going splendidly, see the highlights here below.
Follow me on Instagram @weeklycantata to see some more photos and videos in my highlight “Bach Travels.”
I got to hear Elina Albach’s adaptation of Bach’s Mass in B Minor for six singers, seven instrumentalists, and one narrator on Sunday evening in Arnstadt. It was inspiring, captivating, and just simply fabulous.
I cannot quite believe it yet that I actually got to attend concerts in two of the churches where Bach used to work, in Arnstadt and Mühlhausen.
I loved visiting the Bach House in Eisenach. From attending an excellent presentation of all the keyboard instruments in the instrument room, to seeing the books Bach had in his library, to meeting the museum’s generous director and discussing plans for next year with him, it was all better than I had expected.
I was pleasantly surprised by the beautiful and varied landscape in this region. Between Arnstadt and Eisenach there are hilltops that seem to pop out of the otherwise much flatter landscape, and many have fortresses on them. The route from Eisenach to Mühlhausen is extremely scenic, with beautiful rolling hills, meadows, forests, a river, and truly picturesque towns. Driving here is easy because it’s not busy on the roads.
Random fun fact: the number of Bach merchandise items (including those made out of chocolate!) one can buy at the Bachhaus in Eisenach is mind boggling. If you follow @weeklycantata on Instagram, keep an eye on my stories and highlights — I will post all the chocolate there in the next few days!
Thanks for following along!
Wieneke Gorter, April 19, 2022.
17 Sunday Apr 2022
Happy Easter!
These are exciting times for me. I just finished participating in a typical Dutch thing to do this time of year: I sang Bach’s St. Matthew Passion as a choir member. I was lucky to get into a choir of lovely people, work with an amazing conductor and make some new friends, and even come out of it with an engagement for a different choral singing project that will take me to for the first time in my life Leipzig in June (update from 2026: I ended up not being able to go at that time because of a concussion, but I made up for it in 2024 and 2025).
But, Leipzig is the town of the last part of Bach’s life, and I have always wanted to see the towns where he spent his youth first. So today I’m on my way to Thuringia, the region where Bach spent the first 32 years of his life.
The next four days are going to be packed with concerts of the Thüringer Bachwochen (a fantastic festival of several weeks with performances in historic Bach churches) a visit to Bach’s birth place Eisenach, and a tour of the Bach locations in Weimar.
Today we drive from Frankfurt to Arnstadt, where we attend a concert in the church where Bach held his first position as organist. In his time it was called the “Neue Kirche” (New Church), but it was renamed in the 1980s, and is now the Johann Sebastian Bach Church.
Wieneke Gorter, April 17, 2022, updated June 19, 2025
26 Saturday Feb 2022
Posted in Cantatas
Today is the last Sunday before Lent. In Leipzig, this meant Bach would get a break from the weekly cantata composing to work on (revisions of) his Passions, and rehearse those works with the choir. His audience (= congregations of the St. Thomas Church and the Nicholas Church) wouldn’t get to hear any of his music until Good Friday. Today is also the day on which, if I were Wonder Woman, I would have gone to hear Alex Potter sing in Hannover, Germany. If any of my readers live easy travel distance from there, go hear him sing with the excellent La Festa Musicale in a beautiful program of solo works by three Antonios: Vivaldi, Caldara, and Lotti. More information: https://www.lafestamusicale.de/en/concerts/upcoming-concerts.
So, what better day to repost my blog post from 2020 about Alex Potter singing Cantata 159. The post also includes links to the three other cantatas Bach wrote for this Sunday.Wieneke Gorter, February 27, 2022.
Between Estomihi Sunday (or the last Sunday before Lent) and Good Friday, there were 47 days in 1729. During that entire time the Leipzig congregations would hear no music in the churches, except for chorales. So Bach’s last music had to be as memorable as possible, had to give them hope, and ideally also prepare them for the St. Matthew Passion they would get to hear on Good Friday.
Bach successfully checked all these boxes with Cantata 159 Sehet! wir gehn hinauf gen Jerusalem. And leave it to alto Alex Potter to bring all this out in a performance. Opera-like drama, heart-breaking emotion, the promise of hope and redemption, it is all there in his singing, and in that voice with the beautiful variety of colors.
Listen to / watch the performance by the Netherlands Bach Society here on YouTube. Soprano:Miriam Feuersinger; Alto:Alex Potter; Tenor:Thomas Hobbs; Bass:Stephan MacLeod…
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19 Saturday Feb 2022
Posted in Cantatas
I know, this picture of the Sower in an Italian landscape has nothing to do with Bach and the weather. I had already selected it for a different type of post, focusing on Cantata 181. But looking at the painting soothes me, so I decided to leave it in.
Yesterday, on Friday afternoon, February 18, 2022, when storm Eunice made landfall here in Amsterdam, I couldn’t concentrate on that post about Cantata 181 anymore. Amsterdam was hit pretty hard, mostly with extreme wind. Three people lost their lives because of fallen trees, and one of those accidents happened in our own street.
Thus, with the wind raging through my neighborhood on Friday afternoon, I thought: well, this is exactly the weekend to talk about Cantata 18 Gleichwie der Regen und Schnee vom Himmel fällt (Just like rain and snow falls from heaven) again, and see how Bach illustrates the weather. Please find my post from 2020 about this cantata here.
Bach wrote two other cantatas for this Sunday.
In 1724, during his first year in Leipzig, Bach performed two cantatas during the church service: Cantata 181 Leichtgesinnte Flattergeister before the sermon, and Cantata 18 after the sermon. Find a live performance of Cantata 181 here on YouTube. The text of this cantata elaborates even more on the different kind of people discussed in the Gospel for this Sunday, the Parable of the Sower. Find that text here, and the score here.
One year later, during his cycle of chorale cantatas, Bach wrote Cantata 126 Erhalt uns, Herr, bei deinem Wort (Lord, keep us true to your word). As with most chorale cantatas, this one is much more based on the text of the chorale than on that of the Gospel reading. The wonderful thing about this cantata is that it shows Bach in St. Matthew Passion writing mode. Read it here in my post from 2018.
Wieneke Gorter, February 19, 2022.
06 Sunday Feb 2022
Posted in Cantatas, Chorale cantatas 1724/1725, Leipzig
This past Wednesday, February 2, was the feast of the Purification of Mary, or The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple. According to Jewish custom (as described in Luke 2:22-38), 40 days after the birth of a first-born son, his parents bring him to the Temple for a ceremony in which the mother offers a pair of doves for the purpose of her own purification, and the child is “bought back” from the Temple for money. When Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to the Temple, the prophetess Anna, an 84-year-old full-time resident of the Temple, is there too, as well as Simeon. Simeon was a devout Jew who had been promised by the Holy Spirit that he would not die until he had seen the Messiah. Upon seeing the child, Simeon offers a song of praise, known as the “Song of Simeon” or the “Nunc Dimittis.” He also speaks a prophecy to Mary. Read the complete Gospel text here.
I have written several blog posts about this over the past years, discussing how the early Christian church tied pre-Christian end-of-winter rites to their own feast days of Candlemass and the Purification of Mary. Whether Bach writes a joyful cantata about new beginnings or a more solemn one for this feast day, there is always a bright spotlight on Simeon’s words “Now let your servant die in peace” (Nunc Dimittis).
In his German-language Bach cantata podcasts, prominent Bach scholar Michael Maul has now twice pointed out the influence of the existing art works depicting The presentation of Jesus in the Temple on how Bach and his contemporaries might have seen this story. I loved hearing this, because that’s what I almost always try to do in this blog too, to find an example of the kind of imagery Bach might have had in mind when thinking of the Bible stories.
There is a large number of paintings about the presentation at the Temple, and Simeon plays a central role in each of them. Maul gives the example that the Bible doesn’t specify Simeon’s age and that references to “the old Simeon” by Bach and his librettists must come from the long beard and grey hair in all the paintings.
So, this week, I decided to do a bit of digging around in those art works and the Bible story.
Reading the Gospel of Luke (see above), it seems logical to me that artists thought of Simeon as an old man, since it says “that he would not die until he had seen the Lord’s Messiah.” From the detailed description of the prophet Anna’s old age it is then of course an easy step to also think of Simeon as an octogenarian.
What I did find surprising is that in many of the paintings, especially the earlier ones, and even in the discussions by art historians such as Zuffi, Simeon gets assigned the role of the priest on duty at the temple, when he was just a visitor that day. It is an interesting question how and when that piece of fiction was born, but it is just a side story here.
In several paintings, such as all presentations by Memling (see here and here), Lorenzetti, and Lochner (Darmstadt, see above), the focus is on the ceremony. Jewelry, doves, money, and clothing are painstakingly portrayed, but there is no emotion. But then there are the paintings that seem a bit more intimate, the earliest of these the “Lisbon presentation” by Lochner, from ca. 1447, see here directly above. In this painting it is Joseph who’s carrying the doves, Mary is empty-handed and just praying. This painting is not about her. Jesus is touching Simeon’s beard, and Simeon seems to be crying. Daniel Levine offers the explanation that Simeon’s sadness is caused by his vision of the child’s future, as he says to Mary: “This child is destined to cause many in Israel to fall, and many others to rise. He has been sent as a sign from God, but many will oppose him. As a result, the deepest thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your very soul.” The painting at the top of this post, by Bellini, might also fall in this category.
We see this happening even more clearly and directly in Rembrandt’s representation of the same story, almost two centuries later. There is no ceremony at all here, only a conversation between two people, with Simeon clearly speaking to Mary.
Thus it seems as if at least some of the artists were especially moved by the foreshadowing of the Passion story in Simeon’s words. Whether Bach had seen those specific paintings or not, I don’t know of course. But it is clear that the idea existed at the time, and it is a bit more proof for the theory I expressed in this blog post about Cantata 125, that this cantata looks ahead to the St. Matthew Passion. This is all the more motivation for me to start writing more about that Passion in the coming weeks.
Wieneke Gorter, February 6, 2022.
