Tag Archives: Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra

Bach’s Music for Ascension Day

13 Thursday May 2021

Posted by in Ascension, Cantatas, Leipzig

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The Ascension, from the illuminated 15th-century manuscript Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry, Folio 184r – Musée Condé, Chantilly, France.

Today was Ascension Day. In Bach’s time this was a very important holiday in the churches. Many countries in Europe have a four-day weekend starting on this Thursday. I did too as a kid growing up in the Netherlands. But we didn’t go to church on this day, and I don’t remember my mother playing the Ascension cantatas or the Ascension Oratorio on the turntable at home on this day. Instead we went for a bike ride, visit grandparents, or go camping. I didn’t know Bach’s music for Ascension Day at all until we performed BWV 11 and 43 with California Bach Society in the early 2000s. The choruses from these compositions are among the most fun I have every sung in a choir. I love the syncopated rhythms.

Here is an overview of Bach’s music for Ascension Day, as far as we know, in order of creation:

In 1724, Bach wrote Cantata 37 Wer da gläubet und getäuft wird (Whoever believes and is baptised). Listen to it here. Soloists in this recording by Ton Koopman/Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra are Sibylla Rubens, soprano; Bernhard Landauer, alto; Christoph Prégardien, tenor; and Klaus Mertens, bass.

In 1725, as part of the series of cantatas on texts by Christiane Mariane von Ziegler, Bach wrote Cantata 128 Auf Christi Himmelfahrt allein (On Christ’s ascension alone). Listen to it here. Soloists on this live recording by John Eliot Gardiner/English Baroque Soloists are Lenneke Ruiten, soprano; Meg Bragle, mezzo soprano; Andrew Tortise, tenor; and Dietrich Henschel, bass. Find my blog post from 2018 about this cantata, which includes a different recording by Gardiner here.

The last Bach cantata we have for this holiday is from 1726: Cantata 43 Gott fähret auf mit Jauchzen (God ascends with shouts of joy). Listen to it here. Soloists in this live recording by Rudolf Lutz/J.S. Bach Foundation are Miriam Feuersinger, soprano; Annekathrin Laabs, alto; Charles Daniels, tenor; and Wolf Matthias Friedrich, bass.

Nine years later, Bach wrote his Ascension Oratorio, BWV 11 Lobet Gott in seinen Reichen (Praise God in His kingdoms), incorrectly labeled as a cantata in the 19th century. Bach might have been inspired by the Christmas Oratorio he had written only five months before that.

On that Ascension Day, Thursday, May 19, 1735, this oratorio was performed in the morning service in the St. Nicholas Church, and again in the afternoon service in the St. Thomas Church. Watch the wonderful opening chorus here in a live performance by Philippe Herreweghe/Collegium Vocale Gent from 2014 from the Chapelle de la Trinité in Lyon, France. Or listen to the entire oratorio by Philippe Herreweghe/Collegium Vocale Gent on a CD recording from 1993 here. Soloists on that 1993 recording are Barbara Schlick, soprano; Catherine Patriasz, alto; Christoph Prégardien, tenor; and Peter Kooij, bass.

Wieneke Gorter, May 13, 2021.

Passion stress for Bach plus two more cantata movements disguised as organ works

05 Monday Mar 2018

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

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Bach_house_Leipzig

On the left the rebuilt Thomas School Anno 1732. The apartment of the Bach family was on the left of the building. On the right is “a part of the Cather(ine) Street”. Zimmermann’s Café which hosted Bach’s Collegium Musicum was located in the center building labeled “2”.

Around this time in 1725, Bach was still on a break from writing cantatas (they were not to be performed in Leipzig during the 40 days before Easter), but was by no means resting. On the contrary, he was likely rather stressed out about his passion music for Good Friday 1725.

We know that on Good Friday 1725, Bach performed a revised version of his St. John Passion from 1724. We don’t know why he revised it, and some scholars such as John Elliot Gardiner even suggest that Bach had been planning to perform a St. Matthew Passion instead.*

If we could only travel back in time and find out what happened. If it was indeed Bach’s plan to perform a completely new composition, why did he not perform it until 1727? Did he simply run out of time, or did the Leipzig city council not approve of the piece? And why exactly did he revise the St. John Passion? Did he want to change it himself, or had the presentation of Jesus as victor** in the original 1724 version irked the city council?

Now for some music, related to my previous blog post, but completely unrelated to the passion stress story above:

Following up on my post from two weeks ago, there are two more cantata movements that show up in Bach’s “Schübler” organ chorales:

The fifth movement of Cantata 10 Meine Seele erhebt den Herren (live performance in the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig by alto Bogna Bartosz, tenor Jörg Dürmüller, and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra under the direction of Ton Koopman) disguised as organ chorale BWV 648 (Ton Koopman on the historic Müller organ (1724) of the Grote Kerk in Leeuwarden, The Netherlands) with the same title. Click on the links to watch and listen on YouTube.

Also: the second movement of Cantata 137 Lobe den Herren, den mächtigen König der Ehren from 1725 (violinist Margaret Faultless with all the altos of the Amsterdam Baroque Choir under the direction of Ton Koopman), transformed into organ chorale BWV 650 Kommst du nun, Jesu, vom Himmel herunter (Bine Katrine Bryndorf on the historic organ (1724) of the Garnisons Kirke in Copenhagen, Denmark). Click on the links to listen on YouTube.

Wieneke Gorter, March 5, 2018

*In his book Music in the Castle of Heaven, John Elliot Gardiner makes a strong case that Bach might have initially planned to have the St. Matthew Passion ready for Good Friday 1725. Read this blog post to find out why that is not an unlikely scenario at all.

**Read more about this in this blog post

Bass arias with trumpet

22 Sunday Oct 2017

Posted by in Cantatas, Leipzig, Trinity

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bwv5_manuscript_tromba

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 Kooij’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 (J.S. Bach Foundation recording from 2015 with Wolff-Matthias Friedrich, bass; Patrick Henrichs, trumpet)

August 1, 1723: “Dein Wetter zog sich auf von weiten” from Cantata 46 (Herreweghe recording from 2012 with Peter Kooij, 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 (Koopman recording from 1998 with Klaus Mertens, bass; Stephen Keavy, 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, updated October 15, 2020.

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.

Second Sunday after Easter 1724

30 Sunday Apr 2017

Posted by in After Easter, Cantatas, Leipzig

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christ-the-good-shepherd
Christ the Good Shepherd, by Bartolome Esteban Murillo, c. 1660. Museo del Prado, Madrid.

We keep following Bach in 1724. For the second Sunday after Easter of that year, he composed cantata 104 Du Hirte Israel, höre. Of all the recordings I listened to, I prefer the one of Ton Koopman with his Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Choir, here on YouTube.

Please consider purchasing this recording here on Amazon, or here on iTunes.

Find the text of this cantata 104 here, and the score here.

Agnew
Paul Agnew

My main reason for choosing this recording is tenor Paul Agnew’s fabulous singing. Type his name in the “search” box on this blog and you’ll find more fan mail from me 🙂

But also: this recording has the best balance among the voice parts in the choir in the opening chorus, and Klaus Mertens presents a bass aria I can actually listen to without getting irritated.

This is a very pretty cantata, entirely based on the “good shepherd” theme for this Sunday, using pastoral motifs in the music, oboes in the orchestra, and displaying an innocent character overall, much more so than the more complicated cantata 85 Bach would write for this same Sunday a year later, which I wrote about last year in this post.

Wieneke Gorter, April 30, 2017.

On my mother’s birthday, March 24

24 Friday Mar 2017

Posted by in Cantatas

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my mother with my daughter, The Hague, summer of 2009

This year, on March 24, my mother would have turned 71. Sadly, she left us on November 19, 2010, after a tragic illness we only understood to be a terminal one on September 5 of that same year. To say that those months were an emotional roller coaster for all involved is an understatement. Normally very liberal and progressive in her Christianity, my mother turned very pious in her last weeks, and during that time she didn’t really let any persons in anymore, only music.

One of the major reasons I started this blog in January 2016 was to continue my mother’s legacy of playing the cantata for the appropriate Sunday every week, but also to remember the joy of going to concerts with my mother and listening to recordings together with her.

So I would like to think of this post as a short radio program with beautiful Bach music, featuring three soprano arias I strongly associate with my mother, sung by singers she and I adore(d).

A fond childhood memory is my mother, my sister, and I taking the bus from the little town where we lived to a town 15 kilometers (9 miles) away, where my mother was going to sing a solo in a wedding service. I remember what she wore: a light blue dress with tiny white and red flowers on it, a narrow red belt, and red sandals with heels. The solo she was singing was the aria “Sehet in Zufriedenheit” from cantata 202. I remember being in awe that she was standing there on the organ loft and singing it so beautifully. A gorgeous example of this aria, in the exact tempo in which my mother liked to perform it, is this recording of Nancy Argenta with Ensemble Sonnerie under the direction of Monica Huggett:

Sehet in Zufriedenheit
See in contentment
Tausend helle Wohlfahrtstage,
a thousand bright and prosperous days,
Dass bald bei der Folgezeit
so that soon as time passes
Eure Liebe Blumen trage!
your love may bear its flower!

Much later, my parents had a subscription to the series of cantata performances by the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra with Ton Koopman, and there they got to see and hear many different soprano soloists. I remember them being impressed with Caroline Stam. Hear her sing the aria “Es ist und bleibt der Christen Trost” from cantata 44, one of my mother’s favorite Bach cantata arias of all time,  with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra under the direction of Ton Koopman.

Es ist und bleibt der Christen Trost,
The consolation of Christians is and remains
Dass Gott vor seine Kirche wacht.
God’s watchful care over his church.
Denn wenn sich gleich die Wetter türmen,
For even though at times the clouds gather,
So hat doch nach den Trübsalstürmen
yet after the storms of affliction
Die Freudensonne bald gelacht.
the sun of joy has soon smiled on us.

We felt extremely blessed that Caroline Stam agreed to sing at my mother’s funeral service. We asked her to sing Purcell’s “Evening Hymn,” since that had been in the top 5 on my mother’s iPod in her last weeks. But for the Bach aria, we let Caroline pick what she would like to sing. I am still very grateful for that decision. Always very conscious of texts, Caroline chose the hauntingly beautiful “Die Seele ruht” from cantata 127. For years, I have not been able to listen to this aria, but now I can again, though it still makes me cry a little. Hear Dorothee Mields sing this aria with Collegium Vocale Ghent under the direction of Philippe Herreweghe:

Die Seele ruht in Jesu Händen,
My soul rests in the hands of Jesus,
Wenn Erde diesen Leib bedeckt.
Though earth covers this body
Ach ruft mich bald, ihr Sterbeglocken,
Ah, call me soon, you funereal bells,
Ich bin zum Sterben unerschrocken,
I am not terrified to die
Weil mich mein Jesus wieder weckt.
Since my Jesus will awaken me again.

If you would like to read more, here are five posts from 2016 in which I talk about my mother a lot or a little bit:

The order of things

Glorious soprano arias and unusual instrumentation

The Crown on Bach’s 1723 Trinity season

Many things to be proud of

Our Christmas Morning

Wieneke Gorter, March 24, 2017

When good fortune smiles – beware!

24 Sunday Apr 2016

Posted by in After Easter, Cantatas, Leipzig

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Vanitas

Allegory of Vanity, Antionio de Pereda, between 1632 and 1636

Bach wrote cantata 166 Wo gehest du hin?  in 1724 for the fourth Sunday after Easter, or Cantate Sunday. I recommend listening to Koopman’s recording of the cantata. I appreciate his choices of tempo and his decision to use five voices instead of just one for the soprano chorale. Also, the tenor and alto arias are absolutely marvelous.

We are now much closer to Ascension than to Easter in the Lutheran Church year, so there is definitely some of the despair about Jesus’ imminent departure in text and music. This time the text focuses more than last week on the actual “going away,” and what that means for the disciples / the believers.

However, it is Cantate Sunday, and of course Bach could not leave that alone. He uses several terrific examples of what “singing” can mean in his church music: a Vox Christi (a bass voice representing Jesus) arioso as opening, a beautiful tenor aria, a soprano chorale, and then a piece of opera for the alto. In the cantata he wrote for this same Sunday the next year, he even includes a bit of polyphonic choral motet-writing in the middle. (cantata 108, Est ist euch gut, das ich hingehe).

The bass arioso quotes only the Wo gehest du hin? from the Gospel text (John 16):

5. Nun aber gehe ich hin zu dem, der mich gesandt hat; und niemand unter euch fraget mich: Wo gehest du hin?

  

[5] But now I go my way to him that sent me; and none of you asketh me, Whither goest thou?

The text of the  tenor aria elaborates on this, focusing on heaven, where Jesus is going, versus world, or life on earth, that man has to do something with. Interestingly, the title of the lost Weimar cantata for this Sunday is Leb ich oder leb ich nicht (To be or not to be, freely translated).

Ich will an den Himmel denken
I want to think of heaven
Und der Welt mein Herz nicht schenken.
and not give away my heart to the world.
Denn ich gehe oder stehe,
For whether I go or stand still
So liegt mir die Frag im Sinn:
I have this question in my mind:
Mensch, ach Mensch, wo gehst du hin?
Man, ah man, where are you going?

I love this aria. It is one of the many examples in Bach cantatas where the tenor aria is a perfect trio sonata,  and I adore this soloist: Christoph Prégardien.

The soprano chorale  answers the last question of the tenor aria (and perhaps also the question asked in the bass arioso) with a firm answer from the Christian(s)  that they want to stay on the path to Christ, to heaven. Koopman’s choice to have this sung by the entire soprano section of the Amsterdam Baroque Choir is brilliant. Not only do the five sopranos (Vera Lansink, Caroline Stam, Francine van der Heijden, Annemieke Rademaker, and Melanie Greve) sound wonderful together, it is also a better balance with the string accompaniment, played unisono by the violins and violas.

Ich bitte dich, Herr Jesu Christ,
I ask you, Lord Jesus Christ,
Halt mich bei den Gedanken
keep me in your thoughts
Und lass mich ja zu keiner Frist
and do not let me at any time
Von dieser Meinung wanken,
falter in this purpose,
Sondern dabei verharren fest,
but instead let me firmly persevere
Bis dass die Seel aus ihrem Nest
until my soul from its nest
Wird in den Himmel kommen.
shall go to heaven.

The bass recitative points out the worthlessness of life on earth and worldly possesions, reminding the congregation that whenever things are going well, life can quickly take a bad turn:

Gleichwie die Regenwasser bald verfließen
Just as rainwater soon flows away
Und manche Farben leicht verschießen,
and many colours easily fade,
So geht es auch der Freude in der Welt,
so is it also with joy in this world,
Auf welche mancher Mensch so viele Stücken hält;
which many people value so highly;
Denn ob man gleich zuweilen sieht,
even though sometimes people are seen
Dass sein gewünschtes Glücke blüht,
to be flourishing with the good fortune for which they longed
So kann doch wohl in besten Tagen,
still even in the best days
Ganz unvermut’ die letzte Stunde schlagen.
quite unexpectedly the last hour may strike.

The alto aria elaborates on this thought, and Bach really shows off his vocal writing in this aria.How the friendly smile of good fortune can quickly turn into satanic laughter of sorrow/bad luck/disaster is brilliantly illustrated in the music, and wonderfully executed by countertenor Bernhard Landauer. Koopman’s and Landauer’s interpretation of this aria is unrivaled by any of the other recordings I listened to.

Man nehme sich in acht,
You should take care
Wenn das Gelücke lacht.
when good fortune smiles.
Denn es kann leicht auf Erden
For easily in this earthly life
Vor abends anders werden,
before evening things can turn out differently
Als man am Morgen nicht gedacht.
from what you thought in the morning.

Wieneke Gorter, April 23, 2016.