Detail of Pieter Brueghel II’s Landschap met Kruisdraging (Landscape with Christ Carrying the Cross) from around 1605. Oil on oak wood. Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, the Netherlands. Click here to see the entire painting and its eventful history in the 1940s.
What do you think of when you hear the text of the solo cantata for bass “Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen”? My mental image was similar to the painting above, but this week, that got turned on its head when I read research published in 2015. However, my favorite recording is still the same! My love for this particular performance is older than my marriage!
Peter Kooij, image taken from a video by the Netherlands Bach Society.
That favorite recording of Cantata 56 Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragenis the one by Herreweghe with Peter Kooij and Marcel Ponseele, from 1991. Not this same piece by Peter Kooij with other conductors or orchestras, only Herreweghe. Because for me, it’s the combination that makes the magic. Peter Kooij’s musicality, voice, and text-awareness is always there, but under Herreweghe’s direction the music flows and every musical line takes you to a point far beyond the note that’s currently in your ears.
Marcel Ponseele
And then there’s Marcel Ponseele’s oboe playing. I know no other recording where the oboe and the voice dance so beautifully together in the third movement “Endlich, endlich wird mein Joch” (Finally, finally will my yoke). Kooij and Ponseele were both with Herreweghe for decades, but Kooij, 72, has retired from touring, and Ponseele, 69, has recently left Herreweghe’s ensembles to focus more on his own projects. (see my previous post for an example of the fabulous productions he creates with his ensemble Il Gardellino).
The score of Cantata 56 Ich will den Kreuzstab gerne tragen can be found here. The German text with a thorough and thoughtful English translation by Michael Marissen & Daniel R. Melamed can be found here. In their translation, Kreuzstab is correctly translated as cross staff, such as a Bishop’s staff, or even a medieval navigation device as pictured at the very bottom of this post (more about that later!). But in about half of the English translations out there, it is translated as cross beam.
Wy did I also have that image of the cross beam in my head, instead of a cross staff? For me, that has to do with the word “Joch” (yoke) in the third movement, but also with Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. As a Dutch choral singer, I know the St. Matthew Passion libretto from memory, and thus, for me, that text always comes to mind first. Concert programs also sometimes feature the “Komm, süsses Kreuz” (Come, sweet cross) bass aria from the St. Matthew Passion together with this Kreuzstab cantata.
In the St. Matthew Passion, leading up to that “Kom, süsses Kreuz” aria, the Evangelist sings the Gospel text from Matthew:
Und da sie ihn verspottet hatten, zogen sie ihm den Mantel aus und zogen ihm seine Kleider an und führeten ihn hin, dass sie ihn kreuzigten. Und indem sie hinausgingen, funden sie einen Menschen von Kyrene mit Namen Simon; den zwungen sie, dass er ihm sein Kreuz trug.
And when they [the Roman soldiers] had ridiculed him, they took the cloak off him and put his own clothing on him, and led him forth, so that they might crucify him. And as they were going out, they found a man from Cyrene named Simon; they forced him to carry Jesus’ cross for him.
Thus, that image of literally carrying Jesus’ wooden cross is a vivid one. Then, in the “Komm, süsses Kreuz” aria, Bach’s librettist, in his 18th-century reflection on the Gospel text, makes the connection to suffering, metaphorically bearing a cross.
Komm, süsses Kreuz, so will ich sagen, Mein Jesu, gib es immer her! Wird mir mein Leiden einst zu schwer, So hilfst du mir es wieder tragen.
Come, sweet cross, so I will say, My Jesus, ever give it here [for me to bear]! If someday my suffering becomes too heavy for me, Then you will help me bear it [the cross] again.
But this Kreuzstab Cantata 156 is only partly about that. Foremost, the text talks about finding a way through one’s life, letting God lead the way, and finding a safe harbor, using a wealth of metaphors from marine navigation. See for example the analogy in the second movement “Mein Wandel auf der Welt ist einer Schiffahrt gleich: Betrübnis, Kreuz und Not sind Wellen, welche mich bedecken und auf den Tod mich täglich schrecken” (My course of life in the world is like a ship voyage: distress, cross-bearing, and hardship are waves that cover me and daily scare me) and these words in the closing chorale: “Löse meines Schiffleins Ruder, bringe mich an sichern Port!” (Free the rudder of my little ship, bring me to safe harbor). So in that sense, the image of a cross staff is more appropriate than that of “the” wooden Cross.
I didn’t come up with this myself of course. Already in 1985, Gustav Adolf Theill explained that the cross-staff was a nautical device used to determine distances and positional coordinates. It would take until the 1730s for this to be replaced by the sextant. Theill linked the description of a cross-staff with Bach’s succession of notes in the bass motif (Ich – will – den – Kreuz – stab) of the first movement.
Dr. Christine Blanken
Thirty years later, in 2015, Dr. Christine Blanken of Bach-Archiv Leipzig presented more evidence. She had discovered that Bach’s student Christoph Birkmann was most likely the librettist of this and other solo cantatas from the fall and winter of 1726. In addition, she showed that only two months before Bach’s performance of this cantata, Birkmann, also a mathematician and physicist, had given an academic presentation about trigonometrical calculations requiring the use of cross staffs such as pictured at the bottom of this post.
So, while Bach might have had both Jesus’ wooden cross and a cross staff in mind, his librettist was definitely thinking of the latter.
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Frontispiece to the Introductio geographica, by Petrus Apianus, 1532. The illustration depicts the use of a cross-staff, or Jacob’s staff, to measure angles. The instrument was used in astronomy, navigation, and surveying.
Over the summer and fall of 1726, Bach wrote several solo cantatas with the organ as “duet partner” for the vocal soloist. Cantata 169Gott soll allein mein Herze haben, written for this 18th Sunday after Trinity, is one of these. Until 2023, I had always heard and seen these solo cantatas performed the way you can see in this video, with the organist playing on a small “portative” organ, on the same stage as the other members of the orchestra.
When in February 2023, ensemble Il Gardellino released a CD featuring two of these solo cantatas with countertenor Alex Potter, I at first merely started listening to it because I was excited to hear one of my favorite soloists perform together with one of my favorite ensembles. The album cover doesn’t reveal more than those two names, and neither did the social media posts that alerted me about the release at the time.
But as I heard the first few notes I started smiling: instead of a portative organ I heard a large church organ! And oh, what an incredibly gorgeous instrument! Turns out this album was recorded at the Stiftskirche St. Georg (collegiate church of St. George) in Grauhof (Goslar), Germany, using that church’s famous Treutmann organ from 1737 (pictured above), played by Dutch organist Leo van Doeselaar. Bach wrote the organ part of these solo cantatas clearly with a large church organ in mind. However, because of challenges of tuning pitch, space, and place, playing these cantatas on large church organs can often not be achieved in concerts. So we’re lucky to have recordings like these!
I’ve listened to this album many times since, because I appreciate Alex Potter’s sensitivity to the text, but also because I love how the rainbow of colors in Alex Potter’s voice is perfectly matched by the organ’s sound, thanks to Van Doeselaar’s fabulous registration.*
Find this recording on YouTube or on Spotify. Cantata 169 is the second cantata on this album. Please consider purchasing the recording to support the artists, for example on Amazon if you are in the USA or directly from the record label if you are in Europe.
Please find the score for Cantata 169Gott soll allein mein Herze habenhere, and the German texts with English translations here.
Leo van Doeselaar, photo by Eduardus Lee.
Coming back to Van Doeselaar’s registration, when you listen to this album, don’t miss the organ piece between the two cantatas, the Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C Major, BWV 564. Van Doeselaar uses the “Glockenspiel” stop in the first measures of the Toccata. The stop was added during a recent renovation of the organ. When I asked Van Doeselaar about using it here, he said that he knows Bach appreciated a Glockenspiel stop since it is listed in his 1708 specification for the new organ in Mühlhausen**, and that he just had to let that shine through in the Toccata, he couldn’t help himself, “it was too much fun!”
This cantata’s text is based on a passage from the Gospel reading for this Sunday, Matthew 22:34–46, in which Jesus formulates the “double commandment”: “Love God with all your heart” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Only the recitative (movement 6) addresses the “Love your neighbor as yourself”; the preceding movements focus on “Gottesliebe” (love for or from God), in its two meanings: humankind’s subjective love for God, which implies a rejection of worldly pleasures (movements 2,3, and 5); and God’s objective love for people, which comes to people as a gift (movement 4).
If the music reminds you of something, you’re right! For the first two movements of his harpsichord concerto BWV 1053 in E major Bach arranged movement 1 and 5 from this cantata.*** However, the cantata movements are not the original pieces of music either, but rather arrangements of a lost concerto. For a long time it was assumed that this was a concerto composed in Köthen for a woodwind instrument or a viola, and there are many recordings of this piece as an oboe concerto. Only in 2005 Christoph Wolff suggested that it may have been an organ concerto performed in 1725 at the Sophienkirche in Dresden.
There is, hooray, one more cantata for this Sunday featuring Alex Potter’s gorgeous singing: Cantata 96Herr Christ, der einge Gottessohn from Gli Angeli Genève’s Chorale Cantata Box I spotlighted last week. Please find this recording here on Youtube and here on Spotify. Exceptionally, in this cantata Bach gives the cantus firmus in the opening chorus to the altos. And on Gli Angeli Genève’s recording, the a capella chorale preceding the cantata is sung by two altos and one soprano: Alex Potter, Christelle Monney, and Anne-Kathryn Olsen. Read my post from 2017 to learn why Bach brings the Christmas story into a Trinity cantata, and find a video by the J.S. Bach Foundation’s in my post from 2020.
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*When talking about an organ, “registration” means the organist’s decision regarding which sound registers, called “stops,” to use when playing a piece of music. If you would like to know more about this art, please watch this video by the Netherlands Bach Society, in which Van Doeselaar explains his approach and compares it to the work of a chef. The organ in this video is the Arp Schnittger organ in Groningen I mentioned and pictured in my previous post.
**As organist of the Blasiuskirche in Mühlhausen, from 1707 to 1708, Bach initiated a complete renovation of the organ by local builder Johann Friedrich Wender. He however already left Mühlhausen before the instrument would be finished in 1709. The organ was reconstructed in the 1950s at the instigation of Albert Schweitzer based on Bach’s specification drawn up in 1708.
***The music of the third movement is the same as the opening chorus of Cantata 49, which is part of that same group of solo cantatas with organ from 1726.
This week I returned from a wonderful vacation in the Scottish Highlands. While I miss the stunning nature and the friendly people, it was much easier to get back to writing than normally after a trip, because this fall I’m part of an all-women writer’s group. Two times a week we all log in to Zoom and then do our own writing for 2 hours and receive inspiring coaching by Jennifer Louden. The community and accountability work wonders for me, and I hope that after the group disbands in December, I will have sufficiently strengthened the commitment to myself to keep making time for my writing, and keep my standards at a realistic level.
Gli Angeli Genève’s Chorale Cantata Box
“The Complete Chorale Cantatas” by Gli Angeli Genève, released in 2025.
Continuing to highlight remarkable cantata recordings that came out over the past few years, this time I would like to put the spotlight on baritone Stephan MacLeod’s ensemble Gli Angeli Genève. And before you start giggling about about me featuring a Scottish conductor after coming back from a trip to Scotland, Stephan MacLeod is a native of Geneva!
In 2025, Gli Angeli Genève released “The Complete Chorale Cantatas”: nineteen CDs packaged together in a tastefully and thoughtfully designed cardboard album, with two paperback books, one with all the tracks and texts, the other with all the program notes. Both books have most of the information in English, German, and French. The only place an English translation is missing is in the cantata texts. Those only have French translations.
It’s of course not just this collection’s design that makes it an exceptional release. What stands out to me most are the musical introductions to each cantata. Each work is preceded by an organ prelude by Bach or one of his contemporaries on the same chorale that the cantata is based on, followed by the chorale itself, sung a capella by two or three singers. In today’s world where we listeners are not as familiar with these chorale tunes as listeners in Bach’s time were, this makes a huge difference in appreciating these cantatas.
Arp Schnittger Organ, Groningen, the Netherlands.
I applaud Gli Angeli Genève going through the extra trouble of recording these additional pieces after they had already recorded all the cantatas. The cantatas were recorded live over the course of 12 years, from 2011 to 2023, all in Geneva. The a capella chorale tunes were recorded in three different sessions spread out over 2024, in Geneva, Chaux-de-Fonds (also in Switzerland), and Groningen (the Netherlands). All the organ preludes were recorded in September 2024 on a historic organ from Bach’s time, the Arp Schnitger Organ in the Martinikerk (St. Martin’s church) in Groningen, the Netherlands. Organist Francis Jacob does a fabulous job on this beautiful instrument, and his registrations and notes for each of the pieces are included in one of the books included with the CD box.
Cantata 114 Ach, Lieben Christen, seid getrost for the 17th Sunday after Trinity
On to the cantata for this Sunday, Cantata 114Ach, lieben Christen, seid getrost, from 1724. It appears on CD 7 of Gli Angeli Genève’s “The Complete Chorale Cantatas” box. If you’re in Europe, you can purchase the box on jpc.de: you pay 160 euros instead of the original price of 200 euros. It’s also available on Amazon.de and Amazon.uk. If you’re outside of Europe you’ll have to rely on the streaming platforms. Find Cantata 114 here on Spotify, or here on YouTube (this is a playlist of the entire album (CD 7), just scroll down to the 9th track to start this cantata with the organ prelude).
Find the German texts with English translations for Cantata 114 here, and the score here. I have previously published two articles about this cantata on this blog, in 2017 and 2020. The one from 2017 includes a detailed listening guide and the one from 2020 shares a few more recordings.
Coming back to the musical introductions I mentioned above, sopranos Aleksandra Lewandowska and Sarah van Mol sing a 17th-century anonymous setting of the chorale. I love their voices together and I could listen to their a capella chorale singing all day. If you have time, check out their rendition of “Lobe den Herren, den mächtigen König der Ehren” preceding Cantata 137 on CD 5 of this same box. Goose bumps!
However, what I love most about Gli Angeli Genève’s recording of this cantata is the opening chorus, with exquisite phrasing by the orchestra, and beautiful transparency in the chorus. The two-on-a-part singing works really well in this case!
Thomas Hobbs
Tenor Thomas Hobbs and flutist Alexis Kossenko do a terrifyingly beautiful job in the tenor aria. This is the slowest I’ve ever heard this aria performed, but again, it works. In this tempo, the “sighs” in the flute part really make me think of sobs, fitting for an illustration of “Jammertale” (vales of tears). I still also really love the J.S. Bach Foundation/Lutz’ recording with flutist Marc Hantaï and tenor Georg Poplutz. When you regard this aria’s text, Wo wird in diesem Jammertale vor meinen Geist die Zuflucht sein? (Where in this vale of tears will there be a refuge for my spirit?) I feel that Thomas Hobbs focuses more on illustrating the vale of tears, while Georg Poplutz expresses the problem of where to turn to.
But let’s not forget the soprano and alto solos! The soprano solo consists of a verse of the chorale with an exciting continuo accompaniment, performed convincingly here by sopranos Alexandra Lewandowska and Anne-Kathryn Olsen. It’s fun for me to hear Anne-Kathryn sing, because she and I chatted online during the Covid pandemic about her working in Europe as an American soprano, and about San Francisco Bay Area audiences versus European audiences (it’s not what you think). Her voice also sounds fabulous together with Alexandra Lewandowska’s, so I guess Alexandra is good at selecting fellow singers 🙂
Anne-Kathryn OlsenAlexandra Lewandowska
Now we can all go in peace.
As almost always in a Bach cantata, there is a turning point where the text and music move from misery to glory. In this cantata this happens in the alto aria. Bach illustrates the at the same time victorious and peaceful text with a joyful orchestra accompaniment with oboe solos, beautifully played by Emmanuel Laporte, and a virtuoso part for the singer. And what better countertenor to sing this than Alex Potter? Now we can all go in peace.
More cantatas for this 17th Sunday after Trinity
One year later, for this same 17th Sunday after Trinity, Bach wrote Cantata 148Bringet dem Herrn Ehre seines Namens. Please find my previous posts about this cantata here. Since last year, there’s been a beautiful new recording out on Youtube, performed by the J.S. Bach Foundation under the direction of Rudolf Lutz, with two of my favorite soloists, countertenor Alex Potter and tenor Daniel Johannsen. Find it here.
I want to tell a story and I want to touch everyone in the audience. People can hate it, and that’s okay, we can talk about it! But I don’t want it ever to happen that someone is leaving a concert of my group saying it didn’t move them in any way.
This is what CONTINUUM’s leader Elina Albach told me when I interviewed her in April 2022, and it still rings true today. For me, CONTINUUM’s Missa Miniatura was the most compelling concert at Bachfest Leipzig 2025, and an even stronger manifesto for peace than when I first heard it at the Bachkirche in Arnstadt in 2022.
Unless otherwise noted, all quotes in this article are from the interview I had with Elina Albach in April 2022 and have been edited for clarity.
What is Missa Miniatura?
CONTINUUM’s Missa Miniatura is a chamber-music version of Bach’s Mass in B Minor, arranged by Elina Albach for six singers and seven to eight instrumentalists. It is called “Miniatura” not just because it is performed by fewer people, but also because several movements have been cut from the original score. The Christe Eleison, the second Kyrie, the Gratias, the first three Credo movements, and the second Osanna are replaced by spoken texts, written specifically for this production by Swiss author Jürg Halter. In the music that remains, the vocal parts are almost the same as in the original composition.1 Of the instrumental parts, all original notes are played, but sometimes on completely different instruments than the original score asks for, and also divided differently over the various instrumentalists.
This new approach makes for an exciting, captivating, and thought-provoking concert experience. The spoken texts create a story arc in the piece, which, as an audience member, I often miss in performances of Bach’s Mass in B Minor.
Who is Elina Albach and what moved her to create an adaptation of Bach’s Mass in B Minor?
Elina Albach. Photo by Neda Navaee
Elina Albach is an award-winning harpsichordist, and the leader and founder of ensemble CONTINUUM, which has become known for its fresh and innovative approaches to Early Music performance. To the wider Bach audience, Elina Albach is probably best known as one of the creators of the Three-person St. John Passion, which received an OPUS Klassik award for the most innovative concert in 2019 and was broadcast live on Good Friday 2020 from an empty Thomaskirche in Leipzig.2
Regarding Bach’s Mass in B Minor, Elina foremost wanted to give the audience a chance to reflect on what “believing” means nowadays. This is the main reason she wanted contemporary spoken texts to replace the first three movements of the Credo, which contain the words “I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things, seen and unseen. And in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God.”
She also strongly felt she wanted to reduce the length of the piece, for the practical reason that singing two hours in a row would be too demanding for such a small group of singers, and having an intermission is not an option for her:
“I prefer not having breaks in a concert. When one tries to build a story, a break just destroys everything. When I try to create a particular atmosphere, I really want to grab the audience’s hands and pull them into the concert.”
Selecting instrumentalists: “It is all about the people.”
What distinguishes Elina even more in the world of classical musicians is that she tends to form an ensemble based on the people she loves to share a stage with. Which exact instruments these people play is secondary. She explains this well in a preview video for Missa Miniatura on her YouTube channel:
“I look at which personalities would be a perfect fit for this project, even if they play an instrument that wasn’t planned. It is all about the actual person, with their individual background and abilities, their intellect, and their positive attitude —all the elements I require to realize this project.”
This year in Leipzig, this approach created such a compelling energy on stage, that I personally felt more than pulled into it: I wanted to curl up in the middle of it.
Orchestration
Of course, if you put together an ensemble this way, and still want all the notes from the original score to sound, it becomes quite a puzzle to figure out which instrument will play which notes. Elina admitted this process was much more complicated for the Mass in B Minor than for the St. John Passion. But thanks to a six day retreat with all instrumentalists where they tried out several different options, she solved the puzzle beautifully.
Hearing different instruments in the arias and choruses than the ones I’m used to kept me alert as a listener and made the music more transparent. The most striking change was the extreme percussiveness of the “Crucifixus,” which was played on electric guitar, violin, viola da gamba, cello, and harpsichord, with some of the string players playing col legno (with the wooden part of the bow hitting the strings). I felt it illustrated the crucifixion much better than Bach’s original orchestration.
Electric guitar? Yes! Keep reading to find out more about Bertram Burkert.
A strong connection to Bach’s manuscript
seeing it laying there was just very, very emotional
Through a special collaboration with the Staatsbibliothek (state library) in Berlin, all members of CONTINUUM had the rare opportunity to view several pages from Bach’s manuscript of the Mass in B Minor during their rehearsal week in that same building in February 2022. Elina says:
“We saw five or six pages. Of course I had checked the whole manuscript on the internet, but seeing it laying there was just very, very emotional. It was wonderful to be able to give all my instrumentalists and singers the opportunity to see it as well. Because I think it’s one thing to be free with the music, to be free with the concept, and to use different instrumentalists. But I am, of course, still very interested in historical performance practice and I get furious if someone is playing the wrong ornaments or the wrong Generalbassaussetzung [basso continuo realization]. So I think that it was just so good to perform this very free version of the B Minor Mass, but sticking to the original autograph we saw in the library.”
Members of CONTINUUM viewing Bach’s manuscript of his Mass in B Minor at the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin. Photos by Alex Potter.
Sensitive and well-balanced ensemble singing
Exciting orchestration aside, this production wouldn’t be as successful as it is without the sensitive and well-balanced ensemble singing by the six fabulous vocalists: sopranos Marie Luise Werneburg and Viola Blache; countertenors Alex Potter and Tobias Knaus; tenor Raphael Höhn; and bass Tobias Berndt. Especially the “Qui Tollis” was fantastic at the concert in Leipzig this year, sung by only four singers, with an incredibly gorgeous entrance by Alex Potter (I already wrote about his “Agnus Dei” aria in my previous post).
The premiere of Missa Miniatura was set for March 3, 2022, in Berlin. Author Jürg Halter had already finished the texts, to be spoken by actor Thomas Halle during the performance, when, on February 24, Russia invaded Ukraine. It made Halter delete all his words and write new, more personal ones. He finished the texts during the night of March 2. Elina adds:
It’s such a huge privilege standing there, performing and making music, while only 700 or 800 kilometers from Berlin, people are dying.
“For me at least, and I think for all of us in the first performances, it was very, very moving because we felt it’s such a huge privilege standing there, performing and making music, while only 700 or 800 kilometers from Berlin, people are dying. The text finishes with the words ‘I want to see you all laughing in peace,’ after which the ‘Agnus Dei’ and ‘Dona Nobis Pacem’ [Grant us Peace] come. Thus, the whole concert is now a manifesto for peace and against war and cruelty. It has gained that additional layer, which is good.”
Jürg Halter. Photo by Rob Lewis.
Here’s an excerpt of the First Reading, which in the performance comes right after the first Kyrie:
“Ich zweifle an uns Menschen. Ich will nicht glauben, dass ich nicht mehr glauben kann. Ich kann nicht mehr glauben, weil ich weiß. Ich weiß, dass nachdem ich als Kind vom Holocaust erfuhr, mein Zweifeln begann. Meine Gebete wurden mehr und mehr zu Anklagen. Je mehr ich über die dunkle Geschichte unserer Spezies erfuhr, desto weniger konnte ich glauben, dass wenn es tatsächlich einen Gott gäbe, er es zulassen würde, dass Menschen durch Menschen vernichtet werden – denn weshalb um alles in der Welt würde er als Allmächtiger so etwas geschehen lassen? Friede auf Erde den Menschen guten Willens? Nein – was ist schon nur mit all den Verbrechen, die im Namen des vermeintlich Guten, im Namen Gottes begannen werden? Ist Gott ein Zyniker? Ich bin verzweifelt. Ich weiß nur, was ich zu wissen glaube. Ich sehe nur: Die große Herrlichkeit gebärt auch die große Schrecklichkeit. Zweifle nicht – aber ich zweifle!”
I doubt us humans. I don’t want to believe that I can no longer believe. I can no longer believe, because I know. I know that my doubts began when I learned about the Holocaust as a child. My prayers started to sound more and more like accusations. The more I learned about the dark history of our species, the less I could believe that if God actually existed, he would let humans destroy other humans – because why on earth would he, as the Almighty, let something like that happen? Peace on earth to people of goodwill? No – what about all crimes committed in the name of the so-called Good, in the name of God? Is God a cynic? I am desperately confused. I only know what I have come to believe. All I can see is that great glory also gives birth to great horror. Doubt not—but I doubt!
At the time of our interview, Elina suggested they might change the texts in a year. But of course, over the past three years, there have been only more reasons to wish for peace, not less. On June 17, 2025, this horrific reality hit me hard as the concert in the Nikolaikirche was starting. So this First Reading affected me more this time, perhaps also because Thomas Halle read it, in my humble opinion, with more confidence and conviction than he did in 2022.
Electric guitar? Yes! And another moving story about a plea for peace
Electric guitarist Bertram Burkert provided a new aspect to the production this year in Leipzig. He did an amazing job playing the notes percussionist Philipp Lamprecht used to play on marimba in previous performances of this piece. His interpretation was completely convincing and very musical. He also played a stellar improvisation to help the spoken text that replaces the first three Credo movements flow into the “Et incarnatus est.” It made the “Et incarnatus est” as poignant as three years ago, albeit in a completely different way. After the concert Elina told me enthusiastically how wonderful it was for her to find a person coming from the jazz world who also loves Baroque music and has such an open mind about combining different styles and traditions of music.
“Schwerter zu Pflugscharen” (Weapons to Plowshares) poster in the Nikolaikirche in Leipzig.
In the “friends and family” row on the second balcony of the Nikolaikirche in Leipzig, my seat was next to a lovely German couple. When I talked to them after the concert, they turned out to be Bertram’s parents. They had traveled there from Weimar and the concert had moved them too. As people who have their roots in church music, they were deeply touched to see and hear their jazz musician son perform Bach, but also moved that they found themselves in the Nikolaikirche. They reminded me this is where the peaceful protests against the GDR had started in the 1980s.3 Nowadays, there are still posters in the Nikolaikirche advertising the Monday evening “Friedensgebet” (prayer for peace), which has been held there every Monday evening since 1982.
When Bertram’s parents told me that during the first 10 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, they thought this peace was going to last forever, I had to think of Halter’s text in Missa Miniatura‘s Second Reading:
“Never has peace been anything but a long or short phase between wars. You have to be insane to believe in world peace – I would like to be insane. Is that already a profession of faith?”
Let’s talk about it
CONTINUUM’s Missa Miniatura was a great success, not miniature at all in its impact on the audience. Please let me know in the comments if you heard this production at any time over the past three years, how it moved you, and if it made Bach’s Mass in B Minor more transparent for you. Remember, even if you hated it, “we can talk about it!” 🙂
CONTINUUM receiving applause in the Nikolaikirche. Photo by Stefan Haupt.
My heartfelt thanks to Marie-Luise Werneburg, Viola Blache, Alex Potter, Tobias Knaus, Raphael Höhn, Zachary Wilder, Tobias Berndt, Thomas Halle, Johanna Bartz, Anna Schall, Lambert Colson, Joosten Ellée, Liam Byrne, Bertram Burkert, Daniel Rosin, Joseph Crouch, Lola Mlácnik, and Philipp Lamprecht for the two concerts I attended in 2022 and 2025. And to Elina Albach for making time for the interview in 2022, for answering my additional questions this week, for her playing and directing, but most of all for her powerful and inspiring energy!
Only in the Osanna, instruments are taking over some of the notes from the vocal lines, and the tenor and bass singers are „jumping“ between both choirs. In the end, all notes are played or sung. ↩︎
The Three Person St. John Passion (or “Johannes Passion zu Dritt” in German) is Bach’s St. John Passion, arranged by Elina Albach, tenor Benedikt Kristjánsson, and percussionist Philipp Lamprecht for tenor solo, percussion, and organ/harpsichord. The only parts that are eliminated are the tenor arias (yes, that is correct: the tenor sings all the arias except his own) and most notes of the choir are played by harpsichord and percussion. In concert performances of this adaptation, the chorales are sung by the audience. This production became widely known on and after Good Friday 2020, during the Corona pandemic, when it was livestreamed from the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig. Several chorales had been pre-recorded by Bach choir members from all over the world, and these were edited into the live performance. ↩︎
A good explanation of Leipzig’s role in the peaceful revolution of 1989 can be found here. ↩︎
I visited Bachfest Leipzig again this year, from Tuesday evening, June 17, through Sunday, June 22, attending eight concerts in six days. Read my highlights below, and please subscribe to this blog so you don’t miss future posts. I joined a festival trip to Merseburg, took walks, caught up with friends from all over the world, and met some new fellow Bach lovers. For me, the camaraderie has almost become a more important reason to return each year than the concerts.
That said, next year’s cantata programming is not to be missed, with Herreweghe AND Lutz AND Rademann, so if you would like to attend you should probably get organized – my tips for that at the end of this post.
Summer in Leipzig
June is the perfect time of year in this city. People are out on café terraces everywhere, and walking in the streets. Then there’s the summer green: entire rose bushes for sale on the street in the middle of the center, and linden trees in bloom wherever you go. The scent of linden delights me, and I learned something new about them this year, thanks to our Bachfest tour guide Anna-Sylvia Goldammer on the organ trip to Merseburg: Leipzig has apparently always been full of linden trees! The latin word for Leipzig, Lipsi, was derived from the Slavic word for linden tree, lipa. Most of downtown, inside the ring, is car-free, with only taxis and necessary vehicles allowed in. This makes it feel safe and, dare I say it, more walkable than Amsterdam.
The free performances can be the most meaningful
Inspired by a seatmate on the trip to Köthen last year, I attended more of the free or almost-free performances this year. You can still fully enjoy the camaraderie with other Bach fans and hear beautiful music without spending a fortune. There are no assigned seats for the church services, so as long as you line up early, you can enjoy the best view for free.
This year I had missed the free performances on the market square, but on Saturday morning, June 21, I was so lucky to attend an unforgettable, absolutely exquisite rendition of the duet from Cantata 79 Gott der Herr ist Sonn und Schild by soprano Miriam Feuersinger and baritone Tobias Berndt during the “Mette” (morning service) in the Nikolaikirche. The Sunday morning service in the Thomaskirche was special too. The service was a reconstruction of what a church service in Bach’s time would have been like (I could write an entire blog post about that!), I got to hear Johannes Lang play the organ, Tomáš Král sing the bass arias in Cantata 20 O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort, and tenor Patrick Grahl sing not only the tenor aria in that cantata but also the cantor-bits in the service as well as the reading from the New Testament (yes this was sung, beautiful!). But I also happened to sit and sing (in the congregational singing) next to the 80-year-old father of choir director Maria Küstner. With great determination he had climbed all the stairs to the balcony, even though he was walking with a cane. When after the service I thanked him for his clear and confident singing, he told me that decades ago, on frequent car trips between Leipzig and Berlin, he would sing Luther’s “Wir glauben all an einen Gott” (one of the Lutheran chorales we had just sung in the service) to keep himself and the family awake. I forgot to ask him if this was still during GDR time, but it might very well have been.
Catching up with David Chin
This year I also finally had the opportunity to have lunch with David Chin, director of Bachfest Malaysia and creator of the excellent documentary Encountering Bach which I have referenced already a few times on this blog. We started conversations on Facebook during the Covid pandemic after David published his first episodes of the documentary, then met in person at the Thüringer Bachwochen in 2022, but only managed to say a few quick hellos at last year’s Bachfest. So grateful it worked out to talk this year!
Concert highlights: Alex Potter and David de Winter
Alex Potter in the Nikolaikirche on June 17. Photo courtesy of Sascha Wolff.
I had only just arrived to Leipzig on Tuesday June 17. I had not even unpacked yet, but I had a chance to hear “Missa Miniatura,” Elina Albach’s adaptation of Bach’s Mass in B Minor again, and I am a big fan of that production. So I ate a quick dinner and made it to the Nikolaikirche just in time. Alex Potter’s stunning rendition of the Agnus Dei at this concert was definitely a highlight of this Bachfest for me. In order to have a bit more acoustic, he had climbed up a few steps so he stood directly under an arch in the Nikolaikirche. Thanks to Sascha Wolff for capturing that moment on photo. After this aria I felt “we can now all die happily.” The other aria that transported me to a similar state of bliss was David de Winter’s “Der Ewigkeit saphirnes Haus” from Cantata 198 Laß, Fürstin, laß noch einen Strahlwith Solomon’s Knot on Friday, June 20, in the Evangelisch-Reformierte Kirche. I had never heard this aria sung so beautifully.
Bach’s “50 best cantatas” by Lutz, Herrewege, and Rademann, Vox Luminis, Koopman, and Gardiner in 2026 – how to get organized
Disclaimer: I’m not getting paid to write this. Below is a reflection of my personal opinion and personal interpretation of the information that is available at the time of writing this blog post. I do not accept responsibility if your experience is different. I just thought it might be helpful to curate the information from various websites for you.
Anyone reading this who has visited Bachfest in the last few years: please feel free to add your own advice in the comments. Thank you!
Next year’s cantata programming at the festival is going to be a hit parade of the “50 best cantatas” (chosen by the audience, read more about the how and why in this interview with festival director Michael Maul by blogger Rick Fulkner) with two concerts each by Herreweghe, Lutz, Koopman, Gardiner, Rademann, and Vox Luminis. Here are my tips to get organized:
If you already know you want to attend all 12 cantata concerts (= two concerts per day, six days in a row, of two to three cantatas each, each cantata preceded by a motet by Schütz or Schein), you can purchase your “packet” here. You’ll go through two seat selection screens, one to select your seat for the Thomaskirche (the screen doesn’t specify this, but it is the seatmap that has the stage at the bottom, and “Südempore” on the right), and, once you have clicked the checkout button, another one for the Nikolaikirche (not specified either, but this is the map that has the stage at the top and 1. Empore and 2. Empore).
Please note for Thomaskirche:
For concerts with choir and orchestra, the performers are located on the organ loft of the Sauer-organ (the bottom of the seating map).
The majority of the pews downstairs, where the sound is likely best, have their backs to the performers. Many people don’t mind this, but it surprised me. Thus, if it is important for you to see the performers, choose a premium seat (yellow on the map) on one of the balconies, where the sound is wonderful too.
Some seats on the Empore (balconies) have partially blocked views of the performers due to large pillars, even the premium seats are not all equal, so don’t get your hopes up too much.
Please note for Nikolaikirche:
The sound is good everywhere in the church, but most seats on the balconies have limited leg space, so keep that in mind if you are tall, since these cantata concerts will be pretty long. The Bach Museum shop sells cute portable cushions for making your church pew seat more comfortable, see picture on the left, pillow folded in half. I also saw people who traveled with inflatable pillows.
If you want to pick and choose, only want to go to one concert per day, or don’t want to commit to spending a thousand euros just yet, mark your calendar:
November 11, 2025: Advance sales start for Patrons of the Bachfest/Bach-Archiv Leipzig and for members of the Neue Bachgesellschaft.
Become a patron of the Bachfest here (access to VIP seating for three concerts or more, depending on level of giving).
Become a member of the Neue Bachgesellschaft here (no special seating, just the earlier access to ticket sales).
November 25, 2025: Regular ticket sales start.
Where to stay: People I met had good experiences at Innside (hotel directly across the ring from the Thomaskirche, in a nice neighborhood), Motel One (close to the Nikolaikirche), and Adina Apartment Hotel (apartments close to the Nikolaikirche, 24-hour reception, pool, restaurant, bar). I myself stayed in Apartmenthotel Quartier M. which I loved because of the excellent organic supermarket on the ground floor of the same building, the good price, and the short walking distance to the Thomaskirche.
Adoration of the Shepherds by Dutch painter Gerard van Honthorst, 1622. Pommersches Landesmuseum (Pomerania State Museum), Germany.
In my post for the first Sunday of Advent about Cantata 62 Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland, I explained how Bach’s chorale cantatas were most likely influenced by Johann Martin Schamel‘s annotations in his publication “Evangelischer Lieder-Commentarius.” Still, in that post, I gave just a few examples of how Bach used Schamel’s explanations.
Only after I wrote that post, I realized that Lydia Vroegindeweij had already created a “Read and Listen” guide for this cantata on her Luther 500 / Bach 300 website, shining a very clear light on the relation between Schamel’s explanations and Bach’s music. However, that article was in Dutch. So over the past few weeks, I translated Lydia’s Dutch text into English, and then Lydia transformed that text into a beautiful web page, with listening examples for every single movement of the cantata. Please find that brand-new English “Read and Listen” guide for Cantata 62 here.
In the process of translating and re-reading, I became more familiar with Luther’s and Schamel’s key themes for Advent and Christmas, especially these three:
The importance of light: the light comes from the manger (as pictured in the painting above), from within, and is a metonym for Christ, always conquering the darkness. It is mentioned again and again.
Jesus is always there, he is living in the hearts of the people, he is always with them as if he were a family friend, a house guest. In other words, he is already here and one doesn’t have to wait for him.
Christ’s divine character and human character exist simultaneously, in one and the same person.
During that same time, I was rehearsing and performing cantatas 1, 2, 5, and 6 of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio as a chorus member, as well as attending an excellent performance by the Netherlands Bach Society of cantatas 1, 4, 5, and 6. Singing these texts and reading them in a program booklet with my newly acquired knowledge, I became much more conscious how strongly Luther’s and Schamel’s way of thinking are also present in the text and music of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio.
The theme of the inner light is especially present in one of my favorite parts of the Christmas Oratorio, the fifth cantata, written for the Sunday after New Year. Please find a live video recording here of the Netherlands Bach Society’s performance of this cantata in Utrecht on December 13, 2024, the same production I attended two days earlier in Naarden.
Following the chorus that talks about the sighting of the star, Bach and his librettist present an alto recitative (performed here by Alex Potter), which at first still refers to the star, but then turns to Jesus / to the core of the faith, and explains that Jesus is the light:
Wohl euch, die ihr dies Licht gesehen, Happy are you who have seen the light, Es ist zu eurem Heil geschehen! It has appeared for your salvation! Mein Heiland, du, du bist das Licht, My saviour, you, you are the light Das auch den Heiden scheinen sollen, Which shall shine on the Gentiles also Und sie, sie kennen dich noch nicht, And they, they do not know you yet, Als sie dich schon verehren wollen. Though they would already worship you Wie hell, wie klar muss nicht dein Schein, How bright, how clear must your radiance be, Geliebter Jesu, sein! Beloved Jesus!
Rodrigo Lopez-Paz. Photo by Eduardus Lee, courtesy of the Netherlands Bach Society.
More illustrations of this special light follow in the bass aria (performed here by baritone Tomáš Král and oboist Rodrigo Lopez-Paz)
Erleucht auch meine finstre Sinnen, Illuminate also my gloomy thoughts Erleuchte mein Herze Illuminate my heart Durch der Strahlen klaren Schein! With the rays of your clear light! Dein Wort soll mir die hellste Kerze Your word will be the brightest candle for me In allen meinen Werken sein; In all my deeds; Dies lässet die Seele nichts Böses beginnen. This lets my soul begin nothing evil
In the terzetto (performed here by violinist Cecilia Bernardini, soprano Carine Tinney, alto Alex Potter, and tenor Daniel Johannsen), we also see the theme of “Jesus who dwells in the heart” appear. In this trio, the alto interrupts the tenor and soprano with the very strong statement “er ist schon wirklich hier!” (he really is already here!). The tenor and soprano represent the people who think the Messiah is yet to come, singing:
Ach, wenn wird die Zeit erscheinen? Ah, When will the time appear ? Ach, wenn kömmt der Trost der Seinen? Ah, When will he who is the comfort of his people come ?
While the alto voice represents the Lutheran doctrine that Jesus is always with you, that he dwells in your heart, singing: Schweigt, er ist schon würklich hier! Be silent, he is really already here!
The text of the closing chorale combines the theme of Jesus dwelling in the heart with that of the inner light:
Zwar ist solche Herzensstube Indeed such a room in my heart Wohl kein schöner Fürstensaal, Is certainly no fine royal palace Sondern eine finstre Grube; But rather a dark pit; Doch, sobald dein Gnadenstrahl Yet, as soon as the rays of your mercy In denselben nur wird blinken, Only gleam within there Wird es voller Sonnen dünken. It will seem filled with sunlight.
View of the city of Köthen. Copper engraving from around 1720. Bach-Archiv Leipzig.
This is the second post about my experience at Bachfest Leipzig 2024. Please find my first post, about Friday, June 7, here. Find the program for Bachfest Leipzig 2025 here.
7 am walk through Leipzig’s historic center
Because of the back-to-back activities on Friday I hadn’t made it to a supermarket before 10 pm, so I went on a grocery run at 7 am on Saturday. I took a little detour past the Thomaskirche, just to be sure where to locate the “main portal” where the bus to Köthen would leave from at 9:30. Something I forgot to mention in my earlier post: this time of year there are blooming linden trees everywhere in Leipzig! So many more than in Amsterdam. The blossoms provide a delightful and calming fragrance.
I’m so glad I listened to the Reisen reisen podcast before traveling to Leipzig, otherwise I wouldn’t have known to walk into the many courtyards one finds in this city. I found the one pictured here on Saturday morning, and another gorgeous one on Sunday. There are several others I missed, so I will have to come back! Walking in these courtyards I could imagine a bit better how the city must have looked in Bach’s time.
On the way back to my apartment I even found a friendly fruit and vegetable seller setting up early for the weekly open market, so I was all set for making breakfast and a sandwich to take on the bus to Köthen.
On the bus to Köthen
Around 9 am I found a seat on the festival bus to Köthen, together with 49 other Bach fans from all over the world. Köthen is where Bach lived and worked from 1717 to 1723, between his time in Weimar and his time in Leipzig. It was here that he wrote his Brandenburg concertos, cello suites, his sonatas and partitas for solo violin, and several other instrumental works. He had an appreciative employer and got to work with probably the best orchestra he ever had in his life. He retained his title of “Court Capellmeister” even after leaving his post. His wife Anna Magdalena had been a singer at this court for two years before they moved to Leipzig, and together they made the journey from Leipzig to Köthen at least three times to perform for the Prince together.
I visited Arnstadt, Mühlhausen, and Weimar in 2022, but had never been to Köthen, so it was a no-brainer for me to join this “Bach out and about” trip.* The landscape between Leipzig and Köthen, at least as seen from the freeway, is much less interesting than that of Thuringia, the region where Bach spent the first part of his life, and where I traveled in 2022. This was actually a good thing, so there were no spectacular views to distract me from our guide Gerlinde Kämmerer’s stories about Bach’s life in Köthen and his travels between Leipzig and Köthen.
Something new I learned during this bus trip: roads used by carriages in this area in the early 18th century were stone roads (“Steinwege” in German), which we should not understand as cobblestone or gravel, but a bit more like this one pictured here, rough stones hammered into sand or clay, but not as clean-looking – Gerlinde explained there would have been all kinds of dirt sticking to the surface. All this made for very uncomfortable travel and the carriage would have had to make several stops along the way. Looking it up on the fantastic new interactive map by Viabundus, a carriage-trip from Leipzig to Köthen would have taken more than one whole day in Bach’s time.
When we got close to Köthen and turned off the highway we saw fields of poppies and several hop farms. Hops have been grown in this Elbe-Saale region for centuries. The first written records date to the 9th century. Today this hop growing region is the second-largest in Germany, with around 1550 hectares (about 3830 acres).
Hop farm. Plants reach full height at the end of June
More about this trip, and what we actually saw and heard in Köthen, in the next post.
Wieneke Gorter, June 20, 2024. Links updated November 29, 2024.
*Each year the festival organizes a handful of these trips to other towns in the region. It is a combination of city and/or museum tour in the morning and organ or chamber music concert in the afternoon. The concert is usually in collaboration with a local organization, so there will be more people attending the concert than just you and your fellow travelers. But for the rest of the day you are with your travel group only. Once at the destination, the groups gets split into English-speakers and German-speakers. The trips are well organized, you travel in a comfortable coach, and there are knowledgeable guides and excellent translators on board (more about this in the next post). There is a lunch break long enough to eat at a local restaurant or go for a walk. On the way there, you get a lecture about what you are going to see, and on the way back you can take a nap, chat with new friends you made on the trip, or organize all the photos you took. This year these trips cost €88 each and I found it well worth it.
This is the first post in a longer series about my experience at the Bachfest Leipzig 2024. I was there for only four days, and wished I could have stayed longer and could have traveled more in the region, but it was enough to get a taste of the wonderful atmosphere, the camaraderie, and to hear some fabulous concerts in Leipzig and Freiberg. Find the program for Bachfest Leipzig 2025 here.
I’m really here!
On Friday, June 7, I took a crazy early train from Amsterdam and arrived at the Leipzig main station (Hauptbahnhof) in the early afternoon. Both at the station and on the short walk to my apartment I saw enormous Bachfest posters, see the pictures above (left photo at the station, right photo at the Evangelisch Reformierte Kirche, which is one of the concert venues). No doubt about it: I was really here!
Participating in a Flash Mob
View from the rehearsal room
At 3:15 pm I made my way to a pretty rehearsal room around the corner of the St. Thomas church (Thomaskirche), to rehearse for the not-so-secret-anymore Flash Mob. The festival’s artistic director Michael Maul had announced the Flash Mob on Facebook and picked a good time and place for it: right before the festival’s official opening concert, on St. Thomas Square. To give you an idea of how busy it was: the cafe we sat down at afterwards asked us to move or wait 10 minutes, because they had run out of glasses.
We sang the two chorales from Cantata 147 Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben: “Wohl mir, dass ich Jesum habe” and the famous “Jesus bleibet meine Freude.” To get an idea of what that sounded like, watch this video by the Bachfest on Facebook, with many thanks to David Chin for filming and creating the video.
I had met up with my friend Lydia Vroegindeweij. Thanks to her groundbreaking research into chorale cantatas and her and Ellen van der Sar’s all-encompassing Luther300-Bach500 project, Michael Maul now calls her “Die Choralkantatenexpertin” (the chorale cantata expert) when he introduces her to a fellow Bach scholar, and rightfully so. We had fun participating in the Flash Mob, and met three lovely women from a local a capella choir. Afterwards (while the opening concert was taking place in the church) the others enjoyed a “Bach Kaffee” (yes that is a German thing, to drink coffee late in the afternoon), while I ate an early dinner.
Lydia Vroegindeweij (middle) and our fellow choir memberson St. Thomas Square (me on the right)
Singing along with chorales
The theme of this year’s Bachfest is Chorale Cantatas, and in 16 concerts over the course of one week, all of Bach’s chorale cantatas* will get performed during this festival. I only attended the first one of these, on the evening of Friday, June 7, in the beautiful St. Nicholas church (Nikolaikirche), which has great acoustics.
Carus’ special festival edition
To make the audience fully aware of the chorale on which Bach based his cantata, the festival came up with a formula for each of these cantata concerts. For each cantata on the program, the formula is as follows:
The church’s organist plays an organ prelude (by Bach if he wrote one) on the chorale melody
The audience sings the first two stanzas of the chorale. To aid with this, the festival and Carus Verlag created a free edition of all the chorales (you can download it too, just click on the link!)
After the closing chorale of each cantata (sung by the ensemble performing the concert), the audience also gets to sing that closing chorale.
I very much appreciated this for this first concert, and I happened to sit next to a friend who is also an avid choral singer, so we enjoyed it. However it made for an extremely long concert, and I felt a bit for the people who had bought tickets to *all* chorale cantata concerts, as I couldn’t really see myself doing this seven days in a row, sometimes three times a day.
Kristjánsson was my hero of this first festival day, yes a bit because of the Flash Mob, but mainly thanks to his singing in this first chorale cantata concert.
For me, his aria “Des Vaters Stimme ließ sich hören” from Cantata 7 Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam, which also features two gorgeous flute parts, was the absolute highlight of that concert.
Full Nikolaikirche for the first chorale cantata concertNikolaikirche after the concert
After this concert it was time for bed for me, because I would have to get up at 6:30 the next morning. More about that in the next episode.
Thank you for reading! Please feel free to share with anyone you think might like to read this too.
Wieneke Gorter, June 11, 2024, updated November 29, 2024.
*Bach’s chorale cantatas = the cantatas he wrote during his second year in Leipzig, from June 1724 to March 1725. For nine and a half months, including the entire Christmas season, Bach would write every cantata according to this same template: the opening movement is a chorale fantasia on the first stanza of an existing Lutheran hymn or chorale, with the tune appearing as a cantus firmus. The last movement has the last stanza of the same hymn as text, in a four-part harmonization of the tune. The text of those choral, outer movements was used verbatim, while the text of the solo, inner movements was paraphrased, but still based on the inner stanzas of the same hymn.
The Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard by Rembrandt van Rijn. 1637. Oil on panel. The Hermitage, St. Petersburg, Russia.
An idea for this blog post was still sitting in my drafts folder. It’s a party in that drafts folder, so many blog posts in various stages of readiness are hanging out there! Self-imposed deadlines and self-imposed standards often lead me to decide that the post won’t be finished in time for the appropriate Sunday and that it is thus better to shelve it.
In 2020 I jotted down that it would be good to talk about gratitude in connection with Bach’s Cantata 144 Nimm was dein ist, und gehe hin! (1724) and Cantata 84 Ich bin vergnügt mit meinem Glücke (1727) for this Sunday Septuagesima, or the Third Sunday before Lent. I’m not alone in associating these cantatas with a gratitude practice. Prominent Bach scholar Michael Maul calls the soprano aria “Genügsamkeit” (Contentment) from Cantata 144 “the Buddha aria” in his Podcast about this cantata (in German).
It seems appropriate to take the draft post off the shelf today, because at the start of this weekend I went to see Wim Wenders’ movie Perfect Days. The movie celebrates living a simple life and being open to small wonders and pleasures. I loved it and it calmed me down. And it is an excellent opportunity to finally share Miriam Feuersinger’s 2022 solo album “Ich bin vergnügt …” on this blog.
For the background stories about cantatas 144 and 84, please (re)read my post from 2017.
Before I discuss Feuersinger’s recording, I should not forget to mention that the Netherlands Bach Society’s live recording of Cantata 84 was also published in 2022 and features excellent music-making by soprano Maria Keohane and oboist Martin Stadler. I love the many colors of Maria Keohane’s voice and I enjoy watching her sing because she is so obviously enjoying herself, and her singing always seems effortless.
The award-winning Solo Cantata album by Miriam Feuersinger and Capricornus Consort Basel includes a beautiful rendition of Cantata 84. Find it here on Spotify and here on YouTube. I adore Feuersinger’s clear voice and Katharina Arfken’s oboe playing. I also appreciate their decision to have the strings play the alto, tenor, and bass part in the final chorale. It is too bad there is no video recording of this, because watching Miriam Feuersinger’s energy on stage is fantastic, and enormously inspiring to me.* I have never attended a live performance of hers yet, but I am hoping to fix that on February 17 in Stuttgart and/or on April 7 in Arnstadt. And to circle back to gratitude practice, she is also an inspiring promotor of celebrating the beauty in everyday life, from quoting Albert Einstein on her concert calendar page “You can live life in two ways: As if there are no miracles at all, or as if everything you encounter is a miracle,” to her instagram account.
Wieneke Gorter, January 28, 2024.
*watch for example her performing the opening aria of Cantata 32 with the J.S. Bach Foundation here on YouTube.
About Weekly Cantata
I am a bilingual writer, publicist, choral singer, art and nature lover, foodie, 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.
Please 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 / Dankuwel / Merci mille fois / 감사합니다 / 谢谢 / ありがとう / Mille grazie / Muchas gracias / Muito obrigado / Tusen takk / Tack så mycket / Terima kasih / شكراً جزيلاً / תודה רבה
Photos from my visit to Weimar in April 2022: The famous altarpiece by Cranach in the St. Peter and Paul church or Herder church and the view over Weimar from the bell tower of St. James church. In the righmost photo you can see on the left the tower of the Bastille where Bach was held prisoner for a month, and on the right the Herder church. In addition to his job at the Duke’s castle, Bach played the organ at both St. James church and Herder church.
I hope you all had a meaningful Advent season and a merry Christmas. I needed to be with friends and family this month, and craved to hear music in old churches. It all worked out and I had one of the best Christmas seasons ever in recent years. I’m sorry that because of spending my time this way, I did not get to share any thoughts or music on this blog. If you went searching in my archives on your own, please let me know in the comments what you listened to. If you ever find youtube links that no longer work, please comment under the specific post or simply send me an email.
Why the photos of Weimar at the top of this blog post?
It’s because of a video I would like to share here today.
One of the best pieces of music I heard in an old church this month was the duet “Herr, dein Mitleid, dein Erbarmen” (Lord, your compassion, your mercy) from the third cantata of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, written for today, the Third Day of Christmas. On December 10, I heard this excellently performed by soprano Agnes van Laar and bass Marc Pantus in the stunning Saint Martin’s church in Bolsward, the Netherlands.
This duet doesn’t usually appear among the “greatest hits” of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio but I just love the way the instrumental and vocal parts move together, and I am also moved by the text. I was searching for a good live video performance of this duet to share here today, and liked Gardiner’s the best, with soprano Claron McFadden and bass Dietrich Henschel. Please find that video here. Here is the text:
Herr, dein Mitleid, dein Erbarmen Tröstet uns und macht uns frei. Deine holde Gunst und Liebe, Deine wundersamen Triebe Machen deine Vatertreu Wieder neu.
Lord, your compassion, your mercy console us and make us free. Your gracious favour and love, your wondrous desires make the love you have for us as a father again new.
While watching this video, I realized that MacFadden and Henschel are singing at the Herder church in Weimar, directly in front of the famous Cranach altarpiece. I cannot really describe in words how thrilling it was for me to finally set foot in that church in April 2022. Watching the video and looking at the photos also inspired me to share more stories about my travels to Thuringia in April 2022 on this blog, and to hopefully visit the region again in the new year.
Further exploring:
Read my post from 2020 about all Bach’s other cantatas for the Third Day of Christmas here.
Find a very nice overview of Bach’s time in Weimar on the website of the Thuringia Bach Festival here.
