Weekly Cantata

~ Memories, musings, and movie script fantasies inspired by Bach cantatas, along with recommendations for recordings

Weekly Cantata

Tag Archives: BWV 13

Bach looking back (Belated 2nd Sunday after Epiphany)

01 Saturday Feb 2020

Posted by cantatasonmymind in Cantatas, Epiphany, Leipzig

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Bart Coen, Benny Aghassi, BWV 106, BWV 13, BWV 155, BWV 161, BWV 244, BWV 249, BWV 3, BWV 46, Colin Balzer, Collegium Vocale Gent, Easter Oratorio, Epiphany 2, Heiko ter Schegget, Herman Stinders, J.S. Bach Foundation, Jakob Pilgram, Jan Börner, Julius Pfeifer, Margot Oitzinger, Mark Padmore, Matthew White, Netherlands Bach Society, Philippe Herreweghe, recorders, Rudolf Lutz, St. Matthew Passion, Susanne Seitter, Wolf Matthias Friedrich

Wedding at Cana by Duccio di Buoninsegna, tempera on wood, between 1308 and 1311. Museo dell’ Opera dell’ Duomo, Siena, Italy. The “scene” from this story that Bach and his librettists prefer to focus on in all his cantatas for this Sunday, is also illustrated here: Jesus telling his anxious mother “Mine hour is not yet come.”

Two weeks ago I ran out of time writing this post, but I had discovered so much about Cantata 13 Meine Seufzer, meine Tränen (1726), that I would still very much like to share that cantata here. So I hope you don’t mind going back in time a little bit, to the Second Sunday after Epiphany, which fell on January 19 this year (2020), and on January 20 in 1726.

Before I prepare a new post, I always like to revisit previous posts I wrote about this same Sunday, and listen to those cantatas again. And it always thrills me when during this process I discover that Bach must have done this too: going back, either in his memory or in the physical stack of manuscripts, to the music he previously wrote for this same Sunday. Sometimes I only get a feeling that he did this, but other times, there’s an obvious quote either in the text or in the music.

This time I was excited to find Bach quoting music from Cantata 155 Mein Gott, wie lang, ach lange? in Cantata 13 Meine Seufzer, meine Tränen. Bach had written Cantata 155 already in Weimar in 1716, but performed it again in Leipzig in 1724, also on the Second Sunday after Epiphany.

I invite you to listen to/watch the wonderful alto-tenor duet with bassoon from Cantata 155 Mein Gott, wie lang, ach lange? here, in a performance by the J.S. Bach Foundation, with alto Margot Oitzinger and tenor Julius Pfeifer. Note this theme in the voices:

After that duet is over, I would suggest turning off that recording for now. *

Now listen to/watch the entire recording of Cantata 13 Meine Seufzer, meine Tränen, also by the J.S. Bach Foundation here, with soprano Susanne Seitter, alto Jan Börner, tenor Jakob Pilgram, and bass Wolf Matthias Friedrich.

Find the German text with English translations here, and the score here. Please note that the English translation of the bass aria’s first line is incorrect: the translation of the German word “Sorgen” should be “worries” or “worrying”, not “care.” The correct translation is something like this:

Groaning and pitiful weeping
are no help to the sickness of worrying

Pay attention to the recorder parts in the opening movement. The music has a slower tempo, and a more drawn out rhythm, but the theme is the same as in that duet from Cantata 155 you just heard:

There is more in this opening chorus of Cantata 13 that gives us a peek into Bach’s referencing process. Bach often uses recorders to introduce sorrow. Early in his career he had done this in the opening movements of Cantata 106 Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit (written in 1707) and Cantata 161 Komm, du süße Todesstunde (1716). Even during his first year in Leipzig, in 1723, he used this “tool” in the opening chorus of Cantata 46 Schauet doch und sehet, ob irgendein Schmerz sei (which would later form the basis for the Qui tollis from the Mass in B minor). And while from the mid 1720s most Baroque composers, including Bach himself, favored the more fashionable French transverse flutes over recorders, Bach still uses recorders to illustrate impending sorrow or death’s slumber in his Easter Oratorio (1725) and his St. Matthew Passion (1727). Click on the links to hear/watch recordings of all these examples on YouTube. Names of performers in all these are listed at the very end of this post.**

If, after listening to / watching Cantata 13 in its entirety, you are wondering why Bach’s illustration of a miracle (Jesus turning water into wine at the Wedding at Cana) is so incredibly sorrowful, read my blog post about Cantata 3 here.

Wieneke Gorter, January 31, 2020, updated January 16, 2021.

* read my blog post about Cantata 155, which now includes a link to the J.S. Bach Foundation recording, here.

** Performers in the YouTube recordings of cantata/oratorio movements with recorders are:

Credits for YouTube recordings linked above:

Opening movement of Cantata 106: Netherlands Bach Society; Jos van Veldhoven, conductor; Heiko ter Schegget and Benny Aghassi, recorders; Dorothee Mields, soprano; Alex Potter, alto; Charles Daniels, tenor; Tobias Berndt, bass.

Opening movement of Cantata 161: Collegium Vocale Gent; Philippe Herreweghe, conductor; Bart Coen and Koen Dieltiens, recorders; Matthew White, alto; Herman Stinders, organ.

Opening movement of Cantata 46: Collegium Vocale Gent; Philippe Herreweghe, conductor. Live recording from the Festival of Saintes, France, July 15, 2013. Recorder players not specified.

Tenor aria “Sanfte soll mein Todeskummer” from Easter Oratorio, BWV 249: Collegium Vocale Gent; Philippe Herreweghe, conductor. Mark Padmore, tenor.

Tenor recitative with choir “O Schmerz, hier zittert das gequälte Herz” from St. Matthew Passion, BWV 244: Collegium Vocale Gent; Philippe Herreweghe, conductor. Colin Balzer, tenor.

Hidden messages

16 Saturday Jan 2016

Posted by cantatasonmymind in Cantatas, Chorale cantatas 1724/1725, Epiphany, Leipzig

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according to Lutheran Church year, Bach, Bach Collegium Japan, BWV 13, BWV 155, BWV 3, cantatas, Dorothee Mields, Epiphany, Epiphany 2, Gerald Finley, Joanne Lunn, Julian Podger, Pascal Bertin, Peter Kooy, Richard Wyn Roberts

marten_de_vos_004_le_nozze_di_cana_1597
Marriage at Cana by Marten de Vos, 1597. Cathedral of Our Lady, Antwerp, Belgium.

Judging by the text and lamenting style of their opening choruses or opening arias, all cantatas for this Sunday (155, 3, and 13) are very sad at first glance. Which seems strange, since the reading for the day is the miracle of Jesus turning water into wine at the Marriage at Cana. So let’s dig a little deeper in the cantata for this Sunday that I love the most, Cantata 3 Ach Gott, wie manches Herzeleid, from 1725.

My favorite interpretation of this cantata the one by Bach Collegium Japan. The choir sopranos (including Dorothee Mields) sing a truly heavenly “zum Himmel” in the opening chorus,  bass soloist Peter Kooy does an excellent job in his on purpose difficult aria and doesn’t hold back in the chorale tune in the opening chorus, and last but not least: fabulous singing by soprano Dorothee Mields and counter-tenor Pascal Bertin in the duet.

Listen to Bach Collegium Japan’s recording of Cantata 3 on Spotify

If you can’t listen on Spotify or prefer not to, you can find Gardiner’s recording here on YouTube. Soprano: Joanne Lunn; Counter-tenor: Richard Wyn Roberts; Tenor: Julian Podger; Bass: Gerald Finley.

Find the text of Cantata 3 Ach Gott, wie manches Herzeleid here, and the score here.

Bach was not just a strong believer but also a self-taught theologian, and stated several times that his church music was intended for the glorification of God and to instruct his “neighbor.” On this day of the Marriage at Cana reading, he might have been compelled to illustrate the deeper meaning of the Bible story: earthly troubles can turn into heavenly bliss if you are patient and believe strongly enough that Jesus will lead you. So either he himself or his librettist decided not to mention the Bible story at all in the the text of this cantata.*

It is then not so strange anymore that in the music of this cantata Bach keeps, brilliantly, combining the struggle and the salvation in almost every part of the work.

The achingly beautiful opening chorus at first just sounds like a lament, but has some hidden messages which reveal the salvation. First, in the instrumental introduction,  there is an ascending (the way to salvation/heaven) line in the violins at the same time as there is a chromatic descending line (the struggle/affliction) in the oboes, illustrating the last two lines of the text of that chorus:

Der schmale Weg ist trübsalvoll, (The narrow way is full of affliction)
Den ich zum Himmel wandern soll. (by which I must travel to heaven.)

Click here to see that visualized by Thomas Braatz on the Bach Cantatas website.

While the Leipzig congregation might have missed this first hidden message, they would have gotten the second: the text communicated through the well-known chorale tune. The same way my Dutch calvinist great-grandmother had all the verses of all the Psalm texts memorized, the Lutherans in Bach’s time knew all their chorales and would immediately think of the text when hearing the tune. For this opening chorus, Bach chose the tune of O Jesu Christ mein’s Lebens Licht, so there was some glorification of Jesus right there amidst the lamentation:

O Jesu Christ mein’s Lebens Licht
Mein Hort, mein Trost, mein Zuversicht
Auf Erden bin ich nur ein Gast
Und drückt mich sehr der Sünden Last
.

O Jesus Christ, light of my life,
my refuge, my comfort, my reassurance,
on earth I am only a guest

And the burden of sin presses down heavily upon me.

And to make this stand out, Bach uses his “pay attention!” trick again, letting this chorale melody appear in a for him very unusual place: the vocal bass line. To emphasize it, he doubles it with a trombone (which is probably also the reason why this cantata is almost never performed today, because who is going to hire an expensive trombonist just to play along with the choir in one part of the cantata?).

In the other outstanding part of this cantata, the soprano/alto duet, this is all reversed: the music sounds absolutely happy, but if you look at the score, you see a visual illustration of the text in the middle section:  Mein Kreuz hilft Jesus tragen (Jesus helps to bear my cross). When the oboe line goes up, the continuo line goes down, and when one vocal line goes up, the other vocal line goes down. On top of that, there are four sharps in the key signature (in Bach’s manuscript this would look like four crosses and a sharp is also called a “cross” in German). We know from other works that hidden messages like this are not a coincidence in Bach’s writing.

Wieneke Gorter, January 16, 2016.  Links updated January 10, 2018 and January 31, 2020.

*Seen in the context of the chorale cantata series of 1724/1725, this is not unusual at all. On Several occasions before this Sunday in 1725, Bach had decided to focus more on the text of the chorale he had chosen for the cantata than on the Gospel reading for that day. See for example my post about December 31, 1724 and January 1, 1725.

 

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