Weekly Cantata

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

Weekly Cantata

Tag Archives: BWV 132

Two Weimar cantatas for the fourth Sunday of Advent

21 Saturday Dec 2019

Posted by cantatasonmymind in Advent, Bach's life, Cantatas, Christmas, Leipzig, Weimar

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Advent, Advent 4, Alfredo Bernardini, All of Bach, Bachvereniging, BWV 132, BWV 147, BWV 147a, Christmas, Dominik Wörner, Hana Blazikova, J.S. Bach Foundation, J.S. Bach Stiftung, Jakob Pilgram, Jan Kobow, Julia Doyle, Margot Oitzinger, Netherlands Bach Society, Rudolf Lutz, Tim Mead, Weimar, Wolf Matthias Friedrich

For the fourth Sunday of Advent, Bach wrote two cantatas in Weimar: Cantata 132 Bereitet die Wege, bereitet die Bahn in 1715, and Cantata 147a Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben in 1716.

Bach rewrote Cantata 147, the same way he did that with cantatas 70 and 186, into a cantata for another time of the year in Leipzig, in this case the feast of the Visitation on July 2, 1723. Read more about that here in my post from 2016. I have now updated that post with a link to the wonderful live performance of Cantata 147 by the J.S. Bach Foundation, with with Hana Blažiková, soprano; Margot Oitzinger, alto; Jakob Pilgram, tenor; and Wolf Matthias Friedrich, bass.

Cantata 132 was not transformed into a cantata for another time in the church year in Leipzig, so today’s performances of this cantata still reflect the Advent cantata from Weimar. Watch a beautiful live performance of this cantata by the Netherlands Bach Society here on YouTube. Soloists are Julia Doyle, soprano; Tim Mead, alto; Jan Kobow, tenor; and Dominik Wörner, bass.

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

As I already pointed out in my Advent Calendar earlier this week, the text of the joyful opening aria refers to the story of John the Baptist, who was believed to have come to prepare the way for Jesus, and includes the Isaiah quote as it appears in the scripture: “Messias kömmt an!” (The Messiah is coming). Bach gives this text to the soprano three times, and to give it extra emphasis, each time omits all instrumental accompaniment on those three words.

The rest of the cantata stays close to the story of John the Baptist. The bass aria refers to the Pharisees interrogating John, but then Bach’s text writer (Salomo Franck, who was also the Weimar court librarian) projects the question “Wer bist du?” (Who are you?) onto the believer: ask your conscience: are you a true person or a false person?

As a child, I was enormously impressed by this bass aria, even more than by the wonderful soprano aria at the beginning of the piece. I loved how Max van Egmond sings the “Wer bist du?” text on the Leonhardt recording from 1983. You can find that recording, and read more about those childhood memories, in this blog post from 2016. I had no idea at the time that in those very cool opening notes Bach is quoting this organ piece by Buxtehude. I only learned that this week, by watching the “extra videos” the Netherlands Bach Society provides along with their live recordings on All of Bach.

If you are not following this blog yet, please consider signing up (on the left of this text if you are on a desktop computer, at the bottom of this post when you are reading on a smartphone). This way you won’t miss any posts about the many cantatas Bach wrote for all three Christmas Days (yes there were three in his time), New Year’s Day, and the Sundays after those feast days.

Wieneke Gorter, December 21, 2019.

Another boy soprano hero: Sebastian Hennig

17 Saturday Dec 2016

Posted by cantatasonmymind in Advent, Cantatas, Weimar

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Advent, Advent 4, Bach, BWV 132, Gustav Leonhardt, Max van Egmond, Sebastian Hennig, Weimar

hennig-sebastian-1boy

Sebastian Hennig

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

To understand this, it helps to know how the Christmas season was celebrated  in our house in The Netherlands in the early 80s. Christmas didn’t feature in store windows or on television until after St. Nicholas (December 5). We would not have a Christmas tree in our house until December 16. And while at school we would sing Christmas carols in the last week before the break and have a “Christmas breakfast” on the last Friday, at home we would not have any real Christmas music, including Bach’s Christmas Oratorio until Christmas Day (more about this next week). Until then it was Advent cantatas only as far as Bach’s music was concerned. And since my mother was also a fan of Sebastian Hennig, the soprano soloist in the 1983 Leonhardt recording of cantata 132, she probably played this cantata pretty frequently in the last week before Christmas.

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

Listen to the Leonhardt recording of cantata 132 Bereitet die Wege, bereitet die Bahn! on Youtube.

Find the text here, and the score here.

As a child, I was very impressed by the soprano aria at the start of this cantata too, but I also vividly remember the “Wer bist du” words in the bass aria, sung by Max van Egmond on this Leonhardt recording. Except for perhaps the tenor aria, their recording of this cantata is unrivaled as far as I’m concerned.

If you like to watch a live performance of this (including some more wonderful playing by Shunske Sato in the alto aria),  there is a wonderful live video performance of this cantata by the Netherlands Bach Society available here on YouTube. Soloists are Julia Doyle, soprano; Tim Mead, alto; Jan Kobow, tenor; and Dominik Wörner, bass.

If you have more time and would like to learn more about this cantata, I can highly recommend that you also watch the “background” videos that go with this Netherlands Bach Society recording, presented as interviews, in this order: conductor Alfredo Bernardini, soprano Julia Doyle, and bass Dominik Wörner.

Wieneke Gorter, December 17, 2016, updated with new YouTube links December 19, 2019.

Recent Posts

  • Second Sunday after Epiphany
  • Third Christmas Day
  • Angels — we can use some this week
  • Advent Goodies, Part II
  • Light in Dark Times (and a compelling melody for Bach)

Archives

  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 267 other followers

Categories

  • 1723 Trinity season special series
  • Advent
  • After Easter
  • Bach's life
  • Cantatas
  • Chorale cantatas 1724/1725
  • Christmas
  • Easter
  • Epiphany
  • Köthen
  • Leipzig
  • Septuagesima
  • Trinity
  • Weimar

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Website Powered by WordPress.com.

Cancel