Tag Archives: cantatas

Something with this Sunday & Robin Blaze’s art of singing a chorale melody

27 Sunday Aug 2017

Posted by in Cantatas, Chorale cantatas 1724/1725, Leipzig, Trinity

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The Pharisee and the Publican by Barent Fabritius, 1661. Oil on canvas. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

In 1723, Bach wrote an exceptional cantata for this Sunday, the 11th after Trinity. I liked that cantata 179 so much that I gave my blog post last year the title “Bach on a roll” and I’ve been listening to it again this week. In 1724, Bach wrote cantata 113 Herr Jesu Christ, du höchstes Gut for this same Sunday. Both these cantatas truly move me. I feel as if Bach was especially humbled by this particular Sunday.

The only recording that does Cantata 113 Herr Jesu Christ, du höchstes Gut justice and gives me the good kind of stomachache is the one by Bach Collegium Japan, because of Peter Kooij’s and Robin Blaze’s terrific singing, beautiful oboe and flute playing, and the fact that Yukari Nonoshita and Robin Blaze make the duet into a lovely piece of music (instead of struggling through it, the way it seems to be on some other recordings). Listen to this recording by Bach Collegium Japan on Spotify, or on Youtube. Soloists on this recording are: Yukari Nonoshita, soprano; Robin Blaze, alto; Gerd Türk, tenor; and Peter Kooij, bass. Please consider supporting the artists by purchasing this recording on jpc.de.

Find the text and translation here, and the score here.

That Bach might have might have felt a special touch or inspiration on this 11th Sunday after Trinity makes sense when you look at the Gospel reading for the day. It is the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican (or Pharisee and the Tax Collector), a story Jesus tells as an illustration on how to pray: the Pharisee is full of himself, telling God how good he is, while the Publican in his own prayer merely asks for mercy, and tells God how bad he is. This concept of how to be a good Christian before God, to be true, not fake, was very important to Bach.

In cantata 113 the chorale melody turns up much more often than in most of the other 1724/1725 chorale cantatas. It is even present in some of the arias that don’t have the chorale text. For the first time since starting this series of chorale cantatas, Bach doesn’t use the chorale melody as a cantus firmus in the opening chorus. Instead, he writes a simple four-part harmonized setting of the chorale melody. But, then there’s the unusual twist: Bach changes the usual 4/4 beat in which a chorale is normally sung to a 3/4, which allows him to write long suspensions in the vocal lines, thus intensifying the pleading character of the music (and the good stomach ache I get when I listen to it).

Robin Blaze. Photo by Dorothea Heise.

In the aria that follows, Bach makes up for the missing cantus firmus from the opening chorus. Any late-comers to that church service on Sunday August 20, 1724 would not have missed what chorale this cantata was based on: the alto sings the text as well as the melody of the chorale’s second stanza in long notes, against strings playing in unison.

Singing a chorale melody like this is not easy, and most recordings were unsatisfying to me because of this aria (as well as the duet). But Robin Blaze knows how to do it: sing with a brilliant sound, clearly placing each note, but also sustaining the sound throughout every note, and keeping it moving, while not forgetting word accents. It is a special art, and he masters it. I can listen to that five times in a row and not tire of it.

The bass aria could -as far as the music is concerned- easily have been inserted into the Christmas Oratorio, with the pretty oboe accompaniment. Note the word illustrations on “Zittern” (trembling) and “zerbräche” (would break), expertly sung by Peter Kooij. If this is all not pretty enough, Bach presents his talented flute player again, and gives him a beautiful but unbelievably challenging part, more virtuoso than ever before,  in the tenor aria “Jesus nimmt die Sünder an.” And then there is the duet.

Wieneke Gorter, August 27, 2017, updated August 15, 2023.

No nonsense for Trinity 10, 1724

19 Saturday Aug 2017

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christ-driving-the-merchants-from-the-temple

Christ Driving the Merchants from the Temple by Jacob Jordaens, circa 1650. Musée du Louvre, Paris.

After the stunningly beautiful music of cantata 94 from last week, it is a bit hard for me to go back to a “regular” chorale cantata: cantata 101: Nimm von uns Herr, du treuer Gott. But then again, maybe the beauty and lightness of last week’s cantata is the key to understanding this week’s …

I was not familiar with this cantata, because for this Sunday in the liturgical year, the 10th after Trinity, my mother would probably have played the more impressive 46 (written in 1723, its opening chorus later used for the Qui Tollis of the Mass in B minor – see my discussion of it here) or 102 (written in 1726, its opening chorus later used for the Kyrie of the Missa Brevis in g minor – see a short discussion at the end of this post).

There is a nice live recording of cantata 101: Nimm von uns Herr, du treuer Gott on YouTube by the Gesualdo Consort, part of a well-constructed program of Bach works based on the Vater Unser melody (Luther’s German version of the Lord’s Prayer). However, this performance doesn’t include trombones doubling the vocal parts in the opening chorus. If you would like to hear that important feature of this cantata, you can listen to Bach Collegium Japan’s recording of the opening chorus here.

Please find the text and translations here, and the score here.

Why does Bach take a starker approach for this Sunday in 1724 than in those other two years? One reason might be that in 1724, he is more strongly bound to his commitment of using a chorale tune as basis for the cantata than he is to the Gospel text for this Sunday (Jesus predicting the destruction of Jerusalem and him driving the merchants from the Temple). And the chorale for this Sunday is terror-inspiring: written during a time of the plague in 1584, on the melody of Luther’s Vater Unser.

If we go back to last week’s cantata, we should realize how frivolous it was of Bach to compose such a lighthearted cantata, featuring the flute, an ultra-secular, and French instrument! And this only to show off a University student, who didn’t even attend the St. Thomas School! It might very well have upset his employers, and afterwards they might have urged him to write something more appropriate next time, something inspiring devotion in the members of the Leipzig congregations, instead of treating them to the stuff he used to write at the court in Köthen. We will never know, but we can imagine.

So, while not directly quoting the Gospel of Jesus banishing the merchants from the Temple, but perhaps inspired by that story nonetheless, Bach goes back to the basics, the core of the Lutheran faith. And we know that whenever the hymn is based on a melody written by Luther himself, Bach shows the utmost respect for that, and often uses references in his music to remind the congregations of the timeless character of the music and of the dogma.

To reinforce the timeless character, he uses the “old” ensemble of cornetto and trombones to double the vocal parts in the opening chorus — the same way he did this for cantata 2 and cantata 25. Bach pushes the doctrine down everyone’s throat even more, or as Gardiner says, he “subjects his listeners to a twin-barrelled doctrinal salvo” when he not only presents the 1584 chorale melody in all but one movement of the cantata, including in the recitatives, but also quotes Luther’s hymn Dies sind die heil’gen zehn Gebot (These are the holy Ten Commandments) in the instrumental opening of the first movement.*

To further rub in the need for penitence, Bach presents strong dissonances on the words “schwere Straf und grosse Not” (grave punishment and great distress). Also, in the terrific Bass aria**, Bach instills horror in his audience when he makes an abrupt move from E minor to C minor on the word “Warum” of the sentence “Warum willst du so zornig sein” (Why wilt thou be so angry). Gardiner calls this a “Mahlerian swerve” and says “Not even Purcell, with his penchant for a calculated spotlit dissonance, was capable of matching this when setting the same words in his anthem “Lord, how long wilt thou be angry.”

In 1726 Bach wrote cantata 102 Herr, deine Augen sehen nach dem Glauben! for this same Sunday, the 10th Sunday after Trinity. It is a terrific composition. Bach was proud of it too, because he later re-used it in the Missa Brevis in F Major (BWV 233) and the Missa Brevis in g minor (BWV 235). Listen to Il Gardellino’s recording of it here on YouTube, with Damien Guillon, countertenor; Marcus Ullman, tenor; and Lieven Termont, bass. Especially the aria Aria Weh der Seele, die den Schaden (perhaps better known today as the soprano aria Qui Tollis from BWV 233) by countertenor Damien Guillon and oboist Marcel Ponseele is to die for.

Wieneke Gorter, August 18, 2017.

* It is not the first time he quotes this hymn in an opening chorus either, see my post about cantata 77 here.

** This bass aria is the best movement of the piece in my opinion, and probably also the reason why the leader of the Gesualdo Consort, Harry van der Kamp, himself the bass soloist, programmed this cantata in the first place.

Third Sunday after Easter in 1724

07 Sunday May 2017

Posted by in After Easter, Cantatas, Leipzig

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For this Jubilate Sunday (the third Sunday after Easter) in 1724, Bach did not write a new cantata the way he had done the previous two weeks*, but repeated one he had written in Weimar in 1714. That cantata: Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen was not any old cantata, but a composition Bach was most probably very proud of: he would later use the opening chorus as template for the Crucifixus in his Mass in B minor. Read all about this cantata and the recordings I recommend in this post I wrote last year.

Wieneke Gorter, May 7, 2017

*see this post about the first Sunday after Easter in 1724 and this one about the second Sunday after Easter in 1724

Second Sunday after Easter 1724

30 Sunday Apr 2017

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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.

First Sunday after Easter 1724

23 Sunday Apr 2017

Posted by in After Easter, Bach's life, Cantatas, Leipzig

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The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Caravaggio, 1601-1602, Sanssouci Palace, Potsdam, Germany

In the past two weeks I ran out of time to work on this blog because of being sick, performing concerts with California Bach Society, and being on a trial jury for the first time since becoming a United States citizen in 2011. So this post for the First Sunday after Easter in 1724 is post-dated, and short, but contains lots of information to learn more about this beautiful cantata.

Previously in 1724: Bach “premiered” his Passion according to St. John on Good Friday, April 7, 1724. Then he ran out of time and energy and, without too much care for detail and text illustration, created cantatas out of existing music for Easter Monday and Easter Tuesday of that year.

This means that the first new composition he wrote after the St. John Passion was this cantata 67 Halt im Gedächtnis Jesum Christ (keep thinking of Jesus Christ), based on the Gospel text of Jesus appearing to his disciples. A famous cantata, already known and admired in the early 19th century, especially because of the dramatic fourth movement for choir and bass, which Bach would later transform into the Gloria of his Missa Brevis in A (BWV 234).

For the background of this cantata I will refer you to the experts, in this 15-minute video by the Netherlands Bach Society, published within their AllofBach series. The video is in Dutch, with English subtitles. It talks about Bach including a flute (not a recorder!) for the first time in a cantata, the meaning behind the text, and the use of the slide-trumpet “corno da tirarsi.”

Listen to and watch their performance here, find the text here, and find the score here. The Netherlands Bach Society, conducted by Jos van Veldhoven, with countertenor Alex Potter, tenor Thomas Hobbs, and bass Peter Kooij.

Wieneke Gorter, April 30, 2017.

The Annunciation of Mary, March 25

25 Saturday Mar 2017

Posted by in Cantatas, Leipzig, Weimar

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The Annunciation, aka The Cestello Annunciation, 1489, by Botticelli. Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy.

In 1714, Palm Sunday fell on the same day as the Annunciation of Mary, March 25. The Annunciation was one of the three Marian feast days Luther kept on the calendar (the other two being the Purification of Mary, February 2, and the Visitation of Mary, July 2).

Thus it happened that in that year, in Weimar, Bach wrote a cantata that is mostly a Palm Sunday cantata, but can also work for the feast of the Annunciation, since that also celebrates the coming of Christ. I squeezed this cantata 182 Himmelskönig, sei willkommen into my post about Bach in Weimar I wrote last year. As I mentioned there, the cantata was repeated a few times in Leipzig, but never on Palm Sunday, as the Leipzig rules dictated that no music was performed during the period of Lent (the 40 days before Easter).

However, the Leipzig council made an exception for the Annunciation, so in 1724 Bach could perform this cantata during Lent, eight days before Palm Sunday, on Saturday March 25. As so often on holidays, there were two cantatas this day, one before the sermon, and one after. The other, newly written, piece for Saturday March 25, 1724, was more literally about the Annunciation: Siehe, eine Jungfrau ist schwanger (Behold, a Virgin is pregnant). The text of this cantata survived, and can be found here, but unfortunately the music is lost.

I still recommend the recording of cantata 182 by Montreal Baroque, but since I wrote my post last year, a terrific live video of the Sonata (instrumental opening) of this cantata has come out on the YouTube channel of Voices of Music, with two fabulous soloists: Hanneke van Proosdij on recorder and Rachel Podger on violin, so I would love to share that here as well. You can find that video here.

Find the text of cantata 182 here, and the score here.

Wieneke Gorter, March 24, 2017.

Third Sunday in Advent: Two adorable infants and a reconstruction of cantata 186a

10 Saturday Dec 2016

Posted by in Advent, Cantatas, Weimar

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madonna_meadow

Madonna with the Christ Child and St. John the Baptist, also known as Madonna of the Meadow, by Raphael, 1506. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

For those of you who already saw this on the third Sunday of Advent 2016: please keep reading, because I considerably revised this post, clarifying the information about the reconstruction and including one more painting 🙂

Growing up, I had a cousin. She was almost exactly six  months older than me. My baby photo album holds several pictures of the two of us together, me a helpless baby, her an infant who could already sit up by herself. I’m always touched by those photos. Not just because they make me think of the cousin I lost when we were both 19, but also because they represent how fast a baby grows up, and how soon the “older” baby can be of help and entertainment for the younger one, and how adorable it is to see that.

Many painters were aware of this cuteness factor too. Especially in the Renaissance, the concept of a one-year-old John playing with or helping a six-month-old Jesus in Madonna and Child paintings became an extremely popular subject, starting with  Leonardo da Vinci. Raphael in particular painted several variations on this theme, including the Alba Madonna, La belle jardinière, Aldobrandini Madonna, Madonna della seggiola, and the Madonna dell’Impannata. The tradition continued well into the 17th century, see this beautiful example from 1658 by Francisco de Zurbarán in the San Diego Museum of Art:

Zurbaran_Madonna_and_Child

Why is all this relevant to Advent? Well, on this third Sunday of Advent, many Christian churches read about John the Baptist, as they believe John was Jesus’ forerunner. Because of a mention in the Gospel of Luke, the Catholic church in the very early Middle Ages determined that St. John’s birthday must have been exactly six months before Christmas — and decided to celebrate this on June 24th.*  You can read more about this in my post about the Feast of St. John.

As far as we know, Bach wrote only one cantata for this Sunday, the third Sunday of Advent. It is the one listed in the BWV catalog as Cantata 186a, Ärgre dich, o Seele, nicht, first performed in Weimar on Sunday December 13, 1716. No original music score is left of this cantata. However, thanks to Bach’s librettist, Weimar court poet Salomo Franck, who published the full libretto for this cantata in a poetry volume in 1717, we do have the original text of 186a.

And, it is not hard to make an educated guess as to what the music would have been.

On July 9, 1723, for the 7th Sunday after Trinity in Leipzig, Bach expanded the music of the 1716 Weimar cantata with four additional recitatives and two chorales (per his usual template for reviving Weimar cantatas for Leipzig), and we do have that music: it is Cantata 186, also with the title Ärgre dich, o Seele, nicht.**

To reconstruct the original 1716 Weimar Advent version, or Cantata 186a, one would have to eliminate all the recitatives Bach added in 1723 as well as both chorales, superimpose different texts on some of the arias, and select alternative music for the original closing chorale. There have been a few performances of these kind of reconstructions, but unfortunately there are no recordings of those.

So I invite you listen to Bach Collegium Japan playing this music via my playlist on Spotify. To imagine the original texts superimposed over this music, and learn why I selected this particular closing chorale, please keep reading.

Opening chorus: This has the same text in 1716 as in 1723. We should imagine a smaller ensemble singing this though, as the maximum number of singers in the Weimar chapel was 7. This opening chorus is again a beautiful example of how Bach provides an “entrada” for the Duke as well as an opportunity for himself to show off his skills with the “fashionable” music, the way he almost always did in the Weimar cantatas.***

Ärgre dich, o Seele, nicht,
Daß das allerhöchste Licht,
Gottes Glanz und Ebenbild,
Sich in Knechtsgestalt verhüllt,
Ärgre dich, o Seele, nicht!		 Do not be confounded, o soul,
because the all-highest light,
God’s radiance and very image,
is concealed in the form of a servant;
do not be confounded!

For the Bass aria, imagine this Advent text instead of the Trinity 7 text you hear (changes in bold type):

Bist du, der da kommen soll,
Seelen-Freund, in Kirchen-Garten?
Mein Gemüt ist Zweifels-voll,
Soll ich eines andern warten!
Doch, o Seele, zweifle nicht.
Lass Vernunft dich nicht verstricken,
Deinen Schilo, Jacobs Licht,
Kannst du in der Schrift erblicken!		 Are You He, who should come,
Friend of souls, to the Church’s garden?
My spirit is full of doubt,
perhaps I should wait for someone else!
Yet, o soul, do not doubt.
Do not let reason beguile you.
Your Messiah, Jacob’s light,
is visible to you in the scripture.(translation of original text by me, unchanged words courtesy of bach-cantatas.com website)

For the Tenor aria,  imagine this Advent text instead of the Trinity 7 text you hear (changes in bold type):

Messias läßt sich merken
Aus seinen Gnaden-Werken.
Unreine werden rein.
Die geistlich Lahme gehen,
Die geistlich Blinde sehen
Den hellen Gnaden Schein.		 The Messiah lets Himself be seen
in His works of grace.
The impure become purified.
Those lame of spirit will walk,
Those blind of spirit will see
the clear brilliance of the mercy.(translation of original text by me, unchanged words courtesy of bach-cantatas.com website)

There is only one word change in the Soprano aria: In the last line the 1716 text is “des Lebens Wort” instead of “das Lebenswort” from 1723.

Die Armen will der Herr umarmen
The Lord will embrace the poor
Mit Gnaden hier und dort;
With his mercy here and there;
Er schenket ihnen aus Erbarmen
Out of his compassion he sends to them
Den höchsten Schatz, das Lebenswort.
His greatest treasure, the word of life.

Enjoy Miah Persson’s beautiful voice and interpretation. If you would like to hear and more about her, read my post about cantata 179. Cantata 179 appears on the same album by Bach Collegium Japan as this cantata 186.

Soprano-alto duet: This is the original text from 1716, unchanged in 1723. The text promises the believer the crown (die Krone) of the everlasting life, but only if he stays faithful (getreu) and only in the afterlife, when free of the body (wenn des Leibes frei).

Laß, Seele, kein Leiden
My soul, let no sorrow
Von Jesu dich scheiden,
Separate you from Jesus
Sei, Seele, getreu!
Be faithful, my soul!
Dir bleibet die Krone
The Crown weight you
Aus Gnaden zu Lohne,
Is your reward through grace
Wenn du von Banden des Leibes nun frei.
When you will be free from the body’s prison.

In Weimar in 1716, for the closing chorale Bach used the 8th verse of Von Gott will ich nicht lassen from 1563, based on the French tune Une jeune fillette from 1557. Since this is not the same melody as Es ist das Heil uns kommen her Bach used in 1723 it is very plausible that both chorales from the 1723 version are new, in text as well as in music. So in an effort to reconstruct the 1716 version,  we need to think of a different solution for the music than the tune from 1723. A good fit would be a simple setting of the Von Gott will ich nicht lassen chorale, the way Bach would set for example verse 5 of this chorale as closing movement of cantata 73 in 1723 or 1724. So that’s why, for now, I’ve included that music (from a Herreweghe recording) in the Spotify playlist. The text would be this:

Darum ob ich schon dulde
Hie Wiederwärtigkeit,
wie ich auch wohl verschulde,
kommt doch die Ewigkeit,
ist aller Freuden voll,
die ohne alles Ende,
dieweil ich Christum kenne,
mir widerfahren soll.		 Therefore, even if I endure
unpleasantness here,
as I have well deserved,
eternity is coming
filled with all joy;
this for ever
will befall me
while I acknowledge Christ.

All translations of existing text and closing chorale courtesy of bach-cantatas.com website, translations of changed texts by me.

© Wieneke Gorter, December 10, 2016, revised December 15, 2017.

* Luke 1:36 (about the Annunciation) mentions that the angel Gabriel also informed Mary that her cousin Elizabeth was already six months pregnant. The June 24 date was most probably also chosen to give a Christian meaning to already existing Pagan Midsummer celebrations. The Feast of St. John being celebrated on June 24 shows up in records as early as the year 506.

**I discussed this 1723 version of the cantata here, and recommended the recording by Bach Collegium Japan with soprano Miah Persson, alto Robin Blaze, tenor Makoto Sakurada, and bass Peter Kooij.

***Read more about Bach’s Weimar cantatas in my posts about cantata 182, 12, 147, and 21

A detour to 1725

18 Sunday Sep 2016

Posted by in 1723 Trinity season special series, Cantatas, Leipzig, Trinity

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sleeping_girl
Sleeping girl in a landscape, after Bernhard Keil, 17th century. Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Kassel, Germany.

In the first version of this post, I argued that cantata 148 Bringet dem Herrn Ehre seines Namens for the 17th Sunday after Trinity was written in 1723, dismissing the statements of several scholars it was probably written in 1725. I agreed with them that this cantata is a bit “out of place” between the somber but extremely beautiful and compelling cantatas of Trinity 16 and Trinity 19, and that the text looks very similar to a poem by Picander, the librettist with whom Bach did not collaborate before 1725. However, I was not convinced by their third argument that  Bach’s writing in the  opening chorus would be too “new” for 1723, and at first I didn’t see how Bach could have practically written the cantata in 1725.

I suggested that Bach was too busy in 1725, coming back from a trip to Dresden right before this cantata had to be performed on September 23 of that year. But when I discussed this idea with Eduard van Hengel, he reminded me that Bach would have had plenty of time to compose a cantata well ahead of his trip to Dresden, since–as far as we know–he had not written a new cantata since August 26. So that was argument number 4 for placing this cantata in 1725 instead of 1723.

Argument number 5 presented itself to me while I did my research for cantata 83, reading Pieter Dirksen’s article on Bach’s writing for violin in his first Leipzig cycle of cantatas. Dirksen points out that Bach’s new compositions from 1723 don’t feature virtuoso parts for violin at all. He suggests the reason for this is that Bach’s orchestra in Leipzig (including Bach himself*) was missing a violinist who could play technically challenging music.

Johann Georg Pisendel

After reading Dirksen’s article on Bach’s connection with the Dresden violinist Johann Georg Pisendel,** and knowing that soon after Trinity 17 it would be Michaelmas, I got excited: the cantata 148 story was coming full circle! I was now no longer seeing Bach juggling ink and parchment on the coach back from Dresden to Leipzig on Saturday September 22, 1725, but instead I was imagining a friend in that coach with him: Johann Georg Pisendel.

If it is true that Pisendel visited Leipzig for the Purification of Mary holiday in 1724, as Dirksen suggests, it is not far-fetched to assume he would do so again for the feast of Michaelmas in 1725 (on September 29, so only six days after Trinity 17 in 1725). St. Michael’s Fair was a huge event in Leipzig, drawing visitors from as far as England and Poland, increasing the city’s population to 30,000, and thus also increasing the “audiences” for Bach’s music in the churches.

For this cantata, I prefer the recording by Bach Collegium Japan, with soloists Robin Blaze (countertenor), Gerd Türk (tenor), Toshio Shimada (trumpet), and Natsumi Wakamatsu (violin). Listen to this recording on Spotify or support the artists and purchase the album on Amazon.com, Amazon.de, or Amazon.fr.

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

The text of cantata 148 Bringet dem Herrn Ehre seines Namens talks about the importance of coming to church on Sunday, and listening to the music in the church (tenor recitative and aria), but it also talks about taking a day of rest (alto aria).

While the opening chorus is exceptional,  it doesn’t sound very polished or “finished.” Gardiner, while otherwise excited about it, is not satisfied with the ending, and suggests that “perhaps Anna Magdalena called from the kitchen that dinner was on the table and the soup was getting cold.” What can I say? Only a male writer would say this!

The virtuoso violin part shows up in the tenor aria. On this recording of Bach Collegium Japan, played by Natsumi Wakamatsu, it moves me to tears. Whoever played this violin part in 1725, this person was not resting on Sunday …

©Wieneke Gorter, originally written September 18, 2016; revised February 4, 2017, links updated and picture of Pisendel added October 2, 2020.

*In his article Dirksen explains in detail how Bach went through the trouble of making the violin solo of cantata 76  relatively easy to play for an intermediate violinist, and suggests Bach was a good violinist, but perhaps not such a virtuoso as many believe him to be. Dirksen’s article appears on pages 135-156 of Bachs 1. Leipziger Kantantenjahrgang: Bericht über das 3. Dortmunder Bach-Symposion 2000 — Dortmund: Klangfarben Musikverlag, 2002.

**Pisendel had been friends with Bach since 1709 and several scholars think that it was for this Italian-trained virtuoso that Bach wrote his most complicated violin music. It is assumed that Bach had Pisendel in mind when writing the violin part of the “Laudamus te” of his Mass in B Minor.

The Herreweghe sopranos

11 Sunday Sep 2016

Posted by in 1723 Trinity season special series, Cantatas, Leipzig, Trinity

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bwv95_sopraan

The soprano part of cantata 95 Christus, der ist mein Leben. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Preußischer Kulturbesitz

After all his experimenting with the form of the cantata last week, Bach keeps exploring how he can build a cantata based on chorale melodies and chorale texts. As a result, this week’s cantata 95 Christus, der ist mein Leben again takes a unique place in Bach’s cantata collection: it features no less than four different chorales, all part of the Sterbe-lieder (Deathbed songs) that were very popular in Leipzig at the time: Christus, der ist mein Leben; Mit Fried und Freud, ich fahr dahin; Valet will ich dir geben; and Weil du vom Tod erstanden bist.

I recommend Herreweghe’s recording of this cantata. Listen to this recording on YouTube, or on Spotify. Support the artists and purchase this recording on Amazon. (Or find them in the Amazon stores  for  Germany and France)

Soloists: soprano Dorothee Mields, counter-tenor Matthew White, tenor Hans Jörg Mammel, bass Thomas E. Bauer. Choir sopranos: Dorothee Mields, Hana Blazikova, Dominique Verkinderen.

In the manuscript of the soprano part pictured above, it is interesting to note the dynamic markings for the text “Sterben ist mein Gewinn.” Dynamics are not very common in Bach manuscripts, but, as Alfred Dürr points out, Leipzig had a strong tradition of singing softly and slowly on the word “Sterben,” and singing loudly on “ist mein Gewinn,” going back at least to 1629. In that year, then Thomaskantor Johann Hermann Schein wrote this note for his singers:

“da singen sie adagio mit einem sehr langsamen Tactu, weiln in solchen versiculis verba emphatica enthalten” (here you should sing adagio in a very slow tempo, because verses like these contain emphatic words)

How Herreweghe’s sopranos sing this Sterben ist mein Gewinn in the first chorale takes my breath away, and this is the most important reason why I prefer this recording. Having grown accustomed to the boy choirs of the Leonhardt and Harnoncourt recordings in the 1970s, my parents, sister, and I were blown away by Herreweghe’s Collegium Vocale Gent when their first CDs started coming out in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

My mother was especially taken by the sound and blend of the sopranos, and “Herreweghe sopranos” became a household term in our family. After attending a performance by a different group, we would often say to each other: “it was nice, but they are not Herreweghe sopranos….,” and sigh a little.

This cantata is all about longing for life after death, and over the course of the cantata these statements are made: I will be happy to die (opening movement), because life on earth is worthless (soprano recitative). Saying goodbye to that will be freeing (soprano chorale), so please can I die as soon as possible (tenor recitative and aria), because death is only a sleep (bass recitative) from which I will wake up to join Jesus, who has gone before me (closing chorale).

The outstanding tenor aria features Bach’s signature “death bells” in the pizzicato strings. Bach uses these “Leichenglocken”  also in cantatas 73, 8, 105, 127, 161, and 198. For an alternative recording of this movement, with gorgeous singing by Mark Padmore, listen to the Gardiner recording on Spotify.

The concept of death being only a short period of sleep after which the dying person wakes up to meet Jesus in the afterlife was an extremely important part of 18th-century Lutheran faith. When dealing with death on a daily basis, it was comforting to believe that death would ultimately lead to paradise. And by stressing this concept, Bach also refers to the Gospel for this 16th Sunday after Trinity. It is the story of the miracle at Nain: a young man who has died  is carried out of the city and then woken up by Jesus.

Wieneke Gorter, September 11, 2016, updated October 7, 2025

Children’s stories

03 Saturday Sep 2016

Posted by in 1723 Trinity season special series, Bach's life, Cantatas, Leipzig, Trinity

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Bergrede_Brueghel

The Sermon on the Mount, oil on copper painting by Jan Brueghel the Elder, 1598

In 1723 Bach wrote cantata 138 Warum betrübst du dich, mein Herz.  Again I prefer Herreweghe’s interpretation, but it’s not so easy to choose between his recording from 1998 (with soloists Deborah York, Ingeborg Danz, Mark Padmore, and Peter Kooij) and the one from 2013 (with soloists Hana Blazikova, Damien Guillon, Thomas Hobbs, and Peter Kooij). Update from 2021: there now is an extremely inspired Herreweghe recording with all my favorite soloists (Dorothee Mields, Alex Potter, Guy Cutting, Peter Kooij), recorded live at De Singel in Antwerp on Sunday January 31, 2021 (during the Covid19 pandemic, so without audience). Find it here.

Listen to the entire 1998 recording on Youtube or listen to one long track of the 2013 recording with Hana Blazikova and Damien Guillon on YouTube. Please consider supporting the artists by purchasing the 1998 version (used copies available only) or the 2013 version  on Amazon.

Find the text, based on the Sermon on the Mount, of this cantata here, and the score here.

It is often not immediately clear what a Bach cantata is about, what the text means, or what Bach wanted to convey with it. In an absolutely wonderful interview (with excellent English subtitles) for the Leipzig Bach Festival, soprano Dorothee Mields says that even she, as a native German speaker, often feels the need to look at English translations, go back to the Bible texts, and read more about the subject, because she didn’t necessarily recognize the text from her children’s bible.

The image of the children’s bible stuck with me since first watching the interview seven months ago. And when listening to the cantata for this Sunday, I had to think of it again, because the choice of words in this cantata is very moving, but at the same time so simple, that it is almost as if the librettist is speaking to children. Listen, for example, to the text the soprano sings in the third movement:

Nur ich, ich weiss nicht, auf was Weise ich armes Kind mein bisschen Brot soll haben; Wo ist jemand, der sich zu meiner Rettung findt?

(It is just that I, poor child, don’t know how I should receive a bit of bread; Where is the person who will save me?)

Eduard van Hengel hilariously remarks that it reminds him a bit of Calimero (a popular children’s cartoon about a little chick, which aired in The Netherlands, Belgium, France, and Italy in the early 1970s. Watch this first episode to get an idea).

I wonder who the librettist for this cantata was. I imagine a different person than who wrote texts for the last few cantatas. Last week, the Bachs possibly had their house full with the families of Anna Magdalena’s brother and sisters, visiting because the men, all trumpet players, were needed for two cantatas. Perhaps one of the visitors had talent for entertaining the children with stories and making up poems on the spot? Did Bach ask this person to write the libretto for this cantata? Or was his own head still filled with children’s stories and did he write the text himself?

These are all just assumptions and we don’t know for sure if last week’s extra players were the relatives of Bach’s wife, but my potential movie script is getting better and better …

There’s of course more to this cantata than the charming texts. Musically, as far as the form and structure is concerned, this cantata is unique within this first cycle of Leipzig cantatas. Bach takes a chorale as the base for the cantata, yet it is not at all the same as his series of chorale cantatas from the 1724/1725 cycle. In those later chorale cantatas, he always uses all the verses and keeps a strict structure of one soloist per movement. In this cantata 138, he only uses three verses of the chorale, and gives the cantata a very free form, with a different number of soloists for each movement. He is obviously experimenting. And I wonder again: might he have been influenced by his visitors from last week? Did he have discussions about his compositions with his colleagues? And how is this playing around with the form of the cantata related to using a different librettist or no librettist? Did he not want to bother a professional writer with his experimenting?

There is one more–for me at least–exciting aspect to this cantata: when I first started listening to it, I discovered that I already knew the bass aria. Same singer (Peter Kooij) and same music, but a different text, because I had until then only heard this as the Gratias from Bach’s Mass in G Major, BWV 236 from the mid 1730s. Listen to both, and marvel at Bach’s talent for subtle recycling.

Wieneke Gorter, September 3, 2016, updated September 19, 2020 and February 13, 2021.