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Palm Sunday 1714

05 Sunday Apr 2020

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Jesus Entrance into Jerusalem. First picture is Lorenzetti’s version, in the Basilica of Assisi, 1320. Second picture is Giotto’s version from 1305, in the Capella Scrovengni in Padua, third is Duccio’s, created between 1308 and 1311, as part of an altar piece, currently in the Museo dell’Opera Metropolitana del Duomo in Siena. The first two are frescoes, the last one is tempera on wood. 

We’re on Day 20 of “shelter in place” here in the San Francisco Bay Area. We’re counting our blessings, trying to figure out how we can be most helpful to others while also taking good care of ourselves, and trying to wean ourselves off spending too much time on social media. I definitely need my “church” of regular check-ins with family and friends, daily mindfulness exercises, and lots of yoga classes to stay sane through all of this.

Back to Bach’s church. Today is Palm Sunday! Bach never officially wrote a cantata for this Sunday, since no music was to be performed in the churches during Lent. However, in 1714, Palm Sunday fell on the same day as the feast of the Annunciation of Mary, March 25. This way, while specifying “for the feast of the Annunciation of Mary” on the title page of the cantata manuscript, Bach could still write music for Palm Sunday with cantata 182 Himmelskönig, sei wilkommen! (Welcome, King of Heaven!)

If you’re not in the mood for a long story and would just like to listen to a short piece of calming music, I recommend the live performance of the opening sinfonia of this cantata on the YouTube channel of Voices of Music, with two fabulous soloists: Hanneke van Proosdij on recorder and Rachel Podger on violin. You can find that video here.

Many of Bach’s Weimar cantatas start with an elaborate instrumental ouverture or sinfonia.* There are two possible reasons for this. First of all, it was in Weimar that Bach studied lots of French and Italian compositions, and he might have wanted to “show off” that he could also write such a fashionable ouverture. But there might have also been a more practical reason: such an opening movement was the perfect piece of music during which the Duke and his entourage would slowly walk into the chapel and take their seats, and not miss anything of the cantata itself.

For the entire cantata, my all-time favorite still is the recording by Montreal Baroque. Listen here on Spotify, or here on YouTube. Their one-on-a-part performance is similar to how this would have sounded from the small organ loft in Weimar, and features fabulous singing all around (soprano Monika Mauch, countertenor Matthew White, tenor Charles Daniels, bass Harry van der Kamp).

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

If you would like to learn more about Bach’s time in Weimar, please visit my post about Bach in Weimar I wrote in 2016. I’ve just updated it with some new photos, including a picture of the organ loft, and it has all the same links for the recording, text, and score as mentioned here.

In Leipzig in 1724, Bach performed this cantata again, on the feast of the Annunciation of Mary, which that year fell eight days before Palm Sunday.

Wieneke Gorter, April 5, 2020.

*(for example cantata 21 Ich hatte viel Bekummernis, 18 Gleichwie der Regen und Schnee vom Himmel fällt, and 61 Nun Komm der Heiden Heiland)

Sweet soprano consolation for Third Christmas Day 1725, or “the one with the dirty baby”

26 Thursday Dec 2019

Posted by in Cantatas, Christmas, Leipzig

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The Nativity of Christ, by Federico Barocci, ca. 1590. Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain.

Sometime in the first decade of this century, after I had already moved to the USA, my mother acquired Gardiner’s Christmas Cantatas CD from 2000 (Volume 15 of the Cantata Pilgrimage CD series). I remember that every time a Bach lover came to visit they were urged to listen to the soprano aria from this CD. Among my mother, her sisters, and my grandma, this CD became known as “the one with the dirty baby.” (or as they said in Dutch “die met het vieze kindje”). At some point my mother allegedly said to them that this particular recording should be played at her funeral. Listen a bit to that Gardiner recording of Cantata 151 Süsser Trost, mein Jesus kömmt with Gillian Keith, soprano, and Rachel Beckett, flute, here on YouTube. Just listen for a little bit, because a much better recording of this cantata is coming up in this post! When the time came (much sooner than anyone in the early 2000s could have thought) to plan my mother’s funeral, we were blessed with a live performance, not a recording, I personally didn’t remember the “dirty baby” story that vividly, and we opted for another aria instead (read more about that here).

I don’t remember ever hearing anything more from the CD with the dirty baby than this one aria, and I never ever realized it was from a cantata for the Third Day of Christmas. (Read here why I didn’t know any other cantatas for the Third Day of Christmas than the third cantata from the Christmas Oratorio.)

Swedish soprano Maria Keohane

Fast forward to last week, when I was researching new live video recordings for Cantata 110 for Christmas Day, and discovered that the Christmas concert by the Netherlands Bach Society from 2015 also featured this Cantata 151, and that Maria Keohane does an absolutely beautiful job singing that opening movement. I also enjoy all the other soloists. Watch this live recording here on YouTube. Soloists are Frank Theuns, flute; Maria Keohane, soprano; Alex Potter, alto; Charles Daniels, tenor; and Matthias Winckhler, bass. Interestingly, Maria Keohane has recorded this cantata on video with two other ensembles: Concerto Copenhagen and Ricercar Consort. Those other performances are good too, but I very much prefer the performance and the camera work on this one with the Netherlands Bach Society.

Find the text of Cantata 151 Süsser Trost, mein Jesus kömmt here, and the score here.

Wieneke Gorter, December 26, 2019.

Bach and the Christmas Day message

24 Tuesday Dec 2019

Posted by in Bach's life, Cantatas, Christmas, Leipzig

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The Nativity with Donors and Saints Jerome and Leonard, by Gerard David, ca. 1510-15. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Moren information about this painting can be found here.

On this blog I have shared only two of Bach’s compositions for Christmas Day so far: Cantata 91 from 1724 here, and of course the first cantata from the Christmas Oratorio (our family’s “wake-up call” on Christmas morning) from 1734 here. But Bach wrote at least three more cantatas for this day, as well as his Magnificat.

Today I’d love to share Cantata 110 Unser Mund sei voll Lachens (May our mouth be full of laughter) from 1725. Find The Netherlands Bach Society’s live recording of this cantata here on YouTube.

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

This live video registration has an abundance of Christmas presents for me: the festive setting of the Grote Kerk in Naarden; soprano Maria Keohane in a Scandinavian Christmas dress and truly enjoying herself; tenor Charles Daniels, always a delight; a promising new young bass, Matthias Winckhler, who can actually sing every note of the enormously challenging bass aria in this cantata; and the best gift of all: Alex Potter singing the alto aria, which to me is the most moving part of this cantata, and also the core message Bach wanted to communicate to his fellow believers on this Christmas Day in 1725.

Alex Potter. Photo by Annelies van der Vegt.

For the joyous opening of this cantata, Bach re-uses his Orchestral Suite no. 4 in D major (BWV 1069) to grandly illustrate the “arrival” of Jesus. In the center of the cantata, after the festivities of the opening chorus, but before the very pretty Christmas-y “Glory to God in the highest” soprano-tenor duet, and an impressive bass aria with trumpet, the music goes into a minor key, and also turns inward, in the alto aria. The text of that alto aria is as follows:

Ach Herr, was ist ein Menschenkind,
Ah, Lord, what is a child of man
Dass du sein Heil so schmerzlich suchest?
that you should seek his salvation with so much pain?
Ein Wurm, den du verfluchest,
A worm whom you curse
Wenn Höll und Satan um ihn sind;
when hell and Satan are around him;
Doch auch dein Sohn, den Seel und Geist
but also your son, whom soul and spirit
Aus Liebe seinen Erben heißt.
Through love call their inheritance.

Of course this text refers to the believers in general, that on the one hand they are worms, and on the other hand will be saved by Jesus. but I feel the choice of the word “Menschenkind” is not a coincidence. It definitely also refers to the the fact that Jesus can’t just stay in the godly realm, but in order to be a true savior, he has to come to earth, become man, and go through all the rotten reality that might imply. This theme appears more or less prominently in all Bach’s cantatas for Christmas Day, and in this cantata 110 it is already announced in the tenor aria:

Er wird Mensch, und dies allein,
He has become man, and this only
Dass wir Himmels Kinder sein.
so that we may become children of heaven.

Nine years later, in the first cantata of his Christmas Oratorio, Bach also stresses this “coming to earth” and “becoming man” of Jesus on this first Christmas Day, in what is also the most moving and inward-looking part of that particular cantata: the soprano-bass duet. The text Bach gives to the bass in that duet is as follows. Note the last line.

Wer will die Liebe recht erhöhn,
Who will rightly extol the love
Die unser Heiland vor uns hegt?
that our Saviour cherishes for us?
Ja, wer vermag es einzusehen,
Indeed, who is able to realise
Wie ihn der Menschen Leid bewegt?
how he is moved by human suffering?
Des Höchsten Sohn kömmt in die Welt,
The highest’s son came into the world
Weil ihm ihr Heil so wohl gefällt,
because its salvation pleases him so well
So will er selbst als Mensch geboren werden.
that he himself is willing to be born as a man.

Merry Christmas!

Wieneke Gorter, December 24, 2019

The cantata that started my music writing career

24 Saturday Mar 2018

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

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1024px-pietro_di_giovanni_d27ambrogio-_entry_into_jerusalem-_1435-40-_pinacoteca_stuard2c_parma

Entry of Christ into Jerusalem by Pietro di Giovanni d’Ambrogio, 1435-1440. Pinacoteca Stuard, Parma, Italy.

Following Bach’s cantata writing in 1725, we have now come to Cantata 1 Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, an oh so pretty composition with two horns in the orchestra, also the very last of Bach’s 1724/1725 cycle of chorale cantatas. And Bach probably knew that when he was writing it. It is based on the chorale about the Morning Star, a metaphor for Christ.

The recording of this cantata I like best is the one by Montreal Baroque, with soprano Monika Mauch, counter-tenor Matthew White, tenor Charles Daniels, and bass Stephan MacLeod. Please find it here in my playlist on Spotify. If you don’t have access to Spotify, you can purchase the album here on Amazon or listen to Harnoncourt’s recording on YouTube.

Find the text here: http://bach-cantatas.com/Texts/BWV1-Eng3P.htm

Find the score here: http://bach-cantatas.com/BGA/BWV001-BGA.pdf

This cantata was the first I ever wrote about. It was in college, as an assignment for Frits de Haen: we had to compare a modern-instrument and a period-instrument recording of a piece of our choice. I don’t remember why I selected this cantata. At the time the only period-instrument recording I had was the one by Harnoncourt. Frits loved the review I wrote (in Dutch) and kept giving me nudges to write more. For several years in a row after that first review I wrote for his class, I would run into him at the Utrecht Early Music Festival or at another concert, and he would always ask “are you still writing?” or “why aren’t you writing?” and told me that I should really write every day or every week. His words have always stayed with me and are one of several reasons why I started writing this blog in January 2016.

You might think it is because of Palm Sunday that there was music in the Leipzig churches again on this Sunday. However, in Leipzig Palm Sunday was firmly part of Lent (the 40 days of introspection before Easter): no thinking beyond the crucifixion until Good Friday, and thus not celebrated with music. Or was it?

An exception was always made for the Annunciation of Mary: if that day, March 25, fell within Lent, it would still be celebrated, an thus Bach could write a cantata for that day.

The only surviving Bach cantatas for the Annunciation of Mary, Cantata 182 Himmelskönig, sei wilkommen from 1714** and Cantata 1 Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern from 1725 were written for days when this holiday fell on Palm Sunday. And perhaps not surprisingly, both these cantatas are also very much Palm Sunday cantatas, or at least Bach’s librettist interprets the Annunciation as yet another announcement of the arrival of Christ. The references to the coming of Christ outnumber the references to Mary, in the text as well as in the music.

I think it is striking that in Cantata 1 Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern Bach uses a chorale that was so strongly associated with the Christmas season, and writes music that is festive and perhaps even regal, but at the same time humble, with horns in the orchestra instead of the trumpets and timpani he would have used for a bigger holiday. Whether he was indeed illustrating the Palm Sunday story (a humble king entering Jerusalem, riding on a donkey) I don’t know, but it is very well possible.

Wieneke Gorter, March 23, 2018.

**Read more about Cantata 182 in this post.

 

Wedding music for the 20th Sunday after Trinity, with a gorgeous soprano aria

30 Monday Oct 2017

Posted by in Cantatas, Leipzig, Trinity

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Bachsaal_Schloss_Koethen

The mirror-hall, now called “Bach hall” in Köthen, where Bach worked from 1717 to 1723.

A concert weekend, successful, but fueled almost exclusively by adrenaline; the overwhelming fatigue thus following; my favorite breakfast cook/violin practice coach/morning chauffeur/bedtime enforcer away on a business trip all week; much needed family hike on Saturday; me not being superwoman: It sometimes leads to a late blog post 🙂 Thank you for understanding.

The 1724 cantata for yesterday, Cantata 180 Schmücke dich, o liebe Seele (Adorn yourself, beloved soul) is full of luster, with an opening chorus, a tenor/flute aria and a soprano/orchestra aria that make me think of the orchestral suites Bach wrote at the court of Köthen between 1717 and 1723. With all this joy already from the beginning, it sounds like a wedding cantata.

The recording I appreciate most is the one by the Swiss J.S. Bach Foundation, because I feel they bring the most light into the opening chorus and the soprano aria, illustrate the “knocking” the best in the tenor aria, and the singers do a great job bringing out the text. Soloists: Maria Christina Kiehr, soprano; Jan Börner, counter-tenor; Julius Pfeifer, tenor; and Fabrice Hayoz, bass.  The entire recording is only available on Amazon, but worth the extra trouble to get it. This is not a plug for Amazon at all, but for the artists. It was their choice to make their recordings available this way, and not offer them on Spotify or YouTube (except for one single track per cantata).

If you prefer to listen on YouTube, this recording by McCreesh/Gabrieli Consort & Players is a good alternative. (Ann Monoyios, soprano; Angus Davidson, counter-tenor; Charles Daniels, tenor; Peter Harvey, bass). The soprano aria on this recording is fabulous, but because of some–to me–distracting issues with pronunciation and text-expression in other movements, I prefer the Bach Foundation recording overall.

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

Why all this luster in this cantata? In Bach’s time, the Gospel reading for this Sunday, the parable of the Wedding Banquet (Matthew 22: 1-14) was seen in relation to the union of the faithful with Christ, both during communion as well as during the heavenly banquet in the afterlife. If you then realize that that union between the soul of the faithful and Christ was in that time often compared to the marriage between bride and groom, it was not unusual to present something that sounds like wedding music on this communion Sunday.  Expressing the love-like relationship of Jesus and the soul was not a foreign concept for Bach. He did it beautifully in the duet in Cantata 21 from Weimar (read my post about that cantata here) and later also in Cantata 140 Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme.**

In addition to this important link to the Bible texts, I think Bach might have an ulterior motive to bring so much splendor in a cantata for a Communion Sunday. On those Sundays, the congregations in the Leipzig churches would have been larger, and more prominent (read: wish-to-be-seen) families would have been present. Having followed Bach’s cantata compositions in the order he wrote them in Leipzig for almost two years now, I am seeing this pattern around large events in Leipzig: important audience = time to show off his star players and singers and his composition skills.

In his lecture (in German, but the music examples are universal), Rudolf Lutz, the director of the J.S. Bach Foundation, points out all the musical elements that make the opening chorus so utterly joyful and full of splendor. If you start watching at 19 minutes, you can see/hear how he shows that the bass notes are already signs of happiness, similar to the way how Bach expresses that in his Magnificat from 1723 and his Cantata 140. He then goes on to explain how the recorders build a “dome” over all of it, and the unisono violins and viola express the utter pleasure of lovers, or as Lutz says: “I love you, I love you, I say it to you again! Oh! Ah!”

In the tenor aria Christ is knocking on the door of the believer. This is a reference to the Revelations chapter from the Bible. When Bach received the libretto for this cantata, he must have thought back to an earlier cantata in which this Bible text was quoted literally: Cantata 61 Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland from Weimar. In that cantata, the “Vox Christi” bass sings:

Siehe, ich stehe vor der Tür und klopfe an.
So jemand meine Stimme hören wird und die Tür auftun,
zu dem werde ich eingehen
und das Abendmahl mit ihm halten und er mit mir.

See, I stand before the door and knock.
If anyone will hear my voice
and open the door
I shall go in
and have supper with him and he with me.

This recitative/arioso is accompanied by staccato continuo, illustrating the knocking. Bach uses this feature again in the continuo for this tenor aria from Cantata 180. Except this Christ is more impatient than the one from Cantata 61. For the rest it is pure blissful music, again putting Bach’s fabulous flute player in the spotlight. The theme of the flute part is likely based on the first three notes of the chorale melody. Julius Pfeifer does a great job singing this on the Bach Founation recording. Another fabulous recording of this aria is the one by Cristoph Prégardien on the Christophe Coin CD. Listen to it here.

Christophe Coin is, by the way, also the guest artist on the Bach Foundation recording of this cantata, doing a fabulous job playing violoncello piccolo in the soprano chorale.  If you really can’t or don’t want to listen to that recording on Amazon, you can still catch a bit of it on Youtube: their video of the soprano aria only, with Maria Christina Kiehr. Sublime interpretation by all, with levity, freedom, and abandon in the orchestra and superb singing by Kiehr. If you wonder where you know here voice from: she appears on many Savall recordings alongside Montserrat Figueras.

Wieneke Gorter, October 30, 2017

** Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme was really also a Trinity, almost Advent, cantata, but is nowadays better known as “The Wedding Cantata” (incorrectly suggesting that Bach wrote only one Wedding cantata) because of that subject matter.

The Feast of St. John 1724

28 Wednesday Jun 2017

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

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The Naming of St. John the Baptist by Fra Angelico, 1434 or 1435. Basilica di San Marco, Florence, Italy.

As I explained in my post for the first Sunday after Trinity in 1724, Bach most probably intended for the first four chorale cantatas of this 1724 Trinity season to form a set, or at least to present some kind of order:

  1. For the first Sunday after Trinity in 1724, June 11: Cantata 20 O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort: French Overture, with cantus firmus in the soprano
  2. For the second Sunday after Trinity in 1724, June 18: Cantata 2 Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein: Chorale motet, cantus firmus in alto.
  3. For the Feast of St. John in 1724, Saturday June 24: Cantata 7 Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam: Italian concerto, cantus firmus in tenor.
  4. For the third Sunday after Trinity in 1724, June 25: Cantata 135 : Ach Herr, mich armen Sünder: Chorale fantasia, cantus firmus in bass.

The Feast of St. John, celebrating the birth of St. John the Baptist, always falls on June 24 (exactly six months before Jesus’ birth). Read more about this feast day in my blog post from last year. This means that in 1724, this date came *after* the second Sunday after Trinity, while of course this year (2017) it came *before* that date.

Because I’m trying to follow the order in which Bach wrote his cantatas in 1724, I did not write about this cantata this past Saturday, but feel it should be presented within the order Bach wrote them in: between this past Sunday and next Sunday. So after the French Overture in cantata 20 and the chorale motet in cantata 2, Bach now presents you with an Italian concerto in this cantata 7 Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam. The performance I like best is the one by Montreal Baroque, because of the opening movement and because of  Charles Daniels singing the tenor aria. Other soloists are Daniel Taylor, countertenor, and Stephan MacLeod, bass. You can enjoy this performance here on YouTube. The phrasing of the orchestra is beautiful and overall this recording is much more thoughtful and satisfying to me than many others I listened to.

Find the German text with English translation of this cantata here, and the score here.

Wieneke Gorter, June 27, 2017.

Easter in Leipzig 1724

16 Sunday Apr 2017

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the-resurrection-1544halfhd

The Resurrection by Titian, 1542-1544

This post is really three posts in one, because I’ve realized over the past weeks that for this Easter season, I would like to follow Bach’s cantata performances of 1724 the same way I did that for the Trinity Season of 1723. Thanks for reading to the end!

In the year 1724 in Leipzig, the last Sunday service with music in the churches had been on February 20, when Bach performed the same cantatas (22 and 23) as on that Sunday in 1723, when they were part of his audition in Leipzig.

Bach’s reason for repeating two existing cantatas for that last Sunday before Lent might have been that he was busy writing his Passion according to St. John. However, he might have had extra reasons: cantata 22 features the Vox Christi (voice of Christ). By reminding the Leipzig audiences of the role of Christ in the scripture and his music, they would–in Bach’s mind– hopefully be well prepared for the St. John, in which the figure of Christ is powerfully prominent, much more than in passion compositions of Bach’s predecessors, and even much more than in Bach’s later St. Matthew Passion, even though the singer portraying Christ has more notes to sing in that piece.

The long monologue by Christ occurs almost right away in the opening of cantata 22. Listen to it here on the AllofBach website, performed by the Netherlands Bach Society, with bass Christian Immler. (If you are wondering what that string instrument is on the shoulder of the medieval-looking guy, it is Sigiswald Kuijken playing the violoncello da spalla, and you can read more about it in this post).

Then, a month later, on Saturday March 25, outside of the regular church year, there was the performance for the Annunciation, as I discussed here. In that cantata, 182, written much earlier in Weimar but not known to the Leipzig audiences until March 25, 1724, there’s also a Vox Christi, singing the words “Siehe, ich komme, im Buch ist von mir geschrieben …” (Lo, I come: in the book it is written of me…). So here we have another “convenient” performance for Bach: no new music to write for the first part of the service*, and a good reminder of the Vox Christi for the listeners.

Despite Bach’s efforts to put his audience in the right frame of mind for the St. John Passion, they were surprised (according to some accounts even shocked) when they heard it on Good Friday, April 7, 1724. I’m pretty sure that Bach himself had not expected this. The passion must have been on his mind already such a long time, and I have no problem picturing this brilliant but nerdy musician who was somewhat incapable of putting himself in the shoes of those with shallower minds. Why I believe the Passion according to St. John must have been on his mind for months already: the tenor aria “Ach mein Sinn” already presents itself in October 1723 in cantata 109 (read more about that here), in November 1723 in cantata 60 (read more about that here), and in January 1724 in cantata 154 (which also has a Vox Christi, read more about it here). Also, the “Herr, Herr” exclamations from the opening chorus first appear as early as July 1723 in cantata 105 (which also has previews of the St. Matthew Passion, read about it here).

Already the opening chorus is of such a dramatic intensity – nobody had every heard anything like it. In the liner notes with his recording, Gardiner says it well: “Even when approaching it from the vantage point of the preceding church cantatas, with their astonishing array of distinctive opening movements, this grand tableau is unprecedented both in scale and Affekt.” What is more, while the instrumental opening suggests lament, the text of the vocal parts turns out to be a praise of Christ as a majestic figure: not a victim, but a victor. Perhaps this vision is what stung the elders and city council members the most, because a year later, in his drastic 1725 revision of the Passion, Bach completely replaced this victorious opening chorus with a lamenting one, later also used as the final movement of the first half of the St. Matthew Passion.

For Easter 1724, on Sunday April 9, Bach performed a cantata from his Weimar years and one from his Mühlhausen years: cantata 31 Der Himmel Lacht, die Erde Jubilieret (discussed here on this blog) and the nowadays well known cantata 4 Christ lag in Todesbanden. Why no new composition for this Easter Sunday? Perhaps he was proud of these cantatas and wanted to show off to the Leipzig congregation and to his colleagues. But most probably he had been extremely busy working on the Passion, and since he was planning no less than four new cantatas for the period between April 10 and 23 of that year, he simply didn’t have time to write anything new.

Watch this live performance by Gesualdo Consort Amsterdam of cantata 4 Christ lag in Todesbanden. It is by no means an impeccable performance, but it is nice to see a live performance of this, and as so often I am moved by Dorothee Mields’ interpretation. I adore how she blends with the cornetto in the alto/soprano duet (starts at 5:27), and her duet with tenor Charles Daniels (a fabulously sensitive and knowledgeable singer, but sometimes overpowered by the orchestra in this performance) is exquisite (starts at 6:10).

Happy Easter!
Wieneke Gorter, April 16, 2017.

* Bach performed two cantatas on that Saturday March 25, 1724, and he did write new music for the second one.

Mary’s lament

14 Saturday Jan 2017

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marriage_cana_david
The Marriage at Cana, c. 1500, by Gérard David. Musée du Louvre, Paris. Mary pleads and worries, but Jesus says: “Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come.”

This week, I watched a very good video by the Swiss Bach Foundation (Bachstiftung) about today’s cantata 155 Mein Gott, wie lang, ach lange? I found it very insightful, helpful, and even entertaining, but was struck by its Calvinist character and was a bit disappointed by the director’s statement that he doesn’t know why this cantata starts with a movement for solo soprano. When reading Gardiner’s and Van Hengel’s discussions of this cantata, I liked their suggestions that the soprano lament refers to  Mary’s role in the Bible story of this Sunday, the Marriage at Cana. It made sense to me. This cantata, from 1715 and repeated in 1724, contains references to the wine as well as to the fact that Jesus says to his mother: “my time has not come yet.”

While the Lutheran church in Bach’s time did not regard Mary as a saint, let alone a mediator between God and the people, she was still an important person in the faith, and thus probably also for Bach. The three Marian feast days*  Luther kept on the calendar were important holidays and Bach wrote cantatas for all of them. Also, Bach wrote this cantata 155 in his Weimar years, when he explored a large number of works by (Catholic) Italian composers.

Listen to Montreal Baroque’s recording of cantata 155 on YouTube through a playlist I created. With Monika Mauch, soprano; Franziska Gottwald, alto; Charles Daniels, tenor; Harry van der Kamp, bass; Anna Marsh, bassoon. If this playlist doesn’t work for you (it might not work outside of the USA), or you prefer to watch a live recording, you can find the live performance by the J.S. Bach Foundation here, with Julia Neumann, soprano; Margot Oitzinger, alto; Julius Pfeifer, tenor; and Raphael Jud, bass.

Read the German text with English translation of this cantata here, and find the score here.

The cantata is not so much a musical play with the soprano taking the role of Mary, but more a reference to her role in the Gospel story and an exploration of that theme: try to trust that everything will be okay in the end, try to not be in control all the time. The first movement has the character of a lament in music and text, you can picture the hand-wringing, the desperation. There is also the steady pedal point in the bass, similar to what Bach will use later in the opening chorus of the St. Matthew Passion.

However it is the second movement, not even sung by the soprano, and with text that is trying to urge her to “let go,” that secretly is the true lament, in the music that is. To hear or see this, the video by the Swiss Bach Foundation is terrific. They explain extremely well (with music examples) how the notes of the solo bassoon part form in fact a lament for three voices. watch from 12:10  By the way: the composition I had to think of when hearing the “lamento bass” was Monteverdi’s  Lamento della Ninfa

If you would like to explore other cantatas for this second Sunday after Epiphany, I invite you to read my post about cantata 3 from 1725 here. It is all about hidden messages in the music of a an extremely beautiful composition with an equally heart wrenching—but completely different—opening movement as this cantata 155.

Wieneke Gorter, January 14, 2017, links updated January 31, 2020.

*The Purification of Mary on February 2, The Annunciaton of Mary on March 25, and the Visitation of Mary on July 2.

June 24 = Feast of St. John

23 Thursday Jun 2016

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

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Pontormo,_natività_del_battista

Birth of St. John the Baptist, Zechariah writing “His name is John,” by Jacopo Pontormo, c. 1526. Uffizi, Florence, Italy.

In Bach’s time, June 24 was an important feast day, celebrating the birth of John the Baptist. In the Lutheran faith, it is believed that John the Baptist paved the way for Jesus to come into the world, and his birthday was thus dated exactly six months before Jesus’ birthday. Many paintings from the 16th century onward show Mary with a baby Jesus in her lap, while John the Baptist, or St. John, usually depicted as an already standing infant, is looking on or playing with Jesus.

It means that on this day, June 24, 1723, the Leipzig congregation got to hear a new cantata already on Thursday: cantata 167, Ihr Menschen, rühmet Gottes Liebe.

My favorite recording of this cantata is the one by Montreal Baroque, with terrific singing especially by tenor Charles Daniels and soprano Suzie Leblanc.

Listen to this recording on YouTube or on Spotify.

Find the text here, and the score here.

A little more than a week later, on July 2, the church would celebrate the feast of the Visitation (Mary visiting her relative Elizabeth), strongly related to St. John. (Another wonderful cantata for that coming up next week!)

So let’s imagine two consecutive weeks of festival buzz in Leipzig, since both these holidays were important. Thanks to Gardiner’s research, we know that during trade fairs, the Leipzig population would grow to 30,000, and that Bach would often have extra students and colleagues visiting. The feasts of St. John and the Visitation did not fall during a trade fair, but we can assume that there were nonetheless a few hundred, or maybe even a few thousand visitors in Leipzig  for these holidays.

And it really looks and sounds to me as if Bach is showing off to his fellow musicians in the writing of this St. John cantata from 1723. While it is a small-scale and intimately scored work, it showcases impressive composition talent and skills: a lovely tenor aria with wonderful melismas on the word “preiset” (praise), brilliant meter changes in the already striking soprano-alto duet, a bass recitative which gives the listeners a “sneak peek” at the melody of the closing chorale, and a terrific setting of the closing chorale.

The Gospel reading for this day is the declamation by Zechariah from Luke 1: 57-80. Zechariah, the father of St. John the Baptist, has been made mute by Gabriel because he didn’t believe Gabriel’s announcement that he and his wife Elisabeth would have a son. At the time of his son’s birth, Zechariah carves a sign to tell the community “His name is John,” and as soon as he has done this, he regains his voice, and praises God. The unknown librettist of this cantata reworks this song of praise (also known as the Benedictus) into the text for the tenor aria as well as the alto recitative in this aria, sometimes quoting directly from the Gospel.

This past Sunday, in cantata 24, Bach decided to let a recitative blossom out into an arioso at the end, probably to emphasize the text. It was not a new thing, as he had actually often written recitatives this way in Weimar and Köthen. But it created a wonderful effect in cantat 24, and he must have liked it himself, because he uses the same “trick” in this cantata, at the end of the alto recitative as well as at the end of the bass recitative.

The exquisite soprano-alto duet, which at times sounds more like a motet than an aria, moves into a 4/4 canon on the text “was er in dem Paradies,” and then–still within that middle-part–moves smoothly back into 3/4, so when music and text goes back to the beginning, as if it were a standard “da capo” aria, the meter has already been back to 3/4 for a while.

In the bass recitative the Weimar/Köthen characteristic feature of letting a recitative blossom out into an arioso Bach already played with in cantata 24 gets even better: The call to action to see Zachary as an example and now also praise God is illustrated by musically quoting the closing chorale on the words “und stimmet ihn ein Loblied an” (and sing praise unto him). It is a witty joke, which, just like the clever move with the meter in the duet, only fellow musicians would have fully appreciated. But that is just my own humble opinion …

The impressive features of this cantata are more obvious in the closing chorale. As Gardiner points out, and as those who remember cantata 75 might have already heard: Bach wrote the closing chorale of this cantata 167 in the same way he wrote the closing chorales for cantatas 22 (the cantata which he performed as part of his audition in Leipzig in February 1723) and 75 (his debut piece on Trinity 1). While the chorus sings a “standard” chorale setting, the orchestra parts, moving to a walking bass, are completely separate, and form another piece of music around the chorale, just like a beautifully ornamented Baroque frame around an already great painting. In this case the frame is a golden one, because of the extra luster the trumpet part brings to the music.

Wieneke Gorter, June 23, 2016

 

A Bach Cantata for Three Kings Day can swing both ways

06 Wednesday Jan 2016

Posted by in Cantatas, Epiphany

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Adoration of Magi

Some of us love to keep the tree and the lights for a few more days, others are (eagerly or not) looking ahead, facing reality (and finally starting that blog).  The same two sentiments can be found in Bach’s music for this time of year. The cantata for January 6 (Epiphany) from 1724 is very Christmas-y, the one from 1725 absolutely not. Both are well worth a listen.

Let’s start with the one that is still in full Christmas swing, from 1724: cantata 65 Sie werden aus Saba alle kommen, with a happy text incorporating the story of the Three Kings visiting the baby Jesus, and featuring 2 horns, 2 recorders, and 2 oboes da caccia in the orchestra. As a child I loved this cantata. It was mainly because of the special instrumentation, the horns prominent in the tenor aria, the oboes in the bass aria. But I also clearly remember it was so cool that the bass aria talks about the New Year!

I grew up with the Harnoncourt recording, and though that interpretation of the tenor aria (sung by Kurt Equiluz)  is still one of the best, my “favorite overall” recording of this cantata today is that of Bach Collegium Japan. Tenor James Gilchrist and bass Peter Kooy do a fabulous and compelling job at their arias, and the horns sound beautiful.

Listen to cantata 65 by Bach Collegium Japan on Spotify

Listen to cantata 65 by Harnoncourt on YouTube

Click here for the full German text with English translation of cantata 65

The next year, in 1725, Bach wrote cantata 123 Liebster Immanuel, Herzog der Frommen. A gem of a cantata, with little strands of the chorale woven into the opening chorus, extremely beautiful. Both music and text are much more poignant than the Epiphany cantata of the year before. There are even references to the cross. And then there’s the bass aria. When you listen to this cantata for the first time, and you hear the flute start this aria, you will never guess it is going to be a bass aria! It is a very unusual combination of voice and instrument for Bach, and that usually means: pay attention! And yes, there it is in the text, the core of Bach’s 18th century Lutheran faith: even if society casts you out, you don’t belong, you are lonely, then you will still be saved by Jesus.

My favorite recording of this cantata is the one by Montréal Baroque, on which Dutch bass Harry van der Kamp and flutist Grégoire Jeay make something truly special out of that bass aria. I love the liveliness of this interpretation overall, including an opening chorus that immediately grabs my attention and moves me, and fabulous performances by countertenor Matthew White and tenor Charles Daniels in their arias as well.

The only downside for me of the Montréal Baroque recording is that the chorus pieces are all sung one-on-a-part, by the four soloists only. Not only do I have a personal (maybe not historically accurate, but so be it!) preference for 3-5 voices on a part, I also find that soprano Monika Mauch is outbalanced by the men in the opening chorus. I can hardly hear her, which is too bad because I’m sure she’s an equally great singer as the other three.

Listen to cantata 123 by Montreal Baroque on Spotify

Listen to cantata 123 by Montreal Baroque on YouTube

Listen to cantata 123 by Harnoncourt on YouTube

Click here for the full German text with English translation

If you enjoy listening to these recordings, please consider supporting the artists and purchase them!
BWV 65 by Bach Collegium Japan is here
BWV 123 by Montréal Baroque is here
BWV 123 by Bach Collegium Japan is here
Wieneke Gorter, January 6, 2016
(links updated January 3, 2017)