Tag Archives: Eduard van Hengel

Trombones and altos from heaven (a guide to BWV 2)

26 Thursday Mar 2020

Posted by in Bach's life, Cantatas, Chorale cantatas 1724/1725, Leipzig, Trinity

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Ceiling painting installed around 1700 in Christian V’s Hall in Rosenborg Castle, Denmark. Possibly by Reinhold Timm, ca. 1620, originally for for a music pavilion in Kongens Have. *

Yesterday, Wednesday March 25, 2020, the J.S. Bach Foundation published their live video recording of Cantata 2 Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein (Please God, look down from Heaven) on their YouTube channel. I thought it might be nice to provide a listening guide to go with this performance.

I love this cantata because it has trombones in the orchestra, doubling the choir parts, and because the altos have the cantus firmus (=they sing the chorale melody in long notes) in the opening chorus, which sounds incredibly good, and is unique within Bach’s writing.

Find the video recording by the J.S. Bach Foundation here on YouTube. Soloists are Alex Potter, alto; Georg Poplutz, tenor; and Markus Volpert, bass.

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

This cantata was the second in Bach’s 1724 series of Chorale Cantatas. He most probably intended for the first four cantatas in that series to form a set, or at least to present some kind of order,  if you look at the composition form of the opening movement, and which voice has the cantus firmus of the chorale tune in that chorus:

  1. Cantata 20 O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort: French Overture, with cantus firmus in the soprano (find my blog post about this cantata here)
  2. Cantata 2 Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein: Chorale motet, cantus firmus in alto (the cantata discussed here)
  3. Cantata 7 Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam: Italian concerto, cantus firmus in tenor. (find my blog post about this cantata here)
  4. Cantata 135 : Ach Herr, mich armen Sünder: Chorale fantasia, cantus firmus in bass. (find my blog post about this cantata here)

We know that Bach liked to use order and symmetry when he wanted to impress other people with a composition. But perhaps he was also thinking of his legacy. When he started composing cantatas at the Weimar court in 1714, albeit on a monthly instead of weekly basis, his first four cantatas formed a similar portfolio of composition styles in the opening choral movements:

  1. Cantata 182 Himmelskönig, sei wilkommen: Choral fugue
  2. Cantata 12 Weinen, klagen, sorgen, zagen: Passacaglia
  3. Cantata 172 Erschallet, ihr Lieder, erklinget, ihr Saiten!: Concerto
  4. Cantata 21 Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis: Motet.

Back to this Cantata 2 Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein (Please God, look down from Heaven), and what to listen for.

Opening chorus:

The chorale, based on Psalm 12, is by Luther. For an idea what Luther’s original song would have sounded like, you can watch this video. For readers who understand German: Eduard van Hengel’s website (in Dutch) has a very insightful overview of the original German text of Psalm 12, the text of Luther’s chorale, and how Bach’s librettist changed that into the text for the cantata.  You can find it here.

When Bach uses a chorale by Luther in a cantata, he often demonstrates his reverence for the father of his faith by using the archaic form of chorale motet as opening chorus combined with the equally archaic trombone quartet (1 cornetto and 3 trombones) to double the choir parts.**

Giving the cantus firmus to the altos is however not something Bach does very often. If only he had! In this case it is especially wonderfully orchestrated, with doubling by one trombone, two oboes, and all second violins. Both on this video recording by the J.S. Bach Foundation as well on the Herreweghe audio recording I recommended back in 2017, Alex Potter’s voice significantly enhances this winning blend of alto voices and instruments, and on this J.S. Bach Foundation video recording he also sings the beautiful alto aria. It definitely made my day yesterday.

Alto aria:

Bach alto and tenor arias are at their prettiest, I find, when they are written as a trio sonata, and the alto aria Tilg, o Gott in this cantata is a beautiful example of that. Wonderful singing and playing by alto Alex Potter and violinist Renate Steinmann. The aria is a plea for help in fighting the “Rottengeister,” or the sectarians amidst the Lutherans. When the alto starts singing the word “Rottengeistern,” we realize we had heard this word already many times in the triplets of the violin part. As Eduard van Hengel says, it is the “popular easy talk of the sectarians, and that is also the reason why the other two parts don’t have this motive” [to further illustrate the schism].

Renate Steinmann, violin and Alex Potter, alto. Photo of Alex Potter by Annelies van der Vegt.

Bass recitative:

Definitely keep the text & translations handy for this one, because this movement contains a wealth of text illustrations in the music. On the word Armen  (the poor) sounds a sorrowful diminished seventh, the word seufzend (sighing) has a rest/sigh in the middle of the word, and more such things happening on the words Ach (sighing) and Klagen (complaining). In contrast to this, a few lines later, the chord on the word Gott (God) sounds open and liberating, after which God himself gets to speak, and the music turns to an arioso (similarly to how Bach does that in his much earlier Cantata 18 when God speaks). At the word heller Sonnenschein (bright sunshine) the light gets turned on in the music too: the harmony changes to C Major.

Tenor aria:

Here we have arrived at the solution/salvation part of the cantata, and so this music is more pleasant, easier to listen to. But Bach is still preaching: there are some crossing (!) lines in the music, and in the middle section, which tells the listeners to be patient (sei geduldig) and Bach stresses the words Kreuz und Not.

With many thanks to Eduard van Hengel and Rudolf Lutz for their explanations of this cantata,

Wieneke Gorter, March 26, 2020.

*more information about this painting and the other objects in Christian V’s Hall in Rosenborg Castle can be found here.

**The best examples of this are cantatas 2, 25, 38, and 121.

Bach’s “most beautiful cantata” connected to a dear memory

11 Sunday Feb 2018

Posted by in Bach's life, Cantatas, Chorale cantatas 1724/1725, Leipzig

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kloosterkerk
Kloosterkerk, The Hague, The Netherlands, where Caroline Stam sang the aria from Cantata 127 during my mother’s funeral service in 2010. This church is also the site of the monthly cantata services performed by the Residentie Bach Ensembles.

What are your five favorite cantatas? This question was asked this week on Facebook by the Residentie Bach Ensembles, the choirs and orchestra of the monthly cantata services in the Kloosterkerk in The Hague, the Netherlands. A hard question to answer, and I would probably have a different Top Five every month. However, Cantata 127 Herr Jesu Christ, wahr’ Mensch und Gott, today’s cantata from 1725, will probably always be in it. The soprano aria from this cantata is forever linked in my heart and mind with the funeral service for my mother in this same Kloosterkerk in The Hague (read a bit more about that in this post), but having carefully listened to about 120 cantatas over the past two years I am struck by how special this cantata is within Bach’s oeuvre.

I’m not alone in my appreciation of Cantata 127 Herr Jesu Christ, wahr’ Mensch und Gott. Eduard van Hengel calls it an “exceptionally inspired cantata,” 19th century Bach biographer Spitta called it “perhaps the most important” cantata, and it received “the most beautiful” qualification by Arnold Schering as well as Ton Koopman.  

My favorite recording of this cantata is now [update from 2021] Herreweghe’s live recording from January 31, 2021. Find it here on YouTube.

Find the text of Cantata 127 here, and the score here.

There are several reasons why this last Sunday before Lent, or Quinquagesima Sunday or Estomihi Sunday, was such an important day for Bach, and maybe especially in 1725:

  1. This was the day, in 1723, on which he had auditioned for his job in Leipzig, with Cantatas 22 and 23, his first performance ever for the Leipzig congregation and city council. In 1724 he would repeat the same cantatas on this same Sunday.
  2. After this Sunday, his audience (=the Leipzig congregations of the St. Thomas and St. Nicholas churches) would not hear any of Bach’s music until March 25, on the feast of the Annunciation of Mary. No figural music (only chorale singing) was allowed in the Lutheran churches in Leipzig during Lent (the approximately 40 days before Easter), with the exception of the Annunciation. In 1724 this period was 33 days, but in 1725 it was 41 days (from February 11 to March 25). So Bach might have wished to leave his audience with something special, something they would remember for 41 days.
  3. If it is true that Andreas Stübel had been Bach’s librettist for his entire chorale cantata cycle, Bach would have now known that this was the last regular chorale cantata of the cycle for now: Stübel died on January 31, 1725. So perhaps Bach wanted to “go out with a bang” for that reason. It is striking to me that he chooses a bass recitative/arioso with trumpet talking about the Day of Judgement, a similar combination of voice, instrument, and subject matter he uses at the end of the Trinity period in 1723, and again (though less dramatically) at the end of the Trinity period in 1724. Is this Bach’s way of saying: this is the end of an important series?

Compared to all opening choruses that had come before, this opening chorus is the most complex and intricate. It is the same as chorale fantasias in previous chorale cantatas in the sense that the six lines of text of the chorale Herr Jesu Christ, wahr’ Mensch und Gott appear in six sections, with the chorale melody (the cantus firmus) in the soprano and trumpet part.  However the orchestra greatly enhances the meaning of Bach’s message by referring to this chorale plus two others. The instrumental groups (recorders, oboes, strings, and continuo) represent four musical themes referring to these chorales. Eduard van Hengel illustrates this extremely well with two diagrams on his website, which I am copying here with his permission:

127-VHengel

(a) The recorders play a dotted rhythm which in both the St. John and St. Matthew Passions illustrates punishment and suffering.
(b) The oboes introduce the “Leitmotiv” that will sound 78 times throughout the entire movement, and stands for the Herr Jesu Christ, wahr Mensch und Gott chorale. Jesus was a true (“wahr”) man and God. Probably Bach’s most important message here.
(c) The strings quote the chorale Christe, du Lamm Gottes, or Luther’s Agnus Dei. It would show up again in the opening chorus of the St. Matthew Passion, which Bach might already have been working on around this time, see my post about Cantata 125 last week.
(d) In the continuo we hear six times the first seven notes of Ach Herr mich armen Sünder, nowadays better known as O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden, one of the main building stones of the St. Matthew Passion. In the seventh section of the opening chorus, when the sopranos are already done singing the chorale melody, Bach repeats this particular theme in the vocal bass line in the choir, as if to make sure that even those who might have missed the quotation earlier would now hear it loud and clear.

Van Hengel adds this extra diagram to show in which measures of the opening chorus the different themes appear:

127-schemaVHengel

At this point Bach might still have been planning to prepare his audiences for a first St. Matthew Passion, not abandoning that plan until much closer to March 30, Good Friday, 1725. Not only are the references in this opening chorus a striking example of that, but also in the extraordinary bass recitative/aria do we see the theme of the Sind Blitze, sind Donner chorus from the St. Matthew Passion appear on the text “Ich breche mit starker und helfender Hand.”

Regular followers of this blog will notice that Bach had been making a study for this bass recitative/aria in the previous three cantatas: combining lines of the chorale text with “free” text in the bass solo of Cantatas 92 and 125, and then using Sind Blitze, sind Donner material and trumpet accompaniment in the bass solo in Cantata 126.

Wieneke Gorter, February 10, 2018, updated February 22, 2020 and February 13, 2021.

* Herreweghe’s album “Jesu, deine Passion” features cantatas 22, 23, 127, and 159. Cantata 23 has exceptionally beautiful choruses and Cantata 22 represents the first introduction of Bach’s version of the “Vox Christi”(voice of Christ) to the Leipzig congregations, considered by some as an intentional preparation for the listeners of what would be to come in the Passions. Cantata 159 on this album is fantastic too, with an unrivaled interpretation by Peter Kooij of the fourth movement, the bass aria “Es ist vollbracht.”

Bach’s most famous duet

17 Sunday Sep 2017

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

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  • Julianne Baird
  • Allan Fast

Of this cantata 78 Jesu, der du meine Seele most people only know the  soprano-alto duet Wir eilen mit schwachen, doch emsigen Schritten. The best rendition of this I have ever heard in my life is by Julianne Baird and Allan Fast on the Rifkin recording from 1988. Listen to it here. Fast passed away in 1995 at age 41.

Bach wrote this cantata for the 14th Sunday after Trinity, September 10, 1724. It was not the first time he wrote a “cute” duet — there are gorgeous examples  in sacred and secular cantatas from his Weimar and Köthen years. However, at the start of his second Leipzig cycle, for the Trinity season of 1724, there are more and more duets in his cantatas.  Alto-tenor duets appear in cantatas 20 and 10, spaced three weeks apart. A series of soprano-alto duets follows on July 9 in cantata 93, a month later in cantata 101, and the next week in cantata 113. Then there’s the terrific tenor-bass duet in cantata 33 on September 3, and this duet on September 10.

This is why I like it so much to listen to Bach’s cantatas in the order he wrote and performed them. I would never have noticed connections such as these otherwise.

The rest of the cantata is wonderful too, especially the opening chorus, which is among the most complex Bach ever wrote. For those who read Dutch, I encourage you to read Eduard van Hengel’s splendid article about this cantata here.

For the entire cantata I prefer Herreweghe’s recording, also from 1988. Soprano: Ingrid Schmithüsen; Alto: Charles Brett; Tenor: Howard Crook; Bass: Peter Kooy. Find the recording here on YouTube. Find the German text and English translations of the cantata here, and the score here.

More listening for this Sunday: cantata 25 from 1723. It has a much bigger orchestra, including many brass players. Find my explanation for that here.

Wieneke Gorter, September 17, 2017, updated September 10, 2020.

The Herreweghe altos (Trinity 2 in 1724)

25 Sunday Jun 2017

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

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BWV2_title
The title page of cantata 2 Ach Gott tom Himmel sieh darein, written by Bach’s lead copyist, J.A. Kuhnau. Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin Preußischer Kulturbesitz

Regular readers of this blog know that I have a soft spot for the Herreweghe choir sopranos*. But the alto section of Collegium Vocale Gent is often equally impressive, and they deserve a special mention for their fabulous sound in the cantus firmus of this cantata’s opening chorus. Listen to Herreweghe’s recording of cantata 2 Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein on YouTube.

Find the text of this cantata here (read along so you can see the brilliant text-illustration in the music), and the score (where you can see which instruments double which vocal parts) here.

Bach wrote this cantata for the 2nd Sunday after Trinity, which fell on June 18 in 1724.  As I explained last week, this is the second in a series of four cantatas at the start of Bach’s 1724/1725 Leipzig cycle, and according to the master’s orderly design for these first four chorale cantatas, the cantus firmus of the hymn tune (always the same as the cantata title) is now in the alto part.

This Herreweghe recording is from before the time that soloists joined the choir sections of Collegium Vocale, which means that alto soloist Ingeborg Danz does not sing in this excellent group of one mezzo (Mieke Wouters), two contraltos (Yvonne Fuchs and Cécile Pilorger), and one countertenor (Alex Potter). Also the blend with the instruments doubling this alto part (two oboes and one trombone) is so marvelous it gives me goose bumps. Then again, there aren’t many things in music that move me more than a Bach opening chorus with trombones.

Whenever Bach uses the archaic form of chorale motet as opening chorus, especially when he combines it with the use of the Renaissance/Early Baroque trombone quartet (1 cornetto and 3 trombones), he wants to stress the timeless importance, the authoritative character of a message. In this case the at that point already two centuries old message is the chorale, one of Luther’s own.  For readers who understand German: Eduard van Hengel’s website (in Dutch) has a very insightful overview of the original German text of Psalm 12, the text of Luther’s chorale, and how Bach’s librettist changed that into the text for the cantata.  You can find it here.

Bach alto and tenor arias are at their prettiest, I find, when they are written as a trio sonata, and there is a wonderful example of that in the alto aria Tilg, o Gott in this cantata. It is a plea for help in fighting the “Rottengeister,” or the sectarians amidst the Lutherans. Alto soloist Ingeborg Danz does a terrific job interpreting the text. When the alto starts singing the word Rottengeistern, we see that it was that word we had already heard many times in the triplets of the violin part. As Eduard van Hengel says, it is the “popular easy talk of the sectarians, and that is also the reason why the other two parts don’t have this motive” [to further illustrate the schism].

In his effort to educate his fellow Lutherans (the Leipzig congregations) with his music, Bach wants to make it clear that he’s still preaching by means of the well-known chorale, and uses longer notes for the direct quotation (in music and text) of the chorale in this aria: der uns will meistern.

The best interpretation of the tenor aria Durchs Feuer wird das Silber rein actually appears on another recording, that of Bach Collegium Japan with tenor Gerd Türk. You can listen to that aria here. Here we have arrived at the solution/salvation part of the cantata, and so this music is more pleasant, easier to listen to. But Bach is still preaching: there are some crossing (!) lines in the music, and in the middle section, which tells the listeners to be patient (sei geduldig) and Bach stresses the words Kreuz und Not.

So one wonders: was Bach’s decision to focus on chorales for this 1724/1725 cantata cycle inspired by his need to make things easier for the boy sopranos, or by a wish to explain the theology to the congregations in a way that was more obvious to them than the more complicated, sometimes perhaps too hidden, messages he had so far delivered by way of his music? Or had the City Council or the church elders told him to to this?

*Read more about that in this post.

Wieneke Gorter, June 25, 2017

A quick fix for Easter Tuesday 1724

18 Tuesday Apr 2017

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

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As I explained on Easter Sunday and Easter Monday, after his Passion according to St. John, Bach had no time or energy left to write anything new for the three Easter days in 1724. On Easter Sunday he repeated two Easter cantatas from earlier years. On Easter Monday he used existing music from a Birthday cantata from Köthen, didn’t seem to care too much about the music not illustrating the text, perhaps didn’t even write a new score, we don’t know, because the only manuscript that survived is from 1735, not from 1724.

On Easter Tuesday, he used Die Zeit, die Tag und Jahre macht (BWV 134a), a “serenata” for New Year’s Day, also from Köthen. For the Leipzig church cantata, cantata 134 Ein Herz, das seinen Jesum lebend Weiß he didn’t change any music at all, gave the instrumentalists the parts from Köthen, and also used the score from Köthen, writing the new sacred text under the original secular text.

Listening to this cantata is like listening to one of Bach’s instrumental works, because the text and the meaning of the text don’t really matter in this case. Listen to Gustav Leonhardt’s recording of this cantata, with René Jacobs, countertenor, and Marius van Altena, tenor.

Thanks to Eduard van Hengel, it is easy to see side-by-side how the new text compares to the original:

Serenata for New Year’s Day in Köthen 1719
 Cantata 134 for Easter Tuesday in Leipzig 1724
1. Die Zeit, die Tag und Jahre macht,
Hat Anhalt manche Segensstunden
Und itzo gleich ein neues Heil gebracht.

2. Auf, Sterbliche, lasset ein Jauchzen ertönen.
[…] Auf, Seelen, ihr müsset ein Opfer bereiten,
Bezahlet dem Höchsten mit Danken die Pflicht.

 1. Ein Herz, das seinen Jesum lebend weiß,
Empfindet Jesu neue Güte
Und dichtet nur auf seines Heilands Preis.

2. Auf, Gläubige, singet die lieblichen Lieder.
[…] Auf, Seelen, ihr müsset ein Opfer bereiten,
Bezahlet dem Höchsten mit Danken die Pflicht.

Many things to be proud of

26 Saturday Nov 2016

Posted by in Advent, Cantatas, Leipzig, Weimar

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giotto-entry-into-jerusalem

The Entry into Jerusalem by Giotto, ca. 1305. Fresco in the Scrovengni Chapel, Padua, Italy.

Bach performed this cantata 61 Nun komm der Heiden Heiland in Leipzig on November 28, 1723, as a “rerun” of the first performance in Weimar in 1714. Why did he not write a new cantata? The prevailing scholarly answer is that Bach was giving himself a break from composing in between the three-week frenzy of cantatas 60, 90, and 70 and the new works (including a Magnificat) he was planning for the Christmas days.  I think Bach was proud of his Weimar cantatas, and I believe he wanted to show off the special features in this cantata to his colleagues and to the thousands of Lutherans that he knew would flock to the Leipzig churches on holidays.

I myself am proud of having followed Bach’s cantata writing of 1723 every week for the entire Trinity season. After all this listening and reading, I see a pattern in Bach reviving some of his Weimar cantatas on Leipzig feast days*, and I now look at cantata 61 Nun komm der Heiden Heiland in a new way.

This cantata had already been in my top five because of the moving interpretation of the soprano aria by Seppi Kronwitter (soprano) and Nikolaus Harnoncourt (cello) on the Harnoncourt recording from 1976. My mother loved this aria and played this recording many times, and I have fond memories of listening to it with her.

Harnoncourt-cello

I had always found the bass recitative that precedes it very charming, with the musical illustration of the knocking on the door, but not more than that.  I had seen this recitative in the context of all the Bach cantatas and passions that I knew, and had compared it with other typical Bach “Vox Christi” writing for bass. But those were all written after November 28, 1723.  So now, after having tried to place myself in the shoes of the Leipzig congregations for the entire 1723 Trinity season, I am fully aware that they had not heard a “Vox Christi” at all in any of the cantatas leading up to this one.** And thus I finally realize how it must not have been charming, but truly moving to them to hear this announcement presented in this way, on the first Sunday they started looking forward to the birth of Christ.

In the text of the recitative, Jesus says: “See, I am in front of your door! I’m knocking!” The librettist means the door of the believer’s heart, in which he’s planning to live. The pizzicato in the strings, as well as the staccato and the intervals in the voice part illustrate the knocking, and the dissonances at the beginning only resolve until the final “klopfe an.” The form of this recitative is highly unusual, and perhaps also something Bach wanted to show off in Leipzig.

However Bach’s greatest source of pride was probably the opening chorus of this cantata. To understand this, we need to do a mini music history class. First, in the 4th century, Ambrosius created the hymn Veni Redemptor Gentium, beautifully sung here on this video by Giovanni Vianini, director of the Schola Gregoriana Mediolanensis in Milan, Italy. Then, in 1524, Luther turned that hymn into Nun komm der Heiden Heiland, which sounds like this and which all Lutherans in Bach’s time knew very well.

In Weimar Bach had come into contact with French and Italian court music, and had adopted the habit of writing almost every opening chorus or opening sinfonia of his cantatas as a royal “entrada,” to show off his skills in French ouverture writing as well as to please the Duke.

So now Bach needed/wanted to merge the timeless hymn with a fashionable French ouverture. And the result is stunning. Or, as Eduard van Hengel says: Bach wrote “brilliant fusion” at the age of 29. Listen to this in the recording by Philippe Herreweghe on YouTube (Sybilla Rubens, soprano; Christoph Prégardien, tenor; Peter Kooij, bass).

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

The first line of the hymn is sung one voice part at a time, an illustration of the Bible reading for this Sunday: the people greeting the messiah who is riding into Jerusalem. The second line is then sung as a simple four-part hymn, while the instrumental parts keep playing the first part of the ouverture. The third line becomes a mini motet in the fast and happy (“Gai”) middle part of the ouverture, in 3/4. 

The fourth line of text is then again a simple four-part setting on the third part of the ouverture.

For the closing chorale, Bach chose the last two lines of Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern as melody. And again he marries the chorale tune beautifully with the instrumental writing.

Wieneke Gorter, November 26, 2016, updated December 1, 2019.

*Read more about this in my post about the feast of St. John the Baptist on June 24, The Visitation on July 2, and last week’s post about cantata 70. Read how proud Bach was of his Weimar cantatas in this post about cantata 12.

** unless they had a really good memory, and were present at Bach’s “audition” in February 1723. There is a Vox Christi in Cantata 22 which he presented at that time, but didn’t repeat in Leipzig until that same time in the church year in 1724.

Bach in Vienna / Robin Blaze going wild

06 Sunday Nov 2016

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

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kokoschka_pieta

Pietà (It is enough) / Pietà (Es ist genug), plate 11 from a series of 11 lithographs O Ewigkeit, Du Donnerwort by Oskar Kokoschka, 1914/1916. Museum of Modern Art, New York.

In Vienna, they were all talking about Bach’s cantata 60 O Ewigkeit, Du Donnerwort. The astonishing harmonization in the closing chorale as well as the structure of a “dialogue” between Fear (alto) and Hope (tenor) made it one of the most unusual among his cantatas, and apparently something worth discussing. In the first half of the 20th century, that is. In 1935  Alban Berg used the “modern” harmonization from the closing chorale Es ist genug in the final movement of his violin concerto To the Memory of an Angel–an instrumental Requiem for Manon Gropius, daughter of Bauhaus architect Walter Gropius and Mahler’s widow, Alma Schindler.

Several years before, the same Alma Schindler had a short-lived affair with Czech painter Oskar Kokoschka. After they broke up, Kokoschka processed his torment by making a series of 11 lithographs to illustrate the cantata. The dialogue between Fear (the alto) and Hope (the tenor) in the cantata became a dialogue between Alma and himself, in pictures only: click here to see the entire series. Many thanks to Eduard van Hengel for pointing this out.

Listen to Bach Collegium Japan’s recording of this cantata on Spotify, with countertenor Robin Blaze and tenor Gerd Türk. Find the German text with English translations here, and the score here.

Bach wrote this cantata 60 O Ewigkeit, Du Donnerwort for the 24th Sunday after Trinity in 1723, the Sunday normally linked to the Gospel story of the Raising of Jairus’ Daughter. However, in 1723–as now in 2016–this day fell on the first Sunday in November: All Hallows Sunday, All Saints Sunday, however you want to call it, but the Sunday on which the congregation would have commemorated all who had passed away that year. None of the commentaries I have read mention this, but I think it is important, because I feel this cantata is much more about how horrible it might be to die, or the thoughts one has when sitting at a loved one’s deathbed, than it is about the Raising of Jairus’ Daughter.

Of all the recordings I listened to, I like Bach Collegium Japan’s the best, because of Robin Blaze’s interpretation of the alto part. I always love his voice, but he is usually quite understated in his singing. He explains this well in this interview on San Francisco Classical Voice. I sometimes wish he would indeed sing with Kate Bush and “let go” a little, so I was thrilled to hear that in this cantata he actually does go a bit wild, for his standards at least, and that Suzuki lets him do it. His conviction in the opening chorale is already terrific (also note the wonderful blend with the horn doubling his part), but the way he sings the text “Und martert diese Glieder” (and tortures these limbs) in movement 2 is amazing, spot-on, and unrivaled by any others I listened to.

As we have seen before in the course of these 1723 Trinity Season cantatas (read for example my post on cantata 105) there are elements of Bach’s passions already present in this cantata. The agitated singing of the tenor in the stunningly beautiful duet (movement 3) resembles the Ach, mein Sinn! tenor aria from the St. John Passion. The repeated tremolo in the violins in movement 1 is something Bach often uses to illustrate fear, and this will show up again in the tenor arioso O Schmerz! Hier zittert das gequälte Herz in his St. Matthew Passion.

For further reading, including all the amazing harmonies in this piece which impressed the Viennese composers of the early 20th century,  as well as other insights, I can highly recommend Gardiner’s journal entry about this cantata (start reading on page 5).

Wieneke Gorter, November 6, 2016, updated November 21, 2020

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.

Christmas in August

27 Saturday Aug 2016

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

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gesu_lebbrosi
Jesus heals ten lepers, from the Codex Aureus of Echternach, c. 1035-1040

Only a handful of Bach cantatas ask for the Renaissance/Early Baroque ensemble of one cornetto and three trombones in the opening and closing chorus. This instrumentation was considered somewhat “old fashioned” in Bach’s time, while at the same time it was still very normal in cities to hear Stadtpfeifers (city pipers) play chorales from the towers during the day, to remind the citizens of their Christian duties. In this Cantata 25 Es ist nichts Gesundes an meinem Leibe, for the 14th Sunday after Trinity (August 29 in 1723), the playing of the chorale tune by this ensemble in the opening chorus stands for the way it has always been, the way it has been true for centuries.

palatino
Concerto Palatino, the leading cornetto/trombone ensemble for the past 25 years. Photo by Sabrina Flauger. Learn more about them here.

My preferred recording of Cantata 25 is the one by Herreweghe, on the same album as cantata 105 for Trinity 9 and cantata 46 for Trinity 10, as well as cantata 138 for next week. Soloists in cantata 25: soprano Hana Blažíková, tenor Thomas Hobbs, and bass Peter Kooij. Cornetto: Bruce Dickey  (pictured above, front row, on left); trombones: Claire McIntyre, Simen van Mechelen (pictured above, top row, on left), and Joost Swinkels.

Listen to this recording on Spotify or on YouTube. Please consider supporting the artists by purchasing this album (containing four cantatas for this 1723 Trinity season) on Amazon.

Read the text of this cantata here, and find the score here.

I could write an entire blog post about the opening chorus alone, the way I did last week for cantata 77 and two weeks earlier for cantata 179. But in the interest of variety, I’m going to keep this section short, and I will just say that the opening chorus  is an incredible, unrivaled complex composition for ten voices, again completely different than any opening chorus the Leipzig congregations had heard before during this Trinity season of 1723. By having the “ancient” brass quartet play the chorale melody of Herzlich tut mich verlangen nach einem selgen End (With my whole heart I long for my blessed End / my Salvation)** Bach shows that the promise of salvation after death will always provide a silver lining to the sorrow of the daily, sinful human condition. He also illustrates this “salvation” with the recorders in the uplifting and soothing soprano aria (Hana Blažíková in top shape!), and the brass and recorders in the closing chorale, and intensifies the “sickness” of the human sins by setting these texts to “dry” recitatives  (though listen to that bass arioso, beautifully sung by Peter Kooij) in between. Again, it was completely normal in his day and age to think this way, and Bach saw it as his mission in life to teach this theology to his fellow Lutherans by way of his church music.

But, listen to the festive, large orchestra for this cantata! No less than four brass players (one cornetto and three trombones) and five wind players (two oboists and three recorder players) were required at the same time in the opening chorus and closing chorale. For a cantata about the healing of ten lepers? Well, it turns out that this weekend it was Christmas in August for Bach, and the extra players were probably in town for the much more important and incredibly festive Cantata 119 Preise, Jerusalem, den Herrn that was on the calendar for the next day, Monday August 30, the day of the inauguration of the new City Council (Ratswechsel). *** As I already suggested in my post about cantata 147, Bach might have sometimes used guest musicians in his orchestra who were in town for other reasons, and judging from the level of playing required for the Brandenburg concerto-like Cantata 119, the extra brass (all playing trumpet in 119) and wind (playing oboe and recorder in 119) players might have been needed to be of the level of court chamber musician, not just Stadtpfeifer (usually a lower rank, and not necessarily used to playing the complicated court music). So in my probably not so unlikely movie script fantasy, Bach hired musicians from the not too far away courts where he had worked before or where his in-laws worked (Köthen, Weissenfels, Zerbst) to play in the orchestra on Monday August 30, and he had asked them to also play in the service on Sunday August 29.

Listen to the Ratswechsel cantata 119 Preise, Jerusalem, den Herrn as recorded by Herreweghe on YouTube. (Soloists: soprano Deborah York; alto Ingeborg Danz; tenor Mark Padmore, bass Peter Kooij.)

Wieneke Gorter, August 24, 2016, updated September 10, 2020.

** Several writers have suggested the chorale best known to the congregation at the time (on the melody we have later come to know as O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden) would have been instead Ach Herr, mich armen Sünder, but I agree with Eduard van Hengel that because of Bach’s use of the angel-like recorders and the heavenly brass it makes more sense to go with Herzlich tut mich verlangen nach einem selgen End.

*** The new city council was always chosen on August 24, and then inaugurated on the first Monday following August 24, which was Monday August 30 in 1723.

72 and 73

24 Sunday Jan 2016

Posted by in Cantatas, Epiphany, Leipzig

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ChristCleansing

Christ cleansing a leper, Jean-Marie Melchior Doze, 1864

For this third Sunday after Epiphany, we find no less than four gems in Bach’s treasure trove: cantatas 73, 111, 72, and 156. I decided to highlight 73 and 72, because of the interesting references between the two. As far as we can tell, Bach loved these cantatas too: He performed cantata 73 at least one more time, and transcribed the opening chorus of cantata 72 into the Gloria of his Mass in G minor.

From the chronology of performances in Leipzig, it looks as if Bach wrote cantata 73 in 1724 and cantata 72 two years later. However, some scholars argue that (a large part of) cantata 72 was probably already written around 1715, since most of the poetry is from a collection Bach used when working in Weimar at that time. But whether 72 was first or 73 was first, it doesn’t matter that much for the appreciation of these two beautiful cantatas.

I have a soft spot for cantata 73 because I love the way Herreweghe performs this, have listened to the 1990 recording many times since it came out, and then to the (better!) 2013 recording. The best parts are the opening chorus and the bass aria (sung by Peter Kooy on both recordings) and I’m grateful for Eduard van Hengel’s Bach website (in Dutch) where I learned a lot about the many possible bits of reference in this cantata to other works.

Listen first to Cantata 72 Alles nur nach Gottes willen by Bach Collegium Japan/Masaaki Suzuki on Spotify

soloists: Rachel Nicholls (one of the most “boy soprano”-like voices of the soprano soloists in that series, I love it), Robin Blaze (counter-tenor), Peter Kooy (bass)

If you only have access to YouTube, you could listen to Montreal Baroque’s recording or to Gardiner’s recording instead.

What to listen for in cantata 72:

The most important words from the Bible text for this third Sunday after Epiphany (the story of Jesus cleansing a leper, from the gospel of Matthew):

Da er aber vom Berg herabging, folgte ihm viel Volks nach. Und siehe, ein Aussätziger kam und betete ihn an und sprach: Herr, so du willst, kannst du mich wohl reinigen. Und Jesus streckte seine Hand aus, rührte ihn an und sprach: Ich will’s tun; sei gereinigt!

(When He had come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed Him. And behold, a leper came and worshiped Him, saying, Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean. Then Jesus put out His hand and touched him, saying, I am willing; be cleansed.)

In the opening chorus: The illustration of the word “Alles” (Everything): one can hear all the instruments in the orchestra, and when the voices come in, they first jump an octave over two quarter notes, signifying all the possible notes in the chord, and then run up in 16th notes, singing every single note in the chord.

In the alto aria: nine times the words “Herr, so du willt” – make sure to remember this melody!

In the bass aria: the text is set in the third person, but it is almost as if Jesus himself is speaking here, and this is where the text moves to the “Ich will’s tun” (I will do it / I am willing) words from the gospel.

In the soprano aria*: the happy and sweet elaboration on the “Ich will’s tun” – which here turns into “my Jesus will do it!”

The closing chorale: the same text and tune Bach uses throughout cantata 111 for this same Sunday in 1725, as well as in the St. Matthew Passion (but in that case with different harmonies in the last four lines!)

***

Next, listen to cantata 73 Herr, wie du willt, so schick’s mit mir in a fantastic recording by Collegium Vocale Gent/Philippe Herreweghe, from 2013, on Spotify soloists: Dorothee Mields (soprano), Thomas Hobbs (tenor), Peter Kooy (bass)

or their 1990 recording here on YouTube soloists: Barbara Schlick (soprano), Howard Crook (tenor) and Peter Kooij (bass).

Please note: these are two different Herreweghe recordings. The newest one, on Herreweghe’s own label, features a different soprano and tenor soloist than on his earlier recording of this same cantata (Virgin Classics, 1990, with soprano Barbara Schlick and tenor Howard Crook). I like this new one better. The entire CD is wonderful, and also features fabulous counter-tenor Damien Guillon in the other cantatas on the disc. If you like this recording, please consider supporting the artists by purchasing it on Amazon.

What to listen for in cantata 73:

In the opening chorus: the first four notes of the original chorale Herr, wie du willt, so schick’s mit mir in Leiden und Sterben, used as a four-note “Leitmotiv,” first appearing staccato in the horn in the orchestra:

Screenshot 2016-01-22 23.47.40
and at the very end of the movement, homophonically in the choir, repeated three times, not something Bach normally does in cantata opening choruses:
Screenshot 2016-01-22 23.54.06

In the bass aria: now the “Herr, wie du willt” from the chorale text turns in to “Herr, so du willt” from the gospel text. And to accentuate this, Bach again gives this text its own “Leitmotiv”-like melody. However, it might not have been a new melody. It is very similar to “Bist du bei mir” from Anna Magdalena’s music book. She wrote this aria in her book much later, but it was copied from an opera aria by Stölzel from 1717. Perhaps this opera aria was already being hummed in the Bach household in 1724, we will never know. Later in the bass aria in cantata 73, the “Herr, so du willt”-melody from the alto aria of cantata 72 returns!

What I love especially in this bass-aria is the illustration of “Leichenglocken” (death bells) by pizzicato strings and a somewhat “tolling” movement in the vocal part. My mother (a walking Bach encyclopedia who played a cantata on the turntable / CD player every Sunday) would always point features like this out to me. Bach used it in many other cantatas, for example in (cantata number/movement number): 8/1, 95/5, 105/4, 127/3, 161/4, 198/4. [Thanks again to Eduard van Hengel, I didn’t have to look this up myself].

* While overall I like Bach Collegium Japan’s recording of cantata 72 best, and I love how Rachel Nicholls sings the soprano aria, I would like to mention that on Montreal Baroque’s recording of this work, the soprano aria by Monika Mauch is excellent and worth listening to. How she makes everything calm on the words “sanft und still” is very special.

More links:

Wieneke Gorter, January 24, 2016; links updated January 25, 2020, and January 23, 2021.