Tag Archives: Epiphany

Starlight shining on a Trinity cantata

15 Sunday Oct 2017

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

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threekings
The Adoration of the Kings, circa 1440. From a series of four boards from the former High Altar of the Heilig-Kreuz-Münsters in Rottweil, Germany.

In the summer and fall of 1724, Bach wrote an entire series of chorale cantatas, meaning that each cantata was based on a hymn. If at all possible, it was to be a hymn associated with that particular Sunday in the church year.  For this 18th Sunday after Trinity, he chose Herr Christ, der einige Gottessohn (Lord Christ, the only son of God). Keep reading to learn why.

When I first wrote about this Cantata 96 Herr Christ, der einige Gottessohn, in 2017, I recommended Ton Koopman’s recording. Listen to that recording here on Amazon, or here on Spotify. (It is not available on YouTube). Soloists are: Deborah York, soprano; Franziska Gottwald, alto; Paul Agnew, tenor; Klaus Mertens, bass; Heiko ter Schegget, sopranino recorder; and Wilbert Hazelzet, transverse flute.

However, since then a wonderful live video registration by the J.S. Bach Foundation has come out: you can find that here on YouTube. This is a terrific recording as well, with the added bonus that you can see the sopranino recorder and all the other instruments. Soloists in this performance are: Noëmi Sohn, soprano; Jan Börner, alto; Julius Pfeifer, tenor; Wolf-Matthias Friedrich, bass; and Maurice Steger, sopranino recorder.

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

In the Lutheran Church the chorale Herr Christ, der einige Gottessohn, one of the oldest Protestant hymns, was not so much associated with this 18th Sunday after Trinity, but more with Epiphany/Three Kings (January 6), for its reference to the Morning Star. Bach brings the luster of the Christmas season into this cantata in the most beautiful way. He gives the opening chorus a dusting of starlight by writing a part for flauto piccolo, or sopranino recorder*, over the rest of the vocal and instrumental parts. Since this time it is the altos that have the chorale melody in the opening chorus, Bach can create an ethereal link between the chorus and the flauto piccolo by way of the soprano part in the chorus. In the fifth line of the text, Er ist die Morgensterne (he is the Morning Star), he modulates to the brilliant key of E Major on the word “Morgensterne.”

But why did Bach select this chorale for a Sunday in the Trinity season? It becomes a bit more clear in the alto recitative and tenor aria. They refer to the fact that Jesus is God’s son, not David’s son. This is the only direct reference to the Gospel reading for this Sunday: Jesus giving the Jewish elders a hard time after they had claimed that he was only David’s son, not God’s son (Matthew 22: 34-46).  In the tenor aria Bach features his star flute player again.

In the soprano recitative, the focus changes to Jesus as guiding light, referring to the “he is the Morning Star” text from the chorale. The soprano’s statement that it can be hard to stay on the “right path” is illustrated in the bass aria.

We have heard faltering steps in Bach cantatas before (read my post about that here), but this time Bach offers a more theatrical illustration. In the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig a visual and aural effect would have made this even stronger: the violins, playing when the bass sings “zu rechten” (now to the right), would have stood on the right-hand balcony, the oboes, playing when the bass sings “zu linken” (now to the left) would have stood on the left-hand balcony. Also, in Bach’s rhetoric, right meant good and high, left meant bad and low.

The middle part of this cantata, with the text “Gehe doch, mein Heiland, mit” (My saviour please come with me) always moves me, especially when Peter Kooij sings it (listen to that here on Spotify, with Bach Collegium Japan).

Wieneke Gorter, October 15, 2017, updated October 8, 2020.

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*Since his arrival in Leipzig, Bach had used recorders in cantatas quite often (see this image by Nik Tarasov), but this is the very first time he writes for sopranino recorder, or “flauto piccolo.” The second time was on March 25, 1725, in Cantata 1 Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, and the third time on the third Sunday after Easter in 1725, in Cantata 103 Ihr werdet weinen und heulen.

Third Sunday after Epiphany

22 Sunday Jan 2017

Posted by in Cantatas, Epiphany, Leipzig

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There are four Bach cantatas for this Sunday, the third after Epiphany. Last year I wrote about two of them: cantatas 72 and 73. You can read that post here.

This year I’d like to share a little bit about cantata 156 Ich steh mit einem Fuß im Grabe. I did not grow up with this cantata, my mother didn’t play this one for us. Whether this was because the Harnoncourt recording of this cantata is not very satisfying, or because she liked the three other cantatas for this Sunday much better, I don’t know.

I heard cantata 156 for the first time around 2008 or so, on a recording by American Bach Soloists from 1992, and was blown away by the rich sound of the strings and by the  “groove” the ensemble finds so easily, it seems,  in the opening movement and in the tenor aria. I have not heard such comfort with the rhythm in any other recording of this cantata. It is also a historic recording: it is one of the few ABS cantata recordings on which  director Jeffrey Thomas sings the tenor arias himself. While Thomas’ voice is perhaps not as full as Gerd Türk’s on the recording by Bach Collegium Japan, I enjoy the music-making in this movement so much that it was comfort-music for me in the weeks and months after my mother passed away in 2010, and it is still one of my favorite Bach cantata recordings.

Other soloists on this recording:

oboe: John Abberger; violin: Jörg-Michael Schwarz; counter-tenor: Steven Rickards; bass: James Weaver. Choir sopranos singing in the tenor aria: Julianne Baird, Christine Earl, and Claire Kelm.

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

You might recognize the opening movement of this cantata as the second movement of Bach’s harpsichord concerto, BWV 1056. However, Bach based both the cantata movement and the harpsichord concerto movement on an oboe concerto from Köthen which is now lost.

Wieneke Gorter, January 21, 2017.

Mary’s lament

14 Saturday Jan 2017

Posted by in Cantatas, Epiphany, Weimar

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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 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. Rudolf Lutz explains extremely well (with music examples) how the notes of the solo bassoon part form in fact a lament for three voices. This video has English subtitles. 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. Link for the score updated January 16, 2021, link for the J.S. Bach Foundation video with English subtitles updated January 15, 2022.

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

Hidden messages

16 Saturday Jan 2016

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

O Jesus Christ, light of my life,
my refuge, my comfort, my reassurance,
on earth I am only a guest
And the burden of sin presses down heavily upon me.

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

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

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

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

 

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 and November 20, 2020)