Tag Archives: Pascal Bertin

Bass arias with trumpet

22 Sunday Oct 2017

Posted by in Cantatas, Leipzig, Trinity

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bwv5_manuscript_tromba

Excerpt from the trumpet part of Cantata 5 Wo soll ich fliehen hin? copied out by J.A. Kuhnau, Bach’s principal copyist, a nephew of Bach’s predecessor at Leipzig. Bach-Archiv Leipzig/Bach Digital.

The cantata from 1724 for this Sunday, the 19th after Trinity, is terrific, with a beautiful tenor aria with viola (or violin on some recordings) and rousing bass aria with trumpet. I prefer Bach Collegium Japan’s recording of this Cantata 5, Wo soll ich fliehen hin? because of Peter Kooij’s singing in the bass aria, Azumi Takada’s viola playing in the tenor aria, and the many colors of Susanne Rydén’s voice. Listen to it on YouTube via a playlist I created. Soloists are Susanne Rydén, soprano; Pascal Bertin, countertenor; Gerd Türk, tenor; Peter Kooij, bass.

Koopman’s recording of this cantata is good too, with perhaps a nicer tempo in the opening chorus, fabulous trumpet playing by Stephen Keavy in the bass aria, and good singing by Christoph Prégardien in the tenor aria. Listen to Koopman’s recording here. Soloists on this recording are Sybilla Rubens, soprano; Annette Markert, alto; Christoph Prégardien, tenor; Klaus Mertens, bass.

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

Bach’s principal trumpet player, Gottfried Reiche, was an excellent musician, probably famous in the entire region, and apparently the only one who could play the tromba da tirarsi (slide trumpet) or corno da tirarsi (read more about that instrument in this post). And since Anna Magdalena’s father and all her three brothers-in-law were trumpet players at the regional courts, Bach knew their world well, and was most likely very well connected to many excellent players and their students. Around the feast of St. Michael’s (September 29), thousands of visitors from all over Europe would come to the Fair in Leipzig, and stay for a bit. Did Bach want to show Reiche off to all these visitors on September 29 (for Cantata 130, see below) and again this time on October 15, 1724, or were the trumpeter and/or bass singer themselves guests from out of town?

Bach paired the trumpet most often with the bass voice when writing arias. The most impressive bass arias with trumpet the Leipzig congregations would have heard between June 1723 (when Bach started working in Leipzig) and October 1724 are:

July 2, 1723: “Ich will von Jesu Wundern singen” from Cantata 147 (J.S. Bach Foundation recording from 2015 with Wolff-Matthias Friedrich, bass; Patrick Henrichs, trumpet)

August 1, 1723: “Dein Wetter zog sich auf von weiten” from Cantata 46 (Herreweghe recording from 2012 with Peter Kooij, bass; Alain De Rudder, Tromba da tirarsi).

November 14, 1723: “So löschet im Eifer der rächende Richter” from Cantata 90 (Bach Stiftung video with Klaus Häger, bass; Patrick Henrichs, trumpet)

May 28, 1724: “Heiligste Dreieinigkeit” from Cantata 172 (Leonhardt recording from 1985 with Max van Egmond, bass; Friedemann Immer, Klaus Osterloh, and Susan Willems, trumpets)

June 11, 1724: “Wacht auf, wacht auf, verloren Schafen” from Cantata 20 (Koopman recording from 1998 with Klaus Mertens, bass; Stephen Keavy, Tromba da tirarsi)

September 29, 1724, feast of St. Michael’s: “Der alte Drache brennt vor Neid” from Cantata 130 (Koopman recording from 2007 with Klaus Mertens, bass; Stephen Keavy, Jonathan Impett, and Michael Harrison, trumpets)

Wieneke Gorter, October 22, 2017, updated October 15, 2020.

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A double bill for July 2

01 Saturday Jul 2017

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

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In my effort to follow Bach’s compositions in the order in which he wrote them in 1724, I sometimes get a bit confused, because in 2017 the Sundays of the church year are exactly one week later than in 1724. Where it gets tricky is around the Feast days of St. John and the Visitation of Mary, which are always on the same date: June 24 and July 2 respectively.

See how the dates of 1724 compare to the dates of 2017 in this table here below, and you’ll understand my dilemma for today: in Bach’s time, if the feast of the Visitation fell on a Sunday, it would cancel out the theme and thus the cantata for that Sunday. That is why there is no cantata for Trinity 4 from 1724, and why Weekly Cantata will be on break next week.

Sunday/Feast day17242017Cantata
Trinity 1June 11June 1820: O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort
Trinity 2June 18June 252: Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein
St. John (Johannis)June 24June 247: Christ, unser Herr, zum Jordan kam
Trinity 3June 25(July 2)135: Ach Herr, mich armen Sünder
Visitation (Mariä Heimsuchung)July 2July 210: Meine Seele erhebt den Herren
Trinity 4July 2July 9(no cantata from 1724 because same day as Visitation)
Trinity 5July 9July 1693: Wer nur den lieben Gott lässt walten
Trinity 6July 16July 23(no cantata from 1724 because of Bach’s visit to Köthen)
Trinity 7July 23July 30107: Was willst du dich betrüben
Trinity 8July 30Aug 6178 Wo Gott der Herr nicht bei uns hält

So officially, I should present you only with the cantata for the feast of the Visitation today, but since we are listening in order of 1724, I give you some highlights of cantata 135 Ach Herr mich armen Sünder first. An update from 2021: Since I first wrote this post, a beautiful live video recording of this cantata has been released on YouTube by the J.S. Bach Foundation. Find it here.

The cantata is the last of the set of four I described in this post, and thus has the cantus firmus in the bass in the opening chorus. This is nicely done on the J.S. Bach Foundation recording, with a trombone doubling the choral bass part. But the best choral basses are still on the recording by Bach Collegium Japan. Listen to that recording on Spotify.

While the boy sopranos have a bit more work in the opening chorus (as was the case the last two weeks), there is again no soprano aria in this cantata. The Leipzig congregations haven’s heard a soprano solo since Trinity Sunday.

But then, on July 2, 1724, they get to hear the cantata for the feast of the Visitation: cantata 10 Meine Seel erhebt den Herren. With a soprano aria directly after the opening chorus, and a virtuoso one too. It might be that a talented new student had enrolled in the school, or Bach was finally ready training one, or there is a talented boy visiting for the holiday.* There is a very nice live video of Ton Koopman performing this in the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig during the Bach Festival there in 2003, with Deborah York singing the soprano aria.

Wieneke Gorter, July 1, 2017. Updated March 26, 2020, and June 19, 2021.

*Read more about the possibility of musicians visiting for this feast day in my post from last year about the Visitation. Read more about the soprano problem in this post.

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.