Weekly Cantata

~ Memories, musings, and movie script fantasies inspired by Bach cantatas, along with recommendations for recordings

Weekly Cantata

Tag Archives: Ton Koopman

Passion stress for Bach plus two more cantata movements disguised as organ works

05 Monday Mar 2018

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

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Amsterdam Baroque Choir, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, Bach, Bine Katrine Bryndorf, Bogna Bartosz, Copenhagen, Garnisons Kirke, Grote Kerk Leeuwarden, Jörg Dürmüller, John Eliot Gardiner, Leeuwarden, Leipzig, Margaret Faultless, Schübler, St. John Passion, St. Matthew Passion, St. Thomas Church, Ton Koopman

Bach_house_Leipzig

On the left the rebuilt Thomas School Anno 1732. The apartment of the Bach family was on the left of the building. On the right is “a part of the Cather(ine) Street”. Zimmermann’s Café which hosted Bach’s Collegium Musicum was located in the center building labeled “2”.

Around this time in 1725, Bach was still on a break from writing cantatas (they were not to be performed in Leipzig during the 40 days before Easter), but was by no means resting. On the contrary, he was likely rather stressed out about his passion music for Good Friday 1725.

We know that on Good Friday 1725, Bach performed a revised version of his St. John Passion from 1724. We don’t know why he revised it, and some scholars such as John Elliot Gardiner even suggest that Bach had been planning to perform a St. Matthew Passion instead.*

If we could only travel back in time and find out what happened. If it was indeed Bach’s plan to perform a completely new composition, why did he not perform it until 1727? Did he simply run out of time, or did the Leipzig city council not approve of the piece? And why exactly did he revise the St. John Passion? Did he want to change it himself, or had the presentation of Jesus as victor** in the original 1724 version irked the city council?

Now for some music, related to my previous blog post, but completely unrelated to the passion stress story above:

Following up on my post from two weeks ago, there are two more cantata movements that show up in Bach’s “Schübler” organ chorales:

The fifth movement of Cantata 10 Meine Seele erhebt den Herren (live performance in the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig by alto Bogna Bartosz, tenor Jörg Dürmüller, and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra under the direction of Ton Koopman) disguised as organ chorale BWV 648 (Ton Koopman on the historic Müller organ (1724) of the Grote Kerk in Leeuwarden, The Netherlands) with the same title. Click on the links to watch and listen on YouTube.

Also: the second movement of Cantata 137 Lobe den Herren, den mächtigen König der Ehren from 1725 (violinist Margaret Faultless with all the altos of the Amsterdam Baroque Choir under the direction of Ton Koopman), transformed into organ chorale BWV 650 Kommst du nun, Jesu, vom Himmel herunter (Bine Katrine Bryndorf on the historic organ (1724) of the Garnisons Kirke in Copenhagen, Denmark). Click on the links to listen on YouTube.

Wieneke Gorter, March 5, 2018

*In his book Music in the Castle of Heaven, John Elliot Gardiner makes a strong case that Bach might have initially planned to have the St. Matthew Passion ready for Good Friday 1725. Read this blog post to find out why that is not an unlikely scenario at all.

**Read more about this in this blog post

Cantata movements in organ works

17 Saturday Feb 2018

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

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Bach, BWV 140, BWV 549, BWV 6, BWV 645, BWV 647, BWV 93, chorales, Dorothee Mields, Freiberg, Groningen, Ignace Bossuyt, J.S. Bach Foundation, Jan Hage, Kloosterkerk, Martini Church, Michael Schultheis, organ, Philippe Herreweghe, Schübler, Schnitger-Hinsz, Seligenstadt, Silbermann, The Netherlands, Ton Koopman, Wim van Beek

bach-schubler-titelblad
Title page of Schübler’s edition of six of Bach’s organ chorales based on cantata movements, known nowadays as the “Schübler Chorales.” The two last lines are instructions on where to purchase more of these: in Leipzig from Bach himself, from his sons in Berlin and Halle, and from the publisher [Schübler] in Zella.

There is no cantata for this Sunday, as no figural music was allowed in Leipzig in the 40 days before Easter, with the exception of the feast of the Annunciation (March 25).

For me this means I now finally have time to share some of what I learned during the Bach Festival in Bruges. On Friday January 26 I attended an all-day lecture by Professor Ignace Bossuyt about how Bach “reworked” his own music and the music of others in his compositions. The biggest eye-opener for me was that all Bach’s “Schübler Chorales” for organ (named after their publisher, Johann Georg Schübler) from 1747/1748 are actually arrangements of movements from Bach’s 1724/1725 cycle of cantatas I have been discussing on this blog since June 2017.

While I am not an organist at all, I did grow up in the land of organs and miss hearing them. My mother comes from a family of organists on her mother’s side. When other little boys dreamed of cars, my father dreamed of being an organist and built organ keyboards from blocks at home and would pretend to play them (sadly because of class perception his parents didn’t deem it appropriate to send him for lessons). Thus my parents were extremely picky where we went to church – there had to be a good organist. So I heard my share of Bach chorale preludes and Schübler Chorales, even before I knew what they were.

Because of the funeral service for my mother in the Kloosterkerk in The Hague I already referred to last week, I also have a soft spot for Bach’s “Schübler Chorale” BWV 645, Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme, because the incomparable Jan Hage (now organist at the Dom Church in Utrecht) played this at the end of the service, as we were walking out behind the coffin. This music, together with smiles of dear friends we passed by, gave me great comfort at a moment that could otherwise have been unbearable. Listen to this chorale, played by Jan Hage on that same organ of the Kloosterkerk in The Hague, here on YouTube. Another wonderful, and historically significant, performance of this chorale by Ton Koopman, on the Silbermann organ* (1714) in the Freiberg Cathedral, Germany, can be found here on YouTube. Bach and Silbermann knew each other, and Bach might have played on this organ too.

What I didn’t know until Professor Bossuyt’s lecture is that this piece of music was taken from the fourth movement of Cantata 140 with the same title. This cantata is officially not part of the 1724/1725 cycle, but in Bach’s head in 1747 it probably was. Bach wrote Cantata 140 Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme in 1731, most likely in an attempt to leave a complete chorale cantata cycle for posterity. During the chorale cantata cycle of 1724/1725, there had been no 26th or 27th Sunday after Trinity (by that time it was already Advent and it is of course no coincidence that Bach uses an Advent chorale in this cantata). Watch the tenor solo from this Cantata 140 Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme by all the tenors and baritones of the Amsterdam Baroque Choir (on a live recording conducted by Ton Koopman) here on YouTube.

I have two more beautiful examples of how Bach arranged an existing chorale cantata movements into his “Schübler Chorales”:

Bach turned the fourth movement of Cantata 93 Wer nur den lieben Gott lässt walten into the Schübler Chorale with the same title, BWV 647. Watch the duet from Cantata 93 by the J.S. Bach Foundation with soprano Miriam Feuersinger and alto Jan Börner here on Youtube. Watch the Schübler chorale played by Michael Schultheis on the organ of the Basilica in Seligenstadt, Germany, here on YouTube.

The last example is from a cantata that is nowadays not considered a true chorale cantata, but if Bach used it for the Schübler chorales, we can assume that he himself did regard it as such. It is Cantata 6 Bleib bei uns, denn es will Abend werden for Easter Monday in 1725. Hear Dorothee Mields sing the third movement from Cantata 6 live here on YouTube. Then listen here on YouTube to Dutch organist Wim van Beek play the Schübler Chorale with the same title, BWV 549, on the historic Schnitger-Hinsz organ (1740) in the Martini church in Groningen, The Netherlands.

Wieneke Gorter, February 17, 2018, links updated December 2, 2019

*learn more about the Silbermann organ here.

New Year’s Day 1725

31 Sunday Dec 2017

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

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1725, Annette Markert, Christophe Pregardien, Klaus Mertens, New Year's Day, Sibylla Rubens, Ton Koopman

Happy New Year! It’s still 2017 in California as I am writing this, always a bit strange, this time difference, but it is so great to know that I have readers all over the world, from New Zealand to India to France to Brazil to Canada.

Today’s Cantata 41 Jesu, nun sei gepreiset still has a bit of Christmas in it, especially in the soprano aria with the pastoral accompaniment of the three oboes, and with an orchestration worthy of a feast day: timpani, 3 trumpets, 3 oboes,  violoncello piccolo, plus the regular strings and organ. But that’s about the only relation this cantata has with the Christmas story.

The best recording of this cantata available on YouTube is the one by Koopman. You can listen to it here. Soloists are Sibylla Rubens, soprano; Annette Markert, alto; Christoph Prégardien, tenor; and Klaus Mertens, bass.

Find the German texts with English translations of Cantata 41 here, and the score here.

Normally, on New Year’s Day, it would be time to talk about the name-giving of Jesus (the day of the circumcision), see my New Year’s Day post from last year.  While Bach clearly indicates on the first page of this cantata’s manuscript that it is intended “For the “Feast of the Circumcision,” nothing in the text or music of this cantata refers to this.

This year, Bach and his librettist have chosen to focus on the old year / new year theme instead, the same way they did that yesterday for the more intimate Cantata 122. Is this perhaps another indication that this particular New Year’s, 1725, the time on the calendar was more important than the time in the Lutheran church year?

While yesterday Bach was inspired by the early medieval tradition of conflating Christmas with New Year, today it is all about the “Alpha and Omega,” the beginning and the end, in Bach’s time seen as a symbol for God’s extended care of the people. Eduard van Hengel gives the following examples for this:

  • The closing chorale has as much musical “fanfare” in it as the opening chorus, which is rather unusual for a Bach cantata.
  • The main key of the cantata is C Major, which is at the beginning as well as at the end of the sequence of key signatures.
  • In the alto recitative, which is not in they key of C at all, Bach does move to that key just for the text “A und O,” so that A sounds on a high C and O on a low C.
  • The violoncello piccolo part in the tenor aria requires the full range of the instrument, symbolizing the full extent of God’s care.

Also listen for the brilliant illustrations of Satan in the music of the bass aria: Bach uses “forbidden” intervals, also called “diabolus in musica” (the devil in the music), and writes a very unusual “insert” for the choir in the bass aria on the text “Den Satan unter unsre Füsse treten.”

Wieneke Gorter, December 31, 2017

 

 

Bass arias with trumpet

22 Sunday Oct 2017

Posted by cantatasonmymind in Cantatas, Leipzig, Trinity

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19th Sunday after Trinity, Amsterdam Baroque Choir, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, Annette Markert, Azumi Takada, Bach, Bach Collegium Japan, cantatas, Christoph Prégardien, Gerd Türk, Gottfried Reiche, Klaus Mertens, Leipzig, Pascal Bertin, Peter Kooij, Peter Kooy, slide trumpet, Stephen Keavy, Susanne Rydén, Sybilla Rubens, Ton Koopman, Trinity, Trinity 19, trumpet

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.

If you don’t want to miss an episode of this 1724/1725 chorale cantata exploration, please consider signing up  to receive an email every time I’ve posted a new story. How to do this: If you are on a desktop computer, look to the left of this text, where it says “Follow Blog via Email,” enter your email address, and press the “Follow” button. If you are reading this on a smartphone, keep scrolling down until you find the same text.

Starlight shining on a Trinity cantata

15 Sunday Oct 2017

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

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18th Sunday after Trinity, Bach, Bach Collegium Japan, Bachstiftung, BWV 103, BWV 96, Christmas, cornetto, Deborah York, Epiphany, flauto piccolo, flute, Franziska Gottwald, J.S. Bach Foundation, Jan Börner, Julius Pfeifer, Maurice Steger, Nik Tasarov, Noëmi Sohn-Nad, Paul Agnew, Peter Kooij, Peter Kooy, Rudolf Lutz, sopranino recorder, St. Thomas Church, Thomaskirche, Ton Koopman, Trinity 18, Wolf Matthias Friedrich

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.

A double bill for July 2

01 Saturday Jul 2017

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

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Bach Collegium Japan, Deborah York, Gerd Türk, Pascal Bertin, Peter Kooy, Ton Koopman

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. My favorite recording of this cantata is by Bach Collegium Japan with countertenor Pascal Bertin, tenor Gerd Türk and bass Peter Kooij.

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, very well done by the basses of Bach Collegium Japan. Listen to this entire 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.

*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.

“Cantate” Sunday – or the fourth Sunday after Easter, 1724

13 Saturday May 2017

Posted by cantatasonmymind in After Easter, Cantatas, Leipzig

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Bach, Leipzig, Ton Koopman

Thomaskirche_Interior

Interior of the Thomaskirche (St. Thomas Church) in Leipzig.

For “Cantate” Sunday, or the fourth Sunday after Easter in 1724, Bach wrote a short but masterful cantata: BWV 166 Wo gehest du hin? I wrote a long but educational and hopefully also entertaining post about this cantata last year. I explain how Bach illustrates that this is the “singing” Sunday, why there is so much talk of “going away” in this cantata, and why I recommend the recording by Ton Koopman/Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra. Read that post here.

Wieneke Gorter, May 12, 2017

Second Sunday after Easter 1724

30 Sunday Apr 2017

Posted by cantatasonmymind in After Easter, Cantatas, Leipzig

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2nd Sunday after Easter, Amsterdam Baroque Choir, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, Bach, BWV 104, BWV 85, cantatas, Klaus Mertens, Paul Agnew, Ton Koopman

christ-the-good-shepherd
Christ the Good Shepherd, by Bartolome Esteban Murillo, c. 1660. Museo del Prado, Madrid.

We keep following Bach in 1724. For the second Sunday after Easter of that year, he composed cantata 104 Du Hirte Israel, höre. Of all the recordings I listened to, I prefer the one of Ton Koopman with his Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Choir, here on YouTube.

Please consider purchasing this recording here on Amazon, or here on iTunes.

Find the text of this cantata 104 here, and the score here.

Agnew
Paul Agnew

My main reason for choosing this recording is tenor Paul Agnew’s fabulous singing. Type his name in the “search” box on this blog and you’ll find more fan mail from me 🙂

But also: this recording has the best balance among the voice parts in the choir in the opening chorus, and Klaus Mertens presents a bass aria I can actually listen to without getting irritated.

This is a very pretty cantata, entirely based on the “good shepherd” theme for this Sunday, using pastoral motifs in the music, oboes in the orchestra, and displaying an innocent character overall, much more so than the more complicated cantata 85 Bach would write for this same Sunday a year later, which I wrote about last year in this post.

Wieneke Gorter, April 30, 2017.

On my mother’s birthday, March 24

24 Friday Mar 2017

Posted by cantatasonmymind in Cantatas

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Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, Bach, Bach Collegium Japan, bwv 127, bwv 202, bwv 44, cantatatas, Caroline Stam, Collegium Vocale Gent, Dorothee Mields, Masaaki Suzuki, Nancy Argenta, Phlippe Herreweghe, Ton Koopman

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

my mother with my daughter, The Hague, summer of 2009

This year, on March 24, my mother would have turned 71. Sadly, she left us on November 19, 2010, after a tragic illness we only understood to be a terminal one on September 5 of that same year. To say that those months were an emotional roller coaster for all involved is an understatement. Normally very liberal and progressive in her Christianity, my mother turned very pious in her last weeks, and during that time she didn’t really let any persons in anymore, only music.

One of the major reasons I started this blog in January 2016 was to continue my mother’s legacy of playing the cantata for the appropriate Sunday every week, but also to remember the joy of going to concerts with my mother and listening to recordings together with her.

So I would like to think of this post as a short radio program with beautiful Bach music, featuring three soprano arias I strongly associate with my mother, sung by singers she and I adore(d).

A fond childhood memory is my mother, my sister, and I taking the bus from the little town where we lived to a town 15 kilometers (9 miles) away, where my mother was going to sing a solo in a wedding service. I remember what she wore: a light blue dress with tiny white and red flowers on it, a narrow red belt, and red sandals with heels. The solo she was singing was the aria “Sehet in Zufriedenheit” from cantata 202. I remember being in awe that she was standing there on the organ loft and singing it so beautifully. A gorgeous example of this aria, in the exact tempo in which my mother liked to perform it, is this recording of Nancy Argenta with Ensemble Sonnerie under the direction of Monica Huggett:

Sehet in Zufriedenheit
See in contentment
Tausend helle Wohlfahrtstage,
a thousand bright and prosperous days,
Dass bald bei der Folgezeit
so that soon as time passes
Eure Liebe Blumen trage!
your love may bear its flower!

Much later, my parents had a subscription to the series of cantata performances by the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra with Ton Koopman, and there they got to see and hear many different soprano soloists. I remember them being impressed with Caroline Stam. Hear her sing the aria “Es ist und bleibt der Christen Trost” from cantata 44, one of my mother’s favorite Bach cantata arias of all time,  with the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra under the direction of Ton Koopman.

Es ist und bleibt der Christen Trost,
The consolation of Christians is and remains
Dass Gott vor seine Kirche wacht.
God’s watchful care over his church.
Denn wenn sich gleich die Wetter türmen,
For even though at times the clouds gather,
So hat doch nach den Trübsalstürmen
yet after the storms of affliction
Die Freudensonne bald gelacht.
the sun of joy has soon smiled on us.

We felt extremely blessed that Caroline Stam agreed to sing at my mother’s funeral service. We asked her to sing Purcell’s “Evening Hymn,” since that had been in the top 5 on my mother’s iPod in her last weeks. But for the Bach aria, we let Caroline pick what she would like to sing. I am still very grateful for that decision. Always very conscious of texts, Caroline chose the hauntingly beautiful “Die Seele ruht” from cantata 127. For years, I have not been able to listen to this aria, but now I can again, though it still makes me cry a little. Hear Dorothee Mields sing this aria with Collegium Vocale Ghent under the direction of Philippe Herreweghe:

Die Seele ruht in Jesu Händen,
My soul rests in the hands of Jesus,
Wenn Erde diesen Leib bedeckt.

Though earth covers this body
Ach ruft mich bald, ihr Sterbeglocken,
Ah, call me soon, you funereal bells,
Ich bin zum Sterben unerschrocken,

I am not terrified to die
Weil mich mein Jesus wieder weckt.

Since my Jesus will awaken me again.

If you would like to read more, here are five posts from 2016 in which I talk about my mother a lot or a little bit:

The order of things

Glorious soprano arias and unusual instrumentation

The Crown on Bach’s 1723 Trinity season

Many things to be proud of

Our Christmas Morning

Wieneke Gorter, March 24, 2017

Trinity 4: Two cantatas make one

18 Saturday Jun 2016

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

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according to Lutheran Church year, Bach Collegium Japan, Gerd Türk, John Eliot Gardiner, Kai Wessel, Klaus Mertens, Robin Blaze, Ton Koopman

Brueghel_the_Blind

Pieter Brueghel the Elder: The Parable of the Blind Leading the Blind, 1568

Previously on Weekly Cantata: For his first three Sundays in Leipzig, Bach presented ambitious, two-part cantatas, the first part before the sermon, the second part after.  On this Trinity 4, June 20 1723, the congregation and the musicians in Leipzig may still have had the trumpets and timpani from the impressive closing chorus of last week’s Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis going through their heads.

Up until now, it seems to all have been part of a plan: Bach probably wrote his cantatas for Trinity 1 (cantata 75) and Trinity 2 (cantata 76) while still living in Köthen, and most likely had also been planning all along to perform cantata 21 on Trinity 3. *

But now what to do for Trinity 4? In his stack of Weimar cantata manuscripts there was a nice one, very closely referring to the Gospel for the day (Luke 6: 36-42), but it was too short, and not very impressively scored.

So, it was time to write a new cantata that could function as Part I, the part before the sermon, and then present the one from Weimar after the sermon, as part II. This newly composed piece became cantata 24 Ein ungefärbt Gemüte. Only four weeks into his new post at Leipzig,  and possibly up to his ears in getting things organized at the St. Thomas School, Bach had not had the time (or the social intelligence, we don’t know) to find a librettist, so for this cantata he used a pre-existing text by Erdmann Neumeister, a Leipzig-trained theologian, who was preaching at the St. Jacob church in Hamburg from 1715 to 1756. Bach may very well have met him there, since this was the same church where he applied for the post of cantor and organist in 1720. Neumeister’s many volumes of cantata texts were published in the early 1700s, and through the excellent library at the castle in Weimar Bach might have had access to these too, as he already used a Neumeister text for his Weimar Advent cantata 61 from 1714.

The recording of cantata 24 Ein ungefärbt Gemüte I like the best is Bach Collegium Japan’s recording, with beautiful singing by countertenor Robin Blaze and tenor Gerd Türk in the arias. Listen to this cantata on Spotify, or purchase the album on Amazon. Read the German texts with English translations here.

Though on a much smaller scale than cantata 75 from three weeks ago, this cantata 24 again displays a wonderful symmetry: Bach emphasizes that the main message “Everything that you want other people to do to you, you should do yourself for them” is at the center of the cantata text. He sets that part of the text to an intricate choral piece with the fullest instrumentation of the entire cantata, including trumpet, and scores the arias and recitatives around this main message much more soberly. In the two recitatives, Bach accentuates the words at the end of each by letting the music blossom out into an arioso in those spots. This happens on this text in the tenor recitative:

Mach aus dir selbst ein solches Bild (Make yourself such an image)
Wie du den Nächsten haben willt! (As you want your neighbour to have)

and in the bass recitative on these words:

So geht es dort, so geht es hier. (These things go on here, there and everywhere.)
Der liebe Gott behüte mich dafür! (That the dear God preserve me from this!)

Then comes Part Two, cantata 185 Barmherziges Herze der ewigen Liebe, written in Weimar in 1715. For this 1723 Leipzig re-creation of it, Bach transposed it from F sharp minor to G minor, since the tuning in Weimar was different than in Leipzig, and had a trumpet play the chorale tune in the opening duet, instead of an oboe.

Of all the recordings I listened to, only Gardiner brings to life the opening duet of this Leipzig version of cantata 185, with a trumpet playing instead of an oboe. Listen to a recording of that first movement by Gardiner, with soprano Magdalena Kozena and tenor Paul Agnew, on YouTube. However, for the wonderful alto rectitative and aria that come next, as well as the bass recitative and aria, I feel the need to switch to Koopman’s recording, with countertenor Kai Wessel and bass Klaus Mertens. Listen to this recording on YouTube, starting with the alto recitative (when you click on this link, it starts at 4m1s into the cantata).

I am too much of a countertenor lover to pass up this heavenly singing by Kai Wessel for Nathalie Stutzmann on the Gardiner recording, but I realize others might prefer it the other way around. I’m also not completely convinced by Gardiner’s argument that Bach is imitating an irritating Weimar preacher in the bass recitative and aria, so while Gardiner’s bass soloist Nicolas Testé very skillfully portrays this interpretation, it is a bit overdone to my taste.

So why not listen to the entire Koopman recording of this cantata?  Well, there’s the strange opening duet: Koopman makes the surprising choice to have the choir sopranos sing the chorale melody with text instead of having an oboe (per the Weimar version) or a trumpet (per the Leipzig version) play that part. This decision is not explained in their liner notes. And while I like soprano Barbara Schlick’s and tenor Guy de Mey’s individual voices, I feel that Schlick’s voice outbalances De Mey’s on this recording.

One wonders: was the new job as teacher at the St. Thomas School and director of the choir a bit overwhelming for Bach, or was he by this time already getting frustrated with the lack of skill and talent among the choir boys? A few years later, he would complain to the council that there weren’t enough strong voices, and that he needed the good instrumentalists among them to fill the many vacant seats in the orchestra, and could thus not use them in the choir. It is interesting to see how, after the many challenging choral pieces in cantata 21 last week, there is only one polyphonic chorus part in the  combined cantatas for today, and only an embellished chorale in the cantata for the feast of St. John the Baptist Bach was preparing for June 24.

Wieneke Gorter, June 18, 2016

*Please note: the numbers we use now for these cantatas are a product of the 19th and 20th century. Bach never gave his compositions numbers, and he must have referred to the cantatas by title only.

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