Weekly Cantata

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

Weekly Cantata

Tag Archives: Trinity 15

Maria Keohane brings Peace

20 Sunday Sep 2020

Posted by cantatasonmymind in Cantatas, Leipzig, Trinity

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BWV 110, BWV 151, BWV 51, Dresden, Emma Kirkby, European Union Baroque Orchestra, John Eliot Gardiner, Jos van Veldhoven, Lars Ulrik Mortensen, Maria Keohane, Robert Vanryne, Sebastian Philpott, Trinity 15, Weissenfels

One of the three cantatas Bach wrote for this 15th Sunday after Trinity is Cantata 51 Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen!, the famous solo-cantata for soprano and trumpet. In a world that values athletes above artists, attending or discussing a performance of this cantata can sometimes feel as if we’re all judging a tennis match instead of a work of art: will the soprano hit that high C? and how virtuoso is that trumpet player? I have always been a bit frustrated by this.

What a breath of fresh air it was then to discover Maria Keohane’s interpretation of this cantata. There are two live registrations of her singing this on YouTube, one with the European Union Baroque Orchestra, under the direction of Lars Ulrik Mortensen, with Sebastian Philpott on trumpet. Then there is a newer one, from 2015, with the Netherlands Bach Society under the direction of Jos van Veldhoven, with Robert Vanryne on trumpet. That one is my favorite, and you can find it here.

Find the German texts with English translations here (click on “Text”), and the score here.

I noticed how Maria Keohane masters every aspect of this composition, not because she’s the most virtuoso soprano on earth, but because she completely understands the music. She radiates joy, but also brings a great Calm over everything and everyone. In this wonderful interview (with English subtitles here, with Dutch subtitles here) she explains how this cantata has been with her all her music-making life, how she sees her interaction with the trumpet as a symbiosis instead of a competition, and how she believes that “in allen Landen” (in all lands) means that we share the same joy of being together on this earth.

I realize she was in Christmas mode when she gave this interview (the cantata was performed in the same concert as Cantata 110 for Christmas Day and Cantata 151 for the Third Christmas Day), but I absolutely feel the “Peace on Earth” she talks about when I listen to her performance.

Some more information about this cantata:

While almost all soprano solos in Bach’s church cantatas were intended for a boy soprano (no female musicians allowed in the churches of Leipzig), it remains a big question whether this one was ever sung by a boy. Under the “Story” tab on this website, the Netherlands Bach Society explains that Bach composed this cantata around 1730 for either the Weissenfels court (where his wife Anna Magdalena, an accomplished singer who had family there, might have performed it) or for one of the Italian opera singers who settled in Dresden that year. Even Gustav Leonhardt chose an adult female soprano (Marianne Kweksilber) for his recording of this cantata.

If you’d like to hear the perfect “boy soprano voice” sing this cantata, I invite you to listen to Emma Kirkby on the Gardiner recording from 2000, here on Spotify, or here on YouTube. While she doesn’t move me the way Maria Keohane does, her voice is an unbelievably amazing instrument.

Other cantatas for this 15th Sunday after Trinity I’ve discussed in past years: Cantata 138 from 1723, and Cantata 99 from 1724.

Wieneke Gorter, September 19, 2020.

Children’s stories

03 Saturday Sep 2016

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

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according to Lutheran Church year, Bach, Bach-Archiv Leipzig, BWV 138, cantatas, Collegium Vocale Gent, Damien Guillon, Deborah York, Dorothee Mields, Eduard van Hengel, Hana Blazikova, Ingeborg Danz, Leipzig Bach Festival, Lutheran Church year, Mark Padmore, Peter Kooy, Phlippe Herreweghe, Thomas Hobbs, Trinity 15

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). I like the soprano, alto, and tenor soloists better on the 2013 recording, but am more moved by Peter Kooij’s singing in 1998, and more taken by the slower tempo and higher sense of drama in the violins in the opening chorus on that recording. So I’ll offer a mix 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.

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