Johann Sebastian Bach
Page 41
The Thomascantor must surely have regretted his inability to complete the chorale cantata cycle in 1725, because he tried sporadically to fill in some gaps, perhaps with the intention of rounding off or even finishing the Jahrgang (Table 8.9). Texts for all Sundays and feast days from the first Sunday after Trinity up to and including Annunciation were apparently completed by the original librettist of the chorale cantata cycle, so Bach could later set a few texts that he had not needed in 1724–25, such as BWV 14 and 140 (there was neither a fourth Sunday after Epiphany nor a twenty-seventh Sunday after Trinity), or did not compose then, such as BWV 9 (Bach was out of town on the sixth Sunday after Trinity).72 However, having lost his librettist, Bach tried to finish the incomplete cycle also with cantatas based on unparaphrased hymns, that is, chorale cantatas of the per omnes versus variety—represented in the 1724–25 cycle solely by BWV 107. He began filling in gaps as early as in the summer of 1725 (BWV 137), added BWV 129 in 1726, and thereafter several others, among them such magnificent works as BWV 112 and 177. The chorale cantata cycle was, nonetheless, never brought to completion, at least not according to the surviving sources. Transmission patterns indicate, however, that in Bach’s library the nonchorale cantatas that filled the liturgical calendar from Easter to Trinity Sunday in 1725 were integrated within the third cycle,73 apparently in order to maintain the conceptual homogeneity of the chorale cantata repertoire.
TABLE 8.9. Chorale Cantatas (later additions)
BWV
Cantata
Liturgical Date
Performance
177
§ Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ
4th Sunday after Trinity
7/6/1732 s
9
Es ist das Heil uns kommen her
6th Sunday after Trinity
1732–35
137
§ Lobe den Herren, den mächtigen König der Ehren
12th Sunday after Trinity
8/19/1725
80b
Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott (new version)
Reformation Festival
1728–31
80
Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott (1st movement new)
Reformation Festival
1740
140
Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme
27th Sunday after Trinity
11/25/1731
14
Wär Gott nicht mit uns diese Zeit
4th Sunday after Epiphany
1/30/1735 s
112
§ Der Herr ist mein getreuer Hirt
Misericordias Domini
4/8/1731
129
§ Gelobet sei der Herr (see Table 8.10)
Trinity
1732
117
§ Sei Lob und Ehr dem höchsten Gut
unknown
1728–31
192
§ Nun danket alle Gott
unknown
1730
100
§ Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan, III
unknown
1732–34
97
§ In allen meinen Taten
unknown
1734 s
With the inception of the third annual cycle, the nearly uninterrupted cantata production of the previous year came to an end and, in all likelihood, was never resumed with that degree of intensity. The third Jahrgang (Table 8.10) covered a time span of about two years. As documented by a text booklet for the third to sixth Sundays after Trinity 1725,74 there are some definite gaps for which compositions by Bach must once have existed. On the other hand, for a major stretch in 1726 Bach performed no fewer than eighteen cantatas from the pen of his cousin Johann Ludwig Bach, capellmeister at the ducal court of Saxe-Meiningen, and on Good Friday of that year, a Passion by Friedrich Nicolaus Bruhns. Altogether, from mid-1725 to early 1727, Bach seems to have composed cantatas only at irregular intervals. Whatever the reason for this change of pace, it allowed him time to prepare his largest composition ever, the St. Matthew Passion, for performance on Good Friday 1727.
TABLE 8.10. Third Annual Cantata Cycle ( Jahrgang III)— Performance Schedule, 1725–27
Note: Table does not include re-performances of earlier cantatas. Brackets indicate works that were written by another composer or that are no longer extant.
Like those of the first Jahrgang, the cantatas of the third present no unifying concept, as Bach reverted to texts of varying and usually older origin. Above all, he favored sacred poetry by Georg Christian Lehms from 1711 (BWV 110, 57, 151, 16, 32, 13, 170, 35), then texts by Salomo Franck from 1715 (BWV 72) and Erdmann Neumeister from 1714 (BWV 28). Finally Bach also turned to a 1704 collection attributed to Duke Ernst Ludwig of Saxe-Meiningen (BWV 43, 39, 88, 187, 45, 102, 17) that was also set by Johann Ludwig Bach and that often presents two contrasting biblical dicta, one from the Old Testament (an introductory movement) and one from the New (a middle movement). However, apart from an uninterrupted sequence of Lehms cantatas beginning on Christmas Day 1726, no clear compositional pattern emerges. Notable is the relatively frequent occurrence of solo (BWV 52, 84, 35, etc.) and dialogue (BWV 58, 32, 49, etc.) cantatas, but of particular significance in the third cycle—as also in the fourth—is Bach’s use of preexisting concerto movements as opening instrumental sinfonias (BWV 156, 174, and 120a); the opening chorus of BWV 110 is a reworking of a concerto movement. From the summer of 1726 on, obbligato organ parts in BWV 146, 35, 169, and 49, later also in BWV 188 and 29, introduce a completely new dimension into Bach’s Leipzig church music. Perhaps his eldest son, Friedemann, was drafted to take the solo parts, but the often incomplete notation of the organ parts suggests that the composer himself took his place at the organ bench, leaving the conducting to the first choir prefect. This innovative integration of solo organ into his cantatas, which incidentally allowed for an impressive display of the church instrument, was yet another brilliant idea of the capellmeister-cantor, whose third cantata cycle bears his unmistakable mark as an instrumentalist and organ virtuoso.
Following the third cycle came a fourth that must, with the exception of a few remnants, be considered lost (Table 8.11). Conceptually resembling the second, this fourth Jahrgang returns to the plan of a uniform series of librettos. Their fertile and versatile author, Picander—nom de poésie of Christian Friedrich Henrici—would become over the years Bach’s most important Leipzig producer of texts. The collaboration between Bach and Picander, who held the public office of post commissioner in Leipzig and later served as country and city tax commissioner, seems to have begun in early 1725 with a congratulatory secular cantata for the court of Weissenfels, BWV 249a, that was subsequently transformed into an Easter cantata (see Table 8.8) and later became the Easter Oratorio, BWV 249. A year after the first performance of the St. Matthew Passion, Picander’s finest piece of sacred poetry, he published a complete cycle of Cantaten auf die Sonnund Fest-Tage durch das gantze Jahr. In the preface, dated June 24, 1728, Picander writes, “Actuated by the requests of many good friends, and by much devotion on my own part, I resolved to compose the present cantatas. I undertook the design the more readily, because I flatter myself that the lack of poetic charm may be compensated for by the loveliness of the music of our incomparable Capellmeister Bach, and that these songs may be sung in the main churches of our pious Leipzig.”75
TABLE 8.11. Fourth Annual Cantata Cycle (“Picander Jahrgang”)
BWV
Cantata
Liturgical
Date Performance
Cantatas on texts by Christian Friedrich Henrici (Picander), published 1728:
197a
Ehre sei Gott in der Höhe (incomplete)
Christmas Day
12/25/1728(?)
171
Gott, wie dein Name, so ist auch dein Ruhm
New Year’s Day
1/1/1729(?)
156
Ich steh mit einem Fuß im Grabe
1/23/1729(?)
84
Ich bin vergnügt mit meinem Glücke
Septuagesimae
2/9/1727
159
Sehet, wir gehn hinauf gen Jerusalem
Estomihi
2/27/1729(?)
[244
St. Matthew Passion, 1st version/2 nd performance
Good Friday (Vespers)
4/15/1729]
Anh.
Ich bin ein Pilgrim auf der
190
Welt (fragment)
2nd day of Easter
4/18/1729(?)
145
Ich lebe, mein Herze, zu deinem Ergötzen
3rd day of Easter
4/19/1729(?)
174
Ich liebe den Höchsten von ganzem Gemüte
2nd day of Pentecost
6/6/1729a
149
Man singet mit Freuden vom Sieg
St. Michael’s Day
9/29/1728–29
188
Ich habe meine Zuversicht
21st Sunday after Trinity
10/17/1728 (?) or 11/6/1729
(Outside the 1728 publication:)
157
Ich lasse dich nicht, du segnest mich denn
Purification after
1727
Even if this statement was only wishful thinking on the author’s part, Bach definitely completed nine cantatas on Picander’s texts (Table 8.11) and may have composed others whose sources have not survived. Indeed, traces of lost materials may be found in the two printed editions of Bach’s four-part chorales published in 1765/69 and 1783–87.76 Among the chief features of the Picander cantatas is the interpolation of chorale and free poetry in arias and choruses, giving the composer opportunities for various sorts of combinatorial techniques (as in BWV 156/2, 159/2, and nos. 1 and 19 of the St. Matthew Passion).
TABLE 8.12. Cantatas and Related Works Outside the Annual Cycles
BWV
Cantata
Liturgical Date
First Performance
36
Schwingt freudig euch empor (2 parts) (new version)
1st Sunday in Advent
12/2/1731
248 ‡
Christmas Oratorio, Parts I–VI
Christmas Day to Epiphany
12/25/1734–1/6/1735a
249
Easter Oratorio (new version)
Easter Sunday
~1738
158
Der Friede sei mit dir
3rd day of Easter
1724–1735
11 ‡
Ascension Oratorio
Ascension Day
5/19/1735
34 ‡
O ewiges Feuer, o Ursprung der Liebe
Whitsunday
1746–47
30 ‡
Freue dich, erlöste Schar (2 parts)
St. John’s Day
1738
51
Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen
15th Sunday after Trinity
9/17/1730(?)
50
Nun ist das Heil und die Kraft (single movement)
St. Michael’s Day
uncertain
200
Bekennen will ich seinen Namen (single movement)
unknown
1742
248a
Text unknown (music surviving in BWV 248/VI)
unknown
1734
1045
Sinfonia (cantata lost)
unknown
1743–46
As for the Obituary’s reference to a total of five complete annual cantata cycles, the fifth is hardly recognizable among the extant sources, let alone re-constructible (Table 8.12). This Jahrgang would not, in all likelihood, have had the kind of consistency displayed by the second and Picander cycles. And if the first Jahrgang (1723–24) had indeed been planned and largely completed as a double cycle, the fifth could be found there, that is, in the “other half” of the first. But while there are some modest signs of Bach’s continuing though reduced production of church cantatas and related works, among them the two oratorios for Christmas and Ascension Day, BWV 248 and 11, as well as the cantata fragments BWV 200, 248a, and 1045, the list of extant works provides little evidence for postulating a late—post-1730—cantata cycle. As far as we can see, the cantatas written after 1729 contribute nothing essentially new to Bach’s output in this genre. However, we can note his increased receptiveness toward new stylistic trends, especially in arias of the later cantatas (BWV 200, 248a, and 30); particularly noteworthy are revisions of existing works for re-performances, as Bach drew on the rich repertoire that he had created in his productive cantata years of the 1720s.
Complementing the extensive body of the Jahrgang cantatas are occasional works and cantatas for certain regular functions (Table 8.13), but even though some were written for special events such as an organ dedication or the 1730 jubilee of the Augsburg Confession, they do not in principle differ from the cantatas for the Sundays and feast days of the ecclesiastical year. The town council election pieces constitute a particularly important group, however, because they fall into the category of official state music for which the cantor and music director at St. Thomas’s bore the responsibility. They were performed at the service that took place annually on the Monday after St. Bartholomaeus’s Day (August 24) at St. Nicholas’s, after the formal election of the new city council and the rotation of the burgomaster seats. Like the sermon, the cantata was separately commissioned, with both the preacher and the cantor receiving extra fees. “Have ordered from Mr. Superintendent, D. Deyling, the sermon for the inauguration of the new Council, on this coming Monday, likewise the doorkeeper ordered the music from Herr Cantor,” notes the town scribe on August 22, 1729.77 The commissioned piece was due within exactly one week, but because the performance of the council piece always fell on a Monday, Bach had to prepare two different cantatas for the subsequent Sunday and Monday. And as the city council election service was a major communal-political event, Bach would have taken special care with a performance that invariably required a large ensemble and festive scoring with trumpets and timpani.
The autograph score of BWV 119 specifies a continuo group of “Violoncelli, Bassoni e Violoni all’ unisono col Organo,” such plural listing indicating the size of the orchestra and underscoring the ceremonial nature of the music to be performed, which always included a processional march to accompany the exit of the town council from the church at the end of the service. Bach’s score of BWV 120 makes reference to such an “Intrada con Trombe e Tamburi,” which has not come down to us. What has survived, however, are reports in the Leipzig papers of the so-called council sermon on August 31, 1739, on which occasion “the Royal and Electoral Court Composer and Capellmeister, Mr. Joh. Seb. Bach, performed a music that was as artful as it was pleasant; its text was: CHORUS. Wir dancken dir, Gott, wir dancken dir.”78 This performance of cantata BWV 29 began with an elaborate concerto movement for organ solo and orchestra, a sophisticated arrangement of the first movement of the Partita in E major for unaccompanied violin, BWV 1006, that most likely featured the composer as soloist. The terms “artful” and “pleasant,” however banal they may strike us today, are highly favorable judgments that far exceed what newspapers of the time generally wrote about a musical performance.
TABLE 8.13. Cantatas for Special Occasions
BWV
Cantata
Purpose
Date
119
Preise, Jerusalem, den Herrn
Election of city council
8/30/1723a
Anh. 4
Wünschet Jerusalem Glück (lost)
”
1726 or 1728
193
Ihr Tore (Pforten) zu Zion
”
8/25/1727
120 ‡
Gott, man lobet dich in
der Stille
”
1742
Anh. 3
Gott, gib dein Gerichte dem Könige (lost)
”
8/25/1730
29
Wir danken dir, Gott, wir danken dir
”
8/27/1731
Anh. 193
Herrscher des Himmels, König der Ehren (fragment)
”
8/29/1740
69
Lobe den Herrn, meine Seele (II)
”
8/26/1748
Anh. 14
Sein Segen fließt daher wie ein Strom (lost)
Wedding Mass
2/12/1725
34a
O ewiges Feuer, o Ursprungder Liebe (2 parts)
”
probably 1726