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Cantata BWV 201
Geschwinde, ihr wirbelnden Winde
Discussions - Part 5 |
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Continue from Part 4 |
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Discussions in the Week of July 29, 2018 (4th round) |
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William L. Hoffman wrote (August 2, 2018):
1729 Shift: Cantata 201, Contest between Phoebus and Pan
The year 1729 was the most memorable in the Leipzig tenure of Bach with two major events determining his future as he shifted from cantor of church service music to Leipzig music director. In March, he took over the directorship of the university Collegium musicum, presenting weekly concerts at Zimmermann's coffee house and gardens, totaling 100 hours a year and including instrumental works, local profane music, and selections of other composers. Meanwhile, Bach had come into continual conflict with the cantor local conservative faction on the penurious Town Council. They insisted that he present no operatic music, submit the librettos for each church piece in advance of publication, and focus his energies on teaching non-musical subjects at the Thomas School. They showed virtually no interest in his church year music pursuits or other compositions. The council also forbid him (out of spite?) from teaching at the University of Leipzig, and also banned another outsider, reformist Rector Johann Matthias Gessner (1730-35), from teaching.
While Bach had cordial relations with the student groups and certain progressive faculty, the university despite its tradition of collaboration with previous cantors/music directors with university diplomas, also was jealous of emoluments and opportunities over which they had little authority, otherwise being penny-wise and mean-spirited. Celebrations and homage events involving the greater community of governance, wealth, and church brought Bach considerable success, says Klaus Eidam.1 A central one is the general drammi per musica, Cantata 201, Contest between Phoebus and Pan: "Geschwinde, ihr wirbelnden Winde" (Hurry, you whirling winds), possibly Bach's premiere performance as director opening the Michaelmas fall Leipzig Fair at Zimmermann's, 31 September 1729. Not composed for a particular occasion, it was Bach's central creative statement as a Learned Musician, also found in other Bach music and writings. The almost hour-long mini-moralist opera Cantata 201 has six characters and full orchestra in 15 movements of alternating arias and recitatives.
It is Bach's "own artistic credo in musical form," says Wolff (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Performers/Koopman.htm#C4, "Liner Notes"). It contrasts Pan's course, crude style with the Phoebus/Apollo "highly polished artistic style," each with a second, Lydian mountain god Tmolus and Phrygian king Midas, and neutral observers Momus, the god of mockery, and Mercury, the versatile messenger of the gods. Picander wrote the libretto (see below, "Cantata 201 Origins, Book, Plot). Bach reperformed Cantata 201 in the latter half of the 1730s, probably in response to the Johann Adolph Scheibe criticism, and in 1749 with textual additions. The work combines the palatial celebratory sense with the pastorale, natural environment, both with deep spiritual and earthly character, and bring to the agenda six diverse and striking dance styles of gigue-passepied, sarabande, menuett, siciliano, polonaise, and gavotte.2 This music shows Bach at the height of his powers, mature and self-assured, utilizing them in this complex, diversified real world that is mad, bad, glad, and sad — full of the substances of depth and breadth.
Thomas School Rector Ernesti Death
The death later in 1729 of the aged (77-year-old) Thomas School Rector (Headmaster) Johann Heinrich Ernesti enabled Bach to utilize favorable assets to hold the memorial service and to provide the burial music, Motet BWV 226, "Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf" (The spirit comes to help our weakness, Romans 8:26, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbq5sW2hWLE). Ernesti also was a professor of poetry at the University of Leipzig and respected there and in the community. Eventually, Bach's music became part of the solemn, academic ceremony held at the official Leipzig University Paulinerkirche, with burial there. The sermon on the chosen text at the appropriate venue, Paul’s Letter to the Romans 8:26-27, was delivered by St. Thomas Pastor Christian Weise Sr., listed as Thursday, October 21. Weise’s printed sermon “emphasizes the words ‘Ehren-Gedächtniß’ [remembrace in honor of] and ‘Todes-Bereitung’[in preparation of death]” as a “remembrance service.” The text is a Motette zur Gedächtnispredigt von Johann Heinrich Ernesti. For the University of Leipzig, however, the death of a distinguished scholar was an event that called for commemoration, and the students commissioned Bach to compose BWV 226, “Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf,” the only motet whose precise original function is documented, for a memorial service held in the University church of St Paul on 20 October (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/VD/BWV226.htm, 4th round, 3 October 2016). In his later years Ernesti had rather let things deteriorate at the Thomas School, making few requests of the Town Council: discipline was poor, petty rules were enforced and the school building and cantor's residence in urgent need of repair and enlargement.
In addition to Bach’s Motet BWV 226, the Ernesti memorial service perhaps included the “Great 18 Leipzig Organ Chorale” setting of “Komm Hiliger Gesit, BWV 652” in G Major ¾ sarabande rhythm, which also runs about nine minutes (recording https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n64pTS_s6Tw). Also possibly presented was music and liturgy related to the adjacent 19th Sunday after Trinity, October 23, 1729, such as Paul Gerhardt 1656 chorale, "Warum sollt ich mich denn grämen?," found in Bach plain chorale setting BWV 422. It also is possible that if the memorial service were repeated, the Weimar full motets with chorales could have been reperformed, BWV Anh.159, "Ich lasse dich nicht,” and BWV 228, “Fürchte dich nicht, ich bin bei dir."
A similar memorial homage concert for the Saxon Queen of Poland, Christiane Eberhardine of Brandenburg-Bayreuth, “Laß, Fürstin, laß noch einen Strahl BWV 198,” had been held two years previous, October 17, 1727, under the same auspices, at the Paulinerkirche. A reconstruction of that service can be found at https://www.amazon.com/Bach-J-S-Tombeau-Majeste-Pologne/dp/B000NQDEJA (BCW http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Performers/Ricercar.htm, C-9). http://www.bach-cantatas.com/VD/BWV226.htm.
Collegium Musicum Leipzig Institution
The Collegium musicum was the key to creating conditions for Bach's musical success in Leipzig with its stimulating intellectual environment and changing world. It probably was the only civic asset with which he was able to thrive amid otherwise petty, personal, pietistic aggravations, obviously enflamed by his sense of duty and the respect it should engender. Bach seemed happiest in his world of music, witness his time in Cöthen and in Leipzig with the more-than decade directorship (1729-42) of the ensemble which dated to Telemann in 1702. The response was manifold. Bach made the acquaintance of university people possibly had during his probe, 7 February 1723, and scheduled to take office at Pentecost, he began to go prospecting. Bach knew that he had major obstacles in having no university degree in a community that obsessively valued such, had no long-standing relationship with established musicians and was otherwise a stranger and an unknown quantity. Bach exercised his obligation to the University Paulinerkicrhe on feast days with a new Pentecost Cantata BWV 59, using its Collegium musicum since this church lacked enteral musical resources except for a fine organ. Bach exploited other opportunities, particularly involthe Absolutist Dresden faction of progressive Leipzig notables who enjoyed the latest profane music and had direct connections to the Saxon Court. Bach began soliciting occasional music beyond the church primarily at the university through student organizations, affiliated churches and personal contracts which he cultivated, exploiting every opportunity. The record shows 20 impressive, documented commissions (http://unichor.uni-leipzig.de/index.php?page=festmusikenm) — weddings, funerals, Saxon family visits, university functions: the lifeblood of the community. The people most responsible for Bach success in Leipzig were his St. Thomas pastor Christian Weiss Sr, Governor Graf Joachim Friedrich von Flemming, and local poet — and paymaster — Picander, as well as local friends and businesspeople, and increasingly those with connections to Zimmermann's coffee house and other cultural-social establishments.
Informal, social music-making had been a key to establishing Bach's success, beginning with the c1707 Wedding Quodlibet, BWV 524, comical, satirical potpourri for the annual Bach Family gatherings, as well as the presumed family impromptu church organ and motet performances, and Bach extensive visits to communities along his path and his service at court celebrations at Saxe Weißenfels, Saxe-Weimar, Anhalt-Cöthen, and Saxe-Gotha before Leipzig. At the same time Bach had an inherent, intrinsic respect for God-given authority, despite its abuses, misapplications, and general vexations. He provided music for at least 60 weddings in Leipzig and various funerals. In the most public manner he presented at least 60 occasional, congratulatory works (many lost), and extended works for massed outdoor evening celebrations. Despite his general abhorrence of his Leipzig employer, the penny-wise Town Council, virtually every year in Leipzig he produced a festive sacred cantata for the annual service installation in late August, all fresh and vibrant while some borrowed with new text were repeated. Using the Collegium musicum in stately civic function with numerous dignitaries, he found intrinsic serendipity and opportunity to have his regal cake and enjoy it too! In the 1730s he created a blend of drammi per musia parody and sacred opera oratorio for the feats of Christmas, Easter, Ascension, and possibly Pentecost, as well as using occasional homage music and sacred works parodied as contrafaction, beginning in 1733 with his Missa: Kyrie-Gloria, BWV 232a.
A “more comprehensive understanding of Bach’s role in Leipzig’s eighteenth-century coffee-house culture will help to overcome some of the traditional limitations inherent in both ‘Romantic’ and ‘abstract’ approaches to Bach’s [secular] music," says Burkhard Schawlbach.3 "Given this traditional [19th century] methodological myopia, it is significant that Bach’s more recent biographers, such as Christoph Wolff 4 and Martin Geck, have moved decisively towards re-evaluating the creative importance of Bach’s performances with his Collegium Musicum." Christoph Wolff has characterised Bach’s musical gatherings in Leipzig’s fashionable Catharinenstrasse as ‘a bourgeois emulation of the courtly practice of musique de table’, which is an intriguing hypothesis." In the past two decades, Bach scholars have come to explore the profane side of his life and work, particularly in the multi-stage theater that was Leipzig in Bach's time, embracing the paradox/dialectic of unity through diversity.
The offerings of instrumental and vocal music at Zimmermann's included four Bach moral cantatas for the weekly Ordinare Concerten," as categorized in Wolff (Learned, Ibid.: 356; Cantatas 204, 201, 216a, and the Coffee Cantata 212). During this period of 1729, Bach assessed his situation in Leipzig and composed music that begin to articulate his artistic creed. He had already begun as cantor with choral settings of psalms that express the power of music as well as the celebratory psalm elements found in individual movements in his church year cantatas, also known as musical sermons of settings of the day's gospel. Bach also began to provide marginal comments in his Calov interpreter's bible on music's importance in the bible, particularly its use in authoritative daily life. In the genre of wedding cantatas (mostly Leipzig), both profane (202, 210, 216, Anh. 196) and sacred (BWV 34a, 120a, 195, 196, 197, 524 and Anh. 14), Bach spoke of the civic and sacred fusion of marriage, the love of soul and Jesus. It was not that far distance from the 1707 comical, satirical Hochzeits Quodlibet to the fusion of authoritative and divine guide in wedding Cantata Anh. 196 of 1725. It also was no accident or simple serendipity that beginning about 1725 Bach began composing proto occasional cantatas that would model in their affective joy and sorrow considerable music through contrafaction or new-text underlay for the Mass in B Minor (BWV Anh. 14/1, 3, 4, 6; Anh. 196//3; Anh. 9/1, 8, 12; 193a/5; 244a/8 and Anh. 5). In these adaotations Bach conflated what was still doctrine regarding the relationship of divine and civil authority in the growing Age of Enlightenment.
Bach in 1728 began exploring the classical world of Leipzig University professors in law, philosophy, literature, and aesthetics who often were popular with their students, published extensively, and also were engaged in their learned and civic communities and institutions. He valued and shared their interests, insights, and collegiality, setting a variety of profane texts, including learned odes, to his drammi per musica and other university commissions.5 He composed a dual profane work, solo soprano Cantatas BWV 216(a) for a 5 February wedding and later that year as a Leipzig homage cantata, both with two arias borrowed from earlier profane Cantatas 204/8 and 205/13: "Himmlische Vergnügsamkeit (Heavenly contentment) becoming BWV 216a/3, "Angenehme Pleiß-Athen" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RirYC1Vqgk), and "Zweig und Äste" becoming 216a/7, "Heil und Segen" (Heil und Segen). Bach was continuing a multi-parody pattern established in the occasional works, most notably Cantatas 36, 120, 198, 205, 207, 208, and 210).
From 1725 to 1742, Bach composed three types of profane cantatas that had the earmarks of opera: the homage pieces that include elements of opera seria, including the Funeral Ode, BWV 198, and the Funeral Music, BWV 244a=1164; the dozen drammi per musica miniature operas with mythological and allegorical figures following in the German serenade tradition; and the day-to-day human characters found in the "Coffee" and "Peasant" Cantatas, forerunners to the Singspiel without spoken dialogue, as well as in the miniature, intimate solo Cantatas BWV 204, 203 and 209. Originally in the 1723 probe to choose Johann Kuhnau's successor, the Town Council Absolutist faction had championed Telemann, Georg Friedrich Fasch, and Christoph Graupner (none available) — all composers of opera and passion settings holding university degrees. Thus, Bach's employer had set the standard of musical expectations where the Capellmesiter of Anhalt-Cöthen with serenades in hand as well as a sacred cantata cycle, was the next obvious choice, although the council banned Bach from composing opera-like dramatic music in his contract.
Cantata 201 Origins, Characters, Plot
The Cantata 201 origins, based on the Aeneid by Virgil, as well as its six characters and the plot, are discussed in Klaus Hofmann's 2016 liner notes to the Masaaki Suzuki recording (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Performers/Suzuki-Rec5.htm#S9). <<Geschwinde, ihr wirbelnden Winde, BWV 201 (Hurry, Ye Whirling Winds), The Contest between Phoebus and Pan. Whereas the majority of Bach’s secular cantatas were written for specific political, academic or private festive occasions, which are emphasized by their texts, in the case of the ‘dramma per musica’ Geschwinde, ihr wirbelnden Winde no particular catalyst is discerni. It may well be that Bach composed the piece on his own initiative, without an external incentive, especially because the message he conveys in the work can be understood as championing his own cause – a defence of his artistry and his musical attitudes against the trends of the time, against philistinism, superficiality of artistic judgement and an unquestioning preference for easy fare.
The score and parts date from 1729. The introductory chorus urges the ‘whirling winds’ to withdraw to the ‘cave’ so that the music may remain undisturbed, suggesting that the music was performed in late summer or early autumn. According to the Aeneid by Virgil (70 –19 BC) Aeolus, god of the winds, kept the powerful autumn storms captive in a cave, releasing them only when the time was right. Evidently the people of Leipzig were hoping for good weather for an outdoor performance. The work is remarkable for its opulent scoring, with no fewer than six vocal soloists, plus trumpets and timpani, flutes, oboes, strings and continuo. Bach had recently taken over leadership of the Leipzig, founded by Telemann, and could evidently indulge himself. The libretto was by Bach’s regular and skilful collaborator, Picander (i.e. Christian Friedrich Henrici [1700–64)]. It alludes loosely to a famous episode from the Metamorphoses by Ovid (43 BC – 17 AD), describing a musical competition between two Greek gods. Pan, the god of shepherds and flocks and companion of the nymphs, with his own invention, the panpipes, challenges Phoebus (Apollo), the cithara-playing god of the arts, to a contest. They are accompanied by their seconds, the Lydian mountain god Tmolus and the Phrygian king Midas. Phoebus and Pan compete and, as might have been expected, Phoebus emerges victorious. Midas, however, had voted for Pan; and he is now punished by Phoebus, who gives him donkey ears. Picander’s libretto turns the instrumental competition into a singing contest. Two additional characters join in as well: Momus, the god of mockery, and Mercury, the versatile messenger of the gods, who as the patron of merchants was a familiar mythological figure in the trade fair city of Leipzig. To some extent it is these two characters who drive the action forwards.
Bach divided up the vocal pitches into pairs. Momus and Mercury are allocated to the upper voices, soprano and alto; the ‘seconds’ Tmolus and Midas sing first and second tenor, and the protagonists Phoebus and Pan sing first and second bass. In the outer movements all six singers join in unison with the choir. In between there is a regular sequence of recitatives and arias, with one aria for each of the characters. In the magnificent opening chorus, Bach lets the winds ‘whirl’ in rapid triplet figures. The middle section of this da capo movement, however, is full of charming echo effects between the choir and the instruments. The plot per se begins in the first recitative with an argument between Phoebus and Pan, in which the latter boasts about his artistry. By doing so, however, he earns the scorn of Momus, both here and in the following aria (third movement), who calls out to the show-off: ‘Patron, das macht der Wind’ (‘My friend, this is just hot air’). In the following recitative (fourth movement) Mercury suggests a contest and asks the protagonists to choose their seconds.
Phoebus begins the competition with a beautiful aria (fifth movement). The text is full of the tender longing with which Phoebus mourns for his friend Hyacinth, killed by Zephyrus out of jealousy. Bach put all of his artistry into this movement. The exquisite sonority of flute, oboe d’amore and muted strings is combined with an expression of wistful longing. It ticks all the boxes: expressive leaps of a sixth and seventh in the opening theme, sighing grace notes, caressing triplet and trill figures. This movement is a display of artistic emotion par excellence.
Now Pan makes his appearance. His aria ‘Zu Tanze, zu Sprunge, so wackelt das Herz’ (‘Dancing and leaping sets the heart in motion’; seventh movement) is a rustic passepied, and forms a striking contrast to Phoebus’s aria: it is earthy and powerful. Bach makes the most of the ‘motion’ in musical terms, making it thoroughly comical. In the middle section of the aria, where – with a sidelong glance at Phoebus – the text mentions ‘laboured’ music, Bach introduces ‘laboured’ chromatic writing. Bach maybe somewhat biased, but he is not unfair: this movement is by no means lacking in artistry, and it comes as no surprise that Bach reused it some years later, with a new text (‘Dein Wachstum sei feste’/‘May your growth be strong’), in his Peasant Cantata, BWV 212. Mercury and Tmolus are in agreement (eighth movement): Phoebus has won, Pan has lost. Tmolus strikes up a song of praise (ninth movement) for Phoebus and the charm of his music. Bach set this movement most charmingly as a trio with obbligato oboe d’amore. In the middle section, to the words ‘aber wer die Kunst versteht’ (‘but whosoever understands the art’), he pointedly writes a canon between the voice and wind instrument.
Now it is Midas’s turn to speak (tenth movement). He praises Pan, and the melodiousness and memorability of his song – with, unlike that of Phoebus, was not ‘gar zu bunt’ (‘all too colourful’) but rather ‘leicht und ungezwungen’ (‘approachable and unforced’). Midas, too, strikes up a song of praise (eleventh movement). This time, however, Bach has tinged the song with irony: when Midas refers to the evidence of his ‘beiden Ohren’ (‘two ears’ – with a long note on the syllable ‘oh’), Bach has the strings bray quietly like a donkey. In the following recitative (twelfth movement) Midas receives the punishment he deserves: donkey ears. And there is more mockery to follow: in Mercury’s aria (thirteenth movement) there is a mention of a ‘Schellenmütze’ (‘dunce’s cap’) that the Philistine Midas has earned.
The final chorus praises the ‘Kunst und Anmut’ (‘art and charm’) of true music, and defends it against pedantry and derision. This is all part of the message Bach intended to convey. This is even clearer in the preceding recitative (fourteenth movement), when Momus tells Midas: ‘Du hast noch mehr dergleichen Brüder...’ (‘You have brothers of the same ilk. Ignorance and stupidity now wish to be wisdom’s neighbours, judgements are passed on the spur of the moment, and those who so do all belong in your society.’) This does not apply only to Midas, but also to critics of Bach and of his art. And the ending sounds as if Bach were trying to encourage himself: ‘Ergreife, Phoebus, deine Leier wieder...’ (‘Phoebus, now take up once more your lyre, nothing is more pleasurable than your songs.’)
We do not know who or what prompted Bach in 1729 to wish to convey such a message. Later, though, he had ample cause to do so – in 1749 for example, when Johann Gottlieb Biedermann, headmaster of the grammar school in Freiberg, asserted that music was the ruin of youth. This caused outrage among musicians and strong invective, and Bach could not let it pass. For a revival of the cantata that year he smuggled the headmaster’s nickname, Birolius, and that of one of his supporters, into the final lines, which were changed to ‘Verdopple, Phoebus, nun Musik und Lieder, tobt gleich Birolius und ein Hortens darwider!’ (‘Redouble now, Phoebus, your music and songs, though Birolius and Hortensius rage against them!’).
Notes on Text, Music, Controversy
A detailed examination of Cantata 201, based on Alfred Dürr's original commentary is found in Aryeh Oron's BCML Discussion Part 1, Introduction, 7 September 2003 (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/BWV201-D.htm). It includes the Johann Adolph Scheibe affair, Cantata 201 as personal credo, the 1749 Biedermann controversy, and Picander's text and plot. The same material is found in Richard D. P. Jones revision and translation of Dürr's Cantatas of J. S. Bach (Oxford University Press, 2005: 908-15).
At the same time, Bach was able to savor and celebrate the best of all probable and possible worlds: diligent cantor of a “well-regulated music to the glory oGod,” culminating in the double-ensemble St. Matthew Passion, and successful capellmeister (music director) to the wider world of “Tumultuous Philosophers, Pious Rebels, Revolutionary Teachers, Pedantic Clerics, Vengeful Bureaucrats, Threatened Tyrants, Worldly Mystics,” as part of “The Religious World Bach inherited,” which Carol K. Baron describes in various personages in Bach’s Changing World: Voices in the Community (University of Rochester, 2006).
Two of the most recent performances of Cantata 201 are presented in churches: Kay Johannsen (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORxbBLry6dE), and Leonardo García Alarcón (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFoN3w_W9P8). There is no extant staging of Cantata 201, while other works are being staged: the St. Matthew and St. John Passions, notably by Peter Sellers, also Cantata 82 and the stagings of the Coffee and Peasant Cantatas and the Wedding Quodlibet, BWV 524. Not a bad collection of staged works.
Bach's most ambitious profane chorus undoubtedly opens Cantata 201, with all the forces and interests arrayed, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WG2-zTcx8WQ. It is more than the simple description of wind but goes far beyond to suggest the Pentecostal Spirit with a sense of both the divine and earthly with a contrasting middle section of more intimate interplay for brass, winds, and strings — with various virtues and gifts at play. W. Gillies Whittaker6 ranks this chorus, so lacking in the profane cantatas, alongside the sacred choruses of the great works. "Bach's weaknesses resulted in some of the most enthralling pages of his church music." "His manner of dealing with his opponent is replete with a saving grace of humor which we do not find often in the German race."
Whittaker also has a positive perspective on the Cantata 201 text and its purpose, with Picander's sarcasm, "and thank heaven that Johann Sebastian Bach was the manner of man that he was." From a Romantic perspective but by analogy, Whittaker outlines music from other composers' conflicts with critics, suggesting that Bach expressed in Cantata 201: the art of song achieved in Die Meistersinger despite internal bickering, the repose found amid inconsequential babblings of the Hero's adversaries in Richard Strauss' Ein Heldenleben, and Max Reger's comedic response to detractors in his violin sonata. "Of the four examples of hitting back of an irritated composer, Bach's is without doubt the most pleasing to us." "The allegorical and polemical point" here is part of the cantata's "freshness, wealth of beauty, and drastic comedy."
The high point of Cantata 201 is Phoebus/Apollo's tenor aria (no. 5), "Mit Verlangen / Drück ich deine zarten Wangen" (With longing / I press your tender cheeks, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NDEu0viYY0), says Richard D. P. Jones.7 This aria symbolically represents Bach's mature perspective and musical style in a sarabande lullaby setting as "he lavished all his resources upon its composition" — "extraordinarily rich and dense" in texture and instrumentation. The music is "highly personal but decorative, refined and deeply felt." It's theme, motive and embellishment rank this contemplative aria with three in the mature third church cantata cycle: "Bleibt, ihr Engle" BWV 19/5, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4KXc4G6zJY), "Stirb in mir" (BWV 169/5, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZVGDgqtCTM), and "Ich habe genug" (BWV 82/1, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9BbWneSWQE), as well as "Erbarme dich" in the St. Matthew Passion (BWV 244/39,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiJuiXoSscI).
Next comes Pan's straightforward aria by contrast (no. 7), "Zu Tanze, zu Sprunge, so wackelt das Herz" (In dancing and leaping my heart shakes, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9YkzSuIckI), has an immediately appealing melodic style of a popular menuett, with simple scoring, texture and no ornamentation or development, observes Jones (Ibid.). Bach adds word painting to advance the comic element, notably on "wackelt" (shakes) and perhaps as self-criticism takes a poke at his serious side with the old fashion 2/2 alle breve B section, "Wenn der Ton zu mühsam klingt / Und der Mund gebunden singt, / So erweckt es keinen Scherz." (When music sounds too laborious / and the voice sings under control, / then it arouses no fun). Bach parodied this aria in the 1742 Peasant Cantata, "Dein Wachstum sei feste und lache vor Lust!" (May your growth be steady and laugh with delight!, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMct0zxGC5c), when the peasant "searches for a musical language typical of his social rank" that "may reflect Bach's intentions regarding Pan's music," says Konrad Küster Cantata 201 essay. 8
As part of the classical rhetorical device of balance, Bach (and poet Picander) divide equally the refined Phoebus/Apollo and coarse Pan aria contrasting arias among their supporters and observers, Jones shows. Arias nos. 9 and 13 express the intricate, florid, serious style of Phoebus while contrasting are the no 3 mimicking of the serious style and no. 11, gigue-flavor "Pan ist Meister (Pan is Master, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RnmGBgHsQ4) with its boldest satirical stroke of the braying of an ass at the B section words, "Denn nach meinen beiden Ohren / Singt er unvergleichlich schön" (since according to both of my ears / he sings incomparably well.).
In addition, in the recitatives (nos. 2 and 8) depth is provided when some elements of Pan's appeal, such as his simplistic pipes and simple singing, are accepted in the straightforward narrative inter-play of the six characters. Bach's satire is directed, above all, "at those who would elevate the light style to the level of the serious style, or even above it (see nos. 3, 13, and 14)," says Jones (Ibid.: 274). Above all in Bach's music, there is no simple, stark contrast between popular and modern styles or between refined and older styles on the other. The diversified styles are unified in the final da-capo chorus (no. 15), "Labt das Herz" (Refresh our hearts, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3KqEAGLjCM), where the substantial appeal of music is expressed in simple words in a modern homophonic, dance-like gavotte, but with elements of old ornamentation and new syncopation together — "a manner much cultivated by Bach in the late1720s and 1730s," Jones finds. These are particularly notable in the parodied movement of Cantata 214/7 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnYmU5TQH94) and the Christmas Oratorio, BWV 248/8, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IMgd3JmahOw).
In the Bach 1750 Obituary accounting of his legacy, the varied vocal forms from cantata cycles and passions, to motets and Latin church music included a broad miscellaneous category of oratorios, occasional homage pieces of joy and sorrow, and a group of "some comic vocal pieces." Based upon their purpose, the works are the Coffee and Peasant, and Phoebus and Pan Cantatas which were listed as among occasional sacred and profane pieces in Carl Ludwig Heldenfeldt's 1850 biography of extant vocal works. These comic works "give one some idea of the success he could have had with comic operas or intermezzi, had the opportunity arisen," says Peter Williams.9 The comedy and ambiguities of these three "are not far from Johann Adolf Hasse's various Dresden intermezzi, or even Pergolesi's La serva padrona," performed there in 174. One impetus for this music was the Pepusch/Gay Beggar's Opera satire on Italian opera in London 1729 and in 1743 this ballad opera came to the Prussian Court. Meanwhile, Handel had abandoned Italian opera seria and comedia and taken up extended choral oratorios on biblical themes.
The leading librettist for the profane genre was Picander, also Bach's leading textual parodist, who wrote three genres of "comical, playful, and serious verses" in his published poetry. Cantata 201 "contrasts the merely literate man with the truly imaginative artist," between pedantry and true art, says Williams (Ibid.: 480), a "characterization that would serve an opera composer well." The braying ass in Pan's Aria shows that "this is not the work of a composer thinking only of duty, death, Luther, money and invertible counterpoint." The opening chorus sets the tone with "many of the markings of an opera or operetta finale": solo ensemble of leading characters, a bright scoring of strings and winds, a vivace [gavotte] swinging rhythm, simple harmonies, slow harmonic rhythm and certain dramatic details such as the empty octaves for chorus,: says Williams (Ibid.: 488). With its story line in the three later drammi per musica for the Dresden Court, BWV 213-215, with core music parodied in the Christmas Oratorio, they retaing their underlying chamber opera idiom, he says. The Cantata 201 final chorus with its "careful, time-consuming part-writing and harmonic detail" "will not be found in any opera seria, of Hasse, Handel, or anyone else."
Meanwhile, Bach selectively parody the closing Cantata 201 chorus twice to close homage works for key Leipzig people: "Lebe und grüne, grosser Flemming" (Live long and flourish, mighty Flemming, for Count Joachim Friedrich von Flemming, 25 August 1731 birthday tribute, "So kämpfet nur, ihr muntern Töne" (Contend ye then, ye tones so lively), BWV Anh. 10), and "Himmel, streue deinen Seegen" (Heaven, cast abroad thy blessing, Picander text) for the 21 November 1734 installation of the new Thomas School Rector, Johann August Ernesti (no relation to Johann Heinrich Ernesti), "Thomana saß annoch betrübt" (St. Thomas sat till now in grief), BWV Anh. 19), who replaced Johann Mathias Gessner, and with whom Bach had a mixed relationship.
Bach in Cantata 201 artistic credo had found initial expression a year earlier in soprano Cantata 216a, "Erwählte Pleißenstadt" (O Contented Pleisse town) http://www.uvm.edu/~classics/faculty/bach/BWV216a.html, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mIDSGKoTys), a profane, intimate homage serenade to Leipzig, probably performed at Zimermann's with the Collegium musicum and Anna Magdalena singing the solo about the time in late August when Bach also presented the sacred Town Council installation cantata, multi-purpose parody BWV 120, "Gott, man lobet dich in der Stille" (God, they praise you in the stillness, Psalm 65:1, a communal song of gratitude, humility, salvation and blessing, also appropriate for weddings, Reformation events and special thanksgiving services. The theme of salvation and blessing by Apollo and Mercury are sounded in Cantata 216a and a year later the two amplify on the importance of substantial art in the Cantata 201 contest.
Mist significantly in Cantata 201, Bach is dealing with "an interior world" beyond Ovid and Virgil, one " with grace, beauty and culture and not the least with questions of aesthetics" in "The Contest between Phoebis and Pan" about the right kind of music, observes Martin Geck.10 This genre of drammi per musica offered Bach "all sorts of enticement to enter emotional and performance areas," more accessible than spiritual texts. The charm of Pan's melody in the late Baroque, the middle style of more accessibility as a contrast to the comfortable style of sacred music enabled Bach "to make this genre completely his own, and thus can be receptive, more than in his sacred music, to a gallant and sentimental style. The profane in Bach, with sacred overtones, is increasingly recognized and accepted by Bach scholars, particularly as a balance to the 19th century canonization of Bach as the Fifth Evangelist as viewed by Philipp Spitta, Albert Schweiter, and Charles Sanford Terry until the full, balanced perspective of Bach beginning in 1950. Further, Bach in 1749 may have revived Cantata 201 at Zimmermann's not in response so much to the scholarly Biedermann controversy but in response to the town council that had at a concert hall just auditioned his successor from the Saxon Court, Gottlob Harrer. Thus, after its quarter-century of complaints about cantor Bach, he had the last word; that he would be succeeded by a kapellmeister "who promises to comply with the court's desire for Leipzig to become a center of modern, worldly church music," suggests Geck (Ibid.: 246). On 25 August 1749, Bach may have given his last public performance, the Town Council Cantata BWV 29, "Wir danken dir Gott" (We thank thee God), at the Nikolaikirche, whose joyous chorus was double parodied as the Gratias agius tibi and the Dona nobis pacem in the Mass in B Minor.
Provenance. In the estate division of Bach's vocal music between Friedemann and Emmanuel, the latter inherited Cantata 201 score and part set (https://www.bach-digital.de/receive/BachDigitalSource_source_00001042 https://www.bach-digital.de/receive/BachDigitalSource_source_00002348), with the 1749 textual changes, https://www.bach-digital.de/receive/BachDigitalWork_work_00000251?XSL.Style=detail. Details are provided in Thomas Braatz's BCW "Provenance & Description of Sources" (NBA KB I/40, June 30, 2008), http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Ref/BWV201-Ref.htm. The score also has sketches for the beginning of a Michaelmas Cantata, "Man singet mit Freudem vom Sieg" (Songs are sung with joy of victory, Picander text), which Bach presented as BWV 149 on Thursday 29 September 1729, probably with the Collegium musicum (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/BWV149-D4.htm) to open the Leipzig fall fair, and conclude his regular presentation of church cantatas as Leipzig cantor.
FOOTNOTES
1 Source: Klaus Eidam: The True Life of J. S. Bach, trans. Hoyt Rogers (New York Basic Books, 1999: 211ff).
2 Cantata 201 BCW Details & Discography, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/BWV201.htm). Score Vocal & Piano (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Scores/BWV201-V&P.pdf), Score BGA (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/BGA/BWV201-BGA.pdf). References: BGA X1/2 (secular cantatas, Wilhelm Rust, 1862), NBA KB I/40 (secular cantatas, Werner Neumann, 1970), Bach Compendium BC G 46, Zwang W 12.
3 Burkhard Schawlbach, “Eighteenth-century Coffee-House Culture: A New Context for Bach’s Music?”, Understanding Bach, 3, 105-108 © Bach Network UK 2008; http://www.bachnetwork.co.uk/ub3/SCHWALBACH%20-%20YSF.pdf).
4 Christoph Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001: 352).
5 Source: Festmusiken zu Leipziger Universitätsfeiern, https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://unichor.uni-leipzig.de/index.php%3Fpage%3Dfestmusiken&prev=search; https://www.baerenreiter.com/en/shop/product/details/BA5016_41/; https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=https://vkjk.de/artikeldetails/kategorie/orchesterwerke-cds/artikel/festmusiken-zu-leipziger-universitaetsfeiern.html&prev=search; also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leipzig_University).
6 W. Gillies Whittaker, The Cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach: Sacred and Secular (London: Oxford University Press, II 584ff).
7 Richard D. P. Jones, "Sacred and secular: vocal works II," in The Creative Development of Johann Sebastian Bach, Vol. 2, 1717-1750, Music to Delight the Spirit (Oxford UK: Oxford University Press, 2013, 271ff).
8 Konrad Küster, "Der Streit zwischen Phoebus und Pan," Oxford Composer Companions: J. S. Bach, ed. Malcolm Boyd (Oxford University Press, 1999: 137).
9 Peter Williams, "A light and playful manner of thinking," Bach: A musical biography (Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, 2016, 478ff).
10 Martin Geck, "Secular Cantatas and the Christmas Oratorio," Johann Sebastian Bach: Life and Work, trans. John Hargraves (Olando FL: Hartcourt Inc., 2006,: 419).
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To Come: more Leipzig occasional cantatas, including parodies at municipal celebrations. |
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