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William L. Hoffman wrote (January 20, 2021):
The explanation for Bach's broad spectrum of different compositional settings for chorus, solo voices, and instruments in his cantatas is based on various intrinsic factors. By tradition, Bach was in the midst of the development of a wide range of compositional settings as the common practice period expanded its musical pallet and responded accordingly, experimenting with a broad spectrum of performing forces that often blended developing instrumental with more complex vocal music. Meanwhile, Bach was expanding on traditional practices and conventions that called for a wide and full use of instruments and singers in celebratory music of joy and sorrow for singular events in the church year such as oratorios (expanded cantatas) for feast days and Passion settings in the de tempore (proper time) first half of the church year, as well as intimate chamber music in the omnes tempore (ordinary time) second half on Christian themes in the life of the church.
To achieve his calling of a "well-regulated church music to the glory of God," Bach began by developing a wide range of types of church music beyond cantatas and oratorios to include serenades, motets with keyboard accompaniment, Latin church music, chorale collections and the composition of instrumental keyboard music for service chorales and categories of hymns related to Lutheran teachings. He perfected certain musical genres such as the chorale cantata, the Passion oratorio, concerted cantatas with special instruments such as the obbligato organ, keyboard concertos and the deployment of instrumental movements transformed as cantata choruses and arias. He brought to bear his unparalleled skills as a performing virtuoso as well as compositional transcription, known as parody or new-text underlay, which enhanced different compositional settings. Bach was a pragmatist, knowing when to push the envelope and when to take a different tack, especially while battling negative forces on the Town Council that increasingly undermined the quality of music at the Thomas School1 while promoting their own subjective agendas and political and business pursuits. In subsequent reperformances of service cantatas, Bach sometimes substituted alternate obbligato instruments when a competent player for the challenging original was unavailable, showing that he specifically tailored the actual scoring to the pertinent resources and venues available.
Exploring Leipzig's Assets, Resources
To accomplish this vast array of music, Bach beginning in Leipzig as church cantor and music director exploited various possible opportunities to create and present music with an unflinching demand for performance excellence while expanding his interests in teaching students as well as cultivating Leipzig's musical and other community resources. Some of his special activities, interests and opportunities are only now being studied. These include his initial pursuit beginning on Pentecost Sunday 1723 with proto cantata BWV 59, “Wer mich liebet, der wird mein Wort halten I” (Who loves me will keep my word, John 14:23; https://www.bach-cantatas.com/BWV59-D4.htm), with the date of origin of 1721, says Bach Digital.2 This was the beginning of Bach's exploration various venues and performing forces, developing a collegial relationship with the Collegium musicum and the students, faculty, and benefactors at the Leipzig University as well as townspeople while pursuing a collaborative relationship with the ordained superintendent Salomon Deyling (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salomon_Deyling) and Bach's pastor Christian Weiss Sr. (https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Lib/Weiss-Christian.htm, who would preach their sermons after the presentation of Bach cantatas as musical sermons. Only after creating almost two consecutive church year cycles as the core of his creations, Bach in another watershed period broadened his horizons socially and musically at Lent 1725 (http://bach-cantatas.com/Topics/Leipzig-Cantata-1725-Interim.htm), with the assistance of the local poet and government functionary Picander. They secured commissions from noted locals for music of joy such as weddings (BWV 1144=Anh. 14) and birthdays (BWV 249.1, 36.4, 205.1) and music of sorrow such as funeral cantatas. They began in 1725 the process of presenting drammi per musica for the governing Saxon Court in Dresden and its supporters, including elements of progressive music such as Lombard rhythm, polonaise dances, love duets and the stile galant, all the while collaborating on cantatas for the annual governing Town Council installation and Good Friday vespers oratorio Passions. These led to the great double-ensemble St. Matthew Passion of 1727 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwVW1ttVhuQ), to a Picander text. The next watershed period began in 1729 when Bach ceased to present new church service cantatas periodically while taking over the direction of the Collegium musicum with his original cantata to a Picander text, the Pentecost Monday Cantata BWV 174, "Ich liebe den Höchsten von ganzem Gemüte" (I love God most high with all my heart; https://www.bach-cantatas.com/BWV174-D4.htm). This musical resource Bach increasingly utilized when in 1730 he was unable to secure from the Leipzig Town Council a "well-appointed church music" (see http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Topics/Well-Regulated-Church-Music.htm: "Well-Appointed Church Music").
Later, in 1733, Bach began again composing annual celebrations for court name-day and birthday observances, performed by the Collegium musicum, which he had directed since 1729, outdoors in serenade-style evenings at the town square or at Zimmermann's coffeehouse or gardens. Bach recycled many of these works for similar occasions and some as feast-day oratorios in the second half of the 1730s and composed contrafaction parodies of arias and choruses, mostly from sacred works, as the Missae Kyrie-Gloria, BWV 233-36 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_Sct7RroG0&list=PLDW8WaD7m17tp1HKx_kkzcNa2gph4snpu). Meanwhile, Bach in the mid-1730s turned to the works of his Gotha colleague, Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel, for a poetic oratorio Passion, "Ein Lämmlein geht und trägt die Schuld" (A Lambkin goes and bears the guilt) in 1734 and then presented one and possibly two Stölzel church cantata cycles. Bach in the 1740s continued annually to compose Good Friday Passion/oratorio, mixing on two occasions Passion pasticcios of Handel/Keiser and Carl Heinrich Graun, etc. (https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Vocal/BWV1088-Gen.htm: "Discussions in the Week of March 31, 2013), while finishing definitive versions of his three gospel Passions according to John, Matthew, and Mark. Bach also experimented in the 1740s with progressive works such as the Coffee (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nifUBDgPhl4) and Peasant Cantatas, forerunners of Singspiel, and a strophic adaptation of Pergolesi's galant Stabat Mater, with a German contrafaction of penitential Psalm 51, BWV 1083 (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Vocal/BWV1083-Gen2.htm). Little-known are Bach's three extended cantatas for funerals of royalty: “Was ist, das wir Leben nennen?” (What is this that we call life?), BWV 1142, for Weimar Prince Johann Ernst in 1716 (music lost); the Funeral Ode, BWV 198 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfgcgaakZyg), for Saxon Princess Queen Christiane Eberhardine in 1727; and Cöthen funeral music, BWV 1143=244a, for Prince Leopold in 1729 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=miuGs6GeWjk).
1723 Pentecost Sunday Proto Cantata 59
Initially Bach’s dialogue solo Cantata BWV 59, “Wer mich liebet, der wird mein Wort halten I” (Who loves me will keep my word, John 14:23),3 seems like a slight work. It has only four extant movements — two two-part arias with ritornelli (the first, the opening and striking duet), a recitative and a plain chorale, lasting only 14 minutes, with soprano, baritone and strings — despite its unusual opening flourishes of trumpets and drums (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Oorxqthffo). Cantata 59 could have been Bach’s first presentation in Leipzig on Pentecost Sunday, 16 May 1723 at St. Paul’s (University) Church, two Sundays before his official installation as Leipzig cantor and music director. Despite its seemingly meager ingredients, Cantata 59 represents both a significant transitional work as well as a proto transformational cantata that served Bach well as he pursued his calling of “a well-order church music to the glory of God.” Cantata 59 was a serendipitous conjunction of perfect opportunity, motive, and method for the composer. In his final weeks as capellemeister at the Cöthen Court, Bach had begun the two-month process of securing acceptable libretti with madrigalian poetry for arias and recitatives as well as strophic chorales to be set to music in an annual church cycle at the St. Thomas and St. Nikolaus churches. A special opportunity arose when in early May 1723 Bach came ahead of his family and began to acquaint himself with the Leipzig University resources such as patrons and potential librettists and the churches where he could present his cantatas on feasts days with the talented university and civic musicians of the Leipzig Collegium musicum. With only meager choral resources and limited rehearsal time, Bach in 1723 utilized an existing (1714) Erdmann Neumeister orthodox libretto with intimate poetry and two chorales quite appropriate for the Feast of Pentecost. To this “script” or musical sermon text, Bach crafted a dialogue work in Italian style, selecting to set only the first four of Neumeister’s seven movements. Next was Bach's first Leipzig occasional work (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Topics/Leipzig-Serenades.htm) possibly the lost homage serenade (text only), BWV deest=Anh. 195, "Murmelt nur ihr heitern Bäche" (Murmur on, ye merry waters), for the Leipzig University installation of Dr. jur. Johann Florens Rivinus at the , 9 June 1723, member of a noted local family (http://www.uvm.edu/~classics/faculty/bach/XXVI.html).
Bach-Picander Collaboration, 1725
The first documented collaboration between Bach and Picander began in early 1725 when Bach dramatically shifted his compositional output from weekly sacred service cantatas to profane serenades and drammi per musica (BWV 1144=Anh. 14, 249.1, 36.4, 205.1), as well as instrumental music, compositions of other composers, and the beginning of his great St. Matthew Passion. These early Leipzig secular cantatas and drammi per musica "may be smaller in volume than the body of church cantatas but it is in no way inferior in quality and social impact," says Martin Geck.4 He is a "composer in full command of the vocal chamber and theatrical styles who, unlike the sacred music genre, can compose without regard for established tradition, that is, largely autonomously," with a "curious mix of styles and a multitude of perspectives." Bolstering Bach's achievements and growing success were the beginnings of the Anna Magdalena Notebook of family compositions as well as favorite household music of other composers. Bach profane works with possible sacred parody that Geck cites are two paying homage to the Saxon Court in 1727: BWV 1156=Anh. 9. "Entfernet euch, ihr heitern Sterne" (Disperse yourselves, ye stars serenely) (text Christian Friedrich Haupt) for August's birthday visit, 12 May, and Cantata BWV 193.1, "Ihr Häuser des Himmels, ihr scheinenden Lichter" (Ye houses of heaven, ye radiant torches; ? Picander text), Augustus' name day, 3 August, although the parody sources are still debated (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Vocal/BWV232-Gen19.htm), but the origins appears to be in from Cöthen. The two 1727 profane works may have yielded two love duets found in the B-Minor Mass, BWV 1156/8 (Philuris-Apollo “Seid zu tausend mahl willkommen" (For a thousand times be welcome)=232/2 (Christe eleison, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWSuQ7xoCDk) and BWV 193.1 (Fame-Providence, "Ich will/Du solt ruehmen" (I will/Thou shalt boast now)=232/8 (Domine Deus, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SQq7pjAGyLw).
Picander, Count von Flemming
The groundwork for the two Saxon 1727 celebrations involved an earlier relationship between Picander and the Dresden court's most trusted Leipzig representative, Count Joachim Friedrich von Flemming. The impetus for the King’s visit and Bach’s music probably was the court-appointed Leipzig governor and a leader of the Town Council faction that has chosen Bach in April 1723. In 1727, the Leipzig spring fair began on May 4 and the festivities were held on Monday, May 12. Special note was made in the C. F. Haupt libretto of Cantata BWV Anh. 9/5, citing Flemming as the court’s “most trusted” who had been present at this “mighty feast one year ago” in 1726.5 That year the Elector’s birthday had fallen exactly on Jubilate Sunday, 12 May, when Bach may have premiered festive church Cantata BWV 146 with its opening two movements of a sinfonia and chorus (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MORa0Y98Z1o), borrowed from the Clavier Concerto No. 1 in D Minor, BWV 1052. On the 12th Sunday after Trinity, 25 August 1726, Bach presented the first of three special cantatas for Flemming’s birthday: parody, BWV 249.2, “Die Feyer des Genius” (Festival of Genius, drama per musica): "Verjaget, zerstreuet, zerrüttet, ihr Sterne" (Dispel them, disperse them, destroy them, ye heavens); solo soprano serenade, BWV 210a, 1729-30, and repeats for him and unknown patrons (through text revisions) between 1735-1740, and BWV 1160=Anh. 10, "So kämpfet nur, ihr muntern Thöne" (Contend ye then, ye tones so lively, http://www.uvm.edu/~classics/faculty/bach/VII.html), 25 August 1731, also to a Picander text. In 1724, Flemming had assumed his position and moved into the Pleissenburg castle governor’s residence not far from the Thomas Church. On 31 July 1724, Flemming had assumed his official duties with a dramma per musica to a Picander libretto, composer unknown. Picander also wrote the text to a solo Evening Music for Flemming on 1 January 1725. Although both originally were attributed to Johann Gottlieb Görner (https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Lib/Gorner-Johann-Gottlieb.htm), director and organist at the progressive St. Paul University Church, Bach scholars have developed a still-unsubstantiated hypothesis that Bach was the composer.
Leipzig Collegiuum Musicum
"As soon as 1723 and until his official acceptance of the post as its director in March 1729, Bach must already have drawn upon the services of this organization by means of a friendly arrangement with his colleague [Georg Balthasar] Schott (https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Lib/Schott-Georg-Balthasar.htm) at the New Church," says Andreas Glöckner,6 "otherwise Bach would not have been able to perform many of his secular cantatas whichcall upon large instrumental forces: BWV 205, BWV 249a+BWV249b, BWV 198, BWV 193a, BWV 207. Just how these arrangements for using the services of members of the Collegium musicum were made has yet to be clarified. It is a fact that such a friendly relationship between Schott and Bach did exist: Schott substituted for Bach when the latter was performing outside of Leipzig or on private trips away from the city" [Bach-Dokumente II, Item 383]. From 20 March 1729, Bach replaced Schott, who became city cantor and music director in Gotha. Bach began using his family members for copy work to a greater extent than hitherto to help prepare parts from his own and other composer’s compositions for secular cantatas and instrumental works that the Collegium musicum would perform. These included the two Violin Concerti, BW1041 and BWV 1043, the Orchestra Suite, BWV 1068, and several Ouvertures by Johann Bernhard Bach. It is possible that J. S. Bach composed expressly for the new concert season his satirical dramma per musica “Der Streit zwischen Phoebus und Pan,” BWV 201 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFoN3w_W9P8). Bach’s musical activities with the Collegium musicum increased considerably in 1733 when the young elector Friedrich August II became the ruler after the death of his father, August the Strong. Between August and December of 1733 Bach performed with the Collegium musicum three congratulatory cantatas for birthdays or name days of the ruler’s family (BWV 1158=Anh.12, BWV 213, BWV 214), among 21 commissions involving the Leipzig University (http://unichor.uni-leipzig.de/index.php?page=festmusiken). Other Bach works associated with the ensemble include the Violin Concerti, BWV 1041-43; the Ouvertures, BWV 1066-69, the Harpsichord Concerti, BWV 1052-1065, numerous chamber works as the Violin Sonatas, BWV 1014-19, the Flute Sonatas, BWV 1030-35, and various other secular cantatas such as BWV 201, BWV 204, BWV 209, BWV 210, BWV 211. "The presentations of Bach’s Passions with a larger than usual number of performers after 1741 were only made possible with the help given by the musicians in the Collegium musicum with whom Bach continued his contacts even though he no longer functioned as their official leader," says Glöckner (Ibid.). "Likewise, Bach was able put on performances with a large ensemble such as the wedding cantata, BWV 195 (1742), which has separate parts written out for the concertists and the ripienists. Repeat performances of secular cantatas such as BWV 208a (Aug. 3, 1742), BWV 212 (Aug. 30, 1742) or BWV 201 (1749), or of instrumental compositions such as BWV 1055 (circa 1742) and BWV 1067 (between 1743 and 1746), make the assumption appear possible that Bach also directed these works although he no longer conducted the Collegium musicum in an official capacity."
Leipzig Reformation Jubilee 1739
Parallel to Bach's instrumental and secular cantatas with the Leipzig Collegium musicum in the 1730s, was Bach's creation of extended oratorios for feast days, along with related vocal and instrumental works, culminating in the Leipzig Reformation Jubilee of 1739 that observed the bicentenary of the area's acceptance on the Lutheran Reformation in 1539. Although the musical record is still obscure, the key events celebrated were Martin Luther’s sermon preached on Pentecost Sunday, 24 May 1539 at the early main service of the Thomas Church and the afternoon vesper service, which Johannes Bugenhagen, superintendent of the Lutheran Church in Saxony, preached to the Epistle Acts 2: 1-13 (The descent of the Holy Spirit, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Read/Whit-Sunday.htm). For these festive services and others in 1739, cantor Bach had available the newly composed Missae: Kyrie-Gloria, BWV 232-236, the just-published Clavier-Übung, Vol. 3, German Organ Mass and Catechism Chorales, BWV 532, 669-689, 802-805 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFW9wU8Ht3U), the lost Pentecost Oratorio, BWV deest, and chorale Cantata 80, Ein feste Burg ist Unser Gott (A mighty Fortress Is Our God, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7i2z7prCyDY). Lutheran hymns were presumably sung from the new hymnal published by Valentin Schumann following the Wittenberg model, published in 1539 in Leipzig and updated by Valentin Bapst to the liturgical order as Geystliche Lieder . . . [und] Psalmen . . . (Leipzig 1545), with a new preface written by Luther. In the 1740s, in addition to the final versions of Bach's oratorio Passions according to John, Mark, and Matthew as well as reperformances of his chorale cantatas and other Christological works, Bach completed his magnum opus, the Missa tota in B-Minor, "The Great Catholic Mass," a virtual parody contrafactions from German sacred and profane cantatas.
ENDNOTES
1 See Michael Maul, Part IV, "Odd Authorities with Little Interest in Music': the Thomas School in Crisis, 1701-1730, in Bach's Famous Choir: The Saint Thomas School in Leipzig, 1212-1804, Eng. trans. Richard Howe (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2018; 141ff).
2 Cantata 59, Bach Digital, Bach Digital.
3 Cantata 59 sources, https://www.bach-cantatas.com/BWV59-D4.htm, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wer_mich_liebet,_der_wird_mein_Wort_halten,_BWV_59. The date of 16 May 1723 is significant in two respects: 1. "(Pentecost) Beginning of the new school year at the St. Thomas School; the original date for Bach to have begun his Cantorate" (Dok 1: 91, NBR 97), says Robin A. Leaver in Chapter 20, "Life and Works 1685-1750," in The Routedge Research Companion to Johann Sebastian Bach, ed. Robin A. Leaver (London: Routedge, 2017: 5000); and 2. "Performance of a cantata (by Bach?), in the University Church" (Dok 5: B 137a).
4 Martin Geck, Johann Sebastian Bach: Life and Work, trans. John Hargraves (Orlando FL: Harcourt, 2000: 163); Amazon.com: "Look inside."
5 Source, Szymon Paczkowski, “Bach and the Story of an ‘Aria Tempo di Polonaise’ for Joachim Friedrich Flemming," in Polish Style in the Music of Johann Sebastian Bach, Contextual Bach Studies No. 6 (Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield: 219ff); Amazon.com: "Look inside."
6 Andreas Glöckner, “Bachs Leipziger Collegium musicum und seine Vorgeschichte” (Bach's Leipzig Collegium musicum and its prehistory), summary trans. Thomas Braatz, in Die Welt der Bach-Kantaten, Vol. 2, Johann Sebastian Bachs weltliche Kantaten, eds. Christoph Wolff/, Ton Koopman (Stuttgart: Metzler/Bärenreiter 1997: 105-117).
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To Come: considering cantatas, the final question of diverse kinds, "What difficulties do we come across today in performances because of changed conditions.?" |
