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Bach's Exaudi Sunday: Preparation for Pentecost

William L. Hoffman wrote (May 15, 2018):
Bach's Leipzig performance schedule for the last Sunday in Easter, called Exaudi, as well as the next Sunday's three-day Pentecost festival, shows a scarcity of original works. This could have been attributed to both the end of the St. Thomas school year and the end of the de tempore (Proper Time) first half of the church year that focused on the life of Jesus Christ, concluding with the one-day feast of the Holy Trinity, now known in today's lectionary as the 1st Sunday after Pentecost. Bach left only two extant Cantatas for Exaudi, BWV 44 in 1724 and BWV183 in 1725 — both with the same Gospel cautionary dictum, John 16:2, “Sie werden euch in den Bann tun" (They will put you under a ban), his Farewell Discourse to his disciples that they would be shunned from the temple. Now, Exaudi has a different lectionary readings in John's gospel and because of it proximity to Ascension may be replaced in some Protestant churches on this Sunday. In Bach's time, beyond the focus on Jesus' final, stern warning to his disciples, Exaudi also emphasized the expectation of the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost Sunday as the birthday of the Church and its half season (omnes tempore, Ordinary Time) of teachings, as well as the blessing of baptismal waters signifying the coming of the disciples' baptism with the spirit on Pentecost Sunday, as Jesus promised them (Acts 1:5).

Exaudi Sunday comes from the first word of the Introit opening: "Hear, O Lord, when I cry with my voice (Psalm 27, A Prayer of Praise; verse 7). This Sunday, following Ascension Thursday, centers on the Disciples' waiting for the Holy Spirit to come and is a brief time of expectation. The Gospel, John 15: 26-16: 4, has the theme "The Spirit (Helper, Comforter) will come" followed by Christ's warning that his disciples will be expelled from the synagogues. It is the penultimate Farewell Discourse of Jesus to his Disciples (John's Gospel, Chapters 14-16. The day's Gospel reading is divided into two sections: 15:26-27, "The Witness of the Paraclete" (advocate, intercessor), and 16:1-4, "Persecutions." These discourses are virtually unique to John's Gospel, although Jesus warned his disciples earlier in the synoptic gospels to be careful what they said in public and to avoid the synagogues.

The record in 1726 shows a gap following the premiere of the Rudolstadt-text Ascension Cantata BWV 43, "Gott fähret auf mit Jauchzen" (God ascends with shouts of joy), with no documented performance until the 1st Sunday after the Trinitasfest with another original Cantata BWV 39, "Brich dem Hungrigen dein Brot," (Break your bread with the hungry, Isaiah 58:7). This was his second of a series of seven settings of the Rudolstadt church cycle text which he alternated with 18 works of Meinengen cousin Ludwig Bach that year, also set to Rudolstadt texts. Interestingly, there are no extant settings of the Rudolstadt texts for the three-day Pentecost feast and Trinitasfest. For these four feast days in 1727, Bach presented a new work, BWV 34, "O ewiges Feuer, o Ursprung der Liebe" (O eternal fire, o source of love), another virtual parody from an occasional sacred work as with the first reperformances of parodies BWV 173, Erhöhtes Fleisch und Blut" (Exalted flesh and blood), and BWV 184, "Erwünschtes Freudenlicht" (Longed-for light of joy), originally presented in 1724 for the 2nd and 3rd Pentecost feast days of Monday and Tuesday.

A rediscovered church services libretto text book for these events confirms these performances, as well as the premiere of Trinitasfest pure-hymn Cantata BWV 129, on 8 June 1727, after Bach had completed his third church-year cycle. This would appear to be Bach's first systematic reperformances of church cantatas. Another collection of church text books for the end of Pentecost 1731 shows repeats from the first cycle as well as another new pure-hymn chorale cantata, BWV 112, "Der Herr ist mein getreuer Hirt" (The Lord is my faithful shepherd, Psalm 23:1), for the 2nd Sunday after Easter (Misericordias Domini), April 8. It is Bach's only designated chorale cantata for the Easter/Pentecost period, which concluded Bach's second cycle, except for the early (c1707) Easter Sunday Cantata 4, "Christ lag in Todesbanden" (Christ lay on death's bondage).

While Cantata 112 seems an anomaly or a special situation, Bach's otherwise intentional strategy to create cantatas as musical sermons in the context of a "well-ordered church music" shows that he systematically composed three cycles of cantatas, the core of his calling. He then turned to major works of the oratorio Passion with settings of Matthew in 1727 and expanded in 1729, and Mark in 1731, as part of a cycle of all four Passions, as well as the Missa: Kyrie-Gloria, in 1733. With the exception of a few cantatas to fill gaps in the first three cycle and cantatas for special occasions, Bach did not resume systematic church composition until the Christmas and Ascension oratorios, beginning in late 1734. By this time, his efforts focused on recycling extant works with new text underlay. The period of 1732-35 shows almost no new compositions and a scattering of reperformances of some 20 cantatas, based mostly on markings/revisions found in the parts manuscripts. A reperformance of the extant partial chorale cycle of some 48 cantatas from Trinityfest to Easter Sunday is possible in 1731-32, given that these parts sets were donated to the Thomas School in late 1750, where they still reside.

Bach resumed systematic reperformances at Christmas 1734 with the six new, consecutive Christmas Oratorio cantatas for five feast days through the Feast of Epiphany on 6 January 1735. This liturgical calendar secession of services is explore in depth in Daniel R. Melamed's chapter, "Listening to the Christmas Oratorio with a calendar: What is the relationship of a musical work to time?".¹ "One good way to approach the context of the Christmas Oratorio as it was used in Bach's time is to recognize that the work was no so much for Christmas itself but as fior the season miore broadly," he suggests (Ibid.: 88). "Christmas was one of the three main feasts for the liturgical year, together with Easter and Pentecost." This music could have been repeated although there only is evidence in the New Years Part 4 of a reperformance as both a sacred and civic event, he observes (Ibid.: 98). The most likely model for a multi-day observance, Melamed adds (Ibid.: 102), would have been municipal Lutheran multi-day Passion performances in Rudolstadt (1688 or earlier), Nuremberg, and Eisenach of liturgical and devotional music during Lenten Time, with the narrative being a "harmonized gospel" of the four evangelists in Johannes Bugenhagen's division into five units. Bugenhagen's harmonized setting of the Ascension event is the narrative in Bach's Ascension Oratorio.

Bach in early 1735 may have continued with reperformances from the three cantata cycles although only two dates are documented: On the 4th Sunday after Epiphany, 30 January 1735, Bach premiered chorale Cantata 14, "Wär Gott nicht mit uns diese Zeit" (If God were not with us at this time), Martin Luther's paraphrase of Psalm 124, to fill a gap in the second cycle. This late Epiphany Sunday had not occurred in 1725 (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/BWV14-D4.htm). Three days later in 1735, on Wednesday, 2 February, source-critical evidence suggests that Bach possibly reperformed one or two cantatas for the Feast of the Purification, soprano solo Cantata BWV 82, "Ich habe genung" (I have enough), the third of five presentations, and/or Cantata 161, "Komm, du süße Todesstunde" (Come, sweet hour of death). While there is no further record of performances, on Good Friday, 10 April 1735 in the Nikolaichirche, it is assumed that Bach presented a Passion. Since there is no evidence of a Bach presentation of one of his three oratorio Passions of John, Matthew or Mark, it is quite possible that he may have presented a performance of aBrockes Passion Oratorio of Handel or Telemann, since records show they were available at the Thomas School. The previous year, Bach had introduced a Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel poetic Passion, Der Glaubigen Seele, on 23 April 1734, the first documented presentation of a non-Gospel oratorio Passion. Subsequently beginning at Easter Sunday 1735, there is no record of performances, although there is the possibility that Bach gave a repeat of the 1731 Easter to Trinitasfest schedule (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/LCY/1731.htm). There also is no record of a libretto book for the interim three last Sundays in Easter (Cantate to Exaudi).

Meanwhile it is quite possible that Bach began composing chorale Cantata BWV 97, "In allen meinen taten" (In all my doings), for Exaudi Sunday 1725, as part of a 10-year odyssey, borrowing material from Köthen for an opening chorus and tenor aria. He then these set two movements aside until 1731 when he added a series of recitative-aria-recitative and closing chorale (? BWV 392) for Exaudi 1731, as part of mostly repeats for Easter Season following the premiere the St. Mark Passion. Later, Bach set the remaining three versus as more progressive-style arias, totaling 26 minutes) as a pure-hymn cantata autograph-dated "1734," for a special festive event, possibly a thanksgiving service on July 6 in the Nikolaikirche for a temporary truce in the War of Polish Secession (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_the_Polish_Succession). This undesignated pure-hymn work has the festive, regal character for a special service with French Overture (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2slwyDE73Vw, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/BWV97-D3.htm). It also would have been appropriate for Exaudi Sunday. Bach initially used the closing stanza, "So sei nun, Seele, deine" (So be now, soul, thine) of Paul Flemming's 1642 nine-verse chorale, "In allen meinen taten," set to Paul Gerhardt's 1648 Passion melody, "O Welt, ich muss dich lassen" (O world, I must leave thee) as the closing plain chorale setting of Cantata 44 for his first Leipzig cycle, Exaudi Sunday, May 21, 1724. Later Bach set the same stanza and text to close solo Cantata 13, "Meine Seufzer, meine Tränen" (My sighs, my tears), for the Second Sunday after Epiphany, June 20, 1726 in the third cycle. Bach could have performed Cantata 97 again the next year at Exaudi Sunday (22 May 1735), three days after the introduction of the Ascension Oratorio, based on circumstantial and collateral evidence.

FOOTNOTE

¹ Daniel R. Melamed, Listening to Bach: the Mass in B Minor and the Christmas Oratorio (Oxford University Press, 2018: 88-107).

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To Come: Genesis of and potential for a lost Pentecost Oratorio

William L. Hoffman wrote (May 17, 2018):
For Bach’s third cantata cycle, Pentecost festival Sunday-Tuesday, June 9-11, 1726, there are no documented performances. It is possible that Bach substituted cantatas to the Rudolstadt texts, possibly lost works of cousin Johann Ludwig Bach (1677-1731). There exist three Rudolstadt texts for the Pentecost Festival, republished in 1726. Accessible to Sebastian, these were originally set to music in 1705 by J.L. Bach’s Meiningen predecessor, Georg Caspar Schürmann (1672/3-1751), and performed on the three-day festival, May 31 to June 2, Pentecost Sunday to Tuesday. The works existing in manuscript are: “Aber über das Haus David,” “Gnädig und barmherzig ist der Herr,” and “Siehe, ich will mich einer Herde.” Bach’s cousin set the Rudolstadt text cycle, first published in 1704-05, for the Meinengen church year 1714-15.