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William L. Hoffman wrote (December 14, 2020):
When Bach became cantor of Leipzig's St. Thomas School and music director for the city's leading churches, he immediately began to present his own compositions for the first church-year cycle, from the 1st Sunday after Trinity 1723 to the Trinity Festival, 1724. Almost half of the works presented had materials conceived in Weimar and Cöthen, including 24 with texts of Weimar Court poet Salomo Franck. These Bach systematically reperformed unaltered for various services, as well as the revision and expansion of three Advent works (BWV 70a, 186a, and 147a) inappropriate for this closed period in Leipzig but recast for the 26th Sunday after Trinity (https://www.bach-cantatas.com/BWV70-D4.htm), the 7th Sunday after Trinity (https://www.bach-cantatas.com/BWV186-D4.htm), and the Visitation Feast (https://www.bach-cantatas.com/BWV147-D6.htm), respectively. Bach fashioned three Cycle 1 cantata structures with opening biblical text and closing plain chorale and two pairs of internal recitative-arias, with two having an internal plain chorale.
The most likely candidate for the authorship of the 30 entirely new works is Bach's pastor Christian Weiss Sr., who also may have had a hand assisting in the new recitative and chorale texts of the earlier cantatas as well as parody new text underlay in the five Cöthen borrowings (BWV 66a, 134a, 175a, 184a, 194a) for the feasts of Easter, Pentecost, and the Trinity fest in 1724. These original serenades became the impetus for Bach's oratorios and drammi per music, beginning in 1725, when he made a major compositional shift away from original weekly church service cantatas to profane dramatic works, instrumental music, extended oratorio Passions, and a final third cycle of church cantatas. Meanwhile, Bach in the second, homogeneous incomplete cycle of chorale cantatas was following a tradition of other Leipzig cantors and other composers, possibly in collaboration with local pastors as librettists with emblematic sermons. This cycle of 53 followed the basic cantata structure of opening fantasia chorus and closing chorale with pairs of paraphrased stanzas in recitatives and arias, with variant uses of mixed chorales and chorale tropes with recitatives, as well as six pure-hymn chorale cantatas. The poet of the paraphrased madrigalian internal movements remains unknown while the reasons for the cessation of the cantatas in the Easter-Pentecost season also remains unknown, presumably involving external and internal factors. During this time in the spring of 1725 Bach ceased composing chorale cantatas and began searching for printed texts for a third, traditional, homogeneous cantata cycle using groups of published cantatas by various colleagues, including Neumeister-Telemann sacred works.
Heterogeneous Cantata Cycle 1
While the librettists of the 30 totally new cantatas in Cycle No. 1 remain a mystery, the most likely candidate continues to be Christian Weiss Sr. (https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Lib/Weiss-Christian.htm), St. Thomas pastor and Bach’s champion and confessing pastor. Singling out the six Easter Season cantatas (67, 104, 166, 86, 37, 44), Alfred Dürr cites scholarship1 that shows Weiss's theological learning and close connections to the Bach family, as well as his resumption of regular preaching at later Easter Season 1724 after several years of voice problems. In addition, the chorus cantata form texts for the early part of 1724 Easter Season (Easter Monday to the 2nd Sunday after Easter), were delayed a year to 1725, possibly in deference to Weiss, involving BWV 6, 42, and 85, with Cantata 79 performed later at Reformationfest 1725, says Dürr. The three basic Leipzig Cycle 1 structures, cantatas, and services, according to Dürr, are: Structure A. biblical text-recitative-aria-recitative-aria-chorale; BWV 136, 105, 46, 179, 69a, 77, 25, 109, 89, and 104 for the Eighth to the 14th Sundays after Trinity, 21st and 22nd Sundays after Trinity, and Second Sunday after Easter (Misericordias Domini). Structure B. (7 movements) Biblical text-recitative-chorale-aria-recitative-aria-chorale; BWV 48, 40, 64, 153, 65 and 67 for Trinity 19, Christmas 2 and 3, Sunday after New Year, Epiphany, and First Sunday after Easter (Qusimodogeniti). Structure C. (usually 6 movements) biblical text-aria-chorale-recitative aria-chorale; BWV 144, 166, 86, 37, 44 for Septuagesima, Cantate Sunday (Easter 4), Rogate Sunday (Easter 5), Ascension, Exaudi (Easter 6). The C structure Cantatas BWV 37, 44, 86, and 166 as well as Cantatas 67 (B), 75 and 76 (2 parts), 81(solo Epiphany 4), 104 (A), 154 (solo Epiphany 1), and 179 (A), are “hypothetically” attributed to Weiss, says Dürr (Ibid.: 27f). Durr then suggests “Bach compositions that belong to this group [based on form] are divided between two cycles”: Cycle 1, Septugesima (BWV 144, C), Purification (Anh. 199 double) and Easter 4 (Cantate) to Easter 6 (Exaudi), BWV 166 (solo), 86 (C), 37 (C), and 44 (C) and Cycle 2, Easter Monday to Second Sunday after Easter (Misericordias Domini), and Reformation Festival, BWV 6 (C), 42 (solo), 85 (C), and 79 (C). Bach’s 15 “double” offerings constitute a mini-cycle of six two-part cantatas (BWV 75, Tr. 1; BWV 76, Tr. 2; BWV 21, Xmas; BWV 147, Visit. Fst.; BWV 186, Tr. 7; and BWV 70, Tr. 26) and nine double-headers (BWV 24+185, Tr. 4;179+199, Tr. 11; 63+238 (Xmas); 181+18, Sex.; 22+23, Eas.; 1135=Anh. 199+182, Palm; 31+4, Eas.; 172+59, Pen. and 194+165, Tr. Fst.). The Estomihi 1723 probe piece, BWV 22 and 23, was a two-part cantata, subsequently divided into two and reperformed, probably individually.
Also in the realm of librettist speculation but with some collateral evidence are Cycle 1 Cantata libretti of varied structures influenced by or involving Picander (Christian Friedrich Henrici, 1700-64): influences, BWV 25 (Trinity 14, A) and 138 (Trinity 15, chorale fantasia), 148 (Trinity 17, after Picander); and parodies from Cöthen: Easter and Pentecost Mondays and Tuesdays as well as the Trinityfest (BWV 66, 134, 173, 184, 194 double). It also is possible that Weiss participated in some manner in some of these works, possibly teaming with Bach and Picander. As to the Leipzig cantata expansions from Weimar works 70, 186, 147 (Advent Sundays 2-4, 1717, Salomo Franck texts) into two parts with new recitatives, Weiss is most likely to have assisted. Such varied structures in Cycle 1 are only the tip of the iceberg as far as Bach creative development and invention are concerned, says Richard D. P. Jones.2 Among the other textual, stylistic, and innovative elements are the blending of ecclesiastical and operatic elements such as the Vox Christi/Domini and allegorical characters in duets, the troping of hymns with recitatives, and the use of pastorale dance forms in good shepherd works; the “great biblical text choruses that open many of the cantatas from Cycle 1 are one of its defining features” (Ibid.: 123); the closing congregational plain chorale begun in Weimar as well as elaborate interludes and obbligato instruments as well as the blending of different chorales in one cantata; the internal alternating and combining of secular-influence madrigalian texts (recitatives, arias, ariosi); the use of concerto style as well as arresting musical images in the arias; and “the high incidence of dance rhythms” (Ibid.: 129). Bach also utilized certain obligato instruments when talented guest performers were available for the violoncello piccolo use in cantatas, the transverse flute,
Chorale Cantata Cycle: Unique, Partial, ?Librettist(s)
At the conclusion of the first cycle, Bach immediately started on the second, homogeneous chorale cantata cycle. It was a unique undertaking, although other previous Leipzig cantors (Johann Hermann Schein, SebasKnüpfer, and Johann Kuhnau) and composers (Samuel Scheidt, Franz Tunder, Johann Pachelbel, Wilhelm Zachou, Dietrich Buxtehude, and J. P. Krieger) had composed chorale concertos using pure-hymn (per omnes versus) settings and Schelle (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cdr34pSPopg) had set an entire concerto cycle (1689-90, "Leipzig Chorale Cantata Tradition," http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Topics/Church-Year-Cantatas.htm). Bach's chorale cantatas have a unified libretto in the basic form of opening fantasia and closing plain chorale, with the inner chorale stanzas paraphrased in arias and recitatives, poet unknown, often using chorale tropes of original music and text. Bach utilized 40 primarily Lutheran Reformation and later poetic chorales for entirely original cantatas, from the 1st Sunday after Trinity, 11 June 1724, to nine months later in the Feast of the Annunciation, 25 March 1725, when he abruptly ceased further chorale cantata composition in the Easter-Pentecost season. Subsequently, Bach composed four more chorale cantatas to fill gaps in the church year, as well as four wedding pure-hymn cantatas, not part of the second cycle, and completed the Reformation Fest Cantata BWV 80 in c1738, for a total of 53 homogenous chorale cantatas.
Bach's primary motivation for composing this special cycle may have been, in addition to celebrating milestone Lutheran events such as the Augsburg Confession and Reformation Day, that the year 1724 was the bicentenary of Luther’s foundational three hymnals first published in 1524. Bach “may have collaborated with Salomon Deyling, the lead city church official, to revive Johan Schelle’s complete chorale-based cycle,” suggests John Eliot Gardiner in his new Bach musical biography, BACH: Music in the Castle of Heaven.3 This would have enabled Bach, with the presiding pastor preaching the day’s sermon, to exploit the particular chorale theme, which did not always relate directly to the day’s Gospel but had suitable teachings, or to one of the preferred hymns, but could be linked to the pastor’s cycle of emblematic sermons based on a unified series of symbols, called Liederpredigten (chorale sermons). The most used category of chorale cantata structures, according to Dürr (Ibid.: 30f), is the standard model: opening chorus (Stanza 1), alternating recitatives and arias (stanzas paraphrased), and closing plain chorale (final stanza). In all, 27 cantatas follow this pattern and are primarily found in the de tempore first-half of the church year of seasons in the life of Jesus Christ. They are: 1, 2, 7, 8, 10, 14, 20, 26, 33, 41, 62, 78, 96, 99, 111, 114, 115, 116, 121, 123, 124, 127, 130, 133, 135, 138, 139. Within this model form Bach composed multi-chorale cantatas: Estomihi Cantata 127 with three chorales (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mno93KIIVSE), Trinity 3 Cantata 135 with a closing chorale chorus (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPbEbXinYXg), and Trinity 15 Cantata 138 with three chorale choruses: one opening fantasia, one closing chorale chorus, and a troped chorale chorus within a recitative (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8RFr3yya6WY). Cantata BWV 114 has a chorale aria, set to one stanza and first found in Cantata BWV 4. The next category were chorale cantatas with interpolated chorale and poetic recitative materials in the chorale paraphrased inner movements, treated in various ways and usually found mostly during the omnes tempore Trinity Time having lesser-known chorales. The most common insertions are the chorale trope in the recitative found in seven cantatas: BWV 3, 38, 91, 94 (2 tropes), 122, 125, and 126. In eight cantatas Bach used multiple insertions, with as many as two troped recitatives and a separate chorale aria in BWV 92, 93, 101, 113, 122, 125, 126, and 178. Cantata 180 has a troped recitative and chorale aria. In all, Bach also composed 12 pure-hymn cantatas (per ones versus). Six are written for church year services: BWV 4 (Easter Sunday), 107 (Tr. 7), 112 (Easter 2), 129 (Trinity Fest), 137 (Tr. 12), and 177 (Tr. 4). Four were undesignated, possibly for weddings or other special services (BWV 97, 100, 117, and 192). Two of Bach’s most popular chorale cantatas are hybrids that use all the stanzas and insert additional poetic material. Cantata BWV 80, “Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott,” for the Reformation Fest, and Cantata BWV 140, “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme,” for the last Sunday in Trinity Time.
Cycle Cessation, Librettists
After composing 40 chorale cantatas in the cycle, Bach ceased to compose any during the Easter-Pentecost season of 1725, the final quarter of the church year (source: "Cantata Cycle Incomplete," http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Topics/Cycle-2.htm: "Chorale Cantata Cycle"). Speculation about the reason(s) ranged from the lack of a librettist, decline in the quality of the choir, and a fatigue coupled with a desire to return to the more traditional cantata form. In an objective sense, composing the same form using chorale texts may have presented limitations and frustrations Bach no longer needed to conquer. Subsequently, there are key enigmas or unanswered questions about this abbreviated chorale cantata cycle still explored by Bach scholars: Why did Bach leave the cycle unfinished after 40 consecutive endeavors? Was this due to external or internal factors? Who was (or were) the librettist(s) for these "modern" settings. Was the loss of the text poet(s) the reason he ceased and never composed another poetic internal-paraphrase form? There were a variety of internal and external factors, most notably that the Easter-Pentecost season offers few substantial, designated chorales for the various services. Also, after the spring of 1725, Bach never again composed weekly service cantatas and there is scant record that he systematically re-performed even seasonal mini-cycle portions, possibly at Easter season 1731 and 1735 almost all from the first cycle (BWV 31, 66, 134, 42, 112 [new], 103, 166, 86, 37, 44, 172, 173, 184, 194). There is speculation that Bach reperformed the entire chorale cantata cycle in 1732-33 and again in the 1740s. Bach's chorale cantatas were quite admired at the Thomas School where his parts sets were bequeathed and presented in 1755-56 by Prefect Christian Friedrich Penzel in 1755 (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Books/B0221-2.htm: "Bach Copyist Christian Friedrich Penzel"; https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Lib/Penzel-Christian-Friedrich.htm) and Carl Friedrich Barth (https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Lib/Barth-Karl-Friedrich.htm). To consider possible answers to these enigmatic questions, collateral and circumstantial evidence found in the scholar's toolbox can be helpful.
So who is the great mystery chorale cantata librettist or librettists? Four possible authors or groups were involved in mostly mini-series,4 suggests Harald Streck’s Die Verskunst in den poetischen Texten zu den Kantaten J. S. Bachs (diss. Universität Hamburg 1971): Group 4, earliest, possibly by various authors and of inferior poetic quality (BWV 20 to 127); and subsequently interspersed are Group 2, BWV 101 to 180; Group 1, BWV 78 to 124; and Group 3, BWV 33 to 125.115 Other theories regarding the librettist(s) of the chorale cantata cycle have focused on Christian Weiss (1671-1736), Bach’s pastor at St. Thomas Church. Christoph Wolff, New Grove Bach Family, 1983: 130, says Weise “is a possibility,” and Robert L. Marshall, The Compositional Process of JSB, v. 1: 1972: FN 28), cites Alfred Dürr5 raising the “remote possibility” that both principal Leipzig pastors, Weise and Deyling, who prmany of the sermons when Bach’s cantatas were performed, may have alternated in writing at least some of the chorale cantata texts, suggests Dürr. The leading contender around 2000 was Andreas Strübel (1653-1725), retired Leipzig pastor who died on 31 January 1725, as advocated by Christoph Wolff, Hans-Joachim Schulze, and Klaus Hofmann. “The Rise and Fall of the Stübel Theory” is recounted in Thomas Braatz’s 2007 Bach Cantata Website Article (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Articles/Stubel-Theory.htm). It “is rather unlikely that he [Stübel, forced to retired in 1699 on theological grounds] wrote libretti for Bach,” says Marcus Rathey.6 Beyond the apparent lack of libretti for the Easter Season, “it is likely that Bach’s decision in 1724 (to begin the cycle), was motivated by external reasons as well” as compositional challenges. A general description of the work of the anonymous chorale cantata librettist is found in Martin Geck’s Bach biography.7 “There probably was only one author involved, who would of course have allowed Bach to make alterations. In the inner sections of the libretti, the author at first remained so faithful to the original words of individual hymn verses that his texts lack originality, but later on – and perhaps at Bach’s behest – he made his words more descriptive and emotionally affecting, then finally followed a kind of middle road.”
There were several inherent obstacles to creating such a series of rigidly-philological libretti with internal stanza paraphrases or summaries. One is the challenge of adapting set internal strophic stanzas, varying usually from four to 10 with little dramatic coherence to fit into the new mold of two pairs of narrative recitative and dramatic repeat aria, the usual internal cantata structure. Bach conceivably could have created an extended hybrid chorale cantata as he had done once with BWV 80 but that had taken him almost a quarter century to complete (1715-38). The sentiments found usually in lengthy stanzas with prescribed line length and rhyme scheme (an inherent challenge to every translator!) were difficult to shoehorn into a repeat aria in contrasting da-capo (ABA) or dal segno (short repeat) structure. Most detrimental in the chorale stanzas was little, if any, reference to the day's service Gospel or Epistle reading, but rather to a general mood or moral teaching appropriate mostly in the later Trinity Time second half of the church year, with which Bach began this cycle. The 40th and final chorale cantata in the cycle was BWV 1, "Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern" (How beautifully shines the morning star), for the dual feasts of Annunciation and Psalm Sunday, 25 March 1725, with which Bach may have intentionally ended the cycle (see comments, http://bach-cantatas.com/BWV1-D5.htm).
ENDNOTES
1 Alfred Dürr, Cantatas of J. S. Bach, trans. & ed. Richard D. P. Jones (New York: Oxford Univ. Press: 2005: 27f); Amazon.com: "Look Inside").
2 Richard D. P. Jones, The Creative Development of Johann Sebastian Bach, Vol. 2, , “Music to Delight the Spirit," 1717-1750 “ (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015: 121f); Amazon.com: "Look inside").
3 John Eliot Gardiner Bach biography, Chapter 9, “Cycles and Seasons,” in Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven (New York: Alfred A, Knopf, 2013: 318), Amazon.com: "Look inside"; the three initial 1524 Lutheran hymnals are Geystlich Gesangk-Buchlyn, Das deutsche Kirchenlied, and Etliche Cristliche lyder Lobegesang/und Psalm.
4 These four groups are outlined in Arthur Hirsch’s "Johann Sebastian Bach’s Cantatas in Chronological Order," in BACH, Vol. 4/3 (July 1973: 19, 25), Jstor; Hirsch has liner notes in Helmut Rilling’s Bachakademie Hänssler recordings.
5 Alfred Dürr, “Zur Textvorlage der Choralkantaten J. S. Bachs,” in Kerygma und Melos (Kassel: Bärenreiter 1970: 222f).
6 Marcus Rathey “The chorale cantata in Leipzig: the collaboration between Schelle and Carpzov in 1689-1690 and Bach's chorale cantata cycle, ” Bach Vol. 43 (Berea, OH, 2012: 46f), text Jstor, cited in "Chorale Cantata Cycle," http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Topics/Church-Year-Cantatas.htm.
7 Martin Geck, Johann Sebastian Bach: Life and Work, Eng. trans. John Hargaves (New York: Harcourt Books, 2006:367f).
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To Come: 1725 Interim Trinity Time Break. |
