At the beginning of 2010, I decided it was time to get my collection of Bach cantatas in order and to begin listening to them more-or-less as they were composed in the early 1700s: namely, one cantata per Sunday (with provision for extras on special feast days), over the course of three years (because Bach wrote about three complete year’s-worth of cantatas). To encourage me to listen to these masterpieces as diligently as I could, I thought it might not be a bad idea to write an article for each one in which I’d examine the liturgical purpose of the cantata, its text, anything particularly noteworthy about the music and so on. I don’t claim high levels of erudition where Bach is concerned, but these might prove a useful introduction to the genre for anyone else wanting to ‘follow along’.

For the details regarding which cantata was to be performed on which occasion, I am using the List of Bach cantatas by liturgical function article found on Wikipedia. Since Bach wrote, near enough, three complete cycles of cantatas, any particular Sunday could have one of (up to) three different cantatas performed. I’ll be listening to them chronologically, though, so the first time I have to discuss the cantatas performed for the first Sunday in Advent (for example), I’ll be discussing BWV 61 (written in 1714); second time round, I’ll be discussing BWV 62 (written in 1724); the third time around (assuming I’m still here in 2012!) will be the time to discuss BWV 36, which was written sometime between 1725 and 1730. And the same principle will apply to each and every Sunday and feast day for which multiple cantatas exist. This project is one for the long haul, therefore (so wish me luck!).

Translation Notes

I don’t claim to be particularly fluent in German -and especially not in its 18th Century variants! But I can read it reasonably well, and there are lots of different translations available on the Internet with which I can compare my first efforts and refine. In general, I dislike the line-by-line, word-by-word approach which seems, to me, to produce stilted, awkward outcomes. I prefer a more ‘holistic’ approach that attempts to deliver the gist of the original, even if specific words or phrases are pretty loosely translated as a result. I have also sought to eschew the use of thees and thys, preferring the simpler you and yours. Indeed, if the thing ends up reading like a piece of Dickensian prose, I’ve not done a good job: the thing must sound as modern as any text discussing the theology familiar to an 18th Century Lutheran mind can be! I make exceptions to this rule of ‘modern-ness’, however, when the cantata texts are quoting from the Bible or other well-known liturgical texts. If a cantata is quoting the nunc dimitis, for example, the quote will get the full “Book of Common Prayer 1662″ treatment. (And yes, I realise that Bach would not have been using the BCP, but it’s the text I grew up singing in assorted Anglican services, so it sounds melodious to my ears. Which is reason enough, I think, to make use of it!)

General Notes

A cantata is a piece of music written for a mixture of voice and orchestra, consisting of a number of movements and most often based on a sacred text. Bach wrote more than 200 such pieces, each intended for performance in Church. He would not have called them ‘cantatas’ himself, but that is the name these pieces deserve now, regardless. Since they were designed to fit into the structure of a standard Lutheran church service, the text for each cantata was carefully based upon the gospel or lessons for the day. If the cantata was a long one, the sermon probably took place after the first chorus or one of the arias. A lot of the cantatas end (seemingly with no ear for musical drama!) with a simple chorale, which after the theatrics of the preceding arias and choruses can seem a bit of an anticlimax -but the reason these things tend to end with a relative whimper rather than a bang is again the fact that their performance was deeply rooted in standard Lutheran church practice: the final chorale is the bit where the congregation might have joined in -though academics disagree on the probability of that actually happening.

The exact number of cantatas that Bach wrote is a little difficult to pin down! In the standard Bach catalogue of works (the Bach Werke Verzeichnis or “Bach Works Listing”, entries in which are therefore given BWV numbers), the first 200 or so entries are supposed to be the cantatas. But BWV 11 is not a cantata -or, at least, it’s better known as the Ascension Oratorio; BWV 15, 53,141,142,160 and 189 turn out not to have been written by Bach at all but by various other composers, including Telemann and Hofmann; BWV 118 is a motet; BWV 191 is made up of various bits of the B minor mass (which is itself BWV 232); and BWV 190 and 193 are seriously incomplete (that is, large chunks of the works have been lost). The net result of all this is that there are 188 works which can reasonably be called cantatas, exist in substantial form and which are definitely (or extremely likely!) to be by Johann Sebastian Bach, starting with BWV 1 and going through to BWV 199, but missing out the individual BWV numbers I’ve mentioned above.

Each cantata appears to have been written in the space of about a week. On Monday, Bach would prepare his music paper (ruling the staves and so on) and begin jotting down his musical thoughts. By mid-week, he’d start copying out the various parts (with the help of assistants), beginning with the vocal score and then moving on to the assorted orchestral parts. He’d begin rehearsals with the choir on the Friday; on Saturday there would be the first (and only!) dress rehearsal, and then the performance proper would take place on Sunday at 8.00am. The next Monday, the entire process would begin again afresh. This immense workload basically began in 1723, shortly after Bach became cantor of the Thomasschule in Leipzig, and was repeated possibly five times over the subsequent six years (though two of the cantata cycles thus produced would now appear to have been lost to us). There are a handful of extant cantatas from before the 1723/24 period, but it’s the Leipzig period that saw the great bulk of them being composed.

Ratings

I wasn’t going to rate the cantatas, but after the first half-dozen or so, I discovered I very definitely had my preferences! So, as long as we all understand it’s completely subjective and somewhat arbitrary -and that it therefore doesn’t really mean anything (even my own opinions change over time, too!), I will give a rating for each cantata (out of five, where five is stunningly brilliant and one is not really very pleasant at all). It will take me a little while to go back over the cantatas I’ve already covered and retrofit them with one of these ratings, but I hope to catch up soon!

Detailed Notes

(*) Technically, these Sundays fall within the tempus clausum of Lent in the relevant modern year, meaning that no cantata should be performed on this date. However, that means there are weeks when no cantata would be discussed, so instead I take the opportunity to ‘fill in time’ with discussions about cantatas that could have been performed roughly around this time back in the 1720s or so.

(¤) Out of five!