Archive for the ‘Bach’ Category

This is yet another week when we’re technically not supposed to be discussing any cantatas at all, deep as we are in the season of Lent, when musical pleasures were denied even the Lutheran faithful! However, as I’ve been doing for the past couple of weeks, I’m taking the opportunity to discuss all four cantatas that Bach wrote for Quinquagesima -the last Sunday before Lent. In this case, it’s cantata 127 -and I should say upfront that it’s an incomparable masterpiece!

The lectionary readings for today are (inevitably!) the same as they have been for the two cantatas I’ve discussed previously -but unlike those cantatas, this one pays barely a passing nod to anything specific contained in any of the day’s old testament, gospel or epistle texts. The Luke text for the day (as was mentioned a fortnight ago) talks about Jesus ‘going up to Jerusalem’ (where he will, of course, be arrested, tortured and crucified), and in a general sense the cantata uses that as a cue for meditating on the pain and torment of the Passiontide story. The cantata text then turns that well-known ‘external’ story into a personal and internalised reflection on how, through that suffering, a Christian will get through the Day of Judgement at the end of time. After all, “I break the powerful bonds of death”, says Jesus at the very end of the piece. All in all, it’s a very apt piece for getting you into the Lent/Easter pentitential mood, suffused as it is with a sense of time passing, judgement coming… and Jesus standing by you through it all.

It’s also an incredibly complex piece, musicologically speaking! The first movement is based on (or at least contains, buried within it) three different chorale themes. Here’s the first of them, visible in the first four bars of the first violin part, page 1 of the PDF linked to at the end of this blog piece:

If you click on that, you’ll get to hear the notes bashed out on a piano. You ought to be able to recognise the tune, too: it’s exactly the same one mentioned last week, to which the closing chorale’s version of the Agnus Dei was set:

Different pitches, certainly, but exactly the same pattern: the music tells you, even if the words aren’t actually set, that this is a plea for God’s mercy, mediated through ‘the Lamb of God’, Jesus -which fits the words perfectly, of course. (Actually, because it is quite difficult to hear those notes being played, at least one conductor -John Eliot Gardiner- has recorded a version in which that tune is explicitly sung by the sopranos, his argument being that this is what, in all likelihood, Bach would have done originally). So that’s ‘big tune 1′.

The second chorale theme is the one you can hear the sopranos sing in their long notes whilst the other voice parts flit and dance around them. That comes from a hymn written way back in 1562 by a chap called Paul Eber. Bach very commonly took chorale tunes known to his congregation from long-standing sources and adapted them to fit his original work, and this is an example of that happening:

Now, if you take that second chorale tune and shrink its note values down, you get this:

That’s from the very first bar of the very first page of the PDF full score -and you’d better get used to that sequence of notes, because it pops up everywhere! Bar 3 in the recorders/flutes; Bar 4 in the oboes again; bar 5 in the continue; bar 6 in the violins and so on and on. The ‘motif’ even appears outside of the first movement altogether. Take a look at page 14 of the score, for example, and see what’s accompanying the tenor in his recitative at bar (measure) 13:

Now, I’ll readily concede that it’s not exactly the same, but I think you’ll hear at least the strong family resemblance to the original theme! Now jump to the fifth movement (the bass aria), page 22 of the PDF, and see what the bass sings:

Again, there’s that repeated-note theme, though of course it then goes off and does its own thing. Still, that repetition of ‘fürwahr, fürwahr’ happens time and time again throughout the bass aria: it’s quite a striking motif in its own right, and I don’t think it’s any accident that it can trace its ancestry back to the very first bars of the first movement! Anyone claiming that merely repeating notes doesn’t count as echoing an earlier theme, however, needs to read on just two bars more and look at what the continuo line is playing, starting three quavers before the end of that bar:

Despite the very different note values and starting pitches, there’s that same theme all over again, quoted completely, yet appearing in the fifth movement rather than the first. You can play this hide-and-seek-the-theme game lots more times than I’ve got room (or time!) for here and yield lots of other results. But this isn’t just a game, of course: Bach is carefully using this second theme in the first movement to permeate the entire cantata and thus tie it all together, musically and emotionally.

So, that’s two chorale tunes. One using the Agnus Dei motif, and the second this repeated-note them from the Paul Eber chorale of 1562. But that’s not all, for there is yet another, buried in the continuo part on page 1 of the full-score PDF, bar 6:

Now that is a slightly garbled version of a tune you hear properly in Cantata BWV 159, second movement, when the soprano sings:

Again, Bach uses these chorale tunes which were written by others decades earlier (in this case, by Paul Gerhardt in 1656) because the tunes will be familiar to his audience (the church congregation) and they can therefore be expected to attach meaning to them that might pass you and I by. In this case, for example, the words associated with the original chorale were:

You maybe get the idea, therefore, that Bach is quietly dropping this tune into his cantata 127 so that his listeners will quasi-subconsciously call to mind the sufferings Christ endured during his Passion, which would be an entirely appropriate thing for them to do, given that this would be the last music heard before the start of the Lent/Easter season for that year. It’s very subtle, of course -and if you aren’t familiar with the original chorale tune, it might well pass you by. But it means Bach is working at many different levels at once to inspire a given set of emotions in his audience.

Now, that’s already a pretty complex piece: three different chorale tunes playing their part in this opening movement, each giving it multiple meanings, associations and resonances; and some of which are destined to colour or influence parts of all the other movements too. But that’s not quite all! There’s yet another feature of the first movement which has to be mentioned, if only because it gives the entire movement its particular colour and character: the dotted rhythms played (initially) by the two recorders (or flutes):

That rhythm gets passed from instrument to instrument, on and on, page after page -and I wish I could tell you what it represented! Alfred Dürr (he of the mega-expensive book on Bach cantatas) says, “…the scoring with recorders and the invariable dotted rhythm evoke the impression of submissive, beseeching gestures”. Really??! Not for me they don’t. Not unless the beseeching person involved has some sort of manic muscle twitch. Perhaps he’s suffering from Tourette’s? Or maybe, the idea the thing has anything to do with ‘beseeching’ is not a particularly good one! Alternatively, I’ve seen someone claim elsewhere on the web that the rhythm is like the beating of angel wings… but that strikes me as mere fanciful whimsy on that listener’s part. I could just about imagine the jerky flapping of a butterfly’s wings, but if angels beat their wings like that, they’d be airsick pretty quickly, I think! The Other Half suggested that it sounded a bit like a march -but it’s written in 4/4 and marches ought to be in 2/4, so that one doesn’t convince me either, though a sedate funeral march sounds a lot more convincing than twitchy angels or beseeching beggars, especially given that the entire cantata text is all about death and judgement. Finally, I suppose, you could note that recorders have a rural/pastoral flavour about them -in which case it could just be a bunch of shepherds having a knees-up. The nature of the text tends to suggest that would be somewhat inappropriate, however, so no joy there either!

My own best guess is that the dotting is there simply to avoid monotony, but that what’s really important is the insistent pulse of the underlying quavers… because that same quaver pulse rhythm is what opens the third movement (soprano aria). So, again, Bach is tying different parts of the cantata, rhythmically, together -and the bouncy dottedness of this version of that underlying rhythm is there just to keep the ear interested. Anyway, that’s just my best guess: I can’t honestly say with any certainty why Bach adopted that figuration, though I’m glad he did!

All in all, what an opening movement! Three completely independent chorale tunes wrapped up together and topped off with a layer of dotted quaver icing played by some gorgeous-sounding recorders. They don’t come any better than that, I think!

I’ll pass on over the tenor recitative, because there’s not a lot to say about it, and come directly to the core of the work: the soprano aria. It’s a wonderful thing, and I definitely want it at my funeral! There is just a luscious, simple beauty about the soprano tune. (That said, it’s anything but simple musically -wandering through modulation after modulation. I tell you, if you bashed out those notes on a keyboard stripped of their context, casual listeners would think you were playing some awfully modern quasi-atonal composition by some 20th Century wünderkind or other). The bit that really gets to me, though, is when the soprano sings about funeral bells: and Bach has the violins and viola play pizzicato: mention bells in the text and you get bells in the string section! Throughout, there’s a measured quaver pulse which reminds me of the ticking of a clock (presumably, time passing as we make our way to Eternity). It’s calm and sure, however; not at all panicked or resentful of time having run out. If this is what it’s like to kark it, this is the way I would want to go! Even better: it’s a da capo aria, so once the soprano gets to the end of the thing, she re-starts the whole thing from the beginning. It’s true that on the repeat, we stop short of the funeral bells; but you get pretty much everything else for a second helping.

The bass aria (fifth movement -though, technically, it’s just a follow-on to the fourth movement recitative) is also wonderful: the trumpets that shall sound at the last judgement make an appearance, and I just love baroque trumpets! The piece is cunningly composed (of course!): the bass starts quietly, with just a continuo accompaniment. Then he has a trumpet-introduced interlude; another continuo-accompanied interlude; more trumpets and so on, the two styles alternating about six times in all.

To wrap it all up, there’s a deceptively simple-sounding chorale (check out the last three bars and work out how many keys it wanders through, with all those sharps, flats and naturals scattered around like confetti!)

I’ve gone on at some length about this cantata, simply because I’ve been blown away by it (never having heard it before this week -very much my loss). I’m giving it a rating of 6 out of 5 because it’s just so far out of the realm of any other cantata I’ve discussed up to this point. The text says wonderful things, and the music is just at a level of inspiration that defies proper categorization. Some have claimed it to be Bach’s best cantata: well, I wouldn’t know about that (I’ve still got 150 or so of them to go!), but I think it must definitely be in the premier league of cantatas! Wonderful stuff.

Further Information

• A full score of the cantata is available here.
• Commercial recordings of it are available here.

This Sunday, I’m continuing to discuss cantatas which shouldn’t really be discussed at this time (because we’re in Lent and they couldn’t have been performed if it had similarly been Lent in the 1720s). The second of the quinquagesima cantatas that would have been performed at roughly this time of year, if the variable date on which Easter falls didn’t muck things around, is cantata BWV 23. It’s actually the second ‘audition piece’ Bach wrote in 1723 order to get the job of Cantor at St. Thomas’ Leipzig (which makes it a little bit more interesting than usual), and would have been performed as a pair with the cantata I discussed last Sunday (BWV 22).

Of the two, I have to say I much prefer BWV 22, but number 23 has a doleful charm all of its own, too.

The cantata text, as usual, takes the Gospel reading for the day and runs with it. In this case, that’s Luke 18, v.31 to 43, which is the same reading I discussed last week (involving thick disciples who couldn’t understand what Jesus was on about). This cantata text, however, picks up on the second part of that reading:

And it came to pass, that as he was come nigh unto Jericho, a certain blind man sat by the wayside begging and hearing the multitude pass by, he asked what it meant. And they told him, that Jesus of Nazareth passeth by. And he cried, saying, Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me. And they which went before rebuked him, that he should hold his peace: but he cried so much the more, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me. And Jesus stood, and commanded him to be brought unto him: and when he was come near, he asked him,saying, What wilt thou that I shall do unto thee? And he said, Lord, that I may receive my sight. And Jesus said unto him, Receive thy sight: thy faith hath saved thee. And immediately he received his sight, and followed him, glorifying God: and all the people, when they saw it, gave praise unto God.

This reading obviously gives the cantata its title (Du wahrer Gott und Davids Sohn means ‘you, true God and David’s Son’, which is the blind man’s cry, near enough). It also sets the tone: someone suffering, waiting endlessly for something good to come along to relieve the agony. The entire piece is accordingly imbued with a sadness and plaintiveness, entirely fitting the blind man’s mood. The first movement, involving a close duet of alto and soprano, accompanied by the despondency that seems inevitably to arise when oboes do their thing, is unbelievably moving, in fact. Textually, throughout the entire cantata, there are verbal echoes of the blind man’s plea for mercy -culminating in the fourth movement with an explicit setting of the Agnus Dei (though, obviously, in German!):

Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world, have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world, have mercy on us.
Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world, grant us peace.

Musically, Bach was showing off a bit -because the tune to which that Agnus Dei is set appears as the instrumental tune to the accompaniment of the second movement recitative -thus making the call for mercy appear, literally, throughout the entire work… even if, in one part, wordlessly.

On page 12 of the 32-page PDF of the full score linked to at the end of this post, for example, you’ll see this in the oboe/violin opening to the second movement:

That’s a sequence of Eflat -> F -> G -> G -> Aflat -> G, which you can hear by clicking on the music example.

And on page 25 of the same PDF, you’ll see the Sopranos open movement four as follows:

The clef used perhaps makes it a little trickier to see, but that is a sequence of Bflat -> C -> D -> D -> Eflat -> D, and again, you can hear what that sounds like by clicking on the music example. The two cases are a fifth apart, so the second sounds higher than the first, but the pattern is exactly the same in each case. Given that the fourth movement was only added later to the cantata (only the first three movements were included at the first perfomance in 1723), it would seem that the sequence meant ‘plea for mercy’ in Bach’s head when he wrote it into the second movement. When he then came to set the words of the Agnus Dei to music, presumably he chose to re-quote the same theme because its ‘inner meaning’ matched the ‘outer meaning’ of the words, so it was appropriate to do so.

This repeated plea for mercy makes for a very melancholy work (begging for mercy has that effect on you). But it’s also a subtly strong work: there’s no question, from this setting at any rate, that the request for mercy will be granted -and, textually, there’s not a shred of doubt about the matter either. Ultimately, it’s therefore very reassuring: the final request for peace is, you feel certain, going to be granted. The final ‘Amen’ of the fourth movement ends on a blazing C major chord, for example: you can’t mistake the ‘coming home’ feeling and guaranteed solidity of that ending! But what I like about this piece, too, is that there is no whiz-bangery about the miraculous business of regaining sight. The emphasis of the text (and thus of the music) is on the quest for mercy, and the (quiet) miracle of it being granted. Those of us who are not particularly convinced about miracles of the wow-the-crowd sort don’t particularly have anything to carp about, therefore! Even the third movement, which deals with the topics of eyes and vision much more than the other movements do (and in a fairly joyous way, too) frames its observations as a private and inward allegory of the pursuit of ’spiritual light’, rather than as a piece of public magic, wonderful to behold.

Anyway, I am left in two minds about this particular cantata. One is that is simply a great work, mournfully beautiful to listen to, wonderfully calm and reassuring to contemplate. The other is, there are no trumpets, horns or organ, nor any dance rhythms to pleasure the ear: the Puritans (or maybe that should be Lutherans!) have the day -which makes it worthy, but not delicious fun. I can’t love this work, therefore; but I can admire it. 3.5 out of 5 from me.

Further Information

• A full score of the cantata is available here.
• Commercial recordings of it are available here.

Having just recently bemoaned the fact that it’s a lot more work to churn out a piece on a cantata each week than I had ever anticipated, I suppose I should be rubbing my hands in glee today… because, officially, there are no more cantatas to discuss for about 6 weeks! Last Wednesday was, for us in 2010, Ash Wednesday -and therefore the day on which the season of Lent began. I hoped you enjoyed your pre-Lenten pancakes on the Tuesday, because that’s the last bit of fun you’re supposed to be having for 40 days or so (until, in fact, it’s time to break open the Easter eggs on Easter Sunday itself!) The same was true for early 18th Century Lutherans, too: Lent was, and remains, a tempus clausum or “closed time”, during which no ‘festivities or merriment’ were permitted. That included no marriages -and no cantatas in church (as per canon 52 of the Council of Laodicea in (approximately) AD363-364… the Church has been keen on not having fun for quite a while, it seems!)

So Bach had a bit of a holiday on his hands, and I suppose I could do likewise. The trouble is, Easter is a moveable feast (it depends on when the new moon interacts with the Northern Hemisphere’s Spring Equinox), so what is Lent in 2010 wasn’t necessarily Lent in the early-to-mid 1720s, when Bach was in major cantata mode in Leipzig. In fact, if you check the relevant Wikipedia page, you’ll find a number of cantatas for performance at Quinquagesima that have first performance dates ranging from 7th February -which is obviously well behind us now- to 27th February -which is still to come, of course; and then you’ll find the reference to the beginning of Lent, which is now four days ago. So, you see that trying to tie the 1724 or 1725 liturgical calendar to the 2010 one is not such a trivial task!

The net result is that whilst the fact that Lent has begun this year might make discussing a new cantata unnecessary, I’ll still discuss the first of those possible Quinquagesima cantatas -and in the remaining weeks of this year’s Lenten period, I’ll discuss the others, too.

And so down to business: Cantata BWV 22.

The original score of this cantata is annotated with the words, ‘Dies ist das Proberstück in Leipzig’, which translates as, ‘This is the Leipzig audition-piece’. In other words, this was written by Bach in February 1723 to get himself the job of Cantor at St. Thomas’, Leipzig, which adds a certain historical ‘zing’ to it, perhaps! The text of the cantata revolves around the Gospel of the day, which was Luke 18, v. 31 – 43 in which this passage appears:

Then he took unto him the twelve, and said unto them,
Behold, we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that
are written by the prophets concerning the Son of man shall be accomplished.
For he shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked,
and spitefully entreated, and spitted on and they shall scourge him,
and put him to death; and the third day he shall rise again.
And they understood none of these things and this saying was hid from them,
neither knew they the things which were spoken.

I always think the disciples are being unusually thick at this point, since there doesn’t seem to be much ambiguous about Jesus’ words! But, the point is that Jesus ‘brought the 12 to him’ (which gives this cantata its title), warned them he was going to Jerusalem where he would die, and they didn’t understand a word of it. Bach’s librettist transforms this story into a personal affair for each modern-day Christian: it is you that must go to Jerusalem and take part in Jesus’ passion. It is therefore you that needs to understand Jesus’ words -and the text becomes, in parts, a prayer for understanding so that we, unlike the disciples, can understand what is about to happen. Remember the timing here, too: this is to be sung just before Lent starts, and Lent is the season that ‘leads on’ to the time of the passion of Jesus in Jerusalem, culminating in his crucifixion (and resurrection, of course!). So this is a nicely “preparatory” cantata, bending the congregation’s mind to the travails that are about to come, preparing us for the penitential time that is Lent and the agonies of Easter.

Musically, the thing opens with a plaintive oboe line -again, sad, penitential, mournful. The text in the first movement is a direct quotation from the Gospel for the day, initially sung by the tenor (as Evangelist) and bass (taking Jesus’ part). The chorus chimes in as the bewildered and clueless set of disciples: the parts cross nicely, hinting at the complete chaos in their minds, as if to say, ‘What is he on about?!’

The second movement is an aria for alto -with an obbligato oboe accompaniment that, once again, gives the piece a plangent quality. The alto is supposed to be expressing our own thoughts, of course: we are (or ought to be) ready to share in the pain of Jesus in Jerusalem. For the most part, the music is straightforward enough (it’s Bach, though, so not that straightforward!), but there’s an extraordinary moment at the 1:44 mark when the alto is singing the word ‘Leiden’ (which means “suffering” or, in the specific context of Jesus’ sufferings, “passion”). The key suddenly shifts (to C flat major, as it happens), the oboe sticks on one note, and the continuo in the bass part falls away on a descending scale. A very effective ‘heart-stopping’ moment, as the awful truth dawns (and, one might think, a bit of compositional pizzazz to wow the people who were about to decide who to employ as Cantor!)

Next, the bass points out that it’s not so easy to understand after all: first, one has to ‘crucify’ one’s material desires. I find the opening of the movement almost unbearably lovely (the sustained chords in the continuo; the bass line weaving around it; the slow, deliberative tempo). There are two bits of word-painting: first, on the ‘laufen’ in line 1 (meaning ‘to run’, and the bass line certainly starts doing so!); second on the last line, where “Freuden” (joys) gets some suitably joyful airtime. There’s also a little in-joke on the ‘feste Burg’ bit: Ein feste Burg was one of Luther’s own compositions and Bach fleetingly quotes the tune at this point. When I saw the words in the libretto, and before hearing the piece for the first time, I bet he was going to do that… and I wasn’t disappointed! In the cantata’s score it looks like:

…which is three repeated notes, followed by a drop of a fourth.

And here’s what Luther’s hymn opens with:

…which is, er, three repeated notes followed by a drop of a fourth. Bingo!

Anyway, it’s a nice little in-joke, designed (I suspect) to impress long-time committed Lutherans who have your career prospects in the palm of their hands!

The tenor aria is a short affair, with nice word-play on ‘Frieden’ (peace), including a bit at 1:30 where the soloist holds the note steady whilst the continuo plays the opening theme under him. The overall mood at this point is one of happiness, I think: the idea of being eternal peace has that effect on people, I suppose.

We wrap up with a nice chorale, as usual -only this one is a little different in that each of the lines for the chorus is interspersed with an instrumental interlude, rather like what happens in the well-known ‘Jesu, joy of man’s desiring’ chorale. The violin and oboe sustain semiquaver (16th note!) runs throughout the entire movement, giving it a nice sense of forward motion. I rather like the fact, too, that the chorale’s words aren’t of the usual, plodding “…and the moral of the story is…” type. Instead, we just get a rather nice reflection on the idea of making Jesus the focus of our thoughts.

All in all, and as you can probably tell by now, I like this one. I’m thus giving it a rating of 4/5, for whatever that’s worth!

Further Information

• A full score of the cantata is available here.
• Commercial recordings of it are available here.

You wouldn’t think that listening to 20 minutes of music, writing a very short essay and doing a bit of German translation work once a week would take a lot of time, would you? I certainly wouldn’t, anyway -which is why I foolishly thought I’d be able to ‘do’ one Bach cantata a week for three years. I didn’t reckon on real life getting in the way, however -who’d have thought shopping at Woolworths would screw things up so royally?! So I’m late once again with this week’s cantata (though I did listen to it on-time). I may have to re-think the feasibility of this project before too long.

Anyway, down to business. The Gospel appointed for today in the Lutheran lectionary of 1725 (ish) was Luke 8, v. 4-15 -which is the well-known parable of the sower (“some seed fell on stony ground, some was eaten by birds, and some fell amongst thorns.”) At the end of the parable, the disciples ask Jesus what it all means, and his answer is:

Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God. Those by the way side are they that hear; then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved.

This is real meat for Protestants, of course: to have Jesus himself talking about the word of God (as opposed to faith in priests, relics, saints and all the Hellish paraphernalia the Catholics put up with!) is the sort of thing that would have made Luther deliriously excited, I suspect!! Naturally, therefore, Bach’s librettist took this theme and ran -practically a marathon!- with it. The gist of the text is “The word of God is the treasure of my life, and I pray it is never taken away from me”. Explicitly, the librettist adds (and Bach dutifully sets) that this wonderful treasure is at risk from the horrid murder and blasphemy of ‘the Turks and the Pope’. So sweetness and tolerance is not exactly this cantata’s strong point! Which is a bit of a shame, because it’s rather a nice one, musically. I should mention in passing that this is a relatively early work, and not from the main Leipzig cantata cycle of 1724/25: it was actually written in Weimar in about 1714. I could equally well have selected BWV 181, which was the 1724 equivalent for this Sunday in the calendar -but that will have to wait until next year!

BWV 18’s title is the German for “Just as the rain and snow fall from heaven”, which is a direct quote from Isaiah 55:

For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.

…which neatly references the twin ideas of sowing seed and the word of God being like seed that germinates and yields a harvest of accomplishment. This is the text sung, verbatim, by the bass soloist in the cantata’s second movement.

The cantata opens, however, with a ’sinfonia’: a wordless orchestral introduction, scored for an interesting mix of 2 flutes or violins (the recording sample this week uses the violins), 4 (count ‘em!) violas, bassoon, cello and continuo. The massed ranks of the violas give the piece a dark, warm tone. The piece consists primarily of a repeated theme of strong quarter notes (crotchets to us English folk!) interspersed with a spiky bit of eighth-note (quavers!)  runs. Various sources will claim that this is a picture of rain/snow -the sort of weather you need for your seeds to germinate- even to the point of referring to it as a sort of ‘Bach’s Four Seasons’. In particular, it’s claimed by some, that the quaver runs (downwards, often enough) are the musical depiction of falling rain -as about to be described, verbally, by the bass soloist when he quotes the Isaiah passage mentioned earlier. But I can’t see it (or hear it) myself, and I don’t think there’s a need to force Bach into a ‘programme music’ mould. For me, it’s just an attractive and masterful piece of chaconne writing for sparse orchestral resources. But you can listen and decide for yourself, of course.

The second movement, as I’ve mentioned, is a rather fine bass solo, reciting the Isaiah text already quoted -and since it’s a literal and direct quotation from Isaiah, I’m rendering it here into Authorised Version English, despite Bach never using or reading the King James’ bible!

The third movement is very interesting: it’s a standard recitative, interspersed with chunks of the Lutheran litany (which is where the bit about ’save us from Turks and Papists’ comes from -Luther’s own lovely handiwork- and all marked in bold in the translation below). The recitative is relatively standard ‘basic cantata’: pleas for God to consider the supplicant, plant the seed of his word in his heart, and keep the devil and all his instruments (including Turks and Papists!) away. Each part of the recitative is taken by a different soloist -starting with the tenor (and his is a particularly beautiful bit of supplication, I think), then the bass, and then the two alternating for the remaining two bits of recitative. The litany parts are declaimed, mostly on a single note by a soprano -and then the Chorus comes in with the ‘hear us, good Lord!’ bits. I’ve borrowed from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer for some parts of the litany’s translation (again, very anachronistic though doing so is, I think it sounds better that way). It’s a satisfying movement, musically and poetically, and there’s a bit of a feeling of the operatic about it -though also a bit on the preachy side!

The fourth movement is a breath of fresh air after all that: sung by the soprano (and thus with a cut-crystal clarity of tone), there’s a nice bit of emphasis on ‘Fort mit allen, fort, nur fort!’ -Away with everything! (Because I only need God’s word)’. It’s a jolly celebration of what the day’s Gospel was on about, and sounds like she’s having fun.

Finally, the thing wraps up with a fairly standard chorale fifth movement -nothing particularly remarkable about it, and in any case only a minute in length.

Overall, it’s a nice piece. The contents of the libretto are a bit on-the-nose in some respects: products of their time and thus sprinkled with the sort of religious bigotry that is a bit depressing to read in this day and age. But musically, there’s a lot of invention, the tone (or ‘colour’) of the piece is novel and interesting, and there’s a lot of subtlety and charm to listen to.

This week, I’m trying a new way of letting you sample Bach’s music. You’re only getting 80bps files, and extracts of the music even so, but hopefully there’s enough of each track available to let you get a sense of what the music is all about. Just click each of the movement titles in the text/translation below and the magic of mp3 streaming should let you enjoy the relevant bits and pieces. Enjoy!

Further Information

• A full score of the cantata is available here.
• Commercial recordings of it are available here.

It’s been busy in the bunker this week, and so I am late with the latest cantata (something Herr Bach couldn’t say and get away with, I suspect!).

The gospel for today back in 1724 would have been Matthew 20 v. 1 – 16. That’s the parable of the workers in the vineyard, the essential gist of which is that a vineyard owner hires people at the start of the day and promises to pay them a penny; then he hires more at lunchtime and in the mid-afternoon. Finally, he hires some extra workers just one hour before works stops. Then he proceeds to pay everyone the contracted penny wages. Naturally, those who worked since early morning for the same pay as those hired just an hour before complain at their treatment. To which the vineyard owner retorts, ‘Were you not hired at a penny? And haven’t I paid you a penny? So what harm has befallen you? And why, therefore, do you complain? It’s my money and I can pay it as I like, so if I choose to pay these who came last the same as I pay you who came first, it’s not for you to question. Take what is yours and go away.’ In German, those last words translate to Nimm, was dein ist, und gehe hin -and thus gives this cantata its title.

In other words, this cantata seeks to deal with a central conundrum of religious belief: how come the bad guys always seem to get all the luck and the good ones get the shaft? The libretto for the cantata doesn’t really have much profound to say on the matter, other than ‘God knows what’s best for you’, so chin up and trust in Him. Sentiments which don’t really work for me, I’m afraid! The music is also curiously bland, with really nothing particular to commend it. There’s a weird ending to the last movement: just when you think it’s all about to resolve conventionally, the last cadence goes very peculiar. Other than that, it’s a workmanlike affair and not much else, so it rates a mere 1 out of 5 on my personal satisfaction meter!

Possibly more interesting than the music this week is the fact that today marked Septuagesima in 1724: approximately seventy days before Easter (though this observance was dropped from the Roman Catholic liturgy after Vatican 2, and the Anglicans followed soon after. Lutherans still observe it). Benjamin Britten wrote an operetta (Paul Bunyan) in 1941 to a libretto by W.H. Auden, one part of which contains the perhaps memorable line, Septuagesima …ate less and less-imer. Had them rolling in the aisles, I expect, but at least it sticks in my mind! Septuagesima fell rather earlier than that this year, because Easter is a moveable feast and falls this year on 4th April. Count seventy days back from that and you find out that, this year, Septuagesima Sunday was actually last weekend. No matter: it has traditionally marked the beginning of the ‘pre_lenten period’, and thus a time for carnival and other such festivities.

Further Information

• A full score of the cantata is available here.
• Commercial recordings of it are available here.

Today is Candlemas -precisely 40 days after Christmas day (doesn’t time fly?!), and therefore the day on which Mary was bound to present herself for ritual purification after giving birth, according to the rules for these sorts of things laid down in Leviticus (Chapter 12 v. 2-8, if you fancy checking it!). As a result, the formal name for this feastday is usually given as ‘The feast of the purification of the virgin’, though it’s sometimes referred to as the feast of the presentation of Jesus in the Temple, because Jesus was with Mary when she went to the Temple.

The old and holy Jew Simeon was also at the Temple at this time, and recognised Jesus’ true nature. He therefore took him in his arms (so the Gospel relates) and gives voice to the words which became known as the Nunc dimitis (“Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace according to thy word. For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; To be a light to lighten the Gentiles and to be the glory of thy people Israel.”). It is this part of the Gospel which Bach’s librettist used to construct today’s cantata text: there is a direct quote from it in movement 2 -which I’ve marked in bold italics below (“Herr, nun lässest du deinen Diener in Friede fahren, wie du gesaget hast.”), and the final chorale makes specific mention of Jesus being a ‘blessed light for the heathen’. More generally, Simeon was happy to have seen Jesus, at last, just before dying -and the general sense of the cantata is one of great, joyous fun and celebration.

You can tell that from the get-go because of the use of horns in the orchestration for movement 1: there’s nothing quite as raucously happy in Baroque music as the sound of hunting horns, I think! Movement 2 is much more meditative. Movement three is back to dance rhythms. The final two movements are extremely short ’suffixes’ to the main work (movements 1 to 3), and don’t really have much of a personality of their own. Indeed, it is often claimed that in preparing this work, Bach pinched the three movements from a violin concerto (now lost), and stuck on two extra bits (including the obligatory chorale) to flesh the thing out into standard cantata form. Given he only had a couple of days after his last cantata to get things ready, “borrowing” another work in this way would have made sense, I think.

Anyway: I like it. The last two movements are certainly a bit pedestrian, but movements 1 and 3 sound great, and the second movement is a wonderful mix of quasi-plainchant of the “raw” Nunc dimitis text over an elaborate weave of notes from the orchestra: lovely stuff. Definitely a 3.5/5 for me.

Incidentally, Candlemas marks the point where the Church stops counting things as happening ‘after Christmas’ or ‘after Epiphany’ and starts counting them as being ‘before Easter’. So if you haven’t taken your Christmas decorations down yet, now’s your last chance! Traditionally, too, Candlemas day was the day you predicted what the forthcoming weather was going to be like: if the day itself was bright and clear, Winter would continue long and cold. If the day were wet and cloudy, Spring wouldn’t be far away. In America, this tradition got morphed into Groundhog Day -which is why Groundhog Day is February 2nd, too. (You have the Pennsylvania Dutch immigrants in the 18th and 19th Centuries -who were actually German, of course- to thank for that). And why the name Candlemas, back in Europe? Because today was the day the Church would bless the entire stock of candles it intended to use throughout the coming year. All in all, happy candlemas!

Further Information

• A full score of the cantata is available here.
• Commercial recordings of it are available here.

In the Lutheran lectionary of 1724, the Gospel reading appointed for today was the one from Matthew 8, where Jesus calms the storm on the Sea of Galilee:

And when he was entered into a ship, his disciples followed him. And, behold, there arose a great tempest in the sea, insomuch that the ship was covered with the waves: but he was asleep. And his disciples came to him, and awoke him, saying, Lord, save us: we perish! And he saith unto them, Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith? Then he arose, and rebuked the winds and the sea; and there was a great calm.

It’s easy to see how the story can be interpreted in a purely spiritual way: when we think Jesus is not with us, “asleep on the job”, as it were, life’s storms can threaten to overwhelm us. However, if we have faith, all will be well. And that’s pretty much what Bach’s librettist has done with this week’s cantata text. The title, translated, reads “Jesus is asleep -so what hope is there for me?”, and it’s mostly downhill all the way thereafter, except that by Movement 5 (a bass aria -and Bach invariably uses the bass to speak as Christ himself), we get the message of calm: Schweig, aufgetürmtes Meer! (“Be still, tempestuous seas!”) and the concluding chorale, as ever, points the message home: when Jesus is with me, Satan can do his worst, and all will be OK. A curious feature of that fifth movement, when Jesus calms the storm, is that it’s written in da capo form (which simply means you go back to the beginning and repeat what has already been played until a certain point is reached, when you can finally stop). The curious effect is that after Jesus goes to the trouble of calming the storm, the damn thing starts up again! Not sure if there’s a subtle point being made there, or whether musical form is playing inadvertently inappropriate tricks on us! But no matter…

Cantata BWV 81 is of particular interest for a couple of reasons, I think. One is its form and structure: there’s no opening chorale. Instead, we’re plunged (pun intended!) straightaway into an alto aria, built on a gentle accompaniment that suggests (to these ears) a boat bobbing gently on water: the musical calm before the storm, perhaps. At least one commentator has called it a “lullaby”, hinting at Jesus being asleep. Either way, the music is more literally dramatic than is usual with Bach’s cantatas, so in addition to lapping waves or lullabies, we get the violence of the storm graphically depicted in the third movement, for example, with the violins racing up and down the scales and the tenor voice part doing much the same (glad I’m not singing it!). Assorted critics have claimed all this makes the cantata quasi-operatic as a result, though I think that’s taking things a bit far (the liturgical nature of these works is always most apparent to me, anyway).

Apart from that, the cantata is of interest because of the textual disputes that have arisen concerning that same third movement. The words Bach wrote and set are

Die schäumenden Wellen von Belials Bächen
Verdoppeln die Wut.
Ein Christ soll zwar wie Wellen stehn,
Wenn Trübsalswinde um ihn gehn

…and the trouble is that repeated use of the word ‘Wellen’. The word literally means ‘waves’, and Die schäumenden Wellen means ‘the foamy/stormy waves (from Belial’s brooks -and Belial is another name for Satan)’. So far, no problem. But the second use of the word raises issues. The text is literally saying, ‘A Christian should, like waves, stand fast when troublesome winds blow about him’… but how can waves of water ever be said to “stand fast”?! The second use of the word ‘Wellen’ seems out of place, therefore. And to get around this conundrum of metaphors, inventive folk have supposed that Bach mis-wrote: that he intended to use the word Felsen second time around (because Felsen means ‘rock’, and it makes sense that a Christian should stand like a rock when waves of trouble crash about him). The only trouble with this theory is that it’s not what’s in the libretto as printed at the time, nor what Bach’s son clearly wrote about 20 years later (when he was in possession of the original performing materials and would thus have been able to check his father’s original work). In desperation, therefore, other inventive folk have noticed that “Wellen” can mean a shaft or axle of a wheel (’shaft’ is, for example, what Google Translate will tell you the word “Wellen” means, relegating ‘waves’ to a mere secondary meaning). The idea, they say, is that the Christian should be the immovable axle or shaft around which troubles fly -which is all well and good, but I have a hard time working out how anyone could write a text that talks about foamy waves and raging seas… and then stick a shaft in the middle of it, meaningfully! It’s this idea of an immovable shaft, however, that has many translations of this cantata’s text talking about ‘Christians ought to be like a pillar’ -and pillars in the middle of stormy seas don’t make a lot of sense to me either.

I’m not sure there’s any particularly good way of resolving this problem, so I’m going to be loose and free in my translation! I’m running with the idea that a wind causes (‘whips up’) waves on the sea, and that Bach’s librettist therefore had in mind that the winds of trouble blown by Satan would cause a Christian “sea” to ‘rise in waves’ to the occasion. It’s not an especially original idea (see, for example, Z. Philip Ambrose’s translation), but it avoids the need to suppose Bach couldn’t write correctly or that his librettist had axles in the middle of oceans on his mind!

Anyway, after all that lexicological drama, I have to say that I don’t particularly warm to this cantata overall. It’s OK, but nothing special (not like last week’s for example, which I’ve been listening to daily since last Sunday).

Further Information

• A full score of the cantata is available here.
• Commercial recordings of it are available here.

What with all the public holiday shenanigans and our trip to the ghastliest hotel that Canberra can offer, I rather missed the deadline on this week’s Bach cantata. I did actually listen to it at the appointed hour, but writing about it and getting a translation together were a bit beyond me. Slapped wrists all round then, and I’ll try not to do it again!

It’s a shame I didn’t get around to writing about it on time, because it’s a particularly nice one: it has a rather unusual setting of the first movement, for example, which is neither chorale nor recitative/aria, but a combination of the two. The choir starts the chorale (with a rather lovely oboe/organ accompaniment), but the pure chorale is interrupted as tenor, bass and soprano soloists interject with their comments. Each brief recitative/interjection is followed by a return of the not-to-be-distracted choir/chorale. The whole effect is rather jolly -at least for this listener! Once you realise what they’re all singing about, it’s pretty clear that ‘jolly’ is probably not what you’re supposed to feel, but there you go!

The other reason this cantata is particularly interesting is that the text bears almost no resemblance to any of the readings for the day, Old Testament, Epistle or Gospel. There is a tiny bit of relevance to the Gospel for the day (which was Matthew 8, v1 -13, the story of Jesus first curing a leper and then the servant of a Roman Centurion), but it’s tricky to spot! The key passage is this one:

When he was come down from the mountain, great multitudes followed him. And, behold, there came a leper and worshipped him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.

In German, the bit where the leper says ‘if you will it, you can make me clean’ reads, “Herr, so du willst, kannst du mich wohl reinigen.” And those are the three words Bach’s librettist has seized on (and proceeded to wrestle into a mostly-unrecognisable form!). The cantata’s title therefore translates, broadly speaking, into ‘Lord, as you will, so let it be done to me’, and the entire piece is a meditation on the idea that however awkward and difficult life might be from time to time, God’s will is behind it all: there is a purpose to it all, and we must just learn to trust in God that this is so.

I’ve already mentioned the first movement is a particular highlight of the whole work, but so is the Bass’s long aria in the fourth movement (Herr, so du willt -note the echo of the three key words in the Gospel reading once again), in which the ‘if it’s your will’ is repeated, over and over: the orchestration and presentation changes with each repetition of the words, so that the effect is of repetition without boredom. Inspired stuff, basically. As you can probably tell, therefore, this is one of my favourites.

Further Information

• A full score of the cantata is available here.
• Commercial recordings of it are available here.

Next Sunday (for which I shall be on time, I hope!) is BWV 81, which is all about Jesus calming the storm at sea. Have fun in the meantime!

This weekend is a little trickier than normal when it comes to Bach cantatas. As my source for knowing what cantata to play on which weekend, I use the wikipedia page that lists the cantatas by their liturgical function. Thus, I’ve written about cantatas BWV 153, 65 and 154 which all got their first performances at this time of the year back in 1724. For this weekend, however, there was *no* cantata first performed in 1724.  There are suitable cantatas from 1725 and 1726. There is even one from 1729. But a 1724 offering doesn’t exist. So I shall instead have to listen to the BWV 155 cantata, which was written in 1716… and, presumably, used as the cantata in 1724 since it was the only one extant at that time for that week. I wonder what Herr Bach had been up to in mid-January 1724 to have caused himself to run out of cantata-writing time!

Anyway, the Gospel for this day in the 1700-ish Lutheran church was the one from St. John where Jesus turns water into wine at the feast of Cana (John 2 v. 1 – 11):

And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there:
And both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage.
And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine.
Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come.

And so on. Bach’s librettists (Salomo Franck and Paul Speratus) focus on that rather curious statement by Jesus: My hour isn’t yet come, and spin it round a bit, as if to say: well, if not now, when?!  The cantata’s text dwells on the desperation that follows from having to hang around waiting for God to decide ‘now’ is the right time to make the ‘cup of tears’ that life sometimes seems to be, become instead a thing of comfort and joy. The singers, therefore, take the viewpoint expressed by the cantata’s very title (Mein Gott, wie lang, ach lange means ‘My God, how long, ah, how long?’), and the chorus (who usually end up singing the concluding ‘moral of the story’) can only offer the advice that although it often looks like God is not with you, you just need to grin and bear it and have faith that God really is with you, even if it doesn’t usually feel that way. (I must say this particular 21st century man has a lot of trouble dealing with this sort of ‘heads I win, tails you lose’ logic -of the sort that says, if bad things happen to you, it must have been your lack of faith; if good things happen to you, it’s all God’s doing. It may have made sense in the 18th century, but it just seems like having your cake and eating it to me these days!)

I don’t really warm to this cantata’s inner logic, in other words, though the music is (inevitably) a thing of beauty. I especially like the Alto/Tenor duet in movement 2… the duet is fine, of course, but it’s the bassoon accompaniment that cheers me up no end! (I will confess that part of that comes from the fact that it reminds me so much of the theme tune to Rumpole of the Bailey! Call me a Philistine!!)

That last Chorale is so very Lutheran, with its strong emphasis on the power of “the word” to provide comfort and assurance! And you can see why, I think, they talk of modern-day psychiatrists as being somewhat the equivalent of earlier times’ priests! Anyway, I find the whole thing a bit mealy-mouthed and insufferably pious, so I’ll draw a veil over this particular cantata with some degree of pleasure! I rate it 2/5 as a result!!

Further Information

• A full score of the cantata is available here.
• Commercial recordings of it are available here.

Continuing the journey through the Bach cantatas, this week we come to the one used for the first Sunday after Epiphany, which was first performed on 9th January 1724. The Gospel reading appointed for that day was Luke 2, verses 41-52, the edited highlights of which are:

Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the feast of the Passover. And when he was twelve years old, they went up according to custom;  and when the feast was ended, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know it,  but supposing him to be in the company they went a day’s journey, and they sought him among their kinsfolk and acquaintances;  and when they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem, looking for him.

Bach’s librettist took large dollops of artistic license to turn that story of his parents losing Jesus in the Temple into a text which meditates at length on what it means to lose Jesus -and more importantly, to find him again- in one’s life. The cantata’s title (Mein liebster Jesus ist verloren) means, after all, “My loving Jesus is lost”. There are eight movements in total, scored for tenor, alto, and bass soloists plus chorus, together with a pair of oboe d’amore, strings, and basso continuo. It’s not as rich as last Wednesday’s offering, therefore, but it’s a great cantata anyway.

A spiky introduction to a pretty bleak, impassioned aria from the tenor starts the piece. The text takes the idea of having ‘lost’ Jesus from the Gospel reading and personalises it. The piece wanders its way, pretty astringently, through assorted keys as the soloist gets increasingly worked up about the consequences of such a loss.

The same soloist then -somewhat more calmly- adds to the same thought in a short recitative.

Time for the choir to join in with a lovely chorale (with an especially nice tenor line! I’m biased!!). Apart from the musical merits of the piece, the use of ‘Jesuslein’ in the text is endearing: the -lein suffix in German turns a word (in this case, obviously, ‘Jesus’) into a diminutive, implying familiarity and intimacy. It’s the same effect as calling your father ‘daddy’, I suppose. In this case, I’ve translated it as ‘little Jesus’. Note, too, a reference to ‘Schlangentreter’, which means ’snake-trampler’. It’s a fairly oblique reference to the Genesis 3 story of how the snake tempted Eve to eat of the tree of knowledge… and how God, as a consequence, cursed the snake to be hated by Eve’s offspring, who would trample it (“And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.”) It’s also a reference to Mark 16 (“and these signs will accompany those who believe: In my name they will … pick up snakes with their hands.”) and maybe to the bit in Acts 28, where St. Paul is bitten by a snake but suffers no harm (“Paul gathered a pile of brushwood and, as he put it on the fire, a viper, driven out by the heat, fastened itself on his hand … But Paul shook the snake off into the fire and suffered no ill effects.”)

A jaunty little piece follows, sung by the alto. It’s got a nice lilt to it.

Quoting from the Gospel reading, the bass now answers the alto’s asking to be allowed to ‘find you’. It echoes Jesus’ somewhat pointed reply to his own parents: you ought to know very well how to find me. I’ll be in my father’s house!

A long recitative for tenor then follows, responding to the idea that Jesus can be found ‘in his father’s house’.

Now for the big surprise: a duet between tenor and alto. It’s a lovely piece -the particular combination of voices is relatively rare in the repertoire (though Bach did a glorious tenor/alto duet in his own Magnificat in D). On the grounds that Mary is frequently represented by an alto, I wonder if this is Bach’s supposition of what Joseph and Mary might have felt like having found Jesus back in the Temple? Anyway, the sense of  joyous celebration at having re-found Jesus is palpable. I find this one very difficult to get out of my head, anyway.

A very short chorale finishes the piece, as usual drawing the moral of the story and pointing up the moral consequences of the story and sensitivities just elaborated.

All in all, a very nice cantata, and it gets a 4/5 from me.

Further Information

• A full score of the cantata is available here.
• Commercial recordings of it are available here.