Behind the Musik: A Bach Celebration

Program

Johann Sebastian Bach
1685–1750

Chorus: Lobet Gott in seinen Reichen (Cantata 11)
Tenor chorale/recitative: Die Welt sucht Ehr und Ruhm (Cantata 94)
Chorus: Du sollt Gott (Cantata 77)
Soprano aria: Die Seele ruht (Cantata 127)
Chorus: Es erhub sich ein Streit (Cantata 19)
Tenor aria: Die schäumenden Wellen (Cantata 81)
Chorale: Wer hofft in Gott (Cantata 109)
Soprano chorale: Ich, dein betrübtes Kind (Cantata 199)
Chorus: Du wollest dem Feinde (Cantata 71)
Chorus: O ewiges Feuer (Cantata 34)

INTERMISSION

Chorus: Sei Lob und Ehr (Cantata 117)
Chorus: Jesu, der du meine Seele & Tenor aria: Das Blut, so meine Schuld (Cantata 78)
Recitative: Wohl aber uns (Cantata 130)
Soprano aria: Wie zittern und wanken & Chorale: Nun, ich weiß (Cantata 105)
Soprano aria: Wie zittern und wanken & Chorale: Nun, ich weiß (Cantata 105)
Gloria in excelsis Deo (Cantata 191)
–Chorus: Gloria in excelsis Deo
–Duet: Gloria patri
–Chorus: Et in saecula saeculorum

Reflections on the Program

By Ivars Taurins

When art galleries present comprehensive exhibitions focusing on a particular artist, we are given the rare and wonderful opportunity to explore and experience that artist through the variety of their techniques, and the development of their expression. Past exhibitions by the AGO of Lawren Harris, Emily Carr, Turner, Michelangelo, or Monet have allowed us a vastly different perspective on these artists and their work than could be gained by viewing just one or two iconic works.

If we consider the mind-staggering output by Johann Sebastian Bach of over 200 cantatas in a 40-year period, we quickly realize that we are familiar with only a handful of them. This is in no part due to their quality—on the contrary, the variety of compositional styles, techniques, invention, and effects is a veritable compendium of everything that can be done within that form. But we creatures of habit tend to gravitate again and again to the most familiar, the most “popular” and iconic works of any composer.

With all this in mind, in curating this program I’ve attempted to present Bach’s mastery and genius as a composer by creating an aural gallery of arias and choruses from his cantatas, many of them rarely heard in concert. I hope that our Bach Celebration will inspire you to further explore for yourselves the remarkable riches to be found in Bach’s oeuvre.

Notes on the Cantatas

By Charlotte Nediger

It is thought that Bach composed some 300 cantatas for the church, of which 200 have survived. Countless of these are seldom performed today, and thus remain little known. My sense is that the liturgical context of the cantatas can sometimes deter listeners (and concert presenters) from exploring them. And yet in this massive part of Bach’s legacy you find his deepest expression of what it is to be human. It is this essential quality that allows the music to endure and to speak directly to us, distant in time and space from the baroque Lutheran churches of northern Germany, but perhaps not so distant from the people who first experienced it 300 years ago.

The choice of text for each cantata—and the musical expression of the text—is drawn from the readings prescribed by the liturgy of the Lutheran calendar. However, we start and end our Bach Celebration this week with cantatas written for special services outside the usual liturgy. “Lobet Gott in seinen Reichen” is the festive opening chorus of Cantata 11, known also as the Ascension Oratorio, written in 1735 in Leipzig, replete with brilliant trumpets and timpani, and joyful, dancing choral writing.

Most of Bach’s cantatas date from his first years as Thomaskantor in Leipzig. His duties included providing a cantata for weekly Sunday services. Many of his predecessors had relied heavily on works in the library by other composers to fulfill their duty, but Bach grasped the opportunity in his first years to compose a new work almost every week, and selections from this period of creative energy comprise much of the rest of the program.

We sense this creativity in the third movement of Cantata 94. A solo tenor sings a lyrical, ornamented version of the chorale tune on which the cantata is based, accompanied by reassuring oboes d’amore. Each phrase is interrupted by recitative: a rather harrowing text about the impermanence of ambition and pride is anxiously accompanied by the oboes and bassoon.

Cantata 77 was written for the 13th Sunday after Trinity, the reading for the day being the parable of the Good Samaritan: “love thy neighbour” is one of Christ’s additions to the 10 Commandments of the Old Testament. Bach turns to canon, a musical technique of formal imitation; the word “canon” also appropriately means “law.” A solo trumpet and the bass instruments play a stern quotation from Luther’s chorale “Dies sind die heilgen zehn Gebot” (“These are the 10 Commandments”), as the choir and orchestra turn to Jesus’ beneficent text of the 11th “Great Commandment,” ingeniously set by Bach in every possible canonic permutation.

The evocative soprano aria from Cantata 127 follows a recitative that describes “the chilling sweat of death on limbs already stiff,” ending with the reassurance that the soul is accompanied by Jesus, who prepares its rest. A solo oboe then invites the soprano to join in an exquisite duet, as recorders and pizzicato strings sound the funeral bells. The aria is heartbreakingly sad, yet comforting.

Written for Michaelmas, Cantata 19 opens with a brilliant and vigorous chorus, a vivid depiction of Michael prevailing over “the raging serpent, the hellish dragon.” We have paired it with a tenor aria from Cantata 81, the text of which offers Bach the opportunity to write a tempête (storm), so popular in baroque opera. Rolling waves of strings are punctuated with the wild coloratura of the tenor soloist. Here the struggle is against the lawless Belial. Milton writes of Belial in Paradise Lost: “Belial came last, than whom a Spirit more lewd Fell not from Heaven, or more gross to love Vice for itself.”

In the final movement of Cantata 109, the orchestra offers a muscular and driven counterpoint to the choir’s deliberate intoning of a chorale, the tune of which is one of the oldest Lutheran hymns “Durch Adams Fall” (Through Adam’s Fall).

After all this bluster, we leave Leipzig to hear intimate movements from Bach’s earlier cantatas. Composed in Weimar, Cantata 199 features an exquisite aria: the soprano soloist sings a simple chorale over a florid and gently flowing elaboration of the chorale tune played on a violoncello piccolo (a small cello tuned a fifth higher than usual).

Cantata 71 is one of the very earliest of Bach’s cantatas, written at age 23 when he was organist in Mülhausen. The ravishing final chorus sets a verse from Psalm 74, “O deliver not the soul of thy turtledove unto the multitude of the wicked.” One hears the turtledoves in the enchanting score, which with the voices gently intoning a Gregorian-like chant, cloaking the movement in a sense of mystery.

We return to Leipzig to end the first half with one of the last of Bach’s cantatas. Cantata 34 finds its origins in a wedding cantata composed by Bach some years previous. The “heavenly flames” of love inspire a magnificent opening chorus befitting both the celebration of a wedding and of Whit Sunday.

The wedding theme continues in Cantata 117, the text of which began its life as a wedding hymn. It opens with a rollicking concerto movement for the orchestra, over which the choir joyously declaims the first verse of the chorale.

The orchestra underpins the choir’s chorale also in the opening of Cantata 78, this time with a solemn ground bass, four bars of a descending line drawn from the opening of the chorale tune. It is a choral passacaglia, and Bach uses the confines of the repeated ground to inspire a range of textures and colours that makes it deeply personal for the listener.

We continue with an intimate aria for flute and tenor from the same cantata. The text in the middle section depicts the call of hell’s army to battle, and yet is set quite delicately, as if to ensure that the freedom and lightness of heart described in the opening lines cannot be threatened.

With Cantata 130 we return to the feast of St. Michael, but with a text and setting quite unlike its counterpart Cantata 19 (heard in the first half). This is a more narrative approach, and includes the story of Daniel in the lion’s den. Protection from the “the ancient dragon” by a host of angels is assured in an unusual recitative sung by soprano and tenor together (not in dialogue), accompanied by a halo of strings.

In the middle aria of Cantata 105, the violons and violas (without the security of a bass line) depict the “trembling and wavering” of the troubled conscience, while a solo oboe and soprano try “again and again to excuse themselves.” In Bach’s hands, there is nonetheless a hint of redemption in the sheer beauty of the music. The trembling strings return in the final chorale, gradually slowing their trembling. Between each chorale phrase is the descending ground of the passacaglia in Cantata 78, this time heard not in the bass, but in the violin.

If the music of many of the cantatas on the program will be new to many listeners (and to the musicians on stage), the music for Cantata 191 will be very familiar to most: all three movements are drawn from the Gloria of Bach’s Mass in B Minor. Both the text and the music it inspires are a fitting conclusion of our Bach Celebration. It is thought to have been written for a service held on Christmas Day, 1745, in the university chapel to commemorate The Peace of Dresden: the end of the Silesian war, during which Leipzig was occupied by Prussian troops. The words “et in terra pax” (“peace on earth”) would have resonated deeply.

For tickets, visit: tafelmusik.org/bach

Meet Myriam Leblanc, James Reese, & Ivars Taurins.