Johann Sebastian Bach (51 page)

It is hard to imagine that this fascinating, unprecedented project of chorale cantatas was initiated by anyone but Bach himself, and it is most likely that he also had a hand in the choice of hymns if only because of the direct musical implications for the chorale melodies.
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The way in which the project proceeded and eventually ended strongly suggests that Bach's anonymous librettist was a close collaborator who resided in Leipzig. According to the most likely among various hypotheses, the author of the chorale cantata texts was Andreas Stübel, conrector emeritus of the St. Thomas School, a man of solid theological background (if somewhat nonconformist views) and ample poetic experience.
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Stübel's death on January 27, 1725, after only three days of illness and after he had received from the printer texts for the booklet of cantatas to be performed from Septuagesimae Sunday (January 28) to Annunciation (March 25) 1725, would explain the abrupt ending of the chorale cantata cycle with “Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern,” BWV 1, on the feast of Annunciation in that year. Not anticipating any such fateful turn, Bach had started the
Jahrgang
with energy and imagination, and the period from before June 11, 1724, to March 25, 1725, ended up as his most productive cantata year ever: forty cantatas were newly composed in almost as many weeks. On average, that comes to more than one cantata per week, and considering that certain celebrations—St. John's, St. Michael's, and the Marian feasts—and the great cluster of holidays at Christmastide required the performance of two or three pieces within a week, Bach's artistic productivity borders on the incredible.

That Bach went about his grand project systematically becomes immediately evident from the musical planning of the opening movements, especially at the beginning of the chorale cantata
Jahrgang
(II). Thus, the first cantata of the cycle, BWV 20, is designed in the manner of a French overture—an emphatic and most felicitous prelude to the cantata sequence in its entirety. After opening the cycle with a piece of such a modern sort, the second work, BWV 2, stresses the weight of tradition. Its Reformation-period chorale tune (in the Phrygian mode) is treated in a retrospective motet style, a dense five-part setting of imitative polyphony with a cantus firmus in long notes in the alto voice and without the accompaniment of obbligato instruments. In the cantatas for the following weeks, Bach explores further applications of cantus firmus technique, beginning with the opening movements of BWV 7 and 135, in which the chorale melodies appear in the tenor and bass voices, respectively, and of BWV 10, which presents the melody in both soprano and alto. Subsequent cantatas offer a broad array of cantus firmus treatments that develop thematic-motivic elements derived from chorales. Bach allows these musical materials to determine the vocal and instrumental profile of the chorale-based settings, giving each its own character and distinctive format.
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According to the prevailing pattern, the final movements of the chorale cantatas present straightforward four-part chorale harmonizations in Bach's usual unadorned style. But there are surprises in store. In cantata BWV 38, for example, Bach harmonizes the very first tone of the hymn “Aus tiefer Not” with a daring dissonance, a third-inversion dominant-seventh chord. Moreover, in the same work, as in some other chorale cantatas, he subjects the internal movements to cantus firmus treatment, by either using embellished portions of the chorale melody for the development of an aria theme (BWV 38/3), building a free recitative over a strict cantus firmus bass line (BWV 38/4), or constructing a vocal tercet in fugato manner (BWV 38/5), all movements again based on materials drawn from the cantata's chorale.

In the spring of 1725, when the delivery of chorale cantata texts came to a sudden halt, Bach had to come up with an emergency solution for the rest of the year. On Easter Sunday, he re-performed an old work, “Christ lag in Todes Banden,” BWV 4, which fit in well despite its traditional outlook; consisting of unaltered chorale stanzas only, it represented the
peromnes versus
(pure hymn text) type of chorale cantata. Works of mixed origin and structure followed until Bach turned, for the remaining weeks until Trinity Sunday, to nine cantata texts by the young Leipzig poet Christiane Mariane von Ziegler,
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daughter of the former burgomaster Franz Conrad Romanus. However, he chose to make some substantial changes to her words, and although she published her cantata texts later in the form of a complete annual cycle,
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Bach did not return to her sacred poetry.

The Thomascantor must surely have regretted his inability to complete the chorale cantata cycle in 1725, because he tried sporadically to fill in some gaps, perhaps with the intention of rounding off or even finishing the
Jahrgang
(Table 8.9). Texts for all Sundays and feast days from the first Sunday after Trinity up to and including Annunciation were apparently completed by the original librettist of the chorale cantata cycle, so Bach could later set a few texts that he had not needed in 1724–25, such as BWV 14 and 140 (there was neither a fourth Sunday after Epiphany nor a twenty-seventh Sunday after Trinity), or did not compose then, such as BWV 9 (Bach was out of town on the sixth Sunday after Trinity).
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However, having lost his librettist, Bach tried to finish the incomplete cycle also with cantatas based on unparaphrased hymns, that is, chorale cantatas of the
per omnes versus
variety—represented in the 1724–25 cycle solely by BWV 107. He began filling in gaps as early as in the summer of 1725 (BWV 137), added BWV 129 in 1726, and thereafter several others, among them such magnificent works as BWV 112 and 177. The chorale cantata cycle was, nonetheless, never brought to completion, at least not according to the surviving sources. Transmission patterns indicate, however, that in Bach's library the nonchorale cantatas that filled the liturgical calendar from Easter to Trinity Sunday in 1725 were integrated within the third cycle,
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apparently in order to maintain the conceptual homogeneity of the chorale cantata repertoire.

T
ABLE
8.9. Chorale Cantatas (later additions)

With the inception of the third annual cycle, the nearly uninterrupted cantata production of the previous year came to an end and, in all likelihood, was never resumed with that degree of intensity. The third
Jahrgang
(Table 8.10) covered a time span of about two years. As documented by a text booklet for the third to sixth Sundays after Trinity 1725,
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there are some definite gaps for which compositions by Bach must once have existed. On the other hand, for a major stretch in 1726 Bach performed no fewer than eighteen cantatas from the pen of his cousin Johann Ludwig Bach, capellmeister at the ducal court of Saxe-Meiningen, and on Good Friday of that year, a Passion by Friedrich Nicolaus Bruhns. Altogether, from mid-1725 to early 1727, Bach seems to have composed cantatas only at irregular intervals. Whatever the reason for this change of pace, it allowed him time to prepare his largest composition ever, the St. Matthew Passion, for performance on Good Friday 1727.

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8.10. Third Annual Cantata Cycle (
Jahrgang III)—
Performance Schedule, 1725–27

Like those of the first
Jahrgang
, the cantatas of the third present no unifying concept, as Bach reverted to texts of varying and usually older origin. Above all, he favored sacred poetry by Georg Christian Lehms from 1711 (BWV 110, 57, 151, 16, 32, 13, 170, 35), then texts by Salomo Franck from 1715 (BWV 72) and Erdmann Neumeister from 1714 (BWV 28). Finally Bach also turned to a 1704 collection attributed to Duke Ernst Ludwig of Saxe-Meiningen (BWV 43, 39, 88, 187, 45, 102, 17) that was also set by Johann Ludwig Bach and that often presents two contrasting biblical dicta, one from the Old Testament (an introductory movement) and one from the New (a middle movement). However, apart from an uninterrupted sequence of Lehms cantatas beginning on Christmas Day 1726, no clear compositional pattern emerges. Notable is the relatively frequent occurrence of solo (BWV 52, 84, 35, etc.) and dialogue (BWV 58, 32, 49, etc.) cantatas, but of particular significance in the third cycle—as also in the fourth—is Bach's use of preexisting concerto movements as opening instrumental sinfonias (BWV 156, 174, and 120a); the opening chorus of BWV 110 is a reworking of a concerto movement. From the summer of 1726 on, obbligato organ parts in BWV 146, 35, 169, and 49, later also in BWV 188 and 29, introduce a completely new dimension into Bach's Leipzig church music. Perhaps his eldest son, Friedemann, was drafted to take the solo parts, but the often incomplete notation of the organ parts suggests that the composer himself took his place at the organ bench, leaving the conducting to the first choir prefect. This innovative integration of solo organ into his cantatas, which incidentally allowed for an impressive display of the church instrument, was yet another brilliant idea of the capellmeister-cantor, whose third cantata cycle bears his unmistakable mark as an instrumentalist and organ virtuoso.