BWV 17 - Wer Dank opfert, der preiset mich

Week 27 (30 April – 5 May 2013)

Recording: Karl Richter, Münchener Bach-Chor/Orchester; Edith Mathis, soprano; Julia Hamari, alto; Peter Schreier, tenor; Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, bass

 

Turns out that studying Ludwig Bach’s little cantata (the cantata formerly known as BWV 15) a couple weeks ago made more sense than I realized at the time. Ludwig utilized texts by his employer, Ernst Ludwig, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, and he did this for obvious reasons; however, the Duke’s writing demonstrates a deep religious conviction as well as unexpected poetic skills. Sebastian Bach, who performed about eighteen of his cousin’s works in Leipzig in 1726, must have been immediately taken with some of the Duke’s words, which undoubtedly were in sympathy with his own beliefs and intellect. And considering some of the material J.S. had to work with,  it’s no wonder that he was inspired to compose upon encountering such lines as

 

Herr, deine Güte reicht, so weit der Himmel ist,

und deine Wahrheit langt, so weit die Wolken gehen.

 

So he extracted some of the texts for his own use, and one of the results was BWV 17.

 

This cantata is a song of praise: the verb preisen is prominently used in the first four movements, and in the coro and soprano aria becomes a focus through its setting as a melismatic passage. The cantata is also string-centric: although in the opening sinfonia the strings combine with two oboes, the latter are absent throughout the rest of the piece until doubling the soprano in the chorale. The coro is a tight and demanding construction: it’s a definite keeper as a potential anthem – running under 4 minutes – and it contains some tricky melismas that don’t always go in the expected direction. The end of the coro appears to be a fugue, but on the entrance of the third voice (soprano) J.S. interrupts the progression with a line of variant material and suddenly it’s contrapuntal celebration. It’s fun to sing.

 

The material of the opening coro was later used in the Missa in G major (BWV 236) as the basis for the Cum sancto spiritu movement. Similar to his method with the larger Mass in B minor, Bach collected movements of various pre-existing cantatas to construct the final Missa. In the subject movement, he adds some detail that facilitates the change of language as well as the intent of the text. When I initially heard the Richter cantata performance, I figured that the fast tempo of the coro was not something more recent conductors would choose – wrong! Herreweghe in the Missa is just as fast, and I eventually listened to two other recordings of BWV 17, Rilling and Suzuki, both of whom were equally energetic with this movement. It takes a nimble ensemble to execute this music in either the cantata or missa version.

 

The alto recitative has an interesting sequence where the elements Luft…Wasser…Firmament…und Erden, are musically portrayed. I opted for not using a passing tone on the two eighth notes of Erden – you want it to be grounded, after all. This nice solo moment also contains an excellent exercise for non-German speakers in M.9: die er ihr in den Schoss gelegt. When you can easily and correctly sing these vowel sounds so a listener can distinguish them – you are on the way to mastering German diction.

 

The soprano aria could be extracted for recital use, but this is not one I will ever be doing, Baroque pitch or otherwise. Although its E4↑G#5 range may not indicate it, this is for a high soprano since the tessitura lies high, and even a lyric soprano will sound strained. The vocal part is highly instrumental and joins two obbligato violins in weaving a lovely tapestry depicting wonder at God’s works that surround us. Note the orchestral answer to the question Wie (M. 40) (which is obscured in the piano-vocal score), it’s a wonderful touch. This is a very attractive piece, but rhythmically difficult.

 

Likewise, the tenor aria requires a lighter, higher voice. A great technical exercise occurs on the sixteenth note passage in M. 44-45: the difficulty is to maintain smooth, even sixteenths while negotiating the ascending pitches of the melisma. Here Peter Schreier demonstrates why he was so renowned as a Bach singer. With forward momentum, ease of vocal production and perfectly blended tone, he arrives at the destination without apparent effort. It's a model which many can emulate but few will attain. As evidence: either of the other recordings I used this week – valiant efforts to be sure, but just a bit short of the mark. This aria would be a wonderful choice (for the right voice) for recital or church use. It is joyous and heartfelt, with wonderfully delicate string writing. In comparing the latest-and-greatest interpretation of period performance by Masaaki Suzuki (recorded in 2009) with Karl Richter’s more robust modern-instrument version, I find that I’m glad I have them both! Two vastly different approaches, but somehow both work.

 

The baritone recitative, similar to the alto solo in BWV 5, provides no concealment for the singer – it becomes a personal statement. Some may find Fisher-Dieskau overly mannered as a Baroque soloist, but for my money, when he sings Lieb, Fried, Gerechtigkeit - it is the voice of a man who through his life experiences knows the value of these words.

 

The chorale is a verse from a hymn by Johann Graumann, a Lutheran pastor, reformer and “humanist”, who amassed a library of more than a thousand books which he bequeathed to the city of Konigsberg upon his demise in 1541. Can you imagine what it must have been to own that many books in the early 16th century? It would have been unimaginable wealth, monetarily and intellectually. The Graumann collection was one of the foundations of the library of the University of Königsberg, founded in 1544, and probably best known as the alma mater of Immanuel Kant. Shortly after the 400th anniversary of its founding, the University and most of the surrounding city were bombed into ruins by the Allies. The library was destroyed.

 

But both Graumann and Bach had already anticipated this: Gott weiss, wir sind nur Staub. We - men and our creations - are in the end only dust. Sooner or later the edifice of this music and the aspirations behind it will also fall. Whether it will be to the depredations of time or to the vicissitudes of history remains to be seen. But to me it is inconceivable that anyone who can meet and experience this music on humanist terms could be part of its destruction, indirectly or otherwise. Bach provides a litmus test of one's humanity.

 

For practical reasons, I have attempted to stick to the original plan of finishing a cantata by Sunday and then taking a break before opening the next one – it gives the mind a chance to reset. However, last Sunday was rainy and depressing, and having just come off the celebratory BWV 16, but bombarded by bad news from every corner of the globe, not least our own troubled nation, I couldn’t resist seeking refuge for a few minutes and skimming over BWV 17. As the marvelous opening chorus sped by, Schreier nailed his tenor aria, and FiDi intoned the self-reflective words of the final recitative, it occurred to me yet again how miraculous all this is. Almost any other composer would consider the score I held in my hands to be their masterpiece, but it was all in a week’s work for J.S. Bach.

BWV 16 - Herr Gott, dich loben wir

Week 16 (23 April – 28 April 2013)

Recording: Sigiswald Kuijken, La Petite Bande; Petra Noskaiová, alto; Jan Kobow, tenor; Jan van der Crabben, bass

We tend to think of New Year’s celebrations as a fairly modern innovation – the ball drop in Manhattan, the peach drop in Atlanta, revelry with fireworks and libations, followed by football games and soon-to-be discarded resolutions. Like everything else, these traditions evolved from older customs: for example, the Mummers Parade in Philadelphia, which is well over 100 years old, is based on the traditions that Northern European immigrants brought to that city. The practice of noisily and inebriatedly marching through the streets to chase away the bad spirits and ensure good fortune in the new year was an old custom in countries such as Germany, as were noisemakers, firecrackers, tasty beverages, and other family and communal festivities.

So we can safely assume that there were probably a few aching heads on 1 January 1726 when BWV 16 received its first performance, possibly even including that of the music director! The trumpet blast in M. 32 of Movement 3 would have shaken them all up – evidence that Bach had a healthy sense of humor!

This is a festive cantata with two very fun (and not so easy) choruses, the first of which uses the initial lines of the German Te Deum with the cantus firmus assigned to the soprano. In the older Catholic tradition, a plenary indulgence was granted to anyone who recited the Latin Te Deum in public on New Year’s Eve, and perhaps that influenced the choice of text in this cantata. A bass recitative links this short opening coro to a longer and more complex choral movement. The recitative is an extended message of thanks and optimism for the coming year: not a sermon but a celebration. With the query "should we not take up a new song and sing it vigorously?" the third movement begins attacca.

The ensuing chorus verges on being too boisterous to use in church - in its opening moments it's easy to imagine it being sung as tankards of ale are hoisted up to salute the New Year. The chorus has a call and response format, and the call portion could be done by either the bass section or by a soloist (a bass or, possibly, an alto!). In Parry's description: “…the bass solo which alternates its strains with passages of chorus seems to be urging them to ever-increasing joyfulness”. The writing calls for light and flexible singing in all parts, and provides good exercise in maintaining even 16th-note rhythm across an uneven terrain. The master obviously intended this to be celebratory and not tremendously serious, but it is seriously fun to sing!

John Eliot Gardiner writes in his liner notes, “Sobriety and order return with a solo for the alto”. Ain’t it the truth! It’s always up to us. The alto recitative gently recalls the listeners to worship, but nevertheless provides a joyous moment of reflection that demands the singer have absolute comprehension of the text, literally and colloquially.

The heavy-lifting is assigned to the unfortunate tenor, who after a night on the town, gets to come in to work, be blasted by trumpet fanfares, listen to the bass soloist have all the fun, and then sing a very calm, gracious, and difficult aria that is about 7 minutes long. This lovely and reflective aria is in A-B-A-C-B-A format; for a shorter solo, the A-B-A section could be used. But don’t overlook the perfect correspondence between the text and musical setting that drives the C-B order, as well as the wonderful poetry of the middle section.

This week’s recording was my first encounter with Sigismund Kuijken’s La Petite Bande, a Belgian early-music ensemble that has been in existence for several decades and has an extensive discography. Kuijken is a Baroque violinist; consequently the viola da gamba is used in the tenor aria. Originally an oboe da caccia was the obbligato instrument, and I prefer its more plangent sound (as demonstrated on John Eliot Gardiner’s recording). Kuijken also performs this piece with a vocal quartet only, which is his scholarly opinion of how some of the cantatas were actually performed. This piece certainly works that way, and it’s been interesting to compare the versions with solo voices and with chorus. The clarity of the various lines in the quartet performance is undeniable, but the hearty “ever-increasing joyfulness” is especially evident with the Monteverdi Choir, which successfully impersonates a rowdy crowd gathering around the glühwein – four voices can’t produce that effect.

This has been a very enjoyable week for both study and listening, and I may just plant some seeds to try to get all or part of this cantata presented to our local "audience".  In particular, the second chorus is exactly the right length for a great Christmas season anthem, although why wait for 2014? We can always use some optimism even if it's not New Year's Day. Lasst uns jauchzen! The words and music are those of a man who knew how to overcome adversity, seize the day, and never miss an opportunity to celebrate.

BWV 15 - Denn du wirst meine Seele nicht in der Hölle lassen (att. J.L. Bach)

Week 15 (16 April – 21 April 2013)

Recording: Wolfgang Helbich, I Febiarmonici/Alsfelder Vokalensemble; Dorothee Mields, soprano; Henning Voss, counter-tenor; Henning Kaiser, tenor; Ralf Grobe, bass

So right off the bat, for clarification: this week’s cantata is not by Johann Sebastian Bach, but (probably) composed by his second cousin Johann Ludwig Bach (1677-1731), resident of and Kapellmeister in Meiningen, a town about 100 miles as the crow (Krähe) flies southwest of Leipzig. Sometimes referred to as the “Meiningen Bach”, he was a prolific composer of sacred music. Modern sources state that J.S. made a clear copy in his own hand of this cantata and performed it (as well as some of J.L.’s other cantatas) in Leipzig in 1726, thus confounding the subsequent two centuries of Bach cataloguing.
 

Why take time to work on this cantata when about 185 others indisputably by the master’s hand still await my study? For several reasons, principal among which is the very obvious question, when you pick up the piano-vocal score – why did anyone ever think this was composed by J.S? It’s so obvious, looking at the construction of the piece, that this music did not come from his hand. Hubert Parry (in his J.S. Bach biography) picks up on all the clues but fails to solve the mystery: “in some respects…the style is bald and crude”; “the treatment of the strings is dull and commonplace”; “the solo movements are very limited in scope”; “there is a lack of development, a lack of richness in polyphony” and so on. You would have thought the authorship question would have dawned on him at some point – this was not a dense man – but the conventional thinking was that BWV 15 was an early work of J.S. Bach, probably written before 1710. But if you accept that theory, the question then becomes: how do you get from this, to BWV 4, one of the greatest of the choral cantatas and also reputedly of that vintage?

 

Of course, Parry and other biographers of this era were working with very little scholarly information. They were presented in the Breitkopf & Härtel complete edition with a fait accompli – a score based on a manuscript in the master’s own hand, and incidentally the edition was authorized by the Bach-Gesellschaft, which was led by Moritz Hauptmann (a successor of Bach’s at the St. Thomaskirche) and included among its founders Robert Schumann. Would you want to be the person to throw out one of the “surviving” cantatas from the canon based on circumstantial evidence?

I figured if someone had recorded this cantata, I would take a look and a listen – it’s all about learning, correct? And someone has recorded it, along with the other “apocryphal” cantatas. By doing so, Wolfgang Helbich and his excellent orchestra and choir have documented a missing link that could all too easily have been forgotten. (By the way, they have done many similar tasks for the cpo label: another interesting path to investigate).

 

While waiting on the recording to arrive, I sat down with the vocal score and read through it – it’s simple enough that even I can play most of it, and for professional singers it would be pretty easy sight-reading. Time and again, the inescapable truth presented itself – this couldn’t possibly be a J.S. Bach composition. The composer of this work, knowledgeable and a diligent craftsman, had no creative spark. He liked C major. He liked writing vocal parts in thirds. He liked 4/4 and 3/4 time, and he liked ensembles. Thus we have a couple duets, a terzetto, and a brief solo quartet. He preferred, as the CD liner notes would have it “songlike concision” in his arias, which makes them seem truncated. The range of the soprano aria is lower than any that J.S. ever wrote, going down to G3, probably not a note a boy soprano has. Overall the vocal lines do not lie very well: often the orchestration, despite the conductor’s efforts, cancels out the voice.

 

The echoes of the late 17th-century are felt, and at times the use of the brass recalls Handel, who around 1710 was himself a German Kapellmeister. In setting the text about mocking death, J.L. provides word-painting that seems straight out of Baroque opera:

Excerpt from Movement No. 7 (Duetto) - Ich jauchze, ich lache

Ha, ha!

Nevertheless, this is not an unpleasant work to listen to – it’s charming in its way, and where it can have some use today would be as a training vehicle for younger singers at a high school and college level. The tenor aria Entsetzet euch nicht in particular is enjoyable listening, not technically difficult, and lasts only two minutes – perfect for an Easter offertory.  And there’s no better way to appreciate the genius of the Leipzig Bach than to work on a piece like this and then move on to a work by J.S. In fact, my hunch is that you can even appreciate a bit of that genius within this piece – there are some stylistic discontinuities (e.g. the introductions to the duets, and possibly the final page of the closing chorale) that have the distinct feeling of being “improvements”.

But J.L. was by all accounts an estimable man and made his own contribution to music history. From 1711-1731, he was music director of the Meiningen Court Orchestra (Meininger Hofkapelle), then recently founded (1690) but now one of the oldest orchestras in Europe. His successors in that position have included Hans von Bülow, Richard Strauss, and Max Reger – not a bad roster! And today the position is held by…Swiss conductor Philippe Bach.

 

One question I’ve asked myself (and been asked) is whether the BWV sequential approach to studying the cantatas is a good approach. I can’t answer that yet, but what I can say definitely is that – regardless of the order – it is a privilege to be immersed in this world that transcends time and culture, that speaks from and to the very highest aspirations of human nature. This privilege would not be possible for me as a part-time musician and Bach student without the comprehensive resources developed by the late Craig Smith at Emmanuel Church in Boston, who initiated weekly cantata performances as part of worship services http://www.emmanuelboston.org/community/emmanuel-music/. Every week of this project, I have access to an excellent English translation prepared by Pamela Dellal for those programs, saving a huge amount of time – I would never get to spend time actually studying the music if I had to do all that translation!

 

At this link, you will also find an interview with director Peter Sellars, who staged numerous concerts, including cantatas, at Emmanuel Church, and speaks movingly of the “deeply practical” nature of the cantatas, which he believes speak to “lived experiences”. Emmanuel Church, located several blocks from the site of the marathon bombings, performed BWV 112, Der Herr ist mein getreuer Hirt (The Lord is my shepherd) this past Sunday.

BWV 14 - Wär Gott nicht mit uns diese Zeit

Week 14 (9 April – 14 April 2013)

Recording: John Eliot Gardiner, Monteverdi Choir/English Baroque Soloists; Joanne Lunn, soprano; Paul Agnew, tenor; Peter Harvey, bass

This comparatively late work (1735) was composed for the fourth Sunday after Epiphany, an event that happens only in years with a late Easter. Because it is a chorale-based composition, BWV 14 is thought to have been intended to complete the cycle of cantatas from ten years earlier, when the 1725 calendar did not contain the “fourth Sunday”. The cantata is relatively short – the Gardiner recording clocks in at under fifteen minutes – but chock full of marvelous music. Roughly contemporaneous with the Christmas Oratorio, the piece is written with a technical mastery that can be difficult to comprehend – in the sense that the listener is not at first even aware of the complexities of the piece because the construction is so seamless.

BWV 14 begins with a choral movement that provides an astonishing display of contrapuntal writing. Conceived as a counter-fugue, each entrance imitates the preceding voice, but in inverted form. Bach took each line of the first verse of Martin Luther’s hymn and developed it in this way, so that the movement has seven distinct segments, each with its own flavor – seven miniature lessons in the art of the counter-fugue. The carefully designed and paced mechanism reaches its climax with the last line, Die an uns setzen alle (all those set against us) where the compositional technique literally sets the voices against each other. To top it off, layered above the four vocal lines is the chorale theme, played by the winds and brass.

 

The vocal writing is complex and challenging for the singers – I’m betting that what Bach heard from his chancel on 30 January 1735 sounded absolutely nothing like the Monteverdi Choir! The first eighteen pages of the 38-page vocal score are this chorus, which ends up lasting about five minutes, but takes much, much longer than that to learn. The challenges just keep coming at you: diction problems such as diese Zeit, diese Zeit and uns setzen; small, medium, and large melismas (the bass part is particularly florid); a sudden transition to sustained singing at the text describing the people as a humble flock; and fast ornamentation in the exposition of the last fugue. But the coro rewards any effort put into it. Whether working on one part on your own, or participating in a choral performance, this is a piece that will improve any singer, choir, or choral conductor. It’s been fun to attempt to sing along with the recording, although I had to give it up because trying to sing to the lower pitch in the midst of all that polyphony was beyond me. But it’s one piece I intend to keep in work.

The soprano and bass arias require strong voices that can convey the invincibility of the people marching under God’s banner, while at the same time being capable of vocal lightness and agility. Both arias can stand on their own as church or recital solos, although the organ should be used for accompaniment to capture some of the instrumental colors of the original: the corno da caccia and solo violin in the soprano aria, and the oboes in the bass solo. Tasteful editing of some of the dal segno material may be useful to bring the pieces down to a manageable length. These solos are very fun, and are accessible to the alto kingdom through taking the soprano aria down a half-step (it’s not cheating, it’s Baroque tuning) and singing the bass part up an octave. Even if you don’t have the chance to perform them, the arias are well worth studying, whatever your voice part.  

 

The tenor accompagnato recitative, which acts as the structural fulcrum of the piece, provides a nice opportunity to declaim the dramatic text (courtesy of an “unknown poet”). However, less is more in this case. The drama exhibited on the Gardiner version of BWV 14 was probably riveting in a live performance, but comes across as over the top on a recording meant to be heard multiple times. Note that the piano “reduction” in the vocal score contains a fabricated treble part which should be simplified for performance in accordance with the full score.

The chorale is said to have been an old favorite of the Leipzig Lutherans, and the tune is included in the Geystliche gesangk Buchleyn (1524) compiled by Luther’s friend Johann Walter. Psalm 124, which provides the basis for the verse, is a communal thanksgiving for a nation delivered from its enemies – perhaps, the verse had especial meaning in the less peaceful centuries prior to Bach’s era.

 

Martin Luther's Wer Gott nicht mit uns dise zeyt (1524)

 

In honor of John Eliot Gardiner’s 70^th birthday later this month, this week’s study recording was chosen from his series of Bach Cantata Pilgrimage performances in 2000. The recording was made in Romsey Abbey in Hampshire, England. Romsey is one of the few British churches to maintain an all-male choir, with boy trebles and adult men. They have a girls’ choir as well, but the majority of services and evensong are performed by the men. Maestro Gardiner wrote that the "beautifully proportioned Romanesque sturdiness" of Romsey Abbey "cries out for music", and the Abbey plays a significant role in the local arts community, including hosting a yearly arts festival named for one of its patron saints, the Ethelflaeda Festival. According to the brief history on the Abbey website, St. Ethelflaeda was sanctified for, among other spiritual acts, chanting psalms at night while standing naked in the near-by River Test. Maybe that included Psalm 124?