Recording:
Ton Koopman, Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Choir; Deborah York, soprano; Bogna Bartosz, alto; Jörg Dürmüller, tenor; Klaus Mertens, bass
John
Eliot Gardiner’s Bach Cantata Pilgrimage concluded in December 2000 with a stop
in a wintry New York City to perform a group of post-Christmas cantatas,
including BWV 28. At this point, his Monteverdi Choir and English Baroque
Soloists had been on the road for the greater part of the millennial year. In
Sir John’s words, “The music we had spent a year grappling with is technically
challenging: it is often a high-wire act demanding phenomenal precision,
flexibility and virtuosity...It requires you to soak yourself in the idiom, and
you need “Bach miles” on the clock before you feel able to interpret these
cantatas with relative ease and full conviction.” I’m starting to understand
what he means!
Even assuming the instrumentalists and singers in the
Thomaskirche had already traversed plenty of “Bach miles” (or kilometers), they
had their own high-wire act 275 years earlier. Within an 8-day span, Bach
premiered five cantatas: BWV 110, 57, and 151 for Christmas, 26 December and 27
December respectively; BWV 28 for 30 December, the Sunday after Christmas; and
BWV 16 for New Year’s Day. None of this music is easy – not even a professional
adult choir and soloists would be able to essentially sight-read BWV 28 and
come close to a competent performance. Most likely, the majority of music had
been completed in time to allow sufficient study and rehearsal; in some cases,
extant music from other cantatas or simply the “odds and ends” accumulated in
the composer’s desk from his endless and prolific labors may have been used to
construct new works. I suspect a study of this group of cantatas would be very
instructive concerning Bach’s compositional techniques – but for me, that will
have to wait a couple years! Meanwhile, prior to this week, I have experienced
only BWV 16 – admittedly one of my favorites so far, and as befits music for a
New Year’s celebration, much less restrained than BWV 28. But knowing his plan
for BWV 16 may account for Bach’s providing the relatively sedate BWV 28 for
the “in-between” service – or vice versa.
The
cantata is a song of thanks for the year that is ending. Undoubtedly,
misfortunes have been experienced, but in choosing his texts, the composer
decides to focus exclusively on the blessings that have occurred. There is a
spirit of optimism, reflected in musical settings that alternate between quiet
joyfulness and reverence. Gardiner observes that following the choral movement
(No. 2), the balance of the cantata is anti-climactic. Musically this may be
true, but I can imagine Bach thinking about the “attention span” (to use the
modern term) of his listeners, so that the ornate soprano aria and complex chorus
naturally lead into more lightweight material. Closing the piece with a
familiar chorale, the masses were then released to prepare for New Year’s
celebrations.
Opening a cantata with an aria is atypical for Bach, and the text
could have been set chorally, so it’s interesting that he decided to start with
a movement for soloist. But it’s a bravura piece, and a difficult workout,
even for a professional adult soprano. (Listening to the young soloist on
Harnoncourt’s recording, it’s questionable what one of Bach’s Thomaskirche lads
would have been able to do with this.) With a range of E4↗A6, and concentration in the
upper half of that range, the aria requires a high soprano with some heft in the
voice. The text requires as much interpretive care as the notes: as an example,
the contrasting settings of gedenke
and gedenken: sustained in the B section of the aria for the imperative
form and then as the foundation of an extended melisma for the infinitive. The
aria includes several difficult passages which make excellent exercises: the aforementioned
gedenken in M. 92-98 and a
tongue-twisting passage in M.105-108. Both excerpts can be used to advantage by
all sopranos and (with slight modifications) by altos as well. Although the
text is specific to the New Year, the aria could be extracted for service use
at that time, subject to the availability of a great accompanist.
The choral
movement is characterized as stile antico
and its scheme suggests it is a step on the path that leads to the great choruses
of the Mass in b minor – the Gratias and Dona nobis pacem (themselves derived from the choral movement in
the upcoming BWV 29). Bach appears to have been experimenting with this form,
but there is nothing unfinished about this movement. Rather, to quote Hubert Parry,
this is a “chorus of vast extent [that] occupies a niche almost by itself.” Monumental
is not too strong an adjective, and the more you listen to various recordings,
the more it becomes apparent that it is this massiveness that has defeated even
the greatest conductors. Manifold details, such as the series of chromatic
passages on Hat dir dein Sünd vergeben
where one voice hands off to another (M.50 et. seq.) – and that “forgiveness” resolving in D major at
M. 68 only to immediately turn around and modulate through several minor keys
to illustrate the second part of the verse (und
heilt dein Schwachheit gross). Karl Richter comes closest to realizing something
of the composer’s intent, but his large chorus is too overwhelming right from
the start. The tempo and dynamic considerations are crucial in building this
edifice, and while it is the right length (under 4 minutes) for a church
anthem, the complexities and subtleties require more effort on the part of both
conductor and singers than is usually achievable in that environment. But if
you like singing the fugal portions of the Brahms’ Requiem, you will particularly like the final page of this chorus –
which is as “Brahmsian” as anything that came a century and a half later.
The
bass recitative and arioso may have
been an idea “on the shelf” waiting for an appropriate home: for starters, the
text from Jeremiah has nothing to do with the liturgical calendar. It doesn’t
quite “feel” like Bach to me, perhaps due to the way in which some of the text
is set, and stylistically it seems an odd fit as well. Whereas the tenor
recitative is clearly similar to previous moments where the master uses the
harmonic progression to amplify the glorification of God. Note the lovely
moment in M.6 where the viola underlines the voice on the word herzlich – a detail sincerely and prayerfully
brought out in Peter Schreier’s performance for Richter. You will not hear this
recitative better sung than in that recording.
The brief (2 minutes on Koopman’s
recording) but interesting fifth movement is a dancelike alto and tenor duet
that sets the mood for the upcoming New Year’s celebrations. The movement falls
neatly into three sections, which could be viewed as the past (thanking God for
the previous year); present (the current song of praise); and future (hope for
same or better in the coming year). The descending arpeggios in the basso
continuo add to the dancing effect. The duet is a great study in every way –
from working on maintaining the momentum of melismatic lines and not falling
behind on all the tied notes (use ‘em to breathe!), to (for female alto)
staying “on the voice” while navigating a difficult portion of the range. Much
is to be learned from performing this duet (it can be used for December/January
services), but the matching of voices is critical: originally conceived for a
male alto and lighter tenor voice, other combinations can encounter problems in
balance.
The chorale was probably sung by the congregation as well as the
soloists, and musically is almost (but not quite) the same as the closing chorale of BWV
16 which utilizes the same words. The verse is the New Year stanza from the hymn text Helft mir Gotts Güte preisen by Paul
Eber, a 16th-century Lutheran pastor and associate of Reformation
leaders. Klaus Hofmann, the commentator for Suzuki’s recording of BWV 29,
attributes the tune to Wolfgang Figulus, briefly a Thomaskantor and a
contemporary of Eber’s. I have not time or scholarship to determine if that is
in fact accurate, but the lovely set of hymnbooks published by Figulus in 1575
contains what appears to be this melody, as well as another setting with Eber’s
name attached. The books contain some of the most graceful
ornamental lettering and embellishments that I have encountered. Perhaps the
designs are not perfect, as could be achieved today with a computer-generated image,
but they are beautifully, honestly, human – the relics of a world which, distant from Bach's era and far more so from our own, still looked forward with optimism and faith to a New Year.
Excerpt from Wolfgang Figulus' Vetera nova carmina sacra (1575)
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