Bach cantata

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Johann Sebastian Bach

The cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach have become so well known in this genre that the term Bach cantata has become common for them. About 200 Bach cantatas have been preserved (see list of Bach cantatas ).

As with all baroque cantatas, these are multi-movement musical works for (usually) choir , orchestra and vocal soloists, which were intended for performance in church services (church cantatas) or at a festive social event (secular cantatas).

Function and structure of the church cantatas

Bach's first cantata has come down to us from 1707. When he was appointed concertmaster in Weimar in 1714, he was obliged to compose a church cantata every four weeks on the respective Sunday. During his time as Thomaskantor in Leipzig, one of Bach's tasks was to play a cantata for every Sunday and public holiday in the service, which he often composed anew for the occasion. In connection with the theme of Sunday, Bible texts or paraphrases about them, free contemporary poetry and sensibly selected chorales served as a text basis . A special case is the chorale cantata, which is based on the verses of a chant.

A Bach cantata usually has the structure

  • Entrance choir (less often before or instead a sinfonia as an instrumental introduction)
  • solo recitatives and arias , sometimes an arioso or a solo chorale
  • Final chorus or chorale

Performance practice

Bach cantatas are still part of the church music repertoire today. The liturgical context has largely been replaced by the concert in the church, but the cantatas are also performed in cantata services .

As Bach stated in a petition to the Leipzig City Council in 1730, he envisaged three to four singers per voice range as the ideal cast for the music to be performed in Leipzig services. His “Kurtzer, yet most necessary draft of well-established church music” was completely reinterpreted by musicologists Joshua Rifkin and Andrew Parrott . As a result, Bach asked for such a choir for simple motets and chorales, but usually performed his demanding cantatas with a solo quartet that sang all movements (in addition to recitatives and arias, also the choirs and chorales) and only on rare occasions (e.g. B. in the St. John Passion) was supplemented by a second, spatially separated quartet; plus two or three first violins, two second, one or two violas and a continuo group that is very strong for today's standards. The separation between solo and choral tasks that is common today did not exist. However, other proponents of historical performance practice, such as Ton Koopman, have contradicted this theory and still use a small choir. A purely solo performance was neither the rule nor the ideal for Bach.

All Bach cantatas contain a figured bass part , which is usually scored with an organ or an organ positive as well as the bass instruments cello , violone and / or bassoon . The use of the harpsichord is documented for some cantatas. However, there is disagreement on the question of whether Bach regularly used the harpsichord in addition to the organ in church music. It is also not clear which deep string instrument Bach called the violone and whether the violone, like the modern double bass, should play the bass line transposed an octave down (in a 16-foot position) or, like the cello, in a normal bass position without transposition.

Systematics

Bach works directory

The Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (BWV) by Wolfgang Schmieder recorded about 200 cantatas of Bach, to some works, which are now ascribed to research other composers. The numbering of Bach cantatas in the BWV is neither chronological nor systematic, because Schmieder followed the random numbering that had been established by the Bach Complete Edition of the Leipzig Bach Society . The Bach works directory only divides into sacred (BWV 1–200) and secular cantatas (BWV 201–216) as well as those for which Bach's authorship is doubtful (BWV 217–224).

Bach Compendium

The Bach Compendium (BC) undertakes the following grouping of the Bach cantatas based on the occasions for which they were written:

  • Cantatas for the Sundays and feast days of the church year (BC work group A)
  • Church pieces for special occasions (BC work group B)
  • Secular cantatas for court, nobility and bourgeoisie (BC work group G)

Chronological overview

According to the time of origin, Bach's cantatas are structured as follows:

  • early cantatas from the Arnstadt and Mühlhauser period (until 1709), e.g. B. BWV 150 (the oldest known Bach cantata), 4 , 131 , 106 , 196
  • Cantatas from the Weimar period (until 1717), e.g. B. BWV 61 , 162 , 182
  • Cantatas from the Leipzig period (from 1723):
    • first year 1723/24, e.g. B. BWV 105
    • the "choir cantatas year" 1724/25, z. B. BWV 1
    • third year 1725/26, e.g. B. BWV 19
    • late cantatas (1730s), e.g. B. BWV 140

See also

swell

  • Johann Sebastian Bach: Complete cantatas, motets, chorales and sacred songs [sheet music]. Edited by the Johann Sebastian Bach Institute Göttingen, Leipzig Bach Archive (19 vols.). Bärenreiter, Kassel 2007 (special edition: study scores)
  • Bachipedia : Reference work of the JS Bach Foundation in St. Gallen , which has carried out an integral performance and documentation of the vocal works of Johann Sebastian Bach since it was founded in 1999.

literature

  • Albert Jan Becking, Jörg-Andreas Bötticher , Anselm Hartinger (eds.): How beautifully the morning star shines. Johann Sebastian Bach's sacred cantatas: introductions to works and documents from the complete performance in Basel. Authors: Jörg-Andreas Bötticher, Anselm Hartinger, Dagmar Hoffmann-Axthelm, Martin Kirnbauer, Markus Märkl, Karl Pestalozzi , Meinrad Walter, Helene Werthemann, Jean-Claude Zehnder , Philipp Zimmermann. Schwabe, Basel 2012, ISBN 978-3-7965-2860-6 .
  • Alfred Dürr : Johann Sebastian Bach: The Cantatas. 7th edition. Bärenreiter, Kassel 1999, ISBN 3-7618-1476-3 .
  • Werner Neumann : Handbook of the cantatas Johann Sebastian Bach. 1947, 5th edition. Breitkopf & Härtel, Wiesbaden 1984, ISBN 3-7651-0054-4 .
  • Martin Petzoldt : Bach Commentary, Volume I - The sacred cantatas of the 1st to the 27th Trinity Sunday. Bärenreiter, 2004, ISBN 978-3-76181741-4 .
  • Martin Petzoldt: Bach Commentary, Volume II - The sacred cantatas from the 1st Advent to the Trinity Festival. Bärenreiter, 2007, ISBN 978-3-76181742-1 .
  • Hans-Joachim Schulze : The Bach Cantatas. Introductions to all of Johann Sebastian Bach's cantatas. (Edition Bach Archive Leipzig). Evangelische Verlags-Anstalt, Leipzig; Carus-Verlag, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-374-02390-8 (Evang. Verl.-Anst.), ISBN 3-89948-073-2 (Carus-Verl.)
  • Renate Steiger (Ed.): The sources of Johann Sebastian Bach: Bach's music in worship. Report on the symposium 4. – 8. October 1995 at the International Bach Academy Stuttgart / International Working Group for Theological Bach Research. Manutius, Heidelberg 1998.
  • Christoph Wolff , Ton Koopman : The world of Bach cantatas. Verlag JB Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2006, ISBN 978-3-476-02127-4 .
  • Günther Zedler: The preserved chorale cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach. Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2007, ISBN 978-3-8334-8405-6 .
  • Günther Zedler: The preserved church cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach (Mühlhausen, Weimar, Leipzig I). Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2008, ISBN 978-3-8370-4401-0 .
  • Günther Zedler: The surviving cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach (later sacred and secular works). Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2009, ISBN 978-3-8391-3773-4 .
  • Arne Ziekow: Cantatas! Be.bra Verlag, Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-937233-98-7 .

Web links

Commons : Bach cantatas  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Andrew Parrott : Bach's choir: for a new understanding . Metzler / Bärenreiter, Stuttgart / Kassel 2003, ISBN 3-7618-2023-2 .
  2. ^ Ton Koopman: Aspects of performance practice . In: Christoph Wolff (Ed.): The world of Bach cantatas. Volume II. Johann Sebastian Bach's secular cantatas . Metzler / Bärenreiter, Stuttgart et al., Kassel 1997, ISBN 3-7618-1276-0 , pp. 220–222.