Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) Weichet nur, betrübte Schatten, BWV 202 "Wedding Cantata" Ich habe genug, BWV 82 Herz und Mund und Tat und...
Johann Sebastian Bach
(1685-1750)
Weichet nur, betrübte
Schatten, BWV 202 "Wedding Cantata"
Ich habe genug, BWV 82
Herz und Mund und Tat
und Leben, BWV 147
The career of Johann
Sebastian Bach, the most illustrious of a prolific musical family, falls neatly
into three unequal parts. Born in 1685 in Eisenach, from the age of ten Bach
lived and studied music with his elder brother in Ohrdruf, after the death of
both his parents. After a series of appointments as organist and briefly as a
court musician, he became, in 1708, court-organist and chamber-musician to
Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Weimar, the elder of the two brothers who jointly ruled
the duchy. In 1714 he was promoted to the position of Konzertmeister to the
Duke, but in 1717, after a brief period of imprisonment for his temerity in
seeking to leave the Duke's service, he abandoned Weimar to become court
Kapellmeister to Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cothen, a position he held until
1723. From then until his death in 1750 he lived in Leipzig, where he was Thomaskantor,
with responsibility for the music of the five principal city churches, in 1729
assuming direction of the university collegium musicum, founded by Telemann in
1702.
At Weimar Bach had
been principally employed as an organist, and his compositions of the period
include a considerable amount written for the instrument on which he was
recognised as a virtuoso performer. At Cothen, where Pietist traditions
dominated the court, he had no church duties, and was responsible rather for
court music. The period brought the composition of a number of instrumental
works. The final 27 years of Bach's life brought a variety of preoccupations,
and while his official employment necessitated the provision of church music,
he was able to provide music for the university collegium musicum and to write
or re-arrange a number of important works for the keyboard.
In addition to the 200
or so surviving church cantatas Bach wrote a number of secular cantatas for a
variety of occasions. Weichct nur, betrübte Schatten, BWV 202, scored
for soprano, oboe, strings and basso continuo, was seemingly written during the
composer's contented stay in Cothen, a period brought to an end by the marriage
of Prince Leopold to a woman that Bach later described as "amusica".
The work is a wedding cantata, a composition intended for performance during a
wedding banquet, its text a poem about spring and love, the author of which
remains unknown, but might have been Salomo Franck, court poet and librarian at
Weimar. One of the arias from this cantata was later used to provide the
subject of a movement of the sixth of the sonatas for violin and harpsichord.
Cantata 82 (Ich
habe genug) was written for
the Feast of the Purification (2nd February) in 1727. In accordance with the
principles of Pietism the text does not refer directly to a biblical event (in
this case, the reaction of Simeon to the experience of seeing the infant Jesus
in the temple), but obliquely, in paraphrase. It reflects upon approaching
death, depicting a progression from resignation to the end of earthly life in
the first aria to positive joy at the prospect of eternal life in the last. The
cantata form as we encounter it here is across between the German
eighteenth-century church cantata and the Italian cantata spirituale in
that it contains a sequence of arias separated by recitative, but was intended
for church use. Part of Bach's work as Kantor involved the provision of
a cantata every Sunday for performance at the Hauptgottesdienst, or main
service. Considering that his singers were culled from the local Thomasschule,
it was imperative that the bulk of the music be left to competent soloists, and
in several of Bach's cantatas the chorus sings only a chorale at the end. A
few, such as Ich habe genug, are written entirely for one soloist. The
three arias that form the bulk of this cantata are all superb examples of
Bach's artistry. The outer movements share the time-signature of 3/8, but could
not be more different in character, the first highly reminiscent of Erbarme,
dich from the St Matthew Passion, the last a gigue whose
eloquent melismas graphically illustrate the idea of final release and joy. The
middle movement, Schlummert ein, uses falling phrases and subdominant
inflexions to represent sleep.
The cantata Herz
und Mund und Tat und Leben, BWV 147, again represents an original work from
Bach's period at the court of Weimar. With a text by Franck, it was first
written for performance on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, 20th December, 1716.
Again the original music has been lost and the surviving version was intended
for use in Leipzig on the Feast of the Visitation, 2nd July, possibly in 1723.
The work is scored for soprano, oboe da caccia, strings and basso continuo.
The opening polyphonic
chorus, with its virtuoso clarino trumpet obbligato leads to an accompanied
tenor recitative, followed by the alto aria Schame dich, with its oboe
d'amore and continuo accompaniment. A bass recitative is succeeded by a soprano
aria with a triplet solo violin obbligato, Bereite dir, Jesu. The first
part of the work ends with a chorale, one of the best known of all Bach cantata
movements, in which the trumpet accompanies the chorale melody. The second part
starts with a tenor aria, Hilf, Jesu, hilf, leading to an alto
recitative, with words based on the first chapter of the Gospel of St. Luke.
This is followed by the bass aria, Ich will van Jesu Wunden singen, with
accompanying trumpet and oboes doubling the violins. The familiar chorale
returns in all its confident grandeur in conclusion.