Johann Sebastian Bach (30 page)

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6.2. The Weimar Court Capelle, 1714–15 (combined list)

Because of the unique architectural design of the
Himmelsburg
, the performance took place in the elevated gallery space designated as
Capelle
(see illustration, p. 150, and discussion, Chapter 5). From 1712 to 1714, a major renovation of the entire performance space of the
Himmelsburg
was undertaken. The plans called for a significant expansion of the musicians'
Capelle
that would result in more floor space, a higher vaulted ceiling for the cupola, and better lighting.
²⁴
Also, the large wooden ceiling cover for the rectangular aperture was repaired, redesigned, and repainted. It worked by means of a slide mechanism,
²⁵
closing off the sanctuary ceiling for church services without organ or polyphonic music and for rehearsals in the
Capelle
, which in winter was heated separately. For regular church services, the cover was left open.
²⁶
Thirteen new armchairs were acquired in October 1713, and a year later the armchair for the capellmeister was newly upholstered; these fourteen chairs accommodated the principal members of the court capelle during the sermon and other parts of the service. Thiele, as master of the pages ranking above the capellmeister, would have taken his more prominent place with the court pages elsewhere in the church, while the court cantor supervised the choirboys situated by the positive organ on the first arcade gallery behind the altar; they joined the capelle only for the cantata performance preceding the sermon. When additional players and choristers were present on the
Capelle
, they could be seated there on “six red-painted” benches.
²⁷

Most details about participating musicians cannot be determined, but the surviving performance materials for Bach's Weimar cantatas suggest that a great deal of variety was possible because of the considerable expert resources available. On the whole, however, the architectural and acoustical conditions favored a relatively small instrumental-vocal ensemble. The old capellmeister Drese seems to have been inactive as a performing musician for most if not all of Bach's Weimar period. His son, the vice-capellmeister, certainly conducted the performances for which he was responsible and perhaps also took over his father's share, but we don't know whether he played an instrument or sang when he was not conducting. We don't know to what extent Bach could involve students of individual court musicians, including his own. And we don't know whether the harpsichord available in the
Capelle
(like the organ, under service contract with Trebs) was ordinarily used for cantata performances in addition to the organ. At the very least, the harpsichord must have been substituted as a continuo instrument during the construction periods that rendered the organ unplayable. Considering the recent changes made to the organ, which included improvements in the pedal (addition of
Untersatz
32 foot, larger wind chests) and the redesign of the separate barrel vault above the organ for better sound reflection, the continuo group would presumably have carried greater weight. We know from original Weimar performing parts that even works of chamber-music-like qualities (e.g., the cantatas BWV 18 and 199) included violoncello, fagotto, and violono in addition to the organ, indicating that the bass fundament received proper emphasis.

A 1702 description of the Wilhelmsburg palace refers to the
Himmelsburg
with its
Capelle
as “a world-famous masterpiece of architecture…there one hears with the greatest pleasure the most delicate and most agreeable music, made by virtuoso and adroit vocal and instrumental musicians.”
²⁸
After the improvements to the church were completed in 1714, the quality of sound projected from the
Capelle
into the marble-walled church below would have been even more spectacular, augmenting the illusionary effect of music made in and coming from heaven.

In March 1714, Bach began translating his duty “to perform new works monthly” into an extraordinary artistic program closely related to his goal of “a well-regulated church music.” Until then, he had been able to compose and perform cantatas only rarely and irregularly, but earlier works such as cantatas BWV 18, 54, and 199 demonstrate the direction in which the new concertmaster planned to move. The sequence of cantatas for the years 1714–17 only confirmed Bach's commitment to defining his personal cantata style broadly yet in line with the most recent practices at Protestant princely courts in Thuringia.

The “modern” German church cantata actually originated in 1700 near Weimar, at the neighboring court of Saxe-Weissenfels. The capellmeister there, Johann Philipp Krieger, set to music the
Geistliche Cantaten statt einer Kirchen-Music
(Sacred Cantatas Instead of a Church Music) by the young Lutheran theologian and poet Erdmann Neumeister. A native of the duchy, Neumeister was active at various places in central Germany before moving to the distinguished chief pastorate of the St. Jacobi Church in Hamburg. For his innovative collection of sacred poems, which were closely related to the prescribed lessons throughout the ecclesiastical year, Neumeister took as his model the libretto of the Italian secular cantata. (He also adopted the new name in place of the standard German term
Kirchen-Music
, which designated the principal musical piece following the gospel lesson.) Neumeister thus made use of the prevailing types of metric and rhymed verse found not only in cantatas but also in opera librettos: recitatives and arias, free and varied literary forms that originated in the seventeenth-century Italian madrigal. This kind of madrigalistic poetry was aimed at advancing the expressive relationship between words and music and therefore seemed eminently suitable for spiritual meditations set to music. At the same time, the poetically driven decision to accept the recitativearia form immediately revolutionized the style of church music, which was now closely and lastingly tied to the world of opera. This connection made church music susceptible to further new developments, such as the adoption of the dacapo aria, the tripartite structure of the later seventeenth-century Venetian opera that, with its repeat of the first part of the piece (ABA), became the dominating aria type of the early eighteenth century.

Neumeister's pure aria-recitative poetry was soon modified to integrate two additional textual elements, biblical dicta and strophic hymns. This mixed type shows up first in an anonymous annual cycle of cantata texts published in 1704, written apparently by Duke Ludwig Ernst of Saxe-Meiningen and set to music by his court capellmeister, Johann Ludwig Bach, a distant cousin of Johann Sebastian's. This cantata form used three textual components—biblical prose, free poetry (aria, recitative), and chorale—and was emulated in 1711 by the Darmstadt court poet Georg Christian Lehms
²⁹
and simultaneously adopted by Neumeister himself,
³⁰
in his publication of cantata poems written for Georg Philipp Telemann, then capellmeister at the court of Saxe-Eisenach. Originating as a literary-musical genre favored by the central German Protestant courts, the modern church cantata benefited from the taste-setting influence of the aristocracy, which insured its wide distribution and acceptance well beyond the courtly realm. By the second decade of the eighteenth century, it set the standard in cities and towns throughout Lutheran Germany. Earlier, multisectional church pieces lacked any formal design, with freely combined texts—biblical, chorale, and (mainly strophic) aria—that were composed in the manner of a vocal concerto or concertato motet (consisting of chorales and chorale elaborations with arias added in). All of Bach's pre-Weimar “cantatas” adhere to that form, probably because it was not until Weimar that he was given a chance to set madrigalistic poetry to music. However, the recitatives and arias of the
Hunt Cantata
, BWV 208, his first (albeit secular) composition of a Salomo Franck text in the new genre, demonstrate how quickly and completely he mastered these unaccustomed forms.

The extant repertoire of cantatas from Bach's Weimar period, amounting merely to some twenty works, does not give us an accurate picture of his compositional output of cantatas from March 1714 through December 1717 (see Table 6.3). Even assuming that he produced only one cantata per month, as his concertmaster contract of 1714 required, he would have composed nearly twice as many works as we can now document. Moreover, the net loss of three cantatas during the three-month state mourning period for Prince Johann Ernst, during which no musical performances were permitted,
³¹
would have been balanced by the lost funeral piece “Was ist, das wir Leben nennen,” BC B 19. Considering Bach's special relationship with the Red Palace, it is hardly plausible that another composer would have been commissioned.
³²
And the funeral piece is by no means the only work for which the music has been lost. We know of four other cantatas definitely written by Bach in Weimar—one cantata (BWV 80a) from Franck's 1715 cycle and three cantatas (BWV 70a, 147a, and 186a) from the 1717 cycle—whose scores have not survived.

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6.3. Cantatas for the
Himmelsburg, 1713–17