Johann Sebastian Bach (47 page)

M
OSTLY
C
ANTATAS

When Bach took over the St. Thomas cantorate in the spring of 1723, he moved from courtly to municipal service, from unpredictable despotic rule and princely caprices (benevolent or not) to a more slowly operating civic bureaucracy and collegial administration. More important to him than such external conditions, however, was the opportunity finally to realize his artistic aspirations: “the ultimate goal of a regulated church music,” which he had described in 1708 to the Mühlhausen town council and which he had tried to pursue, on a more restricted level, at the Weimar court. Fifteen years later, he was now back in a similar situation—as the leading musician of a municipality—but with far greater authority, experience, and means to prevail. An additional source of encouragement must have been the reputation of the venerable office at St. Thomas's as the leading cantorate in Protestant Germany, esteemed for its uninterrupted sequence of distinguished incumbents such as Calvisius, Schein, Michael, Knüpfer, Schelle, and Kuhnau and their exemplary creative work.

Even before he officially assumed his Leipzig office, Bach must have decided to supply the two main churches with works of his own composition. Once in Leipzig, unlike any of his predecessors, all of whom were also active composers, he embarked on a program to provide a piece of concerted music—a cantata—for every Sunday and feast day of the ecclesiastical year, except for the Lenten weeks preceding Christmas and Easter, when concerted music was traditionally suspended. Such a repertoire required no fewer than sixty cantatas annually, an enormously challenging task (especially during the first several years) demanding extraordinary concentration and discipline. Only gradually could Bach build up a repertoire of sacred music that would eventually enable him to draw on a rich cache of materials for years to come.

In order for the St. Thomas School to serve the two main churches equally well, a scheme of alternation had been devised early in the seventeenth century, so Bach's cantata performances alternated in a steady rhythm between St. Thomas's and St. Nicholas's. For the high feasts of the ecclesiastical year, the morning performance in one church was repeated at the afternoon service in the other, so that the congregations of both parishes would benefit. The headings in the printed booklet for the
Christmas Oratorio
, BWV 248, for example, indicate how the arrangement worked in 1734–35:
⁴⁰

The prescribed pauses occasioned by the two Lenten periods came in handy, enabling Bach and his musicians to prepare for the demanding performance schedule from Christmas to Epiphany and for the outstanding musical event of the year, the Passion performance on Good Friday, followed by the three-day Easter holiday. According to Leipzig tradition, the ecclesiastical year comprised regular Sundays and various kinds of feast days: the high feasts of Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost (three days each, with the first two formally celebrated as high feasts), Ascension, the Marian feasts, St. John's and St. Michael's Days, and the Reformation Festival (see liturgical calendar in Appendix 4). The two Lenten periods extended from the first Sunday in Advent to Christmas and from Invocavit Sunday to Easter; regular Sundays were those from the first after Epiphany to Estomihi, from Quasimodogeniti to Exaudi, and from the first after Trinity to the twenty-seventh. Not celebrated as an ecclesiastical feast, the Monday after St. Bartholomaeus's Day (August 24) was observed with a ceremonial service at St. Nicholas's marking the annual election of the city council.

The cantata performance filled the niche as the principal music piece in the liturgy of the Mass, or main service, formerly occupied by the Gospel motet, which in the Lutheran tradition since the Reformation had functioned to enhance the reading of the Gospel. This motet, which immediately followed the Gospel lesson prescribed for the day according to the ancient proper of the Mass, generally highlighted one or more central verses from the Bible. In the later seventeenth century, the Gospel motet was replaced by a concertato motet with aria and chorale supplements and after 1700 by the cantata, at which time the multisectional cantata poetry moved from merely highlighting a passage from the biblical lesson to interpreting it as well. The theologian-poet Erdmann Neumeister initiated the development that resulted in the cantata's function as a musical sermon. Therefore, all of Bach's Leipzig cantata texts follow a standard pattern firmly grounded in the bifocal homiletic structure of a Lutheran sermon:
explicatioand applicatio
, biblical exegesis and theological instruction succeeded by practical and moral advice. The libretto ordinarily opens with a biblical dictum, usually a passage from the prescribed Gospel lesson that serves as a point of departure (opening chorus). It is followed by scriptural, doctrinal, and contextual explanations (a recitative-aria pair), leading to considerations of the consequences to be drawn from the lesson and the admonition to conduct a true Christian life (another recitative-aria pair). The text concludes with a congregational prayer in the form of a hymn stanza (chorale).

In his autograph score of “Nun komm der Heiden Heiland,” BWV 61, a Weimar cantata re-performed in Leipzig on the first Sunday in Advent—the traditional beginning of the ecclesiastical year—Bach wrote down the order of the service with the somewhat unusual particulars for this Sunday (concerted Kyrie without Gloria, omission of the Latin Credo, addition of the Litany):
⁴¹

Bach's notes provide welcome information on the function of the organ, which is generally not specified in the liturgical formularies. The organ introduced, by preluding, the singing of congregational hymns,
⁴²
but also played a prelude before the cantata in the key of its first movement, during which the instruments were tuned.
⁴³
At the same time, Bach's list for this particular Sunday omits important details about the structure of the principal morning service in the Leipzig main churches (see Table 8.3); for example, no mention is made of the fact that major parts of the service, especially on high feasts (including Salutations, Collects, and Benedictions), were still conducted in Latin.
⁴⁴
The order of the services throughout the church year was officially prescribed in two important, complementary formularies:
Vollständiges Kirchen
-Buch of 1710 and
AGENDA
, Das ist,
Kirchen-Ordnung
of 1712. They were supplemented by two practical handbooks for the use of parishioners,
Leipziger Kirchen-Andachten
of 1697 and
Leipziger Kirchen-Staat
of 1710, and also by two major hymnals: the choral hymnal edited by Gottfried Vopelius,
Neu Leipziger Gesangbuch…Mit 4. 5. bis 6. Stimmen
of 1682 and the standard congregational hymnal, Das
Privilegirte Ordentliche und Vermehrte Dreßdnische Gesang-Buch
of 1725, containing words only but supplied with elaborate indices, lessons throughout the year, the Psalter, and other appendices.

T
ABLE
8.3. Order of the Mass
(Amt) at
Leipzig's Main Churches

All hymns for the services—including those sung before and after the sermons—were traditionally selected by the cantor from the repertoire of the Dresden
Gesangbuch
, of which a revised and expanded version was published in 1725. It was Leipzig tradition since the Reformation that the morning sermon interpreted the Gospel and the afternoon sermon the Epistle, so that appropriate hymns could be chosen.
⁴⁵
In the late 1720s, however, a brief conflict flared up between Bach and Gottlieb Gaudlitz, then subdeacon at St. Nicholas's, over the selection of hymns for the Vespers service (see Table 8.4). Gaudlitz claimed the right to choose the hymns before and after the sermon and also to select a new hymn not included in the Dresden
Gesangbuch
. Bach apparently resisted what he considered an improper appropriation, so Gaudlitz filed a complaint with the consistory, which in September 1728 issued written support for the subdeacon.
⁴⁶
Bach then protested to his own superiors, the city council, in the hope that this group, which often found itself at odds with the consistory anyway, would affirm

 

The customs hitherto followed at the public divine service, and not to make any innovations…. Among these customs and practices was the ordering of the hymns before and after the sermons, which was always left solely to me and my predecessors in the Cantorate to determine, in accordance with the gospels and the Dresden
Gesang-buch
based on the same, as seemed appropriate to the season and the circumstances…. Magister Gottlieb Gaudlitz has taken it upon himself to attempt an innovation and has sought, in place of the hymns chosen in accordance with the established use, to introduce others…. It maybe added that when, in addition to the concerted music, very long hymns are sung, the divine service is held up, and all sorts of disorder would have to be reckoned with; not to mention the fact that not a single one of the clergymen except Magister Gaudlitz, the Subdeacon, wishes to introduce this innovation.
⁴⁷

 

The subject of introducing new hymns came up again in a 1730 memorandum from the city council to superintendent Salomon Deyling, in which he was advised “that in the churches of this town…new hymns hitherto not customary, shall not be used in public divine services.” This unequivocal statement suggests that the cantor's position had prevailed, at least regarding the introduction of new hymns. Bach's general preferences for the traditional repertoire, with emphasis on the hymns written by Martin Luther and Reformation and post-Reformation poets, remains evident throughout his vocal works and organ chorales.

 

Although the cantor's responsibility extended to all musical parts of the service, Bach's major effort and greatest personal interest centered on the performance of the
Haupt-Music
, that is, the cantata. Before composing the cantata, he had to select its text and prepare it for publication in the form of booklets that the congregation could read before or during the performance. These booklets, in conveniently small octavo format, contained the cantata texts for several Sundays in a row, usually six. Besides the libretto of the
Christmas Oratorio
, five such booklets have survived: (1) from the second Sunday after Epiphany to Annunciation, 1724; (2) from Easter Sunday to Misericordias Domini, 1724; (3) from the third to the sixth Sunday after Trinity, 1725; (4) from Easter Sunday to Misericordias Domini, 1731; and (5) from Whitsunday to Trinity, 1731.
⁴⁸
That twelve such booklets were needed per year gives us an inkling of the advance planning necessary for carrying out Bach's musical program. Moreover, the booklets were apparently printed at the cantor's expense and then, with the help of students or his own children, distributed to subscribers and other interested and more affluent citizens. The sales helped not only to recover the printing costs but also to secure some significant extra income that was then used to pay for additional musicians (particularly instrumentalists) and other performance-related expenses.
⁴⁹