|
The cantata in
the broadest sense of the
word - whether as the church
cantata or the patrician,
academic or courtly work of
musical homage and festivity
- accompanied the Arnstadt
and Mühlhausen organist, the
Weimar chamber musician and
court organist, the Köthen
conductor and finally the
Leipzig cantor of St.
Thomas'-Bach-all through his
creative life, although with
fluctuating intensity, with
interruptions and
vacillations that still are
problems to musicological
research down to this very
day. The earliest preserved
cantata (“Denn du wirst
meine Seele nicht in der
Hölle lassen“) probably
dates, if it really is by
Bach, from the Arnstadt
period (1704) and is still
completely under the spell
of North and Central German
traditions. In the works of
his Mühlhausen years
(1707-08) - psalm cantatas,
festive music for the
changing of the council and
a funeral work (the “Actus
tragicus”) - we sense for
the first time something of
what raises Bach as a
cantata composer so much
higher than all his
contemporaries: the ability
to analyse even the most
feeble text with regard to
its form and content, to
grasp its theological
significance and to
interpret it out of its very
spiritual centre in musical
“speech” that is infinitely
subtle and infinitely
powerful in effect. In
Weimar (1708-17) new duties
pushed the cantata right
into the background to begin
with. It was not until the
Duke commissioned him to
write “new pieces monthly”
for the court services that
Bach once more turned to the
cantata during the years
1714-16, on texts written by
Erdmann Neumeister and
Salomo Franck. Barely thirty
cantatas can be ascribed to
these two years with a
reasonable degree of
certainty. It is most
remarkable that, on the
other and, no courtly
funeral music has been
preserved from the entire
Weimar period, although
there must have been a
considerable demand for such
works. It is conceivable
that many a lost work,
supplied with a new text by
Bach himself, lives on among
the Weimar church cantatas.
In the years Bach spent at
Köthen (1717-23), on the
other hand, it is the
composition of works for
courtly occasions of homage
and festivity that come to
the fore, entirely in
keeping with Bach's duties
as Court Conductor. It is
only during the last few
months he spent at Köthen
that we find him composing a
series of church cantatas
once again, and these were
already intended for
Leipzig. It was in Leipzig
that the majority of the
great church cantatas came
into being, all of them -
according to the most recent
research - during his first
few years of office at
Leipzig and comprising
between three and a maximum
of five complete series for
all the Sundays and feast
days of the ecclesiastical
year. But just as suddenly
as it began, this amazing
creative flow, in which this
magnificent series of
cantatas arose, appears to
have ended again. It is
possible that Bach's regular
composition of cantatas
stopped as early as 1726;
from 1729 at the latest it
is evident that other tasks
largely absorbed his
creative energy,
particularly the direction
of the students’ Collegium
Musicum with its perpetual
demand for fashionable
instrumental music. More
than 50 cantatas for courtly
and civic occasions have
indeed been recorded from
later years, but considered
over a period of 24 years
and compared with the
productivity of his first
years in Leipzig they do not
amount to very much. We are
left with the picture of an
enigmatic silence in a
sphere which has ever
counted as the central
category in Bach's creative
output.
But we only need cast a
superficial glance at the
more than 200 of the
master’s cantatas that have
come down to us in order to
see that this conception of
their position in Bach's
total output is fully
justified. Bach has
investigated their texts
with regard to both their
meaning and their wording
with incomparable
penetration, piercing
intellect and unshakeable
faith, whether they are
passages from the Bible,
hymns, sacred poems by his
contemporaries or sacredly
trimmed poetry for courtly
occasions. He has
transformed and interpreted
these texts through his
music with incomparable
powers of invention and
formation, he has revealed
their essence and, at the
same time, translated the
imagery and emotional
content of each of their
ideas into musical images
and emotions. The perfect
blending of word and note,
the combination of idea
synthesis and depiction of
each detail of the text, the
joint effect of the baroque
magnificence of the musical
forms and the highly
differentiated attention to
detail, the skillful balance
between contrapuntal,
melodic and harmonic means
in the service of the word
and, not least, the
inexhaustible fertility and
greatness of a musical
imagination that is able to
create from the most feeble
‘occasional’ text a world of
musical characters - all
this is what raises the
cantata composer Bach so
much higher than his own and
every other age and their
historically determined
character, and imparts a
lasting quality to his
works. It is not their texts
alone and not their music
alone that makes them
immortal - it is the
combination of word and note
into a higher unit, into a
new significance that first
imparts to them the power of
survival and makes them what
they are above all else:
perfect works of art.
Kantate, BWV 206
"Schleicht, spielende
Wellen"
The “Dramma per musica”
“Schleicht, spielende
Wellen” is one of a series
of cantatas of festivity and
homage for the Saxon-Polish
royal family, which Bach
composed in the years
1733-35 and presumably
performed with the members
of his students’ Collegium
Musicum. The public concerts
of this Collegium were one
of the best attended and
most richly traditioned
features of Leipzig’s
musical life outside the
churches. They were held
nearly every week, in summer
in Zimmermann’s coffee
garden before the gates of
the town, in winter in the
same proprietor’s coffee
house. On special occasions,
most of all of course on
festive days connected with
the royal family, largescale
festive cantatas composed
‘ad hoc’ occupied the
central place in the
programmes. The ruling
couple, if in residence at
Leipzig, came to receive
this homage in person, or
the Town Council gave the
events an official colouring
by their presence. Such
festive concerts were
advertised in detail in the
Leipzig newspapers as, for
instance, “a solemn music
with illuminations in
Zimmermann’s Garden”. There
is sure to have been no lack
of audiences on these
occasions.
“Schleicht, spielende
Wellen” was composed for the
birthday of the Elector
Friedrich August II. (as
King of Poland August III.)
on the 7th October 1733. Two
days previously the
anniversary of the Prince’s
election as King of Poland
had been celebrated in great
splendour, likewise with a
festiv: cantata (BWV 215)
composed by Bach. The
Elector was in residence at
Leipzig at the time,
together with his wife and
the entire court, and thus
it can be assumed that he
attended both performances.
Perhaps he was particularly
pleased with the birthday
cantata, for the composer
performed it again three
years later for the
Elector’s birthday or name
day without any important
changes and evidently did
not incorporate any music
from it into other vocal
works - two facts are most
unusual for Bach’s mode of
working in this field.
A special preference on the
part of the Elector for this
work would be quite
understandable, for it is
one of the finest of Bach’s
festive cantatas, although
its text (perhaps by the
Leipzig cantata writer
Henrici-Picander) is no
better than most of the
devout rhymings of this
genre. In accordance with
the traditional formal
scheme of such a “Dramma per
musica” (which was, of
course, a drama only in the
sense of imaginary action
and not performed on the
stage), four allegorical
characters investigate in a
dispute which of them has
the greatest claim to the
ruler, the Polish Vistula,
the Saxon Elbe, the Austrian
Danube (the Electress was a
daughter of the Emperor
Joseph I.) or the Leipzig
Pleisse, who finally
mediates in the noble
dispute and exhorts her
sisters to join with one
another to glorify the House
of Princes.
Bach has endowed this
undistinguished text with an
overwhelming abundance of
musical ideas that raise the
work far above the occasion
for which it was written,
and even subsequently impart
considerable dignity to the
text. The conventional word
imagery seems to be ennobled
by the graphic power of
Bach’s musical language when
the latter is set in action
by the former, while the
courtly occasion and dainty
compliments of the less pictorial
sections of the text have
inspired the composer to an
extraordinary unfolding of
splendour and an elegance of
thematic invention that
reveal almost unaccustomed
aspects of Bach’s genius.
The opening chorus,
thematically inspired by the
play of the “creeping”
(“schleichende”) waves,
presents the full festive
orchestra of the baroque age
with trumpets and timpani;
it is followed, with
intermittent recitative
discussions, by the elegant,
light, polonaise-like bass
aria of the Vistula, the
tenor aria of the Elbe in
swaying 6/8 time with
amazingly “Schubertian”
melodic wave figures and the
alto aria of the Danube
accompanied by two oboes
d’amore in strict canon
(instruments and
part-writing naturally
symbolizing the marital love
of the Princess from the
Danube for her Saxon
husband). Finally the
Pleisse (soprano) speaks up,
whose charm can be resisted
just as little by the “mossy
heads of mighty streams” as
by the modern listener; in
its instrumentation (3
flutes and continuo) and
melodic character this aria
forms the enchanting climax
of the entire score. In the
jubilant 12/8 dance of the
final chorus the dispute is
closed in perfect harmony
and with a respectful bow to
“His Serene Highness
August”; as firmly as the
fame of the ruler stands the
radiant tonic key of D
major, from which the arias
had departed in a carefully
planned sequence of keys - A
major, B minor, F sharp
minor and G major - and to
which the final chorus now
returns with resplendent
emphasis.
|
