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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 208 "Was mir
behagt, ist nur die muntre
Jagd"
Bach’s “Hunting Cantata”
belongs to the long series
of festive secular
compositions in which the
master paid homage to the
ruling houses of Saxony and
Thuringia, the parts of
Germany in which he lived
and worked. In writing works
of this nature he upheld a
long-established tradition
of the court and. town
cantors of Central Germany,
also remaining faithful to
the traditional view -
almost certainly sincerely
held by Bach in spite of all
his inner independence -
that a crowned head was at
the same time an authority
set up by God. Thus it
followed that artistic
service to the crown was at
the same service to God and
glorification of the prince
at the same time
glorification of God. It is
only against the background
of this tradition that we
can understand why Bach, who
penetrated and musically
interpreted his Bible texts
with such profundity and
subtlety, could also
experience as “true” the
trifling verses of such
‘occasional’ cantata texts,
whose careless allegories
can often seem quite comical
to us today, and present
them in a setting of the
highest artistic truth, why
he could provide them with
that magnificent wealth of
music full of worldly joy
and worldly piety that has
raised the works far above
the occasion of their
composition into the realm
of immortality.
The “Hunting Cantata” is
probably Bach’s first work
of homage for a Central
German family of princes. It
owes its existence to the
friendship between Duke
Wilhelm Ernst of
Sachsen-Weimar, Bach’s
employer at the time, and
Prince Christian of
Sachsen-Weissenfels. On the
occasion of his thirty-fifth
birthday on the 26th
February 1716, the ruler at
Weissenfels had arranged a
sumptuous hunting party;
Duke Wilhelm Ernst brought
him as a birthday present a
no less sumptuous cantata
that was to glorify at the
same time the joys of
hunting and the virtues of
the princely hunter. The
text was written by Salomo
Frank, the Ducal Librarian
and Chief Secretary of the
Consistory, a large number
of whose sacred cantata
texts were set to music by
Bach during his years at
Weimar. In accordance with
the practice of that time,
he made up an allegorical
“plot” trimmed with
mythology: Diana sings so
enthusiastically of the joys
of hunting that her lover
Endymion feels himself
neglected; but she dismisses
his complaints and gives him
to understand that the only
thing to be done this whole
day is to praise “cherished
Christian” as the
illustrious lover of
hunting. Pan enters, and
sings the Prince’s praises
as “the Pan of his land”;
the shepherd goddess Pales
does not want to be left out
either, and acclaims the
ruler’s kindness in the
symbol of the good shepherd.
The allegorical assembly of
congratulations then closes
with alternating songs of
felicitation from the four
characters.
Bach has ennobled these
rhymes, now involuntarily
touching, now well and truly
ridiculous, with an
overabundance of magnificent
music, and the world of
nature and of hunting evoked
by the text has inspired him
to some of his most poetic
depictions of nature. The
high opinion in which he
himself held this music is
displayed by its frequent
repetition and
re-utilization on later
occasions: on the birthday
of Prince Ernst August of
Sachsen-Weimar (1716?), on
the name-day of King August
III of Saxony and Poland
(1735?) and probably on some
unknown occasion at the
court of Weissenfels he
performed the cantata again,
two of its arias found their
way into the Whitsun Cantata
“Also
hat Gott die Welt geliebt”,
BWV 68, and the final chorus
reappears in the cantata
“Man singet in Freuden vom
Sieg”, BWV 149.
The work begins in simple
fashion with a recitative
sung by Diana that is more
legato and melodious than
declamatory in style; this
is followed by a highly
virtuoso hunting aria, full
of splendour and based
entirely on triad fanfare
figures and the colour of
the horns. Endymion replies
with a plaintive Andante
aria in which all the
brighter instrumental
colours are lacking. Pan
enters with
a splendid C major aria that
sways in triplet and dotted
rhythms and strides along
in pomp, while Pales sings
one of Bach’s finest and
most gentle arias, caressed
by
the tender B flat major
music of the flutes: “Schafe
können sicher weiden, wo
ein guter Hirte wacht”. A
resplendent ensemble with
full orchestra unites the
four voices in praise of the
Prince. After this, all the
colours and moods that
the allegorical situation
can possibly offer are
invoked once again, in an
elegant
duet between Diana and
Endymion composed in
somewhat courtly minuet
form,
in a gently bucolic aria for
Pales and in a robust,
dance-like aria of Pan’s
that
closely approaches a
Siciliano, until the final
ensemble, again accompanied
by
the full orchestra and
brilliantly written on a
generous scale, brings the
work
to its crowning, festive
conclusion. In its admirably
clear and concise
characterization of the
persons involved - the
courtly, ‘galant’ couple
Diana and
Endymion, the tender
wood-nymph Pales, the vital
forest god Pan, in its
inexhaustible wealth of
invention and its lavish,
colourful and poetic
instrumentation, the work
triumphs over its text and
the motives for its
composition and
stands on an equal footing
with its composer’s great
sacred vocal works.
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