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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 oí 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.
The "Actus tragicus"
occupies a special place
among. Bach’s early
cantatas, alone on account
of its outstanding spiritual
and musical greatness. The
date of the work's
composition has been the
subject of much speculation,
but nothing more specific
than the years 1707-11 could
be arrived at with any
reasonable degree of
probability. The unusual
title “Actus tragicus" (i.e.
“Funeral Ceremony") on the
earliest copy (no autograph
has come down to us) would
seem to indicate that it was
intended for a funeral
service, perhaps for Bach's
uncle Tobias Lammerhirt in
Erfurt (1708), the Weimar
school headmaster
Großgebauer or, perhaps most
probable of all, Bach's
predecessor as organist of
the Weimar Palace Church
Johannes Effler (1711). Yet
such a use of the work -
which may have been later
than its composition - does
not exclude the possibility
that it was actually written
before Bach's Weimar period
and originally only for the
16th Sunday after Trinity.
In its style, at any rate,
it still follows closely the
old North and Central German
“concerto” type rather the
more fashionable "cantata"
form that Bach began to
cultivate during his years
at Weimar. The free sacred
poem hardly plays any role
here as yet (apart from a
few lines in the first
chorus). Bible quotations
and verses of hymns are
arranged into a loose order,
rich in forms, of motet-like
choruses, chorale
arrangements and arioso
solos, with no trace yet of
the usual
recitative-aria-chorale
scheme. It is the key scheme
above all (E flat major-E
flat major-C minor-C minor-F
minor-B flat minor-F minor-C
minor-E flat major-E flat
major) and also
architectural symmetries
that impart a sense of unity
to the work. The manner in
which the youthful master,
hardly experienced as yet in
the composition of cantatas,
joins the various parts into
a whole of profound
significance goes, however,
so much further than the
traditional loose formal
scheme as could only be
possible with the genius of
a Bach.
Both, the text compilation
and the music, bound
together in an inseparable
unity, are dominated by the
contrast between the Old and
the New Covenant, between
the unredeemed state of Man
in the Old Testament and his
redemption through the
sacrifice of Christ in the
New, between temporal death
and eternal life. After a
short instrumental
introduction, a duet full of
sighs for two recorders over
the dark-coloured chordal
support of the gambas, we
hear a brief chorus quite in
archaic style, whose three
thoughts in the text (God's
time-Life-Death) are treated
each with a thematic
material and a partwriting
of its own in accordance
with the motet tradition. It
is followed by two solos in
aria style that concentrate
on the thought of death, the
first in the form of a
ground bass. The F minor
movement that follows is
both in its content and in
its form the centrepiece of
the work, in which the Old
and the New Covenant, the
terrors and the consolation
of death confront one
another, after which the
idea of redemption of the
New Covenant takes an
increasingly prominent place
and the composition acquires
increasingly amiable and
consoling colours. Musically
speaking it is the
magnificent synthesis,
pervaded by both secret and
obvious symbolism, of a
three-part choral fugue (“Es
ist der alte Bund”), an
aria-like soprano solo (“Ja
komm, Herr Jesu, komm") and
an instrumental chorale
arrangement (“Ich hab’ mein’
Sach’ Gott heimgestellt" in
the recorders), which dies
away ethereally in a
mysterious pianissimo in the
soprano's unaccompanied last
invocation of the Redeemer - a
"romantic" inspiration such
as can hardly be found again
with such directness in the
more reticent Bach of his
mature years. Corresponding
almost symmetrically to the
first two solo movements,
there now follow an arioso
for contralto, like the
tenor solo over a ground
bass, and a bass solo
against which the contralto
sings the chorale “Mit
Fried’ und Freud’ ich fahr?
dahin? as a ‘canto fermo’.
The Cantata ends on a
jubilant note with the last
verse of the chorale “In
dich hab’ ich gehoffet,
Herr" as a homophonic chorus
leading into a great fugue
on the last line of the
chorale, while at the very
end, as with the central F
minor chorus, the work dies
away in a mystical piano.
The Palm Sunday Cantata
BWV 182 was presumably
composed at Weimar in 1714.
It originally ended with a
repetition of the first
chorus after the tenor aria
(perhaps evidence of its
having been written in a
hurry), but Bach added the
two last choruses while
still living in Weimar and
performed the work several
times again in Leipzig - in
contrast to the “Actus
tragicus", which would
probably have been too
archaic in its form and
style for this purpose. This
cantata is indeed
considerably more modern in
its effect than BWV 106. The
text, probably by Salomo
Franck like the majority of
the cantata texts of the
Weimar Years, already
approaches in its form and
in its preference for free
writing the fashionable type
of cantata of Erdmann
Neumeister, who had
transformed the cantata poem
"into a piece from an opera,
in the style of recitative
and arias". The musical
composition is matched
accordingly to it with its
self-contained, broader and
technically more demanding
forms and its greater
variety of vocal and
instrumental settings. In
accordance with its intended
performance on Palm Sunday,
its mood is almost entirely
one of calm, contemplative
happiness and gentle
radiance, bright
instrumental colours with
high flute parts and the
bright key of G major. The
introductory "Sonata", which
still recalls the older type
of cantata, is like a
stylized entry march in its
effect; it is followed by
the resplendent, fugal
opening chorus and, after a
little recitative, three
great solo arias (no longer
ariosi of free form as in
BWV 106) which depict the
glory and the sacrifice of
Christ, the submission of
the faithful to the Saviour
and their suffering with Him
in the Passion that already
overshadows Palm Sunday, in
ever darker, more broken
and, at the same time, more
intense colours (C major, E
minor, B minor). A
magnificent fugato chorale
fantasia with a soprano,
‘canto fermo' on “Jesu,
deine Passion" provides a
transition into the final
chorus, which resumes the
key and with it the joyful
mood of the opening chorus,
thus closing and crowning
the work with jubilant
certainty of salvation.
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