Luogo e data di registrazione		Hervormde Kerk, Bennebroek (Holland) - 1966/67
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer		Wolf Erichson
	Prima Edizione LP		Telefunken "Das Alte Werk" | SAWT 9489-B | 1 LP - durata 43' 12" | (p) 1968 | ANA
	Edizione CD		Warner Classics | LC 04281 | 2564-69599-2 | 2 CDs - durata 146' 05" | (c) 2008 | ADD | (BWV 59, 118) Warner Classics | LC 04281 | 2564-64763-2 | 1 CD - durata 66' 44" | (c) 2013 | ADD | (BWV 27, 158)
	Cover		Deckengemälde in der Wallfahrtskirche zu Veresheim von Maria Knoller.
	Note		-

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. Wer Weiß, wie nahe mir mein Ende! (BWV 27) is linked, like the cantata just discussed, to a Gospel narration of an avvakening from the dead (Luke 7: 11-17) - this time of the young man in Nain, The idea which the author of the text has developed is basically the same as before: Jesus will awaken me and therefore, he reasons, my fear of death (dealt with in the first and second movements) is groundless; on the contrary, death can only be welcome to me. The poetry, which recalls an aria text by Erdmann Neumeister in the third movement (Neumeister: "Wilkommen! will ich sagen, so bald der Tod ans Bette tritt..." remains free of both didacticism and baroque exaggerations, and is distinguished instead by a warmth of feeling that places it among the most successful texts ever set by Bach. Bach's composition was written for October 6, 1726, and thus belongs to the third of the yearly cycles that have been preserved. Although it begins with a chorale, it is not a chorale cantata: the inner movements are not paraphrasos of a hymn, nor do the opening and closing chorales belong to the same hymn. ln the opening chorus the hymn tune (”Wer nur den lieben Coll läßt walten" - Who but lets the dear God rule) is worked into a meditative instrumental texture with a theme of its own (though remotely related to the chorale). Bach, however, modifies this manner of writing, wellknown from the chorale cantatas, by the inclusion of recitative inserts in which the motif-based orchestral writing and the fixed meter of the text are maintained. This is the only example of a recitative in three-four time in the whole of Bach! The first aria (movement 3) is of unusual charm, and requires as obbligato instruments an oboe da caccia and an obligato harpsichord, which was evidently replaced by an obbligato organ at a later performance. With its simple song melody, Bach has found just the right setting for the character of its text, and that of the entire cantata. The second aria movement in the cantata (movement 5) is based on the contrast of concepts ”Gute Nacht - Weltgetümmel” (Good night - wordly bustle), which it also maintains consistently in the music. The initial Sarabande rhythm is basically kept going throughout the piece, but already in the second half of the ritornello and the main section of the aria it is filled out with lively sixteenth-note figuration, only the middle section and the end of the last ritornello being kept free of this. Contrary to his usual practice, Bach has adopted a five-part setting by Johann Rosenmüller as the final chorale. The occasion for which Bach wrote his motet O Jesu Christ, mein’s Lebens Licht (BWV 118) is unknown, but it may have been for a Leipzig University funeral service during the mid-1730s. The text is by Martin Böhme. That the funeral ceremony took place in the open air is suggested by the instrumentation, reminiscent of older musical practices and most unusual for Bach, with two high horns, cornetto, three trombones and no continuo part. The instrumental accompaniment is so laid out that in spite of a great degree of independence it is able to support the choir whenever it enters. Simple harmonic relationships and uncomplicated part-writing distinguish the movement, whose effectiveness lies in its instrumentation and simplicity. Der Friede sei mit dir (BWV 158) is one of Bach’s unusual cantatas, not least because of its brevity and sequence of movements. Neither the author of the text nor the circumstances of its composition are known, and the cover of the score, which only exists as a copy, names the Third Day of Easter and the feast of Candlemas (the Purification of the Virgin) as the liturgical occasions for which the cantata was intended. Cantata No. 158 probably consists of a number of parts, and only a fragment has survived. Our knowledge of Bach cantatas suggests that a seconcl aria at least is missing before the final chorale. The focal point of the work is the great bass aria with solo violin ”Welt ade! ich bin dei müde," to which the soprano sings the chorale of the same name line-for-line. In its instrumental symbolism and expressive power the writing here is related to the aria "Erbarme dich” from the later St Matthew Passion. Wer mich liebet, der wird mein Wort halten (BWV 59) was intended for the First Day of Whitsuntide and was probably performed in 1724 in the Leipzig University Church. This venue presumably explains the modest instrumentation of the work, its extremely unusual form and the singular fact than in this instance Bach composed only the first four movements from a text by Erdmann Neumeister (from the latter’s fourth annual cycle of cantatas for 1714). Perhaps Bach himself felt the work to be unsatisfactory, for a year later it was expanded into the large Cantata BWV 74 for Whit Sunday. The first movement is just as unusual as the whole of the work. The text, a quotation from the Sunday Gospel, is rendered four times in canonic form, until eventually the two soloists come together in parallel sixths; around this nucleus strings and trumpets (two instead of the usual three) weave a fine chamber-music-like setting which continually reverts to the two core motifs of the vocal parts. The contrast between the symbolic strictness of the vocal movement and the concertante freedom of the instruments seems in turn to have a symbolic intention. The recitative that follows proceeds from A minor to the G major of the succeeding chorale; a harmonically rich string accompaniment, ecstatic exclamations and the quick vocalises of the concluding arioso give this movement a hint of rapturous exuberance that establishes a link with the chorale, of which this exuberance is a natural part. The bass aria with obbligato violin combines a concise ritornello arrangement (ritornello - first text section a a b - ritornello, abbreviated - second text section c d e - ritornello) with a markedly contrasting representation of the two text sections. Catchy, song-like melody is used to juxtapose secular and divine glory, while expansive, emotional melisrnas convey the bliss of eternal life.