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VOLUME 1 PART 1: THE FIRST LEIPZIG CYCLE 1723-4.
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND.
Bach was thirty seven years old when he applied for the position of Cantor at the St
Thomas School Leipzig and it is well known that he was not the first choice of
candidates. Furthermore, his lack of a traditional university training was not to his
advantage, perhaps particularly in a city which boasted one of considerable
reputation. (Documentation regarding Bach’s application and appointment may be
found in the New Bach Reader from page 99).
The post involved not only tuition and responsibilities within the school but also for
the music required in four Leipzig churches of which St Thomas and St Nicholas
were the principal ones. This in itself required a major task of administration in
addition to a particularly wide knowledge of, and ability to perform and present,
appropriate music for Sunday services, special festivals and key Christian
celebrations such as those for Easter and Christmas. These tasks would have been
enough for most people but Bach, fortunately for us, took upon himself one additional
substantial responsibility. Although not required by contract to do so, he determined
to compose a repertoire of cantatas himself, something which had clearly been on
his mind since he declared, in his letter of resignation from his Mülhausen
appointment, his ambition to compose a body of ‘well regulated church music’ (ibid p
57).
The position at Leipzig provided him with this opportunity and Bach appeared to
grasp it most eagerly. In fact in the posthumous obituary published in 1754 by
Johann Friedrich Agricola and CPE Bach, it is stated that he composed five full
cycles of cantatas (ibid pp 297-307). If this was the case, then many have been lost
but much doubt has been expressed about the accuracy of this statement.
What is known, however, is that he produced a canon of sixty two cantatas for his
first year of tenure about half of which were newly composed works (volume 1
contains the essays on these works). In his second year he produced a further fifty
two, virtually all new compositions (volume 2). Thereafter, his production of cantatas
became less regular although forty-seven have been assigned to possible third and
fourth cycles with just over two dozen later works. The generally accepted groupings
are set out in Wolff’s JS Bach, the Learned Musician (pp 270-285) and are broadly
followed in these three volumes. There is also a further collection of secular cantatas
for such events as civic occasions, weddings and funerals.
VOLUME 1.
This first of three volumes is in two parts. Part 1 contains essays on each of the cycle
1 cantatas whilst the second deals with the handful of pre-Leipzig works which Bach
did not reuse during his first year, followed by the secular cantatas. A few brief
observations may be made about the cycle.
Even though Bach had made a clear statement about his ambitions for producing a
body of well designed church music, he seems to have had no single vision of the
shape or template of the ‘ideal’ cantata. Perhaps he was indifferent to it and was
looking more to the essential quality of the music and its fitness for the event or
theme it served. But it is difficult to escape completely from the conclusion that in his
first year he was constantly experimenting with, and searching for, a definitive format.
He composed cantatas which incorporated one, two, three and even no chorale
melodies. He presented them in plain four part settings but also in the most complex
of arrangements. He began works with choruses, arias or recitatives. He combined
elements of all three formats into the single movement structure. He composed
works for single voices and experimented with the widest possible range of
instrumental colours available to him. He presented works in one or two parts (the
latter to be performed before and after the sermon) and a range of orchestral
sinfonias. The most favoured format was an opening chorus and concluding chorale
enclosing a mixture of recitatives and arias, sometimes paired and frequently
including a duet. Certainly this became an established pattern in the second
chorale/fantasia cycle, although even then there were exceptions and the later
cantatas composed from the second half of 1725 on, demonstrate further need to
experiment with forms and ways of writing for both voices and instruments.
Returning to the first cycle, the pressure of producing more than a cantata a week
(seven in one month alone!) combined with his duties of teaching, administration and
the supervision of all of the other music which the Lutheran services required in
addition to the centrepiece cantatas must have been extreme. One wonders just how
much time Bach had to pause and give thought to the directions he was taking. But
indeed, he must have done it because production of a block of forty chorale/fantasia
cantatas from June 1724 clearly demonstrated that he had formulated a clear vision
and strategy and was initially consistent in its realisation.
Whatever the conclusions we come to about his goals and aspirations, it cannot be
denied that the works of this first Leipzig cycle reveal a treasury of great music. One
constantly comes across surprises and delights and works which deserve to be much
better known than they are. Furthermore, close observation of the scores reveals so
much to the student about his compositional processes, structural innovations and,
above all, his extreme fidelity to the text and its representation and interpretation in
purely musical terms.
There are, it is true, occasions when a movement may seem to some to be
somewhat less inspired or inspirational than those around it. That is only to be
expected in a canon of this range and scope. But it is impossible to escape the fact
that Bach set his personal bar so high that the occasional ‘below average’ work is still
better than that of most other composers. Bach seemed to be virtually incapable of
writing a bar of bad music, something which has become increasingly noticed and
appreciated in the third century after his death.
Copyright: J Mincham 2010