300 years of Bach cantatas

There is currently great interest in Bach’s cantatas. Whether it is performances of cycles as given in the Bach Year 2000 by Sir John Eliot Gardiner with the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists in their great ‘Bach Cantata Pilgrimage’ through 14 different countries; or the BBC, which devoted ten days of radio broadcasting exclusively to Bach round the clock at Christmas 2005; or the new recording of all the Bach cantatas by Ton Koopman and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, now finally complete in 22 triple CDs; or the large corpus of published literature now devoted to this part of Bach’s oeuvre – all these initiatives and projects are impressive evidence of the continued relevance and attractiveness of Bach’s cantatas in concerts, CD recordings and publications.
With regard to published material, the artistic quality of Bach’s music was not fully revealed until the scholarly editions of the scores, prepared over the last fifty years by scholars at the Johann-Sebastian-Bach-Institut in Göttingen and the Bach-Archiv in Leipzig, were published as the Neue Bach-Ausgabe (New Bach Edition) in over 100 volumes by Bärenreiter-Verlag. Here, scores of the cantatas alone occupy 41 volumes of music, each with a separate Critical Commentary containing detailed information on the transmission and manuscript sources of the individual works. According to the catalogue of Bach’s works, the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis, a total of 226 cantatas have survived, together with a few different versions of certain works. These range from the eight early works dating from his pre-Weimar period, through the 22 ‘Konzertmeister’ cantatas, and the two complete yearly cycles (and further later cantatas) from Leipzig, to numerous secular commissioned works which Bach frequently composed in between other works: music of homage for a regent on his birthday or name day, or for an official academic function, music for weddings, music for funerals and music for celebration in courtly surroundings.
The body of cantatas is magnificent, despite the fact that many have not survived. Less than half the fifty or so secular cantatas known about have survived complete, and Bach probably composed many more. Probably only two thirds of the sacred cantatas have survived; in his obituary for his father, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach referred to “five yearly cycles of church works, for all Sundays and feast days” which his father had left. According to this, about 100 sacred works are therefore lost.
If it is true that Bach composed the cantata Christ lag in Todes Banden for his interview at Mühlhausen at Easter 1707, the Neue Bach-Ausgabe will be complete almost exactly 300 years after Bach’s earliest surviving cantata was completed. At almost the same time his cantatas, together with the chorales and motets, are being published in a 19-volume study edition (Bärenreiter-Verlag, 11,220 pages, € 599,–). Browsing in this publication is great fun, because there is simply so much to discover. The varied scorings which Bach used according to the forces available to him in different places; the scheme with which he produced his yearly cantata cycles; the variety of forms and the formal principles which he went on to develop following the early works in the older north German style. In all these, the influence of opera is unmistakable: the amplification of biblical texts by madrigalian techniques, set to music in arias full of emotion represents a nod to secular taste, which rigorous theologians must inevitably have perceived as an affront. Nevertheless, the new Kantor of St. Thomas’s was obliged, when taking up his post, to compose his music “so that it does not last too long and doesn’t turn out to be too operatic, rather that it encourages the listeners to devotion”.
Of course, Bach’s music was no less than heretical. Notwithstanding the fear of the conservative clergy, the composer was better placed at entertaining and disseminating the message than at preaching, teaching and reflection; his cantatas are far more musical commentaries which not only lend a heightened expressiveness to a religious atmosphere, but also point to the theological content of divine worship on a second level, and so in a certain sense themselves become sermons.
»Soll die Musik verderben, die uns so großen Nutzen gab?« (“Should music perish, which has given us such great benefits?”), asks the poet of Bach’s wedding cantata O holder Tag, erwünschte Zeit. Let us hope not, especially bearing in mind the words of the following aria: »Nichts kann dich so sehr ergötzen als der süßen Töne Kunst« (Nothing can so captivate you as the art of sweet music.)
Sven Hiemke