J. S. Bach in Leipzig: Cantata as Text
(Eighth in a series)
In tuning to Bach's Cantorate in Leipzig, a position he accepted at the age of 38 and retained until his death 27 years later, we enter the final stage of our study of the composer's encounters with pietism. In the last installment I recounted how the city's clergy and theological faculty had, only a few years before Bach's arrival, achieved a harmonious balance between the two factions within the church that had stood in opposition to one another for several decades, namely, pietism and orthodoxy.
In this article, we consider Bach's initial response to his new theological environment. After describing his responsibilities as Cantor, we survey his first group of cantatas, paying particular attention to what their texts tell us about the extent to which he was able to compile a repertory of church music reflecting the entire spectrum of Lutheran theological thought.
From Capellmeister to Cantor
In eighteenth-century protestant Germany, the musician appointed to the position of Cantor was expected to perform one of his own compositions on each Sunday and each major festival of the church year. A cantata was performed on all Sundays (except the Sundays during Advent and Lest when music with instruments was not allowed) as well as on the time successive days that marked each of the feasts of Christmas, Epiphany, Easter, and Pentecost. When a Cantor had composed a cantata for each of these occasions, he had completed a cantata cycle. Usually appointed for life, a Cantor would likely compose between 500 to 1000 cantatas, including at least five complete cantata cycles. From them, he could chose a cantata for any given liturgical occasion.
Because Leipzig's annual calendar included 62 services, it is understandable that when the position of Director of Music and Cantor at the Thomaskirche became free in 1722, it was offered first to Georg Philip Telemann, a musician who was well known throughout Germany as a composer of church music. At a comparable position in Hamburg, Telemann had written well over 200 hundred cantatas, including several cantata cycles. His duties as Director of Music in Hamburg were similar to those required in Leipzig: to supervise the music performed in all of the city's religious establishments and to compose cantatas for performance at its principal churches. However, when Hamburg's authorities learned that another city was interested in their Cantor, they increased his salary and refused to release him. For the same reason, Christoph Graupner, the next to be offered the position, remained at the court in Darmstadt. Like Telemann, he had composed several cantata cycles and had been a church musician for well over a decade.
Seen in this light, it is not surprising that Leipzig's council preferred Telemann and Graupner to Bach. Known primarily as a virtuoso organist and a composer of instrumental music, Bach had served the previous five years (1717-22), not as a Cantor, but as a Capellmeister. As the highest-ranking position available to a German musician, a Capellmeister was responsible for composing both sacred and secular music at most courts. However, because the chapel services at Cöthen were conducted by Reformed (Calvinist) clergy, Bach wrote no church music. Consequently, when he applied for the Leipzig position, his repertory of sacred cantatas comprised only those he had written first as Organist in Mühlhausen (1707-09), and then as Organist and Concertmaster in Weimar (1714 and 1717). They totalled 26, less than half the number needed for a single year in Leipzig. To carry out his duties as Cantor successfully, Bach would need to complete a series of cantata cycles "on the job."
Various reasons have been given why Bach, at this stage of his career, accepted a position that involved a dramatic shift from secular to church music and a step down on the social ladder. In seeking to create an image of Bach as the unsurpassed German protestant Cantor, Philipp Spitta, writing at the turn of the last century, concluded that Bach was attracted to Leipzig because of his unswerving commitment to Lutheran orthodoxy. After the two World Wars, Spitta's image was replaced with a more secular one which interpreted Bach's resignation as an artistic necessity caused by the declining role of music at the Cöthen court following the manage of Prince Leopold in 1721. However, no evidence has emerged that links the new Princess directly with Bach's departure. More recently, Bach's move has been seen in socio-economic terms. According to this line of reasoning, accepting an appointment in a major urban center would provide Bach with a larger arena in which to display his musical skills and to earn an income to support his family. Thereby, reduction in social status would be compensated
As I have argued throughout this series, any consideration of confessional conflict is missing from all of the above accounts. Inherent in the life of any German protestant in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, this conflict took its most intense form in the professional lives of pastors and musicians. In Bach's case, it appears to have been particularly acute, as seen by the ways in which he was unwilling (perhaps unable) to align himself exclusively with either the orthodox or pietistic movements. Though I agree with Spitta that Bach's decision was motivated primarily by a desire to achieve his goal of a "well-regulated church music," I have defined Bach's goal in more inclusive terms throughout this series. Until now, much of the evidence for my argument has been circumstantial. Examining Bach's earliest Leipzig cantatas offers more concrete evidence because it shows how he used his new position expressly for these purposes.
First group of cantatas
Information is scarce about Bach's working procedures during his first year as Cantor. The clues that do exist concern the cantata texts. Our primary source is the text booklets distributed, or perhaps sold, to the congregation. Each included the texts of a series of cantatas. Because the booklets were printed on thin paper and later discarded, much like today's church bulletins, very few have survived. For the entire first year, for example, we have only two booklets, recently discovered in a library in St. Petersburg, Russia. However, from these it is dear that Bach planned and composed his first cantata cycle in groups of five to eight.
Another source dating from later in the eighteenth century was written by Frederich Rochlitz, a member of the staff at the Thomaskirche. He reports that the Cantor was required to submit three texts each week to the Superintendent, from the three, one would be chosen. It is not certain whether this process took place on a weekly basis, but Rochlitz's account indicates a dose working relationship between clergy and Cantor. The close involvement of the clergy with the text of each cantata is understandable in light of the role it played in the Lutheran service of the time. Coming after the Gospel (known as the Evangelium) and before the sermon, it functioned both as a response to and an interpretation of the Gospel reading for the day.
According to the new chronology of cantatas established in the 1950s, Bach performed eight works between the first and seventh Sundays after Trinity his first year in Leipzig: four were newly written, and four had been composed in Weimar. The texts of three of the four new works (Cantatas 75, 76, and 167) were written by an unknown librettist. The at two are modeled on texts by Johann Oswald Knauer, a poet active at the pietistic court in Gotha. Each begins with a chorus based on a scripture passage and ends with a four-part chorale. The text of the fourth work, Cantata 24, is based on a libretto by Erdmann Neumeister, the orthodox pastor, whom we encountered earlier in the series.
By interspersing four Weimar works (Cantatas 21, 185, 147, and 186) among his first group of cantatas, Bach gained more time for composing. Furthermore, reperforming them ordinarily required minimal effort. Usually, he could use the original score and parts, transposing only the organ part to suit the pitch of the Leipzig instrument For Cantatas 147 and 186, Bach also added recitative and chorale movements to adapt the works to new liturgical occasions. The well known chorale, "Jesu, Joy of Man's desiring," is one of Bach's additions to Cantata 147 whose title is "Heart and mouth and deed and living, Must for Christ their witness offer."
Except for the recitatives and chorale verses added to the latter two works, the texts of the four cantatas remained unchanged. Three of the four had been taken from the collection of printed librettos published in 1715 and 1717 by Salomo Franck, a Weimar poet Although not a pietist, his texts were devotional, rather than doctrinal, in nature. In Part 5 of this series, a comparison of a Franck text with one by Erdmann Neumeister revealed the extent to which Franck incorporated, in the manner of pietist writers, images of Jesus as lover of the soul and dialogues between Jesus and the Soul. The text of the fourth Weimar work, Cantata 21, is also believed to have been written by Franck.
Taken as a whole, Bach's initial group of cantatas are not drawn from explicitly orthodox texts, but from a broad range of theological sources. Furthermore, as we will discover in the next installment, the one cantata with a text written by Erdmann Neumeister, a chief representative of orthodoxy and avid anti-pietist, may not have been performed. For the remainder of this article, we will focus on the texts of the two works Bach performed on the first and second Sundays of Trinity in 1723.
Unknown librettist
As mentioned above, the texts for these works were not assembled in the traditional manner. In contrast to Telemann and Graupner and to his own practice in the Weimar cantatas, Bach did not draw the texts from the many collections of librettos available in published form. Telemann, for example, set two entire cantata cycles to texts by Erdmann Neumeister. Someone knowledgeable in both poetry and theology — possibly a pastor — complied Bach's texts. Each begins with a Psalm verse followed by several rhymed verses that elaborate the themes of the lectionary and concludes with a stanza or two of a chorale.
During his tenure as Cantor in Leipzig, by far the majority of the texts for Bach's extant 200 cantatas were compiled specifically for his use. Until now, this practice has been interpreted as a sign of Bach's insistence on dose artistic control over all aspects of the compositional process. I agree with this conclusion, but I go a step further. I propose that the particular process by which Bach's texts were written was important for theological reasons as well as for musical ones. This process enabled him to have a role in determining the tone and themes of the texts he set to music and in the interpretation given to a particular gospel text.
For the first Sunday of Trinity, the Gospel reading (Luke 16: 19-31) depicts the parable of the rich man and poor Lazarus. For the second Sunday of Trinity, the Gospel (Luke 14: 16-24) tells the parable of the banquet for which the host seeks out guests from the highways and byways. Chafe argues that the two texts can be read as Bach's theological credo. "Common to both," writes Chafe, "are the antithesis of riches and poverty in the present life and their reversal in the afterlife. The banquet is a symbol of the Kingdom of God, open to all who hear the word of invitation, whereas the possession of world riches without love for mankind brings spiritual death and ultimate damnation."
Furthermore, the two librettos are remarkable for their emphasis on "God's glory and neighbor's good," a theme touched one earlier in this series which is reminiscent of the ideals of August Francke and the pietist community in Halle. The text of Cantata 75 ("The hungry shall be fed until they are full") begins with a condemnation of the world: "What use is purple's majesty when it is gone?...Alas, how swiftly doth it happen that riches, pleasure, pomp, the soul to hell condemn." It moves on to reflect a common pietistic sentiment: "My Jesus shall be all I own... And this his Spirit's fire of love, My most delicious wine of joy." The final message of Cantata 76 ("The heavens are telling the gory of God") is that good deeds are the fruits of the Spirit of Christ, felt as love within the believer.
If the two cantatas cm be seen as "A message to the community," as Chafe states in the study cited above, their message concerns the relationship between faith and love. Namely, that faith, directed towards God, needs to be realized in love directed towards one's neighbor. In the words of the contemporary writer, Walter von Loewenich,"the faith that carries through in experience is love." Precarious even in Luthers's teachings, with its emphasis on the doctrine of justification by faith alone, the relationship between faith and works was at the core of the controversy between orthodoxy and pietism. By reasserting a balance between the two, Bach and his librettist were following the path set down by the reformers and early pietists cited at the outset of this series. In so doing, they were also establishing the theological basis of Bach's "well-regulated church music." The extent to which Bach conveys a similar message in his second group of cantatas will be the focus of the next article.
References:
Chafe, Eric. "Bach's First Two Leipzig Cantatas: A Message for the Community." A Bach Tribute: Essays in Honor of William H. Scheide. (Bärenreiterl/Hinshaw, 1993)
Spitta, Philipp. Johann Sebastian Bach, translated by Clara Bell and J. A. Fuller-Maitland. London, Novello, 1889, 2 vols. [Reprint, New York, Dover Publications, 1951]
Von Loewenich, Walter. Luther's Theology of the Cross, transl. by A. Bouman (Fortress Press, 1976)