The Story of Bach’s Magnificat
In December [2001], AAM will be performing Bach’s Magnificat in which, as with much of AAM’s work, historical research is balanced with the opportunities of live performance. Writer and broadcaster Nicholas Anderson below explains how AAM’s performances this month will embody the ‘best of both worlds’:
For his first Christmas season at Leipzig Bach produced a rich variety of cantatas, some of which he had written earlier in his career, others which he composed specially for his new congregations. Among the newly-composed works was the first version of the Latin evening canticle ‘Magnificat anima mea Dominum’ (My soul doth magnify the Lord). According to custom, elaborate settings of the Magnificat were sung at Vespers at Leipzig on the three principal festivals of the Church year, Easter, Whitsun and Christmas. Bach was formally installed as Cantor of the Thomasschule on 31 May 1723 but, of course, had no time to prepare for the imminent Whitsun festival; so it was for the Christmas vigil of that year that he performed his Latin Magnificat for the first time.
In its earlier version the Magnificat is written in the key of E flat and includes four additional short pieces, or interpolations, intended specifically for Christmas. Sometime later, probably during the early to mid-1730s Bach revised the work, making telling adjustments. He removed the four interpolations, changed the key from E flat to D major, substituted transverse flutes for recorders in the ‘Et misericordia’ and ‘Esurientes’, an oboe d’amore for oboe in the ‘Quia respexit’, two oboes for a single trumpet in the ‘Suscepit Israel’, as well as making alterations of smaller detail. This later, D major version has become much the better known of the two and, though it is the one being performed this evening, the four interpolations, also transposed to D major, have been reinstated in celebration of the Christmas season.
Unlike his almost inveterate practice in the cantatas, Bach laid out the choral movements of his Latin Magnificat in five vocal parts rather than the four dictated by normal resources. For Festal Vespers at the Thomaskirche he had two choirs at his disposal which allowed him extra scope. Each of the five soloists, too, complements one of the choral strands, that is, soprano I, soprano II, alto, tenor and bass; and his festive instrumental colloquium for the opening and concluding choruses consists of three trumpets, drums, two flutes, two oboes, strings and continuo.
Apart from its Latin text, of incomparably greater stature than the majority of German baroque cantata librettos, the Magnificat differs from Bach’s church cantatas in three significant respects. First, in the absence of recitative; secondly, in the avoidance of da capo arias; and thirdly in its reintroduction of the opening thematic material in the final chorus, giving it something of a cyclic character. Only very seldom did Bach adopt this procedure in his cantatas. In the case of the Magnificat, whose text would have been familiar to the congregation, dramatic commentary between the verses was clearly unnecessary. The da capo aria, too, with its often lengthy repeats, would hinder the direct and striking impact of the canticle text. It is Bach’s realisation of this which enabled him to write a work of exceptional concision and structural formality.
Above all, in his setting of the Latin canticle, Bach created a work of commanding declamatory strength, whose expressive range and kaleidoscopic instrumental colouring — sometimes brilliant, at other times tenderly intimate — have afforded the piece a central place in the affection of performers and audiences alike.
This extract is taken from Nicholas Anderson’s programme note for AAM’s concert at St John’s, Smith Square, London on 22 December 2001.