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Bach’s Wedding Cantatas
by Peter Holman

Ever since the complete works of J. S. Bach were published in the BachGesellschaft edition in the nineteenth century, Bach’s church cantatas have held a special place in his works: they are numbered BWV 1–200 in thestandard catalogue of his music published by Wolfgang Schmieder in 1961. It is probably too late to change our terminology now, but the use of the word ‘cantata’ for these works is anachronistic. If they used any name for concerted church works, Bach and his contemporaries preferred the seventeenth-century term ‘concerto’, meaning simply a work for voices and instruments. They reserved the more specific word ‘cantata’ for secular works modelled on the Italian genre of chamber cantatas by Alessandro Scarlatti and his contemporaries, in which the delights and tribulations of pastoral love are typically portrayed in a series of recitatives and arias by a single singer with continuo. By this definition, J. S. Bach did not write any cantatas, though there are a few secular works by him that come close to the Italian type.

Bach’s secular cantatas are of two types. The larger group, mostly described as ‘dramma per musica’, consists of large-scale allegorical works for multiple voices and full orchestra, written to celebrate coronations, royal birthdays and name days, or significant events in Leipzig’s musical life. Not surprisingly, we tend to know a fair amount about the circumstances of the composition and performance of works of this sort, written as they were for highly public occasions; but that is not true of the handful of smaller-scale pieces, scored for a single voice with a small instrumental ensemble. We do not know exactly why or when Bach wrote the two main works recorded here, ‘Weichet nur, betrübte Schatten’, BWV 202, and ‘0 holder Tag, erwünschte Zeit’, BWV 210, though they both seem to have been intended for weddings, and in general they belong to a Bach family tradition of such works, which includes the great wedding dialogue ‘Meine Freundin, du bist schon’ by Johann Christoph Bach (1642–1703), and J. S. Bach’s own early wedding concerto ‘Der Herr denket an uns’, BWV 196, written perhaps in 1708.

The only thing we know for certain about the origins of ‘Weichet nur, betrübte Schatten’ is that it comes from a score in the collection of the music publishers Peters of Leipzig labelled ‘Johannes Ringk, Anno 1730’. The work has been traditionally allotted to Bach’s period in the service of Prince Leopold of Cöthen between 1717 and 1723, though there does not seem to be any evidence for this beyond the fact that the motif in the continuo part of the second aria is similar to the jig-like theme of the last movement of his sixth sonata for violin and harpsichord, BWV 1019. The violin and harpsichord sonatas have also traditionally been allocated to Bach’s period at Cöthen, though recent research has shown that the set did not reach its final form until about 1725. Furthermore, Bach could easily have returned to the theme some time after the composition of the violin sonata, and there is no reason why the aria should not have preceded the sonata. In short, we have no idea when Bach wrote the cantata, beyond the fact that the music is too sophisticated for it to be a very early work, and that the text suggests it was intended for performance in the spring.

Like most Italian cantatas, ‘Weichet nur, betrübte Schatten’ consists of a simple alternation of arias and secco recitatives, five of the former enclosing four of the latter. Variety is maintained by varying the accompaniment of each aria: oboe, strings and continuo; continuo alone; solo violin and continuo; solo oboe and continuo; and a return to the full ensemble of oboe, strings and continuo. The work starts with a beautiful evocation of the spring, with the string arpeggios suggesting the rising mists caused by melting snow, and the lavishly ornamented oboe solo perhaps suggesting the rapture of love. The music has the character of an arioso rather than a da capo aria, which makes the contrasted middle section, a tribute to the goddess Flora, something of a surprise. After a short recitative continuing the pastoral theme, the next aria describes the sun god Phoebus or Apollo, whose fiery chariot was supposedly drawn across the sky each day by a team of horses — portrayed by the galloping motif in the continuo part.

The next recitative and aria introduce the theme of love, personified by Cupid, appropriate to a wedding. The violin obbligato, with its unusual specified diminuendos, seems to portray the breezes caressing the spring meadows. The fourth aria portrays the delights of love in the simple rhythms of a Passepied, though the material is handled in a highly ingenious way: note, for instance, how the arpeggiated continuo line casually appears at one point in the oboe part. After a recitative briefly describing thunder in the continuo, the work ends with a Gavotte, played first by the instruments, then sung in an ornamented form with the accompanying figure passing from instrument to instrument, and finally repeated by the instruments. It is possible that Bach adapted this movement from an existing purely instrumental dance, though its unusual structure may just reflect the fact that it accompanied dancing in the original performance.

‘0 holder Tag, erwünschte Zeit’ is a much later and more sophisticated piece than ‘Weichet nur, betrübte Schatten’, though it has a similar structure — five recitatives and arias — and has a similar scoring: soprano, flute, oboe d’amore, strings and continuo. It exists in two versions: as the wedding cantata recorded here, and as ‘O angenehme Melodie’, BWV 21Oa, a cantata in praise of Count Joachim Friedrich von Flemming, the First Minister at the Saxon court in Dresden and Bach’s long-term friend and patron. The latter version is only known from the soprano solo part. It used to be thought that ‘O holder Tag’ came first, but ‘O angenehme Melodie’ is now known to have been performed on 11 October 1740, while ‘O holder Tag’ may have been given on 3 April 1742. Moreover, the music fits the text of ‘O angenehme Melodie’ rather better than that of ‘O holder Tag’, which suggests that BWV 21Oa is the original.

‘O holder Tag’ begins with an accompanied recitative welcoming the wedding day, followed by an aria in minuet rhythm, scored for oboe d’amore and strings, in praise of music. Bach illustrates the text with an exceedingly florid vocal line, rising at one point to a high C sharp — the highest note he ever wrote for a soprano. In the next recitative and aria the librettist explores the contrasting view, familiar to us from Renaissance literature and art, that music inclines the soul to folly. The aria is anexquisite piece of musical irony: the poet commands the instruments to stop playing, but Bach gives his words the lengthiest, most complex and most beautiful setting possible, using a favourite ‘sleep’ motif in siciliano rhythm, gently accompanied by solo oboe d’amore and violin with continuo. In the next recitative the poet starts to argue in favour of music, though he suddenly and inexplicably changes tack to introduce an expressive and elaborate funeral aria with flute obbligato, similar in mood and scoring to the Benedictus of the Mass in B minor. After an aria addressing the bridegroom in servile terms with music borrowed from the secular cantata ‘Angenehmes Widerau, freue dich’, BWV 30a (1737), the cantata ends with a delightful and surprisingly galant aria wishing the couple happiness.

This recording also includes three sacred vocal pieces taken from the music book Bach started in 1724 for his wife Anna Magdalena. ‘Bist du bei mir’, BWV 508, a minuet-like da capo aria, was once one of the most popular pieces associated with J. S. Bach but is attributed in another source to the German composer Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel (1690–1749). ‘Gedenke doch, mein Geist’, BWV 509, may also not be by Bach, though it is an attractive piece with the bells mentioned in the text evoked in the bass part. The recitative ‘lch habe genug!’ and aria ‘ Schlummert ein, ihr matten Augen’ come from the cantata ‘Ich habe genug’. BWV 82, first performed in 1727. The work was evidently a favourite in Bach’s circle, and exists in a number of different versions, for alto or bass with obbligato oboe, strings and continuo, or for soprano with flute, strings and continuo, though the copy in the Anna Magdalena book only has continuo accompaniment.

Peter Holman, 1999