The Saint Thomas School and Church in Leipzig, 1723
We often say that Bach composed a new cantata every week when he worked in Leipzig. However, Bach seems to have done this only during the two years between Trinity 1723 and Trinity 1725. After that, he didn’t always write for consecutive Sundays and Holidays. And if there ever was a requirement that the music for the Leipzig churches needed to be composed by Bach himself, it must have been lifted after Trinity 1725.
In the summer of 1725 Bach had already performed a series of four cantatas by his friend and colleague (and Godfather of his son Carl Philipp Emmanuel) Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767). But in 1726 he took it much further: between February and September of that year, he performed no less than 20 cantatas by his third cousin Johann Ludwig Bach (1677-1731).
Johann Ludwig Bach (1677-1731)
Johann Ludwig Bach was Kapellmeister at the court of Meinigen, a town just south of Eisenach, where Bach was born, and about 115 miles (185 kilometers) from Leipzig. (See here where Johann Ludwig Bach fits in the Bach family tree).
Why Bach performed so many cantatas by someone else that year, we do not know. There are many theories of course. The most plausible explanation seems to be that he had started working on his St. Matthew Passion with librettist Picander, which he initially likely meant to have finished by Good Friday 1726, and that he needed to create time in his calendar to finish that project. When his ambitions for the St. Matthew Passion grew and he realized he would not finish it until 1727, he just kept performing J.L. Bach’s cantatas.
Duke Ernst Ludwig I of Sachsen-Meiningen (1672-1724)
The texts of those cantatas by Johann Ludwig Bach were all based on a published volume of poetry from 1704, likely written by Johann Ludwig’s employer at Meiningen, Duke Ernst Ludwig I of Sachsen-Meiningen (1672-1724).
Whether J.S. Bach became enamored by this volume of poetry, or perhaps thought “I could do a much better job setting these texts!,” we will never know. But fact is that he started writing a series of cantatas based on these same texts, while he was at times also still performing his J.L. Bach’s cantatas.
This means that between May 30 and September 22, 1726, the Leipzig congregations got to hear either a JLB cantata or a JSB cantata, but almost always* set to text from the same “Meininger” volume of poetry. We wonder if they would have been able to hear the difference. (An example of a J.L. Bach opening chorus can be found here).
A standard feature of the “Meininger” texts is that the cantata is in two parts (to be performed before and after the sermon), with a focus on a text from the Old Testament in the first part, and a text from the New Testament in the second part. We see this too in Cantata 45 Es ist dir gesagt, Mensch, was gut ist (You have been told, mankind, what is good).
The most spectacular movement in Part I of Cantata 45 is the sparkling and energetic opening chorus, based on a dogma from the Book of Micah:
Es ist dir gesagt, Mensch, was gut ist
und was der Herr von dir fordert,
nämlich: Gottes Wort
halten und Liebe üben
und demütig sein vor deinem Gott.
You have been told, mankind,
what is good and what the Lord requires of you, namely:
to keep God's word and to live in love and be humble before your God.
The most striking movement in Part II is the bass aria, featuring the last part of Jesus’ “Sermon on the Mount.” Because the bass functions here as the so-called “Vox Christi” (the voice of Jesus), Bach’s respect for the Bible makes him call this an “arioso,” even though it has all the elements of an aria:
Es werden viele zu mir sagen an jenem Tage:
Herr, Herr, haben wir nicht in deinem Namen geweissaget,
haben wir nicht in deinem Namen Teufel ausgetrieben,
haben wir nicht in deinem Namen viel Taten getan?
Denn werde ich ihnen bekennen:
Ich habe euch noch nie erkannt, weichet alle von mir, ihr Übeltäter!
Many will say to me on that day:
Lord, have we not prophesied in your name,
have we not driven out devils in your name,
have we not done many deeds in your name?
Then I shall declare to them:
I have never known you,
all of you go away from me, you evil doers!
© Wieneke Gorter, February 2021.
*there are only two exceptions to this: Two solo cantatas for alto, based on texts by Georg Christian Lehms: Cantata BWV 170 Vergnügte Ruh', beliebte Seelenlust and Cantata BWV 35 Geist und Seele wird verwirret.