Luogo e data di registrazione		Doopsgezendekerk, Haarlem (The Netherlands) - 20/23 Giugno 1995
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer / Recording supervisor		Wolf Erichson
	Recording engineer / editing		Andreas Neubronner (Tritonus)
	Prima Edizione LP		Nessuna
	Edizione CD		Sony "Vivarte" | LC 6868 | SK 68 265 | 1 CD - durata 64' 42" | (p) 1996 | DDD
	Cover Art		Raphael, La disputa del sacramento, fresco ca. 1508/11
	Note		-

It was with some hesitation that Bach, in 1723, accepted the appointment of Kantor at the Thomasschule, Leipzig, and of Director musices to the city’s main churches. In the eyes of many people (including Bach himself) it might have seemed a step down from the position of court Kapellmeister that he had held at Cöthen since 1717, and, in any case, the Leipzig post had been offered to him only after two other candidates, Telemann and Graupner, had declined it. As Bach later explained, one reason for accepting the appointment was that Leipzig provided the opportunity of giving his sons the university education that he himself had been denied; but another and perhaps deeper reason is to be construed from the prodigious outpouring of church compositions that marked the next six or so years in Bach’s life. There had been no possibility of engaging in liturgical music at the reformed court of Cöthen, and even before that, at Arnstadt, Mühlhausen and Weimar, Bach’s opportunities for composing sacred vocal music had been extremely limited. At Leipzig he was now not only able but expected to write music for the Lutheran services, and the years 1723-9 saw the composition of most of the sacred works for which the composer is now remembered: the Magnificat, the St John and St Matthew Passions and the majority of the two hundred or so church cantatas that have survived (not to mention many that have not). The cantata was the most important and imposing musical item in the main Lutheran service (Hauptgottesdienst); except during the penitential seasons of Advent and Lent, a cantata was normally included on each Sunday and feast day of the Church year. Numerically, Bach’s cantata output is not large: Telemann, for example, wrote over 1.000 such works and Graupner more than 1.400 (perhaps the Leipzig burghers had good reason to place their confidence in these two composers!). But Bach’s cantatas are much more elaborate and ambitious than theirs, more carefully wrought and infinitely more inspired. Many of them present a formidable challenge to the performers (as the pupils of the Thomasschule must have found on chilly Sunday mornings in the Thomaskirche or Nikolaikirche) and, as the three works on this disc amply demonstrate, they also show Bach’s adventurous and varied approach in matters of structure and expression. Cantata No. 27, Wer weiß, wie nahe mir mein Ende (Who knoweth how near my end) was composed for the 16th Sunday after Trinity [October 6,1726]. The anonymous text, expressing the Lutheran’s joyful acceptance of death, takes its cue from the Gospel reading appointed for that day (Luke 7: 11-17), which tells of Jesus’ raising of the widow’s son at Nain. The proportions of the opening chorus - a stanza from a funerary hymn by Ämilie Juliane, Countess of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, set to one of Bach’s favourite chorale melodies,“Wer nur den lieben Gott läßt walten” (He who lets the dear Lord solely govern) - are made more ample by recitative-style “annotations” from the soprano, alto and tenor soloists and by an orchestral commentary (strings and oboes) which heightens the elegiac tone of the movement. The first of the two arias, in which the alto anticipates the joys of heaven, is notable for its unusual accompaniment of oboe da caccia and organ, with continuo bass. A soprano recitative accompanied by strings, with rapid violin scales pointing the words “Flügel her!” (Lend me wingsl), leads to the valedictory bass aria, “Gute Nacht, du Weltgetümmel” (Good night, thou worldly turmoil), a kind of sarabande adumbrating the final chorus of the St Matthew Passion, but with more agitated passages reflecting the “Weltgetümmel”. Uniquely among Bach’s cantatas, the final chorale is in five parts and the harmonization is not by Bach himself but by Johann Rosenmüller (c.1619-84), at one time a teacher at the Thomasschule and himself a prolific composer of church music. In contrast to this cantata’s preoccupation with death, most of the music of No. 34, O ewiges Feuer, O Ursprung der Liebe (O eternal fire, O spring of love), derives from a wedding cantata written in the same year (1726), evidently for the nuptials of a Leipzig clergyman. About twenty years later Bach adapted it as a Whitsun cantata, no doubt inspired to that end by a reference in the opening chorus to the “heavenly flames” (himmlische Flammen). These are represented in the music by a crackling thirty-second-note figuration for the first violins, while the “eternal” (ewiges) fire is expressed in long-held notes for both voices and instruments. Trumpets and drums add a festive note to this expansive movement in da capo form (A-B-A). Fortunately, the adaptation required only minimal changes to the wedding text, which the anonymous librettist achieved by removing references to the bridal pair in the three concerted numbers and by inventing two new recitatives to connect them. Thus, in the alto aria, “Wohl euch, ihr auserwählten Seelen” (Happy are ye souls elect), the “chosen sheep whom a faithful Jacob loves" become the “souls elect, chosen by God to be His abode” - a reference to the Gospel text (John 14: 23-31) for the second day of Whitsun. Nevertheless, this beautiful aria, with its reticent accompaniment of flutes and muted strings, still conveys a feeling of tender affection in a key (A major) closely associated in Bach’s music (as in Mozart’s) with expressions of human love. A second brief recitative (bass) returns to the Gospel theme and leads straight into a final chorus, which opens with the motto that God has inscribed in the hearts of men: “Peace over Israel”. The imposing, rather Handelian chords to which this motto is set serve to introduce a jubilant movement in two sections, in each of which thanksgiving to God is expressed first by the orchestra alone (with, once again, trumpets and drums to the fore) and then by voices and instruments together. Cantata No. 41, Jesu, nun sei gepreiset (Jesus, now be praised), for New Year’s Day 1725, is in many ways typical of the chorale (or hymn) cantatas that helong to Bach’s second yearly cycle at Leipzig. In these cantatas a hymn tune serves as the basis for a largescale fantasia to open the work, usually (as in No.41) with thematically independent orchestral ritornellos, and the cantata ends with the same tune in a plain chordal setting. For the internal movements, the hymn text is freely paraphrased in a manner suitable for recitatives and arias. What makes this particular cantata unusual is that the hymn strophes have no fewer than fourteen lines. This leads Bach to interrupt his opening fantasia - resplendent with three trumpets and timpani in addition to oboes, strings and continuo - with a brief triple-time passage in simple chords (lines 9-10) and a longer motet-like section with instruments doubling the voices (lines 11-12). The result is one of the most majestically proportioned of all Bach’s cantata movements. Each expressing gratitude for past blessings and hope for future ones, the two arias, in a straightforward da capo form, are notable for the unusual obbligato instruments with which Bach accompanies the voice. Three oboes lend a somewhat rustic flavour to the soprano aria, while the tenor is matchecl with the energetic leaps of a violoncello piccolo (smaller than the normal cello, and with a higher range). A choral interjection in the bass recitative, calling on God to “beat down Satan under our feet”, and, in the final chorale, reminders of the opening trumpet fanfares are among other striking features of this remarkable work. © 1996 Malcolm Boyd