Luogo e data di registrazione		Saitama Arts Theatre Concert Hall, Tokyo (Japan) - 25/28 July 2003
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer | Engineer		Uli Schneider | Dirk Lüdemann
	Edizione CD		BIS - BIS-CD-1411 - (1 CD) - durata 62' 05" - (p) & (c) 2004 - DDD
	Note		-

COMMENTARY

The two vocal works by Johann Sebastian Bach on this CD belong to the genre of secular cantatas, an area of Bach’s output that - although it cannot be compared in quantitative terms with his substantial œuvre of some 200 sacred cantatas - does not lag behind in artistic quality. Just over twenty such works have survived; to these we may add almost thirty cantatas that can be shown (partly on the evidence of the surviving texts) to have been lost. In all probability, however, the number of lost works is very much higher. A peculiarity of the surviving secular cantatas is that, almost without exception, they are commissioned or occasional pieces - ordered and written (both text and music) for an outstanding, festive event in family, social, academic or political life, for example a wedding or a tribute to a prince. The cantatas generally reflect their purpose clearly; the texts in particular are entirely tailored to the event in question, and the suitability of the text and music for the specific situation was, according to the generally held view of the time, a wholly desirably and self-evident quality. Such occasional pieces had the aim and the purpose of transcending the perceived solemnity of the moment by reflecting it in art, ennobling it, thrusting greatness upon it, and taking away some of its transience and ephemeral nature. The tailor-made nature of the text for a specific festive event had the consequence that, unlike with Bach’s sacred music, subsequent performances on other occasions were virtually impossible. After the festivities for which it was intended, the music was normally put aside and this often sealed its fate. Many pieces were lost in this way - but luckily not all of them: Bach himself was evidently as keen to preserve his secular works as his religious pieces, and was inclined to use either part or all of them again, in modified form, wherever the possibility arose. Much music that originated in such occasional pieces was thus transferred to his sacred output with a new text, using the so-called ‘parody’ principle (wellknown examples of this can be found in the Christmas Oratorio), or indeed to other secular cantatas. In individual cases Bach could re-use entire secular cantatas with only small changes to the text, such as replacing the name of the original dedicatee with a new one. On some other occasions it was sufficient to rework part of the text, which tended to affect the recitatives (which needed to be recomposed) more than the arias, which could remain musically unchanged. The cantata O holder Tag, erwünschte Zeit (O lovely day, O hoped-for time; BWV 210) is a perfect example of Bach’s re-use of an occasional piece. It appears that he used the piece on no less than five different occasions, in more or less modified form. The existence of the first version, from the period before 1729, cannot be proved from documentary or other sources, but is a hypothetical deduction as a common starting point for the later arrangements, including the parody version of an aria (based on the eighth movement of the cantata), which appeared in 1737 with a new text in a celebratory work, ‘Angenehmes Wiederau, freue dich in deinen Auen’ (BWV 30a). As evidence of three further applications of the lost original we have a single solo soprano part, containing three versions of the text for a cantata starting with the words ‘O angenehme Melodei’ (‘O sweet and charming melody’; BWV 210a). For a long time the oldest text, in which names and salutations were later rubbed out and altered, posed problems for Bach researchers - until, some ten years ago, a text print came to light that indisputably confirms a performance in Leipzig on 12th January 1729 in honour (and in the presence) of Duke Christian of Sachsen-Weißenfels. It was his name, therefore, that was subsequently erased in the soprano part. The corrections at these points are proof of a performance in honour of the Leipzig Stadtkommandant, Joachim Friedrich Graf von Flemming; as he died on 11th October 1740, this must have taken place at the latest on his 75th birthday, 25th August 1740. Further amendments, and the removal of all salutations to people of noble rank, indicate a later performance paying tribute to unidentified but evidently bourgeois musical benefactors. In the version heard on this CD - the only one to have survived intact - the cantata appears with all kinds of textual adjustments as wedding music for a couple whose identities are not specified; from the context, we gather that the bridegroom was a ‘mighty patron’ of music who possessed ‘wisdom’s treasures’, i.e. who had received an academic education (eighth movement) and who apparently was at the start of a promising career (ninth movement). Bach scholars have speculated widely as to the identity of the bride and groom for whose wedding the cantata was destined. Bach edited the parts of the cantata with remarkable care - also a copy that may have been intended for the couple in question, containing the vocal line and basso continuo, beautifully hand-written, raising the suspicion that the occasion was a wedding in Bach’s own circle of friends. Marriages in 1742 and 1744 involving the Bose family - Leipzig patricians who were linked with Bach’s family not only by friendship but also by godparenthood - were considered, but more recent research into the source materials dated the work precisely to 1741. To which couple might the work have been addressed in 1741, therefore? One possibility is the Berlin court doctor, Dr. Georg Ernst Stahl the younger (1713-1772), who married Johanna Elisabeth Schrader (1725-1763), the daughter of a Berlin court apothecary, on 19th September 1741. Stahl was on good terms with Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and apparently also with Wilhelm Friedemann, who dedicated his first published keyboard sonata to him in 1744. Johann Sebastian Bach had been in Berlin in the summer of 1741 and had stayed at Stahl’s house. It is easy to imagine that the cantata could have been a token of his gratitude for his host, that could have been performed at the ceremonies under the direction of Bach’s son Carl Philipp Emanuel. A striking line of text in the ninth movement also suggests Stahl as a possible recipient: ‘Dein Ruhm wird wie ein Demantstein, ja wie ein fester Stahl bestandig sein’ (‘Thy fame will like a diamond-stone, yea, like the hardest steel steadfast endure’ [‘Stahl= steel]). The secret of the cantata’s reusablility lies in the generalized nature of its content: it is about music, about the eternal theme of the power of musical sounds: their ability to beguile and bewitch, to invigorate and to comfort, to refresh and to encourage, but also about those who are contemptuous of music (whose views, unsurprisingly, are contradicted). Only at the end does it allude to the recipient of the cantata, the connoisseur and patron of music, who cannot be praised enough and who deserves all our good wishes. For its application as wedding music the recitative texts were rewritten and, where necessary, recomposed. In the case of the aria texts, however, only minor adjustments were normally necessary; at any rate the metre and rhyme schemes were retained, so the music could remain unchanged. In addition, a reference to the new function (if a rather forced one) was created by posing the question in the text of whether music is compatible with the love of a young married couple. In the live arias, Bach has aimed for to the greatest variety both of expression and of instrumentation. The first aria (second movement) stands for ‘beseelte Lieder’ (‘lively anthems’), the second (fourth movement) for ‘matte Töne’ (‘notes so weary’) but also for ‘Harmonie’ (‘harmony’), expressed in full-toned parallel thirds and sixths. The third aria, ‘Schweigt, ihr Flöten’ (‘Hush, ye ilutes now’; sixth movement), represents of a paradox: the flute duly falls silent repeatedly, but becomes all the more animated in the interludes. The folk-like aria ‘Großer Gönner, dein Vergnügen’ (‘Mighty patron, thy diversion’; eighth movement) follows, in the manner of a stylized polonaise, a dance pattern imported from Slavic folk music, which was then enjoying great popularity in Saxony, where the rulers were bound to the Polish royal family. In the hymn-like final aria, ‘Seid beglückt, edle beide’ (‘Live in bliss, noble couple’; tenth movement), Bach also gives some of the instruments - the flute, oboe d’amore and first violin - the opportunity to take on a soloistic rôle alongside the soprano. Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht (Be quiet, charter not; BWV 211), the so-called ‘coffee cantata’, is by some margin the most popular of Bach’s secular cantatas. The witty text is by his Leipzig ‘poet in residence’, Christian Friedrich Henrici (alias Picander, 1700-1764), who published the libretto in the third part of his collection Ernst-, Schertzhaffte und Satyrische Gedichte (Serious, Amusing and Satirical Poems). Bach’s composition probably dates from 1734. The work is a little ‘dramma per musica’, the plot of which makes satirical reference to the drinking of coffee, a practice that had been popular since the late seventeenth century. The origins of the cantata seem to be associated with this specific content: it is assumed that Bach wrote the work for a performance either in the Zimmermann Coffee House or in its coffee garden. The premises of the Leipzig coffee-house proprietor Gottfried Zimmermann also served as a concert venue, and since 1929 Bach had made regular weekly appearances there with his Collegium musicum. The plot of this little family comedy is almost self-explanatory: the daughter, Liesgen, is an enthusiastic coffee drinker who does not want to give up her passion at any cost. The father, Schlendrian, refuses to drink coffee and attempts in vain, using all kinds of threat, to prevent his daughter from indulging. Finally, however, he works out a cunning plan and promises to find her a husband if she renounces coffee - and, indeed, she agrees to the deal. But she employs a trick of her own: Liesgen secretly lets it be known that she will only entertain a suitor who is prepared to allow her to drink coffee. Overall, the conclusion ‘Die Katze lässt das Mausen nicht’ (‘A cat its mousing never quits’) seems to mean that all the patemal education has been in vain: everything will remain as it was, and Liesgen -like her mother and grandmother - will soon be eagerly consuming her coffee again. Bach set the libretto to music with a sure sense of the effect it would have upon the audience. The recitative-like dialogues are lively and articulated; the arias characterize the people and situations with unerring accuracy: the resigned ranting of the father in the first aria (second movement), the capricious daughter in her solo ‘Ei! wie schmeckt der Coffee süße’ (‘Ah! How sweet the coffee’s taste is’; fourth movement) introduced by the flute in the style of a minuet. In Schlendrian’s second aria, ‘Mädchen, die von hanen Sinnen’ (‘Maidens who are steely-hearted‘; sixth movement), with a melodically bizarre and persistently recurring basso ostinato theme that is shot through with chromaticism, the expression of stubbornness is combined with that of lamentation. Liesgen’s second aria, ‘Heute noch’ (‘This day, still’; eighth movement), a charmingly animated siciliano, is filled with writing that conveys naïve effusiveness. At the end we find the tercet about the girls who remain ‘coffee sisters’. Bach knew what he owed his audience, and wrote a movement that is lively and easily understood. The theme, heard in association with the words ‘Die Katze lässt das Mausen nicht’ (‘A cat its mousing never quits’), at times virtuosically from the flute and repeatedly from the other instruments, leaves an indelible impression on the listener. Many members of Bach’s audience in Leipzig must have hummed it on their way home from the Zimmermann Coffee House and wondered if the Thomaskantor might possibly be secretly concealing the soul of an opera composer. © Klaus Hofmann 2004