1 CD - BIS-2351 SACD - (p) 2018

SECULAR CANTATAS - Volume 10







Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)






"Angenehmes Wiederau, freue dich in deinen Auen", BWV 30a
35' 35"
Tromba I, II, III, Timpani, Flauto traverso I, II, Oboe I, II, Oboe d'amore, Violino I, II, Viola, Soprano (Zeit), Alto (Glück), Tenore (Elster), Basso (Schicksal), Continuo


- Chorus: Angenehmes Wiederau... 3' 53"

- Recitativo (Basso, Soprano, Alto, Tenore): So ziehen wir... 0' 53"

- Aria (Basso): Willkommen im Heil, willkommen in Freuden... 4' 22"

- Recitativo (Alto): Da heute dir, gepriesner Hennicke... 0' 36"

- Aria (Alto): Was die Seele kann ergötzen... 5' 54"

- Recitativo (Basso): Und wie ich jederzeit bedacht... 0' 38"

- Aria (Basso): Ich will dich halten... 5' 44"

- Recitativo (Soprano): Und obwohl sonst der Unbestand... 0' 55"

- Aria (Soprano): Eilt, ihr Stunden, wie ihr wollt... 4' 15"

- Recitativo (Tenore): So recht! Ihr seid mir werte Gäste... 0' 42"

- Aria (Tenore): So, wie ich die Tropfen zolle... 2' 31"

- Recitativo (Soprano, Alto, Tenore, Basso): Drum, angenehmes Wiederau... 1' 16"

- Chorus: Angenehmes Wiederau... 3' 53"





Von der Vergnügsamkeit


"Ich bin in mir vergnügt", BWV 204
29' 54"
Flauto traverso, Oboe I, II, Violino I, II, Viola, Soprano, Continuo


- Recitativo: Ich bin in mir vergnügt... 1' 35"

- Aria: Ruhig und in sich zufrieden... 6' 45"

- [Recitativo]: Ihr Seelen, die ihr außer euch... 2' 01"

- Aria: Die Schätzbarkeit der weiten Erden... 4' 44"

- Recitativo: Schwer ist es zwar, viel Eitles zu besitzen... 1' 55"

- [Aria]: Meine Seele sei vergnügt... 6' 48"

- Recitativo e Arioso: Ein edler Mensch ist Perlenmuscheln gleich... 2' 08"

- Aria: Himmlische Vergnügsamkeit... 3' 54"





 
Carolyn Sampson, soprano (BWV 30a Zeit, BWV 204)
BACH COLLEGIUM JAPAN / Masaaki Suzuki, Direction
Robin Blaze, counter-tenor (BWV 30a Glück) - Jean-François Madeuf, Tromba I
Makoto Sakurada, tenor (BWV 30a Elster) - Tomohiro Sugimura, Tromba II
Dominik Wörner, bass (BWV 30a Schicksal) - Hidenori Saito, Tromba III

- Atsushi Sugahara, Timpani
Kiyomi Suga, flauto traverso - Kiyomi Suga, Flauto traverso I
Masamitsu San'nomiya, oboe, oboe d'amore - Liliko Maeda, Flauto traverso II
Natsumi Wakamatsu, violino - Masamitsu San'nomiya, Oboe I, Oboe d'amore

- Go Arai, Oboe II
CHORUS - Natsumi Wakamatsu, Violino I leader
Soprano: - Yuko Takeshima, Violino I
Carolyn Sampson, Minae Fuijisaki, Aki Matsui, Eri Sawae - Ayaka Yamauchi, Violino I
Alto: - Azumi Takada, Violino II
Robin Blaze, Hiroya Aoki, Tamaki Suzuki, Chiharu Takahashi - Yuko Araki, Violino II
Tenor: - Akira Harada, Violino II
Makoto Sakurada, Yusuke Fujii, Hiroto Ishikawa, Yosuke Taniguchi - Hiroshi Narita, Viola
Basso: - Mika Haradaa, Viola
Dominik Wörner, Daisuke Fujii, Chiyuki Urano, Yusuke Watanabe


Continuo:

- Toru Yamamoto, Violoncello

- Seiji Nishizawa, Violone

- Kiyotaka Dosaka, Fagotto

- Masato Suzuki, Cembalo
 






Luogo e data di registrazione
Saitama Arts Theater, Concert Hall (Japan) - July 2017

Registrazione: live / studio
studio

Producer | Engineer
Hans Kipfer (Take5 Music Production) | Matthias Spitzbarth | Akimi Hayashi

Edizione CD
BIS - BIS-2351 SACD - (1 CD) - durata 66' 11" - (p) & (c) 2018 - DDD

Note
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COMMENTARY
Angenehmes Wiederau, BWV 30a
Pleasant Wiederau
The cantata with which Bach erected a musical memorial to the manorial estate of Wiederau, southwest of Leipzig, is a sister work of the ‘Peasant Cantata’ – the cantate burlesque ‘Mer hahn en neue Oberkeet’ (‘We have a new governor’, BWV 212). Both pieces were written for festive occasions at Saxon noble estates, and owe their existence to a custom known as ‘Erbhuldigung’, the solemn oath of faith taken by subjects upon the arrival of a new lord of the manor. In Wiederau this took place on 28th September 1737. the new ‘hereditary lord, liege and judge’ at Wiederau was Johann Christian von Hennicke (1681–1752), ennobled in 1728. He was of humble origins but had made a career in the service of the Dresden court and, as a favourite of the Electoral Saxon prime minister Heinrich Graf Brühl, rose to become a Dresden privy councillor and minister in 1737. On the title page of the printed text of the cantata (which, incidentally, does not mention Bach), three well-wishers offer the new lord of the manor their humble devotion. All three were civil servants with responsibility for Wiederau, among them Bach’s regular Leipzig poet, Christian Friedrich Henrici (also known as Picander; 1700–64). Professionally he was a tax official, and this manorial estate was part of his administrative district. Evidently it was the three well-wishers who commissioned and paid for the work – and no doubt they were hoping to get something in return.
Picander contributed the text for the cantata. It takes the form of a dramma per musica, a dramatic cantata with four characters. In this case they are ‘die Zeit’ (Time; soprano), ‘das Glück’ (Good Fortune; alto), ‘der Elster’ (the river bordering the palace park in Wiederau; tenor) and ‘das Schicksal’ (Fate; bass). The text shows the librettist’s experience: the whole piece is framed by two tutti strophes in praise of Wiederau. In between, however, the four protagonists take turns to have their say, each with a recitative and aria. In the first pair of movements, Fate – flanked by his three com panions – tells of the wellbeing of Wiederau (movements 2–3). Then the characters speak directly to Hennicke – Good Fortune, Fate and Time surpassing each other in flattering felicitations and assurances (movements 4–9). The Elster’s words lead us in another direction: the river invites Hennicke’s peasant subjects to build on the ‘Au und Ufer’ (‘meadow and river banks’), and to contribute to Wiederau’s affluence through their efforts (movements 10–11). In the final recitative (twelfth movement) the four characters, led by Time, offer – first alternately, then together – their good wishes for all of Wiederau and especially for Hennicke and his family, and the final chorus confirms all of this with its optimistic forecast of unending prosperity, growth and welfare.
The celebrations in Wiederau were not just some country gathering in a peasant milieu. Representatives of the Dresden court will have been in attendance, likewise members of the nobility and of the Leipzig civil service, and the audience would surely have included educated musical connoisseurs. And Bach showed what he could do. The scoring is appropriate for such an occasion: trumpets and timpani, two flutes, two oboes, strings and continuo join forces with the singers in a highly colourful piece of music. Each of the arias has its own combination of instruments: the full strings (third movement) are joined by the flute (fifth movement), then by the concertante oboe and solo violin (seventh movement). In the ninth movement the violins play in unison, and the eleventh, finally, offers us flute and oboe together with the strings.
Furthermore, this is surprisingly modern music. The spirit of a new age, the period of Bach’s sons and pupils and of the Italian-influenced stylistic world of Dresden court music around Johann Adolf Hasse (1699–1783), permeates the entire cantata. This applies to the dance-like opening and closing choruses with their fashionable syncopations as much as to the arias. These are all based on dance patterns, here combined with new stylistic elements, especially the syncopations and triplets that had become so popular in the 1730s, ‘Lombardic slides’, and parallel sixths and thirds. The bass aria ‘Willkommen im Heil’ (‘Welcome in health’; third movement) is a veritable passepied (albeit one with plentiful ‘health’ and ‘joy’ coloraturas), whilst the alto aria ‘Was die Seele kann ergötzen’ (‘That which can delight the soul’, fifth movement) is a gavotte, strikingly reshaped with syncopations and triplets. The second bass aria, ‘Ich will dich halten’ (‘I shall uphold you’, seventh movement), has the char acter of a march and surprises the listener with a theme dominated by fashionable slide figures. Time’s soprano aria ‘Eilt, ihr Stunden’ (‘Hasten, ye hours’, ninth movement) goads us to hurry with its gigue rhythm and, at the same time, urges us to protect ‘Hennicks Ruhm und Glücke’ (‘Hennicke’s fame and fortune’) from the transience of everything temporal. Finally the Elster’s tenor aria, ‘So wie ich die Tropfen zolle’ (‘As I pay tribute with these drops’, eleventh movement), is a polonaise that brings to mind Polish folklore – which had become increasingly popular in central Germany since the union of the Saxon Elector’s family with Polish Crown in 1697. Bach must have been especially fond of this movement: it was used as early as c. 1730, with different texts, in cantatas paying tribute to Duke Christian of Sachsen-Weißen fels and the Leipzig governor Joachim Friedrich Graf von Flemming, and returned once more in 1741 in the wedding cantata ‘O holder Tag, erwünschte Zeit’ (‘O lovely day, o hoped-for time’, BWV 210).
Soon after its composition, Bach reused large parts of his ‘manorial music’ for the church cantata ‘Freue dich, erlöste Schar’ (‘Rejoice, redeemed host’, BWV 30). That piece was probably first performed at the St John’s Day (midsummer) church service in Leipzig, on 24th June 1738. In the sacred version Bach used the music of the outer choral movements (though without trumpets and timpani) and the first four of the five arias virtually unchanged, just giving them different words. The new text, written to fit the existing music exactly, was probably by Picander, like the original. Musical connoisseurs among the Leipzig church goers may have been surprised at the unusually fashionable and at times noticeably secular tone of Bach’s music for St John’s Day. Might they have suspected how long a content-related journey Bach’s cantata had travelled? The Wiederau cantata moves entirely in the here and now, reflecting the worldliness of the lord of the manor and paying tribute to the optimism that focuses on the favour of Time, Good Fortune and Fate, and wastes no time thinking of a higher, divine order. By contrast, the St John’s Day cantata is filled with the ‘redeemed host’ of believers’ joyful anticipation of eternal splendour in ‘Zion’s meadows’.

Ich bin in mir vergnügt, BWV 204
I am content in myself
This cantata for solo soprano, composed in 1726 or 1727, does not automatically fit into the series of occasional pieces that Bach wrote for political, academic or family events. Whereas in the case of most of these cantatas the reason for their composition is apparent from the musical sources or printed texts, and can usually also be determined from the wording of the text, the present cantata offers us no such clues. The text does not refer to any external event; nor is it directed at any specific person. It concerns rather a general theme, philosophical in the broadest sense of the term. This is what was termed at the time a ‘moral’ cantata.
Its theme is identified by Bach in the title written in the score: ‘Cantata Von der Ver gnüg sam keit’ (Cantata of Contentment). What the old-fashioned word ‘contentment’ actually signified is from today’s perspective not entirely clear. The meaning of the German word has changed since the eigh teenth century. Whereas today it tends to bring to mind happy leisure activity, in Bach’s time it signified a humility, a relaxed satisfaction with what life had to offer. This attitude is a very popular theme in the literature and philosophy of the early Enlightenment, and in the ‘moral magazines’ that were widely read among the bourgeoisie – creating a new image of individual virtue, concerned with earthly happiness that is based on a modest lifestyle and prudent acceptance of the prevailing circumstances.
The cantata’s text pays tribute to the new ideal. But it is an oddly disparate patchwork. At its heart lies the libretto for a ‘Cantata von der Zufriedenheit’ (‘Contentment Cantata’) by the respected poet and literary theorist Christian Friedrich Hunold, alias Menantes (1680–1721), from a collection printed in Halle an der Saale in 1713. This comprises movements 2–6 and the first two lines of the seventh movement (which in Hunold’s original libretto appears as a motto above the actual text itself). The cantata’s opening recitative, on the other hand, is based on a separate six-strophe poem by Hunold, entitled ‘Der vergnügte Mensch’ (The Contented Man). The seventh movement (apart from the first two lines) and the eighth are by an unknown and evidently not very proficient poet – perhaps the person responsible for assembling the text.
Bach cannot have been especially happy with this text as a whole. It is not just that the theme of ‘con tentment’ is worn thin by the length of the text; in addition, the strophic poetry that dominates the additions to Hunold’s original libretto proved hard to combine with the modern recitative and aria forms. The Alexandrine verse pattern popular in the baroque era, with its characteristic caesura in the middle of the line, gives the opening recitative a certain short-windedness and monotony of phrasing. A similar small-scale quality emerges from the fourfooted verse in the last recitative (seventh movement). But Bach makes the best of this movement, and livens things up by treating the second half of the text as an arioso.
Hunold’s actual ‘Contentment Cantata’ (movements 2–6) is the work of an experienced opera and cantata librettist – a man who was by no means unknown to Bach, who had set several of Hunold’s cantata librettos during his time in Köthen. (Of these, the texts for ‘Der Himmel dacht auf Anhalts Ruhm und Glück’ [‘Since heaven cared for Anhalt’s fame and bliss’, BWV 66a] and ‘Die Zeit, die Tag und Jahre macht’ [‘Time, which day and year doth make’, BWV 134a] have survived.) From the composer’s point of view, Hunold’s original libretto leaves nothing to be desired. The two recitatives (third and fifth movements) with their freer, nonschematic verse structure permit a varied musical setting. Moreover Bach set the first of them with string accompaniment, and has illustrated the passage where the text speaks of how all worldly goods ‘wie Staub zerfliegen’ (‘blow away like dust’) with a striking musical image: the tempo changes suddenly to Presto, and the vocal line and instruments depict the dust flying with a brief out burst of vigorously animated melodic gestures.
The three aria texts by Hunold (movements 2, 4 and 6) are all in the modern da capo form. Bach has transformed them into beautiful music, and has given each aria its own instrumental profile: the first with a pair of oboes, the second with an agile solo violin part, and the third with a solo flute with wideranging coloraturas that compete with the solo voice.
At the end of the cantata there is a hymn to ‘himmlische Vergnügsamkeit’ (‘heavenly contentment’), performed by all the participants together. Here the flute sometimes resumes its function as solo partner of the soprano, who in turn is given new opportunities to demonstrate her artistry at its finest.
The lack of any reference to the circumstances of its origin or to a dedicatee, together with the text that inclines towards passivity and intimacy, has occasionally led to all kinds of conjecture that the cantata might have been intended by Bach for personal use, within his own family and with Anna Magdalena Bach as soloist. This, however, belongs in the realm of sentimental speculation. For one thing, the ‘composer-unfriendly’ way the text is put together surely does not reflect Bach's own wishes. Probably someone else wanted him to set the text to music. In any case, we have the un known patron to thank for a secular solo cantata by Bach of great beauty and maturity.

The two cantatas on this disc conclude a project that the Bach Collegium Japan started in 2004, in which Bach’s secular cantatas formed the basis of numerous concerts and recordings. After the completion of the ensemble’s recordings of the church cantatas in 2013, all of Bach’s secular cantatas are now also available on disc from the BCJ directed by Masaaki Suzuki. They offer a welcome complement to our image of Bach the church musician, and reveal a com poser who approached secular music with the same artistic integrity and demand for quality that we find in his sacred music. We can still regret that only a little more than twenty works out of what was originally a far larger number of secular cantatas have survived in performable condition. But – as we have discovered from our examination of them in the past few years – these works are well worth per forming, listening to and getting to know.
© Klaus Hofmann 2017