durr a. the cantatas of j. s. bach

The Cantatas of J. S. Bach
The Cantatas of J. S. Bach
with their librettos in
german–english parallel text
ALFRED DÜRR
Revised and translated by RICHARD D. P. JONES
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide in
Oxford New York
Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi
Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi
New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto
With offices in
Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece
Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore
South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam
Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press
in the UK and in certain other countries
Published in the United States
by Oxford University Press Inc., New York
Original edition © 1992 Bärenreiter-Verlag Karl Vötterle GmbH & Co. KG
Translated from the German by arrangement with Bärenreiter-Verlag
Kassel-Basel-London-New York-Prag
The publication of this work was supported by a grant from the Goethe-Institut
Inter Nationes
© Oxford University Press 2005

The moral rights of the author have been asserted
Database right Oxford University Press (maker)
First published 2005
First published in paperback 2006
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press,
or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate
reprographics rights organizations. Enquiries concerning reproduction
outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department,
Oxford University Press, at the address above
You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover
and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Data available
Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk
Printed in Great Britain by
Antony Rowe Ltd., Chippenham, Wilts
ISBN 0–19–816707–5 978–0–19–816707–5
ISBN 0–19–929776–2 (Pbk.) 978–0–19–929776–4 (Pbk.)
10987654321
Preface
In the course of the twentieth century, the music of Johann Sebastian Bach has
undergone a revival with which that of other composers cannot be remotely
compared. Even the cantatas, whose Cinderella status was still lamented in the
preface to the first edition of this book (1971), have since become more familiar
to music lovers through various enterprises, such as complete recordings, radio
broadcasts, summer courses and so on.

Owing to its specific relevance to its own time, the Bach cantata is, of course,
more tied to its period than the ‘timeless’ instrumental works. Yet the author
takes the view that Bach’s cantatas lay claim to our attention as a testimony to
supreme art, Christian faith and Western cultural history, and therefore demand
that we come to terms with them. This involves not only a sensitive response to
their cultural context but also conscientious grappling with the question of their
relevance for our time. Whoever follows the music of today with sympathy will
surely be unable to deny the same sympathy to Bach’s endeavour to give topical
immediacy to the church music of his time. It is this attitude that the present
commentaries try to instil.
This book will, first of all, serve the interested lay reader as a companion
during live performances, radio broadcasts, or recordings, acting as a guide to
attentive listening and attempting to render comprehensible whatever is hard to
understand. These aims extend to the reproduction of the cantata texts, whose
poetic worth should in no way be overestimated, though they should be taken
seriously as baroque poetry bound to a specific purpose. Other matters, such as
symbolism, the musical doctrine of figures, and the liturgical use of the cantatas
today, can be touched upon only occasionally due to the great quantity of
material involved; for them the reader must be referred to specialized studies.
In order to facilitate the study of the individual cantatas without overbur-
dening the commentaries with constant repetition, certain frequently recurring
ideas and concepts are elucidated in a brief introductory historical survey. The
commentary on the individual cantatas that follows this is ordered according
to their original occasion (largely in keeping with their assignment to volumes
in the Neue Bach-Ausgabe). First the sacred cantatas are considered in liturgical
order, as if through a single church year (starting with Advent), then church
cantatas for other purposes or for no fixed occasion, and finally the secular
cantatas. As far as possible the commentaries on the individual cantatas are
formulated so that each is readable independently.
Ideally, study of the commentaries should be accompanied by the score, or at

least a keyboard reduction, of the work concerned. Since this will not always be
possible, however, each commentary is preceded by a synopsis of the relevant
cantata movements. Here details of duration are drawn from the Handbuch der
Kantaten J. S. Bachs (fifth edition, Wiesbaden, 1984) by Werner Neumann, with
the kind permission of the author. Details of key are indicated by capital letters
for a tonic with a major third and lower-case letters for a tonic with a minor
third. Thus capitals denote not only major keys but the Lydian, Mixolydian and
Ionian modes (for example, in the case of harmonizations of chorales in the
church modes), and lower-case letters not only minor keys but the Dorian,
Phrygian and Aeolian modes. Where two (occasionally three) time signatures
are given, they are listed in the order in which they appear in the music. The
volume ends with a bibliography of literature used here or recommended
for further study, a glossary for the elucidation of technical terms (those
marked with an asterisk in the main text), an index of names (excluding authors
and editors listed in the bibliography), and two indexes of the cantatas, one
in alphabetical order of title (i.e. first line of text), the other in order of BWV
(Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis) numbers.
For the reproduction of the cantata texts, the principles employed in the Neue
Bach-Ausgabe apply here too: the use of modern orthography but with the reten-
tion of original verbal or phonetic forms; and the adoption of original question
or exclamation marks (more frequent than those of today). Occasional small
corrections nonetheless proved to be necessary in order to preserve clarity.
Thus, unless grammatically justified, the dative ending -n, customary in dialect,
is replaced by -m, and ‘Küßen’ by ‘Kissen’ (if that is what is meant), and so on.
In the case of certain types of information, the author felt compelled to
restrict the quantity given in order to avoid unduly overburdening the volume.
Thus the texts of lost works that cannot be reconstructed are omitted; textual
variants of little significance (for example, in the repeats of portions of text in
choruses and arias) are suppressed; and scoring details for individual move-
ments are often given in a generalized form (for example, ‘brass ww str bc’),

with further details following in the commentary as and where necessary. In
particular, the instruments that participate in the continuo are not specified in
detail, even if they are clear from the sources or to some extent differ from each
other in voice-leading.
Alfred Dürr
Bovenden, 1995
Translator’s Preface
The English edition includes the cantata librettos in German–English parallel
text. The translator’s aim has been to adhere as closely to the original German as
is compatible with clear, readable modern English. One constraining factor was
vi preface
the line-for-line approach adopted: for ease of comparison, each line of English
corresponds as far as possible with the German line next to it. As a result, the
English word order is not always the most natural one, but it is hoped that gross
distortions have been avoided. Biblical quotations tend to echo the Authorized
Version (1611)—the version most familiar in English-speaking countries—
though exact translation of the Lutheran Bible (1534) naturally takes precedence
in all cases of different readings. Readers should note that the translation does
not match the scansion of the original and is not intended for performance.
The introduction and commentaries have been updated to take account of
recent research: in general, the English edition is designed to reflect the state
of Bach scholarship by the beginning of the Bach Year 2000. With the approval
of the author, all such additions and modifications are woven into the text or its
footnotes and consequently remain undifferentiated from the original. The
style and scope of this editorial intervention has been limited by two factors.
First, the aim has been to preserve the distinctive character of Alfred Dürr’s own
writings. Second, in a book intended primarily for the ordinary music lover, it
was regarded as expedient to restrict scholarly discussion and references to an
essential minimum in order not to overwhelm the reader. For further study he
or she is referred to the bibliography.

The translator would like to express his gratitude to Joshua Rifkin, David
Schulenberg and, above all, Michael Marissen for reading the text in manuscript
with great care and making many valuable suggestions for improvements,
most of which have been adopted. Any deficiencies that remain are the sole
responsibility of the translator.
Richard D. P. Jones
Abingdon, Oxon, 2000
Note to the Reader
Among the details that precede the text of each movement, capital letters
denote major keys; lower-case letters, minor. Chorale texts are given in bold
print, biblical texts in inverted commas. Formally distinct portions of text, such
as the middle section of a da Capo aria, are indented. In the commentaries,
asterisks refer the reader to the Index of Terms and Glossary.
preface vii
Contents
List of illustrations xiii
Abbreviations xiv
Part 1 Introduction to Bach’s Cantatas
1 History of the cantata before Bach 3
2 Development of the Bach cantata 11
2.1 Early forms (c. 1707–12) 11
2.2 Weimar cantatas of the newer type (1713–16) 13
2.3 Cöthen (1717–23) 20
2.4 Leipzig cycle I (1723–4) 22
2.5 Leipzig cycle II (1724–5) 29
2.6 Leipzig cycle III (1725–7) 36
2.7 Picander and his cycle (1728–9?) 39
2.8 Other church cantatas 41
2.9 Oratorios (1734–c. 1738) 44
2.10 Secular cantatas of the Leipzig period 46

3 Performance practice in Bach’s cantatas 48
3.1 Preparation of the performing material 48
3.2 Rehearsal 50
3.3 Problems of scoring 50
3.4 Performance 52
3.5 Consequences for present-day performance practice 53
Music examples for the introduction 54
Part 2 Church Cantatas
1 Cantatas for the church year: Advent to Trinity 75
1.1 First Sunday in Advent: BWV 61, 62, 36 75
1.2 Second Sunday in Advent: BWV 70a 83
1.3 Third Sunday in Advent: BWV 186a 84
1.4 Fourth Sunday in Advent: BWV 132, 147a 86
1.5 Christmas Day: BWV 63, 91, 110, 197a, 248
I
, 191 91
1.6 Second Day of Christmas: BWV 40, 121, 57, 248
II
106
1.7 Third Day of Christmas: BWV 64, 133, 151, 248
III
121
1.8 Sunday after Christmas: BWV 152, 122, 28 133
1.9 New Year: BWV 190, 41, 16, 171, 248
IV
, 143 144
1.10 Sunday after New Year: BWV 153, 58, 248
V
162
1.11 Epiphany: BWV 65, 123, 248

VI
172
1.12 First Sunday after Epiphany: BWV 154, 124, 32 182
1.13 Second Sunday after Epiphany: BWV 155, 3, 13 191
1.14 Third Sunday after Epiphany: BWV 73, 111, 72, 156 200
1.15 Fourth Sunday after Epiphany: BWV 81, 14 214
1.16 Septuagesima (Third Sunday before Lent): BWV 144, 92, 84 220
1.17 Sexagesima (Second Sunday before Lent): BWV 18, 181, 126 231
1.18 Quinquagesima (Estomihi; Sunday before Lent): BWV 23, 22, 127, 159 240
1.19 Third Sunday in Lent (Oculi): BWV 54, 80a 253
1.20 Palm Sunday: BWV 182 258
1.21 Easter Sunday: BWV 4, 31, 249 262
1.22 Easter Monday: BWV 66, 6, Anh. I 190 274
1.23 Easter Tuesday: BWV 134, 145, 158 281
1.24 First Sunday after Easter (Quasimodogeniti): BWV 67, 42 291
1.25 Second Sunday after Easter (Misericordias Domini): BWV 104, 85, 112 298
1.26 Third Sunday after Easter (Jubilate): BWV 12, 103, 146 305
1.27 Fourth Sunday after Easter (Cantate): BWV Anh. I 191, 166, 108 315
1.28 Fifth Sunday after Easter (Rogate): BWV 86, 87 320
1.29 Ascension: BWV 37, 128, 43, 11 324
1.30 Sunday after Ascension (Exaudi): BWV 44, 183 340
1.31 Whit Sunday: BWV 172, 59, 74, 34 345
1.32 Whit Monday: BWV 173, 68, 174 357
1.33 Whit Tuesday: BWV 184, 175 364
1.34 Trinity: BWV 165, 194, 176, 129 371
2 Cantatas for the church year: First to Twenty-seventh Sunday after
Trinity 381
2.1 First Sunday after Trinity: BWV 75, 20, 39 381
2.2 Second Sunday after Trinity: BWV 76, 2 397
2.3 Third Sunday after Trinity: BWV 21, 135 405

2.4 Fourth Sunday after Trinity: BWV 185, 24, 177 415
2.5 Fifth Sunday after Trinity: BWV 93, 88 425
2.6 Sixth Sunday after Trinity: BWV 170, 9 433
2.7 Seventh Sunday after Trinity: BWV 186, 107, Anh. I 209, 187, Anh. I 1 439
2.8 Eighth Sunday after Trinity: BWV 136, 178, 45 453
2.9 Ninth Sunday after Trinity: BWV 105, 94, 168 464
2.10 Tenth Sunday after Trinity: BWV 46, 101, 102 477
2.11 Eleventh Sunday after Trinity: BWV 199, 179, 113 489
2.12 Twelfth Sunday after Trinity: BWV 69a, 137, 35 501
2.13 Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity: BWV 77, 33, 164 510
2.14 Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity: BWV 25, 78, 17 520
2.15 Fifteenth Sunday after Trinity: BWV 138, 99, 51 531
2.16 Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity: BWV 161, 95, 8, 27 542
2.17 Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity: BWV 148, 114, 47 556
2.18 Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity: BWV 96, 169 567
2.19 Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity: BWV 48, 5, 56, Anh. I 2 574
2.20 Twentieth Sunday after Trinity: BWV 162, 180, 49 585
2.21 Twenty-first Sunday after Trinity: BWV 109, 38, 98, 188 597
2.22 Twenty-second Sunday after Trinity: BWV 89, 115, 55 610
x contents
2.23 Twenty-third Sunday after Trinity: BWV 163, 139, 52 619
2.24 Twenty-fourth Sunday after Trinity: BWV 60, 26 628
2.25 Twenty-fifth Sunday after Trinity: BWV 90, 116 637
2.26 Twenty-sixth Sunday after Trinity: BWV 70 642
2.27 Twenty-seventh Sunday after Trinity: BWV 140 648
3 The Marian Feasts 654
3.1 Purification: BWV 83, 125, 82, 200, 161, 157, 158 654
3.2 Annunciation: BWV Anh. I 199, 1 666
3.3 Visitation: BWV 147, 10 670
4 The Feast of St John the Baptist: BWV 167, 7, 30 681

5 The Feast of the Archangel Michael: BWV 130, 19, 149, 50 695
6 The Reformation Festival: BWV 80, 79 707
7 Church and Organ Consecration: BWV 194 715
8 Council Elections: BWV 71, 119, 193, 29, 120, 69; Anh. I: 192, 4, 3, 193 721
9 Weddings: BWV Anh. I 14, 34a, Anh. I 211, Anh. I 212, 120a, 197, 195 742
10 Funerals: BWV 106, 157, 244a, Was ist, das wir Leben nennen; Anh. I:
16, 17 758
11 Various occasions: BWV Anh. I 5, Anh. I 15, 190a, 120b, Anh. I 4a, 223,
150, 131, 196, 192, 117, 97, 100
, 1045 772
Part 3 Secular Cantatas
1 Festive music for the courts of Weimar, Weißenfels, and Cöthen: BWV
66a, Anh. I 6, Anh. I 7, Anh. I 8, 184a, 194a, 36a, 208, 249a, 134a, 173a 797
2 Festive music for the Electoral House of Saxony: BWV Anh. I 9,
193a, Anh. I 11, Anh. I 12, 205a, Anh. I 13, 208a, 213, 214, 215, 207a, 206 819
3 Festive music for Leipzig university celebrations: BWV Anh. I 195,
Anh. I 20, 205, 207, 198, 36b 849
4 Festive music for Leipzig council and school celebrations: BWV
216a, Anh. I 18, Anh. I 210, Anh. I 19 871
5 Leipzig music of homage for nobles and burghers: BWV 36c, 249b,
210a, Anh. I 10, 30a, 212 873
6 Weddings: BWV 202, Anh. I 196, 216, 210 892
7 Various occasions: BWV Anh. I 194,
204, 201, 211, 203, 209 902
Appendix: doubtful and spurious cantatas: BWV Anh. I 197, 15, 53, 141,
142, 160, 189, 217, 218, 219, 220, 221, 222, 224 926
Bibliography 927
Index of names 949
Index of terms and glossary 952
Index of cantatas: alphabetical 960

Index of cantatas: by BWV number 964
contents xi
List of illustrations
1 Autograph entry of the Leipzig order of service for the First Sunday
in Advent in the score of Cantata 61. 23
2 Autograph entry of the chorale Ich freue mich in dir in the score of
the Sanctus, BWV 232
III
. 127
Abbreviations
A alto
B bass
bc basso continuo
BC Bach Compendium: Analytisch-bibliographisches Repertorium der
Werke Johann Sebastian Bachs, ed. H J. Schulze and C. Wolff
(Leipzig and Frankfurt, 1985 ff.)
BG Collected Edition of the Bach-Gesellschaft (Leipzig, 1851–99).
BJ Bach-Jahrbuch (Leipzig, 1904 ff.)
bsn bassoon (fagotto, bassono)
BT Sämtliche von Johann Sebastian Bach vertonte Texte, ed. W. Neu-
mann (Leipzig, 1974)
BWV Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis: Wolfgang Schmieder, Thematisch-
systematisches Verzeichnis der musikalischen Werke von Johann
Sebastian Bach (Leipzig, 1950); 2nd edn, rev. and enlarged
(Wiesbaden, 1990); Kleine Ausgabe (the ‘Little BWV’), ed. A.
Dürr and Y. Kobayashi (Wiesbaden, 1998). The numbering of
the cantatas is not chronological, but accords with that of the
Bach-Gesellschaft edition (reflecting the catalogue’s origin as
an index of that edition), in which order of publication was
determined largely by practical issues, such as the whereabouts

of original sources.
CF cantus firmus
conc concertato
cor da t corno da tirarsi
ctt cttino cornett, cornettino
DDT Denkmäler deutscher Tonkunst (Leipzig, 1892–1931)
Dok I Bach-Dokumente, Vol. I: Schriftstücke von der Hand Johann
Sebastian Bachs, ed. W. Neumann and H J. Schulze (Kassel and
Leipzig, 1963)
Dok II Bach-Dokumente, Vol. II: Fremdschriftliche und gedruckte Doku-
mente zur Lebensgeschichte Johann Sebastian Bachs 1685–1750,
ed. W. Neumann and H J. Schulze (Kassel and Leipzig, 1969)
Dok III Bach-Dokumente, Vol. III: Dokumente zum Nachwirken Johann
Sebastian Bachs 1750–1800, ed. H J. Schulze (Kassel and Leipzig,
1972)
Dürr Chr 2 A. Dürr, Zur Chronologie der Leipziger Vokalwerke J. S. Bachs,
2nd rev. edn of study first published in BJ
1957 (Kassel, 1976)
Dürr St 2 A. Dürr, Studien über die frühen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs,
2nd rev. edn of dissertation first published in 1951 (Wiesbaden,
1977)
flflauto traverso
fl picc flauto piccolo (a sopranino recorder, not a modern piccolo)
hn horn (corno, corno da caccia)
hpschd harpsichord
KB Kritischer Bericht (Critical Report) to the Neue Bach-Ausgabe
Kobayashi Chr Y. Kobayashi, ‘Zur Chronologie der Spätwerke Johann Sebas-
tian Bachs: Kompositions- und Aufführungstätigkeit von 1736
bis 1750’, BJ 1988, 7–72
NBA Neue Bach-Ausgabe: J. S. Bach, Neue Ausgabe sämtlicher Werke

(Kassel and Leipzig, 1954 ff.). Series I: Cantatas; Series II: Masses,
Passions & Oratorios. NBA I/1 = Neue Bach-Ausgabe, Series I,
Volume 1.
NBR The New Bach Reader: A Life of Johann Sebastian Bach in Letters
and Documents, a rev. and enlarged edn, ed. C. Wolff, of a
documentary biography ed. H. T. David and A. Mendel, first
pub. 1945 (New York and London, 1998).
NT New Testament
ob oboe
ob da c oboe da caccia
ob d’am oboe d’amore
org organ
OT Old Testament
picc piccolo
rec recorder
rip ripieno
S soprano
SATB soprano, alto, tenor, bass
Scheide I, II, III W. H. Scheide, ‘Johann Sebastian Bachs Sammlung von
Kantaten seines Vetters Johann Ludwig Bach’, Part I: BJ 1959,
52–94; Part II: BJ 1961, 5–24; Part III: BJ 1962, 5–32
Smend Kö F. Smend, Bach in Köthen (Berlin, 1951). Eng. trans. by J. Page,
rev. and ed. S. Daw (St Louis, 1985)
Spitta I, II P. Spitta, Johann Sebastian Bach, 2 vols (Leipzig,
1873, 1880).
Eng. trans. by C. Bell and J. A. Fuller-Maitland, 3 vols (London,
1884–5).
str strings (as a rule, violin I, II, and viola; continuo instruments
are subsumed under the abbreviation bc)
T tenor

timp timpani, tamburi
abbreviations xv
tr trumpet (tromba, clarino)
tr da t tromba da tirarsi
trb trombone
vln violin
vla viola
vla da g viola da gamba
vla d’am viola d’amore
vc violoncello
vc picc violoncello piccolo
vne violone
ww woodwind
xvi abbreviations
part 1
Introduction to Bach’s Cantatas
1
History of the cantata before Bach
The cantata occupies a prominent position among the musical genres of the
seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Closely related to opera and
oratorio, it originated in Italy as a lyrical counterpart to these dramatic and epic
sister-genres. It penetrated into neighbouring countries in the course of the
seventeenth century; and in the form of the church cantata it attained a unique
high point in Protestant Germany. This culmination is inextricably linked with
the name of Johann Sebastian Bach.
Artistic peaks generally owe their origins to a happy concurrence of various
contributory factors. Hence a variety of causes may be adduced for the cultiva-
tion of the Protestant church cantata. Perhaps the most important of these is
the theology of Martin Luther. The conviction that God’s Word, as laid down in
the Bible, is dead and ineffectual unless it is proclaimed, that everything depends

on making it current, increasingly resulted in a new orientation for church
music. A close link between words and melody is already found in Luther’s
own hymns, and in liturgical singing—increasingly in the vernacular rather than
in Latin—church musicians fruitfully sought to achieve correct declamation.
When the monodic style, invented in Italy around 1600, became known in
Germany, composers sought a declamation of the sung word that was no
longer merely correct but animated and impassioned, an art that in Protestant
Germany found its unsurpassed master in Heinrich Schütz.
At the heart of the Protestant service lies the sermon. Here, according to
Luther, the proclamation of God’s Word becomes a reality. The history of
church music from Schütz to Bach is thus an account of the influx into liturgical
singing of sermon-like interpretative and exegetical elements. The simplest
way of interpreting a text is to repeat parts of it in order to give them special
prominence: for example, the words ‘Wer Ohren hat zu hören, der höre’
(‘Whoever has ears to hear, let him hear’) in Schütz’s setting of the Parable of
the Sower (SWV 408). If new words are added, the principle known to the
Middle Ages as ‘trope’ becomes available—the insertion of freely invented
words within a prescribed text, a procedure often found in the works of Bach.
1
1
For instance in the chorus ‘Wo ist der neugeborne König der Jüden’ from the Christmas
Oratorio, Part V (No. 45), with its interpolated alto recitative ‘Sucht ihn in meiner Brust . . .’.
A further possibility is the addition of a chorale either during or after the singing
of a biblical or ecclesiastical text. This practice also finds a frequent echo in
Bach’s works. Finally, new texts can be written that shed an interpretative light
upon the text transmitted.
Church musicians were naturally most interested in those parts of the divine
service best suited to assuming a sermon-like character. Up to the Reformation,
the Ordinary of the Mass had for centuries stimulated composers to ever-new
settings. But now Bible readings came to the fore: sometimes the Epistle,

but more often the Gospel, which had long been prescribed for clerics as
the obligatory text of their sermon at the main service. Even in the Lutheran
Church these readings were originally chanted by the minister to a prescribed
melodic formula known as the lesson tone. But parts of them, particularly
the words of Jesus or other aphoristic passages, were now set to music
afresh and sung by the choir. Finally, the stage was reached when the choir no
longer sang its ‘dictum motet’ during the reading but afterwards instead. Here
we reach the birthplace of a genre that acquired many different names in
contemporary terminology, such as ‘motet’, ‘Kirchenstück’ (‘church piece’),
‘Kirchenmusik’ (or simply ‘Musik’), ‘Musikalische Andacht’ (‘musical devotion’),
‘concerto’, and so on. In the end, however, it was called ‘cantata’, and this
name alone has survived for posterity as a description of music fulfilling this
function.
The development from Bible reading via dictum motet to cantata, considered
here against the background of Protestant theology, corresponds with con-
temporary changes that took place in the spheres of both text and music. The
textual backbone of all the music associated with the reading is naturally the
biblical Word itself, to which, as we have already seen, freely invented texts
were added. Indeed, these accumulated so much in the course of the decades
that in the end the text of the reading itself became superfluous, since it had
already been read out from the altar beforehand. What form did these freely
invented texts take? Two forms were used above all: the strophic poem and
the madrigal. The hymn was itself a strophic poem, and many of the texts
that supplemented the biblical Word were, in fact, chorale verses. But the
aspiration for deeper piety that spread over wide areas of northern Germany
in the second half of the seventeenth century, in association with the rise of
Pietism, led to a more widespread devotional poetry in strophic form—
designated ‘ode’ in the poetics of the day—a genre particularly well adapted to
musical setting. Just as the poets of such odes often prefaced them with a biblical
dictum as motto, so composers favoured a cantata type of the basic form

‘biblical word—strophic poem’, in accordance with the musical structure ‘con-
certo—aria 1-aria 2-aria 3’ (etc.). ‘Aria’ should here be understood not as the
Italian operatic type but as a simple song-like form. Examples of this cantata
type and its variants were composed in large numbers by Dietrich Buxtehude
4 introduction
and his contemporaries. In Bach’s time, however, it was already regarded as
antiquated.
More forward-looking was the madrigal, which, having emerged from Italy,
underwent a late blossoming in Germany. This should be understood as a song
for several voices, based on a non-strophic poem of mainly subjective and,
at first, mostly amatory content. An important factor in its assessment is the
high significance accorded to the text, which enabled Michael Praetorius to
maintain that the word ‘madrigal’ was ‘nomen poematis und nicht cantionis’ (‘the
name of a poem and not a song’). Interest in the madrigal declined appreciably
in Italy after 1620. In Germany, however, the poetic form was discovered in the
mid-seventeenth century (if we disregard Schein’s Waldliederlein of 1621) by
Caspar Ziegler, who in 1653 published an essay entitled Von den Madrigalen, in
which he stressed how much musicians would want to set such texts. Charac-
teristic of madrigalian verse are the freedoms permitted, no doubt with a view
to prospective musical setting. A fixed number of lines is not prescribed, con-
cealed rhyme is permitted, unequal line lengths are practically a requirement,
and changes of metre no rarity. At the end of the madrigal a punchline of some
kind, or at least something out of the ordinary, is expected. Ziegler, who also
printed a few samples of his madrigals, had successors. Ernst Stockmann made
this originally secular form at home in sacred verse too. In his Madrigalische
Schriftlust of 1660, madrigals are prefaced by biblical quotations. And Salomo
Franck, whom we shall later encounter as one of Bach’s librettists, published not
only individual madrigals but a collection entitled Madrigalische Seelen-Lust über
das heilige Leiden unsers Erlösers (Madrigalian Soul’s Delight on the Holy Passion
of our Redeemer, 1697).

The true significance of the madrigal for the development of the Protestant
church cantata lies not so much in the genre itself as in the suitability of
madrigalian verse for the compositional forms of recitative and da capo aria,
both of Italian extraction. For the text of a recitative, or even that of an aria, is
composed according to the poetic rules of the madrigal (though, of course, with
the omission of the final punchline). This is stated clearly in the poetics taught at
the time. Ziegler says that he adheres to
the aforesaid recitative style, such as the Italians use in the poetry of their sung
comedies, for a continually unfolding madrigal, or for many madrigals, within which
an arietta, or perhaps an aria of several stanzas, sometimes occurs, over which both
poet and composer must then take particular care and alternate them at the right time
in order to sweeten the one with the other.
2
2
‘. . . besagten Stylum recitativum, wie ihn die Italianer in der Poesie zu ihren Singe Comedien
gebrauchen vor einen stets werenden Madrigal, oder vor etliche viel Madrigalen, doch solcher
gestalt, daß ie zuweilen darzwischen eine Arietta, auch wohl eine Aria von etlichen Stanzen lauffe,
welches denn so wohl der Poet als der Componist sonderlich in acht nehmen, und eines mit dem
andern zu versüssen, zu rechter zeit abwechseln muß.’
the cantata before bach 5
The form of alternating recitative and aria Ziegler alludes to here is that of the
Italian chamber cantata. And it is this very form that Erdmann Neumeister
transferred to the Protestant church cantata in his librettos of 1700.
Neumeister, born in 1671 at Uichteritz near Weißenfels, was educated at
Schulpforta, studied theology at Leipzig from 1689, and became a schoolmaster
in 1695. After the publication of a dissertation on poets of the seventeenth
century, he gave lectures on poetics in Leipzig. Unknown to Neumeister, these
were published in 1707 by his pupil Christian Friedrich Hunold under the title
Die Allerneueste Art, zur Reinen und Galanten Poesie zu gelangen (The Very Latest
Fashion of Arriving at a Pure and Galant Poetry). In 1697 Neumeister took up

his first appointment as a pastor at Bad Bibra; this was followed by further
appointments at Eckartsberg, Weißenfels, Sorau, and finally in 1715 at the
Jacobikirche, Hamburg, where he remained till his death in 1756.
Neumeister’s first cycle of cantata texts for the entire church year, completed
in 1700 and published four years later under the title Geistliche Cantaten statt einer
Kirchen-Music (Spiritual Cantatas in Place of Church Music), was soon followed
by others: four more appeared in the years 1708, 1711, 1714 and 1716, and later still
another five. From the third cycle onwards biblical words and chorales were
added. In the fifth cycle of 1716 Neumeister even returned to the antiquated
form of the ode. Neumeister’s librettos, far from outstanding works of art,
are nonetheless well suited to their purpose, skilfully laid out in form, free of
bombastic excess, and yet alive and figurative. As a theologian Neumeister was
strictly orthodox: he took up cudgels against Pietism and on behalf of ‘sound
doctrine’ (BWV 61), and this perhaps explains why in his librettos depth of
feeling is less evident than a moralizing learnedness which at times becomes
insufferable (BWV 24). Yet, taking everything into account, Neumeister is, in his
poetry, not an unworthy advocate of his own innovation.
The introduction of the Italian cantata form into the Protestant church
initiated a lively debate.
3
Musicians took up the innovation enthusiastically and
found themselves supported by the open enlistment of the orthodox clergy. The
Pietists, on the other hand, saw in the adoption of opera-like elements of form
an inadmissible invasion of worldliness into the divine service, and they waged
war on it of the most vehement kind. In the long run, however, they were
unable to hinder it, and so the history of the church cantata in the eighteenth
century became an account of the Neumeister type of cantata.
Still more multifarious than the textual foundations of the church cantata—
biblical prose, strophic chorale and aria, madrigalian verse—are its musical
forms, which unite virtually the entire repertoire of the time. Briefly we shall

attempt to characterize the most important of them according to their origin.
3
A graphic description of these disputes over the introduction of the modern cantata is given in
Spitta I, 463–80 (Eng. trans., I, 468–86).
6 introduction
For the delivery of the biblical Word by the choir, the most commonly
used form from time immemorial was the motet. Characteristic of this form
since the sixteenth century was the division of the text into sections according
to the sentence structure, each of which acquired its own musical material
and form (designated a, b and c in the example below). In the second half of
the sixteenth century, the heyday of a style of vocal polyphony associated with
the name of Palestrina, a basic type of motet had grown up that was charac-
terized by a succession of polyphonic formations according to the following
scheme:
Soprano a
b c
Alto a b c
Tenor a b c etc.
Bass a
b c
Decisions regarding the number of voices and the order of entries were left to
the discretion of the composer. The motet reproduced in part in Music Example
1 essentially follows the above scheme, though with five-part texture and with
differing order of entries from section b onwards.
At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the motet was increasingly
influenced by the madrigal, whose compositional principles for the setting of
secular rhyming verse were transferred to the biblical Word. These involve,
above all, an intensive penetration into the substance of the text: text declam-
ation is elevated to an expressive plane; and the images and ‘affects’ of the text—
the surging of waves, the rustling of wind, height and depth, joy and lamenta-

tion—are all depicted in musical terms. The compositional means available
are, among others, a concentration of contrasting note-values within a confined
space, changes of tempo, and a systematic, text-engendered employment of
diatonic or chromatic, polyphonic or homophonic passages, larger or smaller
intervals, syllabic declamation or extended coloraturas. Even breaking the rules
of composition is occasionally permitted if it assists the interpretation of the
text. The application or ‘significance’ of these resources is regulated by a
carefully elaborated doctrine of musical figures, whose concepts are borrowed
from rhetoric.
4
An illustration of a Protestant dictum motet influenced by the
madrigal is given in Music Example 2. By the eighteenth century the motet was
already antiquated; only commissioned works, chiefly for funerals, were as a
rule newly composed. Nevertheless, the compositional principle of the motet
lived on in many choruses from cantatas.
Among the Italian achievements of around 1600 is a compositional principle
that decisively influenced the music of the following century, namely the
4
See the articles ‘Figures’ and ‘Rhetoric and music’ in S. Sadie, ed., The New Grove Dictionary of
Music and Musicians, 2nd edn, 29 vols (London, 2001).
the cantata before bach 7
concerto—the opposition of diverse sources of sound. This confrontation
between one body and another can take three different forms:
1. Several groups concert with one another, a style frequently cultivated from
the era of Venetian polychoral music right up to Bach’s St Matthew Passion.
The principle is employed in both vocal and instrumental music, hence the
polychoral motet and the concerto for groups of instruments. An illustration
of a double-choral motet (reproduced in part) is given in Music Example 3.
2. A full-textured group is placed in opposition to a single part or several parts.
This principle, developed above all in the instrumental sphere, led to the

well-known form of the instrumental concerto with one or more solo
instruments.
3. Two or more individual parts interact over a continuo bass, hence the ‘sacred
concerto’ for a few parts, which underwent a fertile development during
the seventeenth century and became one of the immediate forerunners of
the cantata. The first publication in this field was the epoch-making Cento
concerti ecclesiastici by the Italian Ludovico Grossi da Viadana (Venice, 1602).
The make-up of these sacred concertos is that of the motet with a reduced
number of voices. The earliest evidence for the reception of this style in
German Protestant church music is Johann Hermann Schein’s Opella nova
of 1618—see Music Example 4. A direct line leads from the sacred concertos
of composers such as Schein and Schütz to the early cantatas of Bach.
Development in the intervening period above all took the form of greater
flexibility of voice-leading and increased differentiation in the treatment of
participating instruments.
Another compositional principle first made its mark in Italy around 1600,
namely the monody with continuo accompaniment. At first it exhibits little
formal articulation, but in Giulio Caccini’s collection Le nuove musiche (Florence,
1602), which contains twelve ‘madrigals’ and ten ‘arias’ for voice and continuo,
an embryonic distinction is already made which in future would lead from
declamatory madrigal to recitative and from simple song-like aria to the
elaborate, virtuoso aria of opera and cantata. Caccini’s collection is thus the
starting-point of the Italian chamber cantata, whose forms, via Neumeister,
entered into the Protestant church cantata.
The Bach cantata was not only imprinted with Italian influences, however, for
the various forms of cantus firmus arrangement—above all the hymn setting—
are derived from the German tradition. In compositions for a few parts, the
rich bicinium and tricinium culture of the sixteenth century blended with the
achievements of the sacred concerto and turned into the chorale concerto in
few parts, of which Schein gives fine specimens in his Opella nova (see Music

Example 4). In the full-textured chorale arrangement, compositional types
range from the plain, chordal, ‘cantional’ setting intended for congregational
8 introduction
participation, as first published by Lukas Osiander in 1568, to the large poly-
choral chorale concerto that we know from the works of Michael Praetorius,
Samuel Scheidt and others. It was not unusual for a chorale to be set per omnes
versus (each verse in its own polyphonic setting), in which case the various
available types of arrangement alternate. Bach’s chorale cantatas are thus
founded upon an old tradition whose eminent exponents include Samuel
Scheidt and Johann Pachelbel. It is also worth mentioning that in Leipzig, when
Johann Schelle was Thomascantor (1677–1701), the pastor based each sermon
upon a chorale throughout the whole of one church year, and the cantor
performed a piece of music specially composed for each occasion on the basis of
the same chorale.
Finally, in the second half of the seventeenth century it became popular
to combine a chorale verse with some other kind of text, a practice chiefly
associated with the motet (see Music Example 3). In cantata composition inter-
est in the chorale dwindled around 1700; and it is no coincidence that it was the
motet, sunk to the level of worthy utility music, that became the retreat of
the chorale, for only with great hesitation did Neumeister and his successors
adopt the chorale in their texts. Bach’s own interest in the chorale, and his
inexhaustible imagination in the invention of new, individual methods of
chorale arrangement, is thus decidedly anachronistic.
Related to the chorale is the strophic aria, a song-like and normally very
unpretentious musical setting which, in the form of the pre-Neumeister con-
certo-aria cantata, was either repeated unaltered for each of the verses of an
ode or else varied more or less from verse to verse. Particularly popular was
the technique of inventing a different melody for each verse (or for some of the
verses) over an unchanging continuo part, or having the same melody sung by
voices of corresponding pitch level: soprano and tenor or alto and bass. Often an

orchestral ritornello concluded each strophe. By the eighteenth century the
strophic aria was so antiquated that, even where the text took the form of an
ode, Bach chose to set it in a through-composed manner rather than in strophic
form.
The secular cantata in Germany followed its Italian model still more closely
than the church cantata. In fact, many German composers wrote cantatas to
Italian texts, and two Italian cantatas are transmitted under Bach’s name. Secular
cantatas to German texts, however, do not differ from them in principle. Con-
temporary theorists distinguish clearly between the true ‘cantata’, a work of
largely lyrical character and amatory text for one or a few solo voice parts,
and the ‘serenata’ for several voices, often lightly dramatic in character and
frequently written as an occasional work for a specific festive event. Later, the
term ‘serenata’ died away and was replaced by ‘dramma per musica’, a name
that still more clearly denotes a usually modest plot, often ending in general
congratulation of the person honoured in the festivities.
the cantata before bach 9
This, then, was the tradition inherited by Johann Sebastian Bach, born in
Eisenach on 21 March 1685. He absorbed it as a choirboy, as a budding organist
and violinist, in the domestic music-making of his family, in the compositions of
his relatives—which he himself collected together in the so-called Alt-Bachisches
Archiv (Archive of the Elder Bachs)—and finally during his trips to Hamburg and
Lübeck. How fully the youthful Bach absorbed and digested the achievements
of his predecessors and contemporaries is testified by his own first works in the
field of the cantata.
10 introduction
2
Development of the Bach cantata
2.1 Early forms (c. 1707–12)
Bach’s cantatas have come down to us in substantially reduced numbers. The
obituary by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach and Johann Friedrich Agricola

1
mentions
five cycles of cantatas for the whole church year, but today only three cycles
survive virtually complete,
2
plus a few scattered remains of others. Almost
two cycles—a good two-fifths of Bach’s output of sacred cantatas—are lost.
Even heavier are the losses in the sphere of the secular cantata, where the
number of works known to have been lost exceeds the number that survive. Any
assertions we make about Bach’s cantatas must therefore take into account the
uncertainty that arises from reduced numbers.
The earliest Bach cantatas that we possess stem from his Mühlhausen period
(1707–8), or in one case (BWV 150) possibly earlier still.
3
Formally, they belong to
the old, pre-Neumeister type of church cantata, lacking recitatives and arias of
the Neapolitan operatic type. Even the first Weimar years (1708–c. 1712) reveal no
fundamental change, though the dating of the few surviving works from that
time is very uncertain. The following cantatas of this older sort have survived:
4
Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mich, BWV 150 (before 1707?)
Aus der Tiefen rufe ich, BWV 131 (1707)
Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit, BWV 106 (1707?)
Gott ist mein König, BWV 71 (1708)
Der Herr denket an uns, BWV 196 (c. 1708/9?)
Christ lag in Todes Banden, BWV 4 (c. 1707–13?)
Biblical words and chorale form the textual basis of these works, exclusively
so in BWV 131, 196 and 4, and almost exclusively in BWV 106. In two of the six
1
Published in L. C. Mizler, Neu eröffnete musikalische Bibliothek, 4/1 (Leipzig, 1754), 158–76;

reproduced in Dok III, No. 666 (80–93); Eng. trans. in NBR, No. 306 (297–307).
2
For Bach in Leipzig a complete cycle may be estimated at about 59 cantatas.
3
Andreas Glöckner (‘Zur Echtheit und Datierung der Kantate BWV 150’, BJ 1988, 195–203)
argues that Cantata 150 might pre-date the Mülhausen cantatas and stem from Bach’s Arnstadt
years (1703–7). Cantata 15, Denn du wirst meine Seele nicht in der Hölle lassen, formerly dated in the
Arnstadt period, was in reality composed by Johann Ludwig Bach (see Scheide I).
4
See Dürr St 2, 221.
surviving works, free verse is added in arias and choruses, mixed with three
psalm extracts in BWV 150 and with biblical words and chorale in BWV 71.
Strophic poetry occurs only in BWV 71, whose closing chorus consists of two
verses of text, set differently. Leaving aside the pure chorale cantata BWV 4,
these early works are dominated by biblical words, themselves interpreted by
the added ingredients of chorale and free verse, so that in textual terms the type
might be designated the ‘troping dictum cantata’.
Typical of Bach’s setting of these texts is its articulation into brief sections
ranged one after another, an obvious legacy of the motet. The thematic relation-
ship between these sections is very loose. In several cases, however, we find a
symmetrical overall structure that may be regarded as a manifestation of the
basic type: chorus–solos–chorus–solos–chorus. Here we might see a critique of
the traditional sectional form and a tendency to draw together the individual
sections into larger forms, an endeavour that Bach brought to fruition by diverse
means in his later works.
Even within the individual sections, however, a tendency towards unified
form is already manifest in these early works. This is especially clear in the
design of the fugal sections. The first type of Bachian choral fugue, the so-called
‘permutation fugue’,
5

dispenses with free episodes such as occur everywhere in
instrumental fugues, and arranges a number of subjects in series, each occurring
in dux and comes form according to the following basic scheme (A = dux form,
B = comes form; 1, 2, 3, 4 = four subjects):
The opening of a Bach permutation fugue is shown in Music Example 5. Within
this strict scheme Bach finds possibilities of variation and enhancement in
solo–tutti contrasts (at first each part is solo, the tutti entering after all four
subjects), in the resting and re-entry of individual parts, and in the addition of
instruments, which either double the voices (colla parte) or else proceed
independently, in which case they too might take a thematic role.
The principle of Stimmtausch (exchange of parts) employed here also plays a
substantial part in Bach apart from in fugues. It allows a passage to be repeated
in a different key without the individual parts becoming impossibly high or low
as a result of the transposition. The basic scheme of such Stimmtausch passages
might perhaps be represented as follows:
ABABABAB
Soprano 12 34 12 34
Alto 1234123etc.
Tenor 12 34 12
Bass 12341
5
See W. Neumann, J. S. Bachs Chorfuge: ein Beitrag zur Kompositionstechnik Bachs (Leipzig, 1938;
3rd edn 1953).
12 introduction