Bach cantata

The cantatas composed by Johann Sebastian Bach, known as Bach cantatas (German: ), are a body of work consisting of over 200 surviving independent works, and at least several dozen that are considered lost. As far as known, Bach's earliest cantatas date from 1707, the year he moved to Mühlhausen, although he may have begun composing them at his previous post in Arnstadt. Most of Bach's church cantatas date from his first years as and director of church music in Leipzig, a position which he took up in 1723. 
Working for Leipzig's and , it was part of Bach's job to perform a church cantata every Sunday and holiday, conducting soloists, the Thomanerchor and orchestra as part of the church service. In his first years in Leipzig, starting after Trinity of 1723, Bach regularly composed a new cantata every week, although some of these cantatas were adapted (at least in part) from work he had composed before his Leipzig era. Works from three annual cycles of cantatas for the liturgical calendar have survived. These relate to the readings prescribed by the Lutheran liturgy for the specific occasion. He probably composed his last cantata in 1745.
In addition to the church cantatas composed for occasions of the liturgical year, Bach wrote sacred cantatas for functions like weddings or (the inauguration of a new town council). His secular cantatas, around 50 known works, less than half of which surviving with both text and music, were written for academic functions of the University of Leipzig, or anniversaries and entertainment among the nobility and in society, some of them (congratulatory cantatas) and (homage cantatas).
Bach's cantatas usually require four soloists and a four-part choir, but he also wrote solo cantatas (i.e. for one soloist singer) and dialogue cantatas for two singers. The words of Bach's cantatas, almost always entirely in German, consist mostly of 18th-century poetry, Lutheran hymns and dicta. Hymns were mostly set to their Lutheran chorale tune. His chorale cantata cycle contains at least 40 chorale cantatas, each of these entirely based on text and tune of such hymn.
Titles of the cantatas.
Although the German term "Bachkantate" (Bach cantata) became very familiar, Bach himself rarely used the title "Cantata" in his manuscripts. In , he wrote "Cantata à Voce Sola e Stromenti" ("Cantata for solo voice and instruments"). Another cantata in which Bach used that term is . Typically, he began a heading with the abbreviation "J.J." (, "Jesus, help"), followed by the name of the celebration, the beginning of the words and the instrumentation, for example in . Bach often signed his cantatas with SDG, short for ("glory to the only God" / "glory to God alone").
Bach often wrote a title page for the autograph score and copies of the original parts. For example, he titled the parts of "Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir", BWV 38, using a mix of languages to describe the occasion, the incipit, the precise scoring and his name: "Dominica 21. post Trinit / Aus tieffer Noth schrey ich zu dir. / â / 4. Voc. / 2. Hautbois. / 2. Violini. / Viola. / 4. Tromboni / e / Continuo. / di / Signore / J.S.Bach". The occasion for which the piece was performed is given first, in Latin: "" (21st Sunday after Trinity Sunday, with Trinit short for Trinitatem). The title follows, given in German in the orthography of Bach's time. The scoring and finally his name appear in a mix of French and Italian, the common languages among musicians at the time, partly abbreviated.
BWV number.
Bach wrote more than 200 cantatas, of which many have survived. In the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (BWV), Wolfgang Schmieder assigned them each a number within groups: 1–200 (sacred cantatas), 201–216 (secular cantatas), and 217–224 (cantatas of doubtful authorship). Since Schmieder's designation, several of the cantatas he thought authentic have been redesignated as "spurious." However, the spurious cantatas retain their BWV numbers. The List of Bach cantatas is organized by BWV number but sortable by other criteria.
Structure of a Bach cantata.
A typical Bach cantata of his first year in Leipzig follows the scheme:
The opening chorus () is usually a polyphonic setting, with the orchestra presenting the themes or contrasting material first. Most arias follow the form of a da capo aria, repeating the first part after a middle section. The final chorale is typically a homophonic setting of a traditional melody.
Bach used an expanded structure to take up his position in Leipzig with the cantatas , and , both in two parts, to be performed before and after the sermon () and during communion (). Each part is a sequence of an opening movement, five movements with alternating recitatives and arias, and a chorale. In an exemplary way both cantatas cover the prescribed readings: starting with a related psalm from the Old Testament, Part I reflects the Gospel and Part II the Epistle.
Bach did not follow any strict scheme but composed as he wanted to express the words. A few cantatas are opened by an instrumental piece before the first chorus, such as the Sinfonia of . A solo movement begins , because its first words speak of silence. Many cantatas composed in Weimar are set like chamber music, mostly for soloists, with a four-part setting only in the closing chorale, which may have been sung by the soloists. In an early cantata, , Bach marked a repeat of the opening chorus after the chorale.
The chorale can be as simple as a traditional four-part setting, or be accompanied by an instrument, or be accompanied by the instruments of the opening chorus or even expanded by interludes based on its themes, or have the homophonic vocal parts embedded in an instrumental concerto as in the familiar , or have complex vocal parts embedded in the concerto as in , in a form called "" (chorale fantasia). In , for the first Sunday in Advent, the beginning of a new liturgical year, he rendered the opening chorus as a French overture.
Singers and instrumentation.
Vocal.
Typically Bach employs soprano, alto, tenor and bass soloists and a four-part choir, also SATB. He sometimes assigns the voice parts to the dramatic situation, for example soprano for innocence or alto for motherly feelings. The bass is often the "vox Christi," the voice of Jesus, when Jesus is quoted directly, as in , or indirectly, as in .
In the absence of clear documentary evidence, there are different options as to how many singers to deploy per part in choral sections. This is reflected in the recordings discussed below. Ton Koopman, for example, is a conductor who has recorded a complete set of the cantatas and who favours a choir with four singers per part. On the other hand, some modern performances and recordings use one voice per part. Joshua Rifkin is well known is an advocate of this approach, although it has yet to be followed through in a complete set of cantatas. Nonetheless Bach would have had more singers available at Leipzig, for example, while the space in the court chapel in Weimar was limited. One size of choir probably does not fit all the cantatas.
Instrumental.
The orchestra that Bach used is based on string instruments (violin, viola) and "basso continuo," typically played by cello, double bass (an octave lower) and organ. A continuo bass is the rule in Baroque music; its absence is noteworthy and often has a special reason, such as describing fragility.
The specific character of a cantata or a single movement is rather defined by wind instruments, such as oboe, oboe da caccia, oboe d'amore, flauto traverso, recorder, trumpet, horn, trombone, and timpani. In movements with winds, a bassoon usually joins the continuo group.
Festive occasions call for richer instrumentation. Some instruments also carry symbolic meaning, such as a trumpet, the royal instrument of the Baroque, for divine majesty and three trumpets for the Trinity. In an aria of BWV 172, addressing the "Heiligste Dreifaltigkeit" (Most holy Trinity), the bass is accompanied only by three trumpets and timpani.
In many arias Bach uses obbligato instruments, which accompany the singer as an equal partner. These instrumental parts are frequently set in virtuoso repetitive patterns called figuration. Instruments include, in addition to the ones mentioned, organ, flauto piccolo (sopranino recorder), violino piccolo, viola d'amore, violoncello piccolo (a smaller cello), tromba da tirarsi (slide trumpet) and corno da tirarsi.
In his early compositions Bach also used instruments that had become old-fashioned, such as viola da gamba and violone. Alto recorders (flauti dolci) are sometimes used in connection with death and mourning as in .
Solo cantata.
Some cantatas are composed for a solo singer ("Solokantate"), as , for soprano, sometimes concluded by a chorale, as in , for bass.
Dialogue cantata.
Some cantatas are structured as a dialogue, mostly for Jesus and the Soul (bass and soprano), set like miniature operas. Bach titled them for example , concerto in dialogue. An early example is (1714). He composed four such works in his third annual cycle, (1725), , (both 1726), and (1727).
Text of Bach's sacred cantatas.
Within the Lutheran liturgy, certain readings from the Bible were prescribed for every event during the church year; specifically, it was expected that an from an Epistle and from a Gospel would be read. Music was expected for all Sundays and holidays except the quiet times ("tempus clausum") of Advent and Lent; the cantatas were supposed to reflect the readings. Many opening movements are based on quotations from the Bible, such as , from . Ideally, a cantata text started with an Old Testament quotation related to the readings, and reflected both the Epistle and the Gospel, as in the exemplary . Most of the solo movements are based on poetry of contemporary writers, such as court poet Salomon Franck in Weimar or Georg Christian Lehms or Picander in Leipzig, with whom Bach collaborated. The final words were usually a stanza from a chorale. Bach's Chorale cantatas are based exclusively on one chorale, for example the early , and most cantatas of his second annual cycle in Leipzig.
Periods of cantata composition.
The following lists of works (some marked as questioned) rely mainly on Alfred Dürr's "Die Kantaten von Johann Sebastian Bach." Usually the cantatas appear in the year of their first performance, sometimes also for later performances and then in brackets.
Mühlhausen.
Bach moved to Mühlhausen in 1707 when he was 22 to take up an appointment as the organist of St. Blasius church (). There is evidence suggesting that he composed a cantata as an audition piece for Mühlhausen, and this may have been . One or two more surviving cantatas may have been composed while Bach was at his previous post in Arnstadt, for example, .
A couple of the surviving cantatas can be firmly dated to his time in Mühlhausen. For example, , was composed for the inauguration of the town council in 1708. By Bach's own account, , was also composed at Mühlhausen. Other cantatas are assumed to date from this period:
Weimar.
Bach worked in Weimar from 1708. He composed a secular cantata, Was mir behagt, ist nur die muntre Jagd, BWV 208, in 1713. The composition of cantatas for the (court chapel) on a regular monthly basis started with his promotion to in March 1714. His goal was to compose a complete set of cantatas for the liturgical year within four years. The cantatas 54 and 199 were performed within the cycle but possibly composed earlier.
Köthen.
Bach worked in Köthen from 1717 to 1723, where he composed for example the "Brandenburg Concertos". He had no responsibility for church music, but his employer Prince Leopold did commission secular cantatas. Later in Leipzig, he derived several church cantatas from congratulatory cantatas, such as , for Easter from the birthday cantata . 
Even after he moved to Leipzig he retained his title of (that is director of music to the court at Köthen). He continued to compose for the court until Leopold's funeral in 1729. There is evidence that he reused musical material from works that he premiered in Leipzig in the 1720s, for example the secular cantata , believed to be have been composed to honour one of the Bach's academic colleagues in Leipzig, was the basis of a secular cantata with a text in honour of Leopold's second wife.
Leipzig.
In Leipzig Bach was responsible for the town's church music in the and and was head of the . Church cantata performances alternated in the two churches for ordinary Sundays and took place in both churches on high holidays such as Christmas, then one in the morning, one in the afternoon, and again alternating for the three days such an occasion was celebrated. Academic functions took place at the . There is debate whether Bach performed , there a week before he began his cantorate. Bach started it on the first Sunday after Trinity of 1723 and wrote a first annual cycle. Bach's major works such as the Passions and the Mass in B minor are inserted in the listing for comparison.
Second cantata cycle.
After Trinity of 1724 he started a second annual cycle of mainly chorale cantatas. The chorale was typically the chorale prescribed for that week ( or ). These cantatas were performed even after his death, according to Christoph Wolff probably because the well-known hymns were appealing to the audience.
The new cantatas Bach composed for Easter of 1725 and afterwards were not chorale cantatas:
Two of these, BWV 128 and BWV 68, both starting with a chorale fantasia, are sometimes seen as included in the chorale cantata cycle.
Other cantatas by Bach that are usually seen as belonging to the chorale cantata cycle:
For four further chorale cantatas it is unclear for which occasion they were composed, and whether they were intended to be added to the cycle:
Third to fifth year in Leipzig.
After Trinity of 1725 Bach began a third annual cycle, but with less consistency. The first cantata is written for the ninth Sunday after Trinity, but the following year he added a substantial work for the first Sunday after Trinity. The cycle extends over several years, although the cantatas from 1727 have been termed as "between the third and fourth cycles". Cantatas for some occasions are not extant.
Picander cycle of 1728–29.
There is some circumstantial evidence that a complete fourth cycle of Bach cantatas, in scholarship indicated as the Picander cycle, may have existed.
Extant cantatas of the fourth cycle:
Other cantatas and church music.
Not belonging to the foregoing:
Parodies.
Bach sometimes reused an earlier composition, typically revising and improving it in a process called parody. For example, a movement from a partita for violin, in ceaseless motion, was arranged as an orchestral sinfonia with the organ as solo instrument for the wedding cantata 120a and again in Cantata 29, for which the organ was accompanied by a full orchestra dominated by trumpets. Not only a single movement but a complete cantata was reworked from the Shepherd cantata , to become the "Easter Oratorio". Bach used parody to be able to deliver cantatas for Christmas, Easter and Pentecost, which were each celebrated for a period of three days. His Easter cantata , is a parody of six of eight movements of the cantata for New Year's Day, . Six movements of his congratulatory cantata , form the cantata for Pentecost Monday of 1724, , while a seventh movement was made part of the cantata for Pentecost Tuesday of 1725, .
Bach's four short masses are parodies of cantata movements; he used several movements of , for two of them. When he compiled his Mass in B minor, he again used many cantata movements, such as a part of , for the of the .
Oratorios.
Bach's oratorios can be considered as expanded cantatas. They were also meant to be performed during church services. Distinct from the cantatas, a narrator, the Evangelist, tells a story in the exact Bible wording, while soloists and the choir have "roles" such as Mary or "the shepherds", in addition to reflective chorales or arias commenting on the story. The "St Matthew Passion" and the "St John Passion" were intended to be performed on Good Friday, before and after the sermon. The six parts of the "Christmas Oratorio" were intended to be performed on six feast days of the Christmas season, each part composed as a cantata with an opening chorus (except in Part 2) and a closing chorale.
Performances by Bach.
Bach composed the cantatas and performed them, conducting from the keyboard. The choir was the Thomanerchor, which also served the other main churches of Leipzig for which Bach was responsible. Cantatas, under his personal direction, were performed in the Nikolaikirche and in the Thomaskirche, alternating on ordinary Sundays. On high feast days, the same cantata was performed in the morning in one of these churches, in a vespers service in the other.
Later performances and recordings.
After Bach's death the cantatas fell into obscurity even more than his oratorios. There is some evidence for the chorale cantatas being performed at Leipzig after Bach's death, but the cantatas were little known until a society called the Bach-Gesellschaft began to publish the composer's complete works starting in 1851. Only one of the cantatas, , had been published during Bach's lifetime. The cantata , was selected as the first work to appear in the "Bach-Gesellschaft-Ausgabe", the first complete edition.
In 1928, "The New York Times" reported the presentation in Paris of two secular Bach cantatas by opera soprano Marguerite Bériza and her company in staged productions, "The Peasant Cantata" and "The Coffee Cantata". In 1931 a recording was made of a performance of , in Barcelona.
The number of performances and recordings increased in the decades after the Second World War. In the early 1950s Fritz Lehmann recorded several cantatas with the Berliner Motettenchor and the Berlin Philharmonic. From 1953, Max Thurn conducted for the broadcaster NDR a series of Bach cantatas, with members of the NDR Chor and members of the NDR Sinfonieorchester. Karl Richter called his choir programmatically Münchener Bach-Chor in 1954 and recorded about a third of the cantatas.
Between 1958 and 1987, the London Bach Society, conducted by Paul Steinitz performed all the extant church and secular cantatas, 208 separate works, in various venues, mostly in the Church of St Bartholomew-the-Great, London. Diethard Hellmann called the (chorale) of the Christuskirche "Bachchor Mainz" in 1965 and produced more than 100 cantatas on a weekly basis with the Südwestrundfunk. Fritz Werner started recording with the Heinrich-Schütz-Chor Heilbronn and the Pforzheim Chamber Orchestra a series that they called "Les Grandes Cantates de J.S. Bach".
The Thomanerchor has sung a weekly cantata during the evening service on Saturday.
The cantatas are also regularly performed on Sundays at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, New York City, under the direction of the Cantor (currently Donald R. Meineke).
Complete recordings.
While individual cantatas were recorded as early as the 1930s, a complete set was not attempted until the 1970s when Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Gustav Leonhardt began recording the Teldec set. This 20-year collaboration used historical instruments, with boys' choirs and boy soloists for most soprano and a few alto parts. Harnoncourt conducted the Wiener Sängerknaben or the Tölzer Knabenchor and the Concentus Musicus Wien. Leonhardt conducted the Tölzer Knabenchor, Knabenchor Hannover and the Collegium Vocale Gent, and the ensemble Leonhardt-Consort. Helmuth Rilling, Gächinger Kantorei, and the Bach-Collegium Stuttgart completed a recording of the sacred cantatas and oratorios on Bach's 300th birthday, 21 March 1985. Ton Koopman and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra & Choir recorded all vocal works of Bach in 10 years starting in 1994, including the cantatas. Sir John Eliot Gardiner and his Monteverdi Choir undertook the Bach Cantata Pilgrimage, performing and recording in the year 2000 the sacred cantatas at churches all over Europe and in the United States. Sigiswald Kuijken has recorded "Cantatas for the Complete Liturgical Year" with La Petite Bande and the soloists forming the choir. Masaaki Suzuki commenced in 1995 a project to record the complete sacred cantatas with his Bach Collegium Japan for the Swedish label BIS; he completed the process in 2013. Pieter Jan Leusink recorded the complete cantatas in 15 months in 1999 and 2000 with the Holland Boys Choir and Netherlands Bach Collegium for Brilliant Classics.
The Fifth Gospel.
In 1929 the Swedish bishop Nathan Söderblom, a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, called Bach's cantatas the Fifth Gospel.
Bach cantatas listed in the first chapter of the "Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis" (1998).
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Further reading.
Links are found for the individual cantatas: