The prescribed pauses occasioned by the two Lenten periods came in handy, enabling Bach and his musicians to prepare for the demanding performance schedule from Christmas to Epiphany and for the outstanding musical event of the year, the Passion performance on Good Friday, followed by the three-day Easter holiday. According to Leipzig tradition, the ecclesiastical year comprised regular Sundays and various kinds of feast days: the high feasts of Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost (three days each, with the first two formally celebrated as high feasts), Ascension, the Marian feasts, St. John’s and St. Michael’s Days, and the Reformation Festival (see liturgical calendar in Appendix 4). The two Lenten periods extended from the first Sunday in Advent to Christmas and from Invocavit Sunday to Easter; regular Sundays were those from the first after Epiphany to Estomihi, from Quasimodogeniti to Exaudi, and from the first after Trinity to the twenty-seventh. Not celebrated as an ecclesiastical feast, the Monday after St. Bartholomaeus’s Day (August 24) was observed with a ceremonial service at St. Nicholas’s marking the annual election of the city council.
The cantata performance filled the niche as the principal music piece in the liturgy of the Mass, or main service, formerly occupied by the Gospel motet, which in the Lutheran tradition since the Reformation had functioned to enhance the reading of the Gospel. This motet, which immediately followed the Gospel lesson prescribed for the day according to the ancient proper of the Mass, generally highlighted one or more central verses from the Bible. In the later seventeenth century, the Gospel motet was replaced by a concertato motet with aria and chorale supplements and after 1700 by the cantata, at which time the multisectional cantata poetry moved from merely highlighting a passage from the biblical lesson to interpreting it as well. The theologian-poet Erdmann Neumeister initiated the development that resulted in the cantata’s function as a musical sermon. Therefore, all of Bach’s Leipzig cantata texts follow a standard pattern firmly grounded in the bifocal homiletic structure of a Lutheran sermon: explicatioand applicatio, biblical exegesis and theological instruction succeeded by practical and moral advice. The libretto ordinarily opens with a biblical dictum, usually a passage from the prescribed Gospel lesson that serves as a point of departure (opening chorus). It is followed by scriptural, doctrinal, and contextual explanations (a recitative-aria pair), leading to considerations of the consequences to be drawn from the lesson and the admonition to conduct a true Christian life (another recitative-aria pair). The text concludes with a congregational prayer in the form of a hymn stanza (chorale).
In his autograph score of “Nun komm der Heiden Heiland,” BWV 61, a Weimar cantata re-performed in Leipzig on the first Sunday in Advent—the traditional beginning of the ecclesiastical year—Bach wrote down the order of the service with the somewhat unusual particulars for this Sunday (concerted Kyrie without Gloria, omission of the Latin Credo, addition of the Litany):41
* * *
Order of the Divine Service in Leipzig on the First Sunday in Advent: Morning
(1) Preluding
(2) Motet
(3) Preluding on the Kyrie, which is performed throughout in concerted manner
(4) Intoning before the altar
(5) Reading of the Epistle
(6) Singing of the Litany
(7) Preluding on [and singing of] the Chorale
(8) Reading of the Gospel [crossed out: and intoning of the Creed]
(9) Preluding on [and performance of] the principal music [Haupt-Music]
(10) Singing of the Creed [Luther’s Credo hymn]
(11) The Sermon
(12) After the Sermon, as usual, singing of several verses of a hymn
(13) Words of Institution [of the Sacrament]
(14) Preluding on [and performance of] the music [i.e., another concerted piece]. After the same, alternate preluding and singing of chorales until the end of the Communion, and so on.
Bach’s notes provide welcome information on the function of the organ, which is generally not specified in the liturgical formularies. The organ introduced, by preluding, the singing of congregational hymns,42 but also played a prelude before the cantata in the key of its first movement, during which the instruments were tuned.43 At the same time, Bach’s list for this particular Sunday omits important details about the structure of the principal morning service in the Leipzig main churches (see Table 8.3); for example, no mention is made of the fact that major parts of the service, especially on high feasts (including Salutations, Collects, and Benedictions), were still conducted in Latin.44 The order of the services throughout the church year was officially prescribed in two important, complementary formularies: Vollständiges Kirchen-Buch of 1710 and AGENDA, Das ist, Kirchen-Ordnung of 1712. They were supplemented by two practical handbooks for the use of parishioners, Leipziger Kirchen-Andachten of 1697 and Leipziger Kirchen-Staat of 1710, and also by two major hymnals: the choral hymnal edited by Gottfried Vopelius, Neu Leipziger Gesangbuch…Mit 4. 5. bis 6. Stimmen of 1682 and the standard congregational hymnal, Das Privilegirte Ordentliche und Vermehrte Dreßdnische Gesang-Buch of 1725, containing words only but supplied with elaborate indices, lessons throughout the year, the Psalter, and other appendices.
TABLE 8.3. Order of the Mass (Amt) at Leipzig’s Main Churches
All hymns for the services—including those sung before and after the sermons—were traditionally selected by the cantor from the repertoire of the Dresden Gesangbuch, of which a revised and expanded version was published in 1725. It was Leipzig tradition since the Reformation that the morning sermon interpreted the Gospel and the afternoon sermon the Epistle, so that appropriate hymns could be chosen.45 In the late 1720s, however, a brief conflict flared up between Bach and Gottlieb Gaudlitz, then subdeacon at St. Nicholas’s, over the selection of hymns for the Vespers service (see Table 8.4). Gaudlitz claimed the right to choose the hymns before and after the sermon and also to select a new hymn not included in the Dresden Gesangbuch. Bach apparently resisted what he considered an improper appropriation, so Gaudlitz filed a complaint with the consistory, which in September 1728 issued written support for the subdeacon.46 Bach then protested to his own superiors, the city council, in the hope that this group, which often found itself at odds with the consistory anyway, would affirm
The customs hitherto followed at the public divine service, and not to make any innovations…. Among these customs and practices was the ordering of the hymns before and after the sermons, which was always left solely to me and my predecessors in the Cantorate to determine, in accordance with the gospels and the Dresden Gesang-buch based on the same, as seemed appropriate to the season and the circumstances…. Magister Gottlieb Gaudlitz has taken it upon himself to attempt an innovation and has sought, in place of the hymns chosen in accordance with the established use, to introduce others…. It maybe added that when, in addition to the concerted music, very long hymns are sung, the divine service is held up, and all sorts of disorder would have to be reckoned with; not to mention the fact that not a single one of the clergymen except Magister Gaudlitz, the Subdeacon, wishes to introduce this innovation.47
The subject of introducing new hymns came up again in a 1730 memorandum from the city council to superintendent Salomon Deyling, in which he was advised “that in the churches of this town…new hymns hitherto not customary, shall not be used in public divine services.” This unequivocal statement suggests that the cantor’s position had prevailed, at least regarding the introduction of new hymns. Bach’s general preferences for the traditional repertoire, with emphasis on the hymns written by Martin Luther and Reformation and post-Reformation poets, remains evident throughout his vocal works and organ chorales.
Although the cantor’s responsibility extended to all musical parts of the service, Bach’s major effort and greatest personal interest centered on the performance of the Haupt-Music, that is, the cantata. Before composing the cantata, he had to select its text and prepare it for publication in the form of booklets that the congregation could read before
or during the performance. These booklets, in conveniently small octavo format, contained the cantata texts for several Sundays in a row, usually six. Besides the libretto of the Christmas Oratorio, five such booklets have survived: (1) from the second Sunday after Epiphany to Annunciation, 1724; (2) from Easter Sunday to Misericordias Domini, 1724; (3) from the third to the sixth Sunday after Trinity, 1725; (4) from Easter Sunday to Misericordias Domini, 1731; and (5) from Whitsunday to Trinity, 1731.48 That twelve such booklets were needed per year gives us an inkling of the advance planning necessary for carrying out Bach’s musical program. Moreover, the booklets were apparently printed at the cantor’s expense and then, with the help of students or his own children, distributed to subscribers and other interested and more affluent citizens. The sales helped not only to recover the printing costs but also to secure some significant extra income that was then used to pay for additional musicians (particularly instrumentalists) and other performance-related expenses.49
TABLE 8.4. Order of the Vespers Service at the Leipzig Main Churches
Otherwise, the only regular stipend available to hire extra musicians, amounting to about 12 talers per annum, was provided by the city council for one or two students from the university to assist in Bach’s church performances; it was used especially to fill a need for bass singers in 1726–27, 1729, and 1745.50 But most of the vocal concertists were found among the alumni assigned to the first choir, an elite group consisting of the best twelve to sixteen singers. Their entry ages as resident choral scholars varied, but they usually began as thirteen-or fourteen-year-old sopranos,51 invariably with prior singing experience in other Latin school choirs, and they stayed for a maximum of eight years, usually two years per class. Because in the eighteenth century the change of voice occurred later than it does today,52 many of the boys could sing soprano for several more years. On entry, Bach judged his best singers to have a “good voice,” “fine voice,” “strong voice,” or “good strong voice,” and whoever had “a fine proficiency” or “hit the notes very prettily” was thus deemed secure in matters of intonation and sight reading, experienced in performance practices, and adept in proper musical expression.
The size of his vocal ensemble is defined by Bach in an important memorandum to the city council dated August 23, 1730 (“Short but Most Necessary Draft for a Well-Appointed Church Music”),53 which states that the fifty-five alumni of the school
are divided into 4 choirs, for the 4 churches in which they must partly perform concerted music with instruments, partly sing motets, and partly sing chorales. In the three churches, namely St. Thomas’s, St. Nicholas’s, and the New Church, the pupils must all be musical. St. Peter’s receives the residue, namely those who do not understand music and can only just barely sing a chorale.
Every musical choir should contain at least 3 sopranos, 3 altos, 3 tenors, and as many basses, so that even if one happens to fall ill (as very often happens, particularly at this time of the year, as the prescriptions by the school physician for the apothecary must show), at least a double-chorus motet may be sung. (N.B. Though it would be still better if the group were such that one could have 4 subjects on each voice and thus could provide every choir with 16 persons.)
Earlier in the same document, Bach specifies that
in order that the choruses of church pieces may be performed as is fitting, the vocalists must in turn be divided into 2 sorts, namely concertists and ripienists. The concertists are ordinarily 4 in number; sometimes also 5, 6, 7, even 8; that is, if one wishes to perform music for two choirs. The ripienists, too, must be at least 8, namely two for each part.
The instrumental ensemble available to Bach consisted of a core group of eight—that is, the salaried members of the town music company (four town pipers, three art fiddlers, and one associate)—which had remained stable in size for several generations and as such was entirely insufficient for the performance of cantatas (see Table 8.5).54 The number, however, is misleading, for in order to take advantage of their privileges of performing (outside their church and municipal obligations) for a fee at private civic functions, most town musicians maintained their own sub-band of family members, pupils, and associates.55 Although the regular income of the town musicians was not that high in absolute terms, they were the best-paid musicians in the city, with many opportunities for additional income beyond their fixed salary; as a result, every vacancy gave rise to a generous supply of applicants. Auditions were held and judged by Bach in his capacity as their immediate supervisor and on behalf of the city council, his voice also counting at promotions from art fiddler to town piper. Various testimonials written by Bach demonstrate the seriousness with which he was involved in the affairs of the town musicians. For example, when the aging town piper Gentzmer needed an official adjunct in 1745, Bach examined Carl Friedrich Pfaffe, who for three years had served as an associate, and testified that he “has taken his trial examination in the presence of the other Town Musicians; whereupon it was found that he performed quite well and to the applause of all those present on all the instruments that are customarily employed by the Town Pipers—namely Violin, Haubois, Flute Travers., Trompette, Waldhorn, and the remaining bass instruments—and he was found quite suited to the post of assistant that he seeks.”56
The astonishing range of skills that were expected of town musicians, especially at the rank of town piper, bespeaks the high degree of flexibility Bach enjoyed in making instrumental assignments. And the stability of the core group meant that Bach could shape his ensemble and its playing style very much to his liking. He actually experienced no change in personnel until 1730, when Christian Ernst Meyer accepted the post of tower watchman at St. Thomas’s (though he may still have been available to perform church music); the first major disruption occurred only when Bach’s virtuoso trumpeter, Gottfried Reiche, died in 1734. In general, Bach’s opportunities to appoint musicians of his choice to the ensemble were limited. Nevertheless, the overall resourcefulness of the company with its full complement of adjuncts and apprentices must have been considerable, judging by the combined inventories of instruments in the estates of the town pipers Rother, Gleditsch, and Oschatz: 2 trumpets, 2 timpani, 3 horns, 2 cornettos, 2 recorders, 4 oboes, 1 transverse flute, 1 piccolo flute, 6 violins, 2 violoncellos, and 1 violone (never mind that both St. Thomas’s and St. Nicholas’s each possessed its own set of church instruments).57
TABLE 8.5. The Leipzig Town Music Company, 1723–50
Bach himself, having grown up in a town piper’s household, would have been intensely aware of the potential and pitfalls to be encountered in a town music ensemble, and kept a wary eye on its quality and reliability. His Leipzig troupe, with a regular head count of about ten to fifteen, included adjuncts and apprentices who normally served as tutti players. More often than not, therefore, he would have needed to add expert instrumentalists to play solo parts and to serve as principals. These had to be recruited from among his own private pupils (both Thomana students and outsiders) and from the student body at the university, where he could always find able musicians who would perform for a regular fee or even for free—either in the hope of being paid for a future engagement or to earn a reduction in Bach’s fee for their lessons, or simply because they wanted to take part. A list of documented participants from 1723 to 1730 alone speaks for itself, as many of them would later pursue musical careers: Johann Christian Weyrauch, Georg Gottfried Wagner, Johann Friedrich Caroli, Friedrich Gottlieb Wild, Johann Christoph Samuel Lipsius, Ephraim Jacob Otto, Bernhard Friedrich Völkner, Christoph Gottlob Wecker, Carl Gotthelf Gerlach, Johann Friedrich Wachsmann, and Johann Christoph Hoffmann.58 Bach’s testimonial for Wild, written in 1727, reports that
during the four years that he has lived here at the University, [he] has always shown himself to be diligent and hardworking, in such a manner that he not only has helped to adorn our church music with his well-learned accomplishments on the Flaute traversiere and Clavecin but also has taken special instruction from me
in the clavier, thorough bass, and the fundamental rules of composition based thereon, so that he may on any occasion be heard with particular approval by musicians of attainment.59
Two years later, he wrote about Wecker “that his knowledge in Musicis has made him a welcome guest everywhere, particularly since he has a good command of various instruments and no less can well afford to make himself heard vocaliter, and equally he has been able to give creditable assistance in my church and other music.”60
Bach’s performances not only needed a sufficient number of performers, they also required that the musicians be extremely well trained, because he expected of them much more than they were used to providing. He expressly characterized this challenge when he wrote in 1736 that “the concerted pieces that are performed by the First Choir, which are mostly of my own composition, are incomparably harder and more intricate.”61 In addition to the technical demands, there was the problem posed by sheer quantity—having to deal week after week with one difficult piece after another, a relentless challenge no previous cantor had put before his musicians. Nevertheless, Bach carefully designed his performance schedule in such a way that he achieved a reasonable balance of what he could demand from himself and from others.
A brief consideration of the packed performance calendar for Bach’s first Christmas season in Leipzig reveals, on the one hand, his interest in presenting an extraordinary citywide musical program, and on the other, his awareness of what was doable and what was not (see Table 8.6). To begin with, he started on the first Sunday in Advent and on Christmas Day with repeat performances of Weimar cantatas (including BWV 63), so that he had more time before Christmas to compose new works, among them the Magnificat in E-flat major, BWV 243a, his first large-scale vocal work for Leipzig, and the cantatas BWV 40, 64, 190, 153, 65, and 154—all to be prepared and then performed within a span of two weeks. The lavish and differentiated scoring for the works on the high feast days is immediately apparent: BWV 63 is Bach’s biggest Weimar score, the Magnificat is his heretofore biggest Leipzig score and the only five-voiced concerted piece before the Mass in B minor, and the cantatas BWV 40, 190, and 65 are carefully scaled. At the same time, he designed the cantatas for the lesser feasts in such a way as not to strain the choir unduly. For example, the difficult opening chorus of the cantata BWV 64 for the third day of Christmas has instruments (cornetto and trombones) supporting the choristers by doubling their parts, an expedient that would compensate for the lack of rehearsal time. Similarly, the cantata BWV 153 for the Sunday after New Year’s Day and BWV 154 for the Sunday after Epiphany require the choir to sing only simple four-part chorales.
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