March 30, Good Friday: The second version of the St. The Easter Oratorio was rewritten from a previous work, but every single cantata Bach wrote after that was newly composed that year, 1725. All the links in this following list refer to my own blog posts from 2018. So let’s look at what this possibly exhausting period looked like for Bach in 1725. Going forward, this year, I would like to keep following his cantata compositions from 1725.
I would like to go back to my posts from the spring of 2018, when I was following Bach’s writing in the spring of 1725. It was perhaps not as non-stop as the Christmas season, but it was much longer in time, and more laden with decision-making, so possibly more draining for the composer. While working like this for two weeks in a row does sound crazy to us, we can still relate to it, because the Christmas season is often busy for most of us too.īut especially because of this wanting or needing to relate, I think we often forget that there was another period in the year for Bach in Leipzig that was equally busy: the time from Easter to Trinity. On the holidays, he would often perform the cantatas twice, once in the St. We tend to think that Christmas was the busiest time for Bach in Leipzig, writing cantatas for the three (!) Christmas Days, New Year’s Day, Epiphany, AND all the Sundays that fell in between those days. Find my blog post about these same cantatas, highlighting completely different aspects of the pieces, here. If you don’t feel like reading a long blog post and just want to learn about this Sunday’s cantatas, please watch Rudolf Lutz’ wonderful lecture/improvisation from 2020 about Cantata 44 and 183 here. Trade Fair traffic entering Leipzig, 1820s. Stay tuned for a discussion of this year’s online version of Bachfest Leipzig: “ Bach’s Messiah,” which will take place from June 11 to 15. I’ll pick up the 1725 thread on August 1st, the 9th Sunday after Trinity, for which Bach finally picked up his pen again, writing Cantata 168 Tue Rechnung! Donnerwort. Bach thought that after two cycles of cantatas in Leipzig (from Trinity 1723 to Trinity 1725) he had created a sufficient amount of music to be used during church services that he didn’t necessarily need to write a new cantata for each Sunday.Judging from some of Telemann’s letters that did survive, he could make a good pitch. Oh, how we all wish that the correspondence between Bach and Telemann had survived! They were good friends since Bach’s Weimar years. Telemann had begged Bach to bring some of his cantatas to the attention of the Leipzig congregations and Bach’s Leipzig orchestra members.
Bach was exhausted from the 1725 Easter to Trinity season – read more about this in my previous post.Wer sich rachet, an dem wird sich der Herr wider rachen (TVWV 1:1600), on July 8.Der Segen des Herrn machet reich ohne Muhe (TVWV 1:310), on July 1.Gelobet sei der Herr, der Gott Israel (TVWV 1:596), on June 24.Instead, he performed three cantatas by Telemann that summer: Judging by the cantatas that are left to us, Bach didn’t write any church cantatas during the months of June and July in 1725.
My last post that year was about this Sunday, Trinity Sunday. In 2018, I was following Bach’s writing in 1725. The Holy Trinity: Son (Jesus), Father (God), and Holy Ghost (depicted by a pigeon) by Hendrick van Balen the Elder (Flemish), 1620s.