The Leipzig Period and Cantatas

 Leipzig was a flourishing commercial city in 1723, 30.000 inhabitants, one of Europe’s oldest
university, a theater and an opera house.
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdmcabpiGYU
 He succeeded Johann Kuhnau as a music director in Leipzig - First choice for this position was
Telemann (1681-1767) (a more “modern musician”) and Christoph Graupner
Listening Example: Telemann Sonata No.2 (1730), Soave (first mov.) – Sonata form – See
Historical Anthology of Music, Davison, Apel, Harvard University Press. Vol. 2, page 187.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hiTCLc7No4
 Bach worked at two most important churches: St. Nicolas and St. Thomas
 Bach and his family lived in an apartment in the part of the school in St. Thomas
 He was the “Cantor of Saint Thomas and Director of Music of Leipzig”
 He had to teach 4 hours a day (music and Latin) and to prepare music for the churches
 The Church service:
o There were 3 short services in addition to the principle one
o The Principle service included: a motet, Lutheran Mass (Kyrie and Glorie only),
hymns and a cantata on alternate Sundays
 Motet: In Bach’s time motet meant: A piece for chorus, in
contrapuntal style on biblical or chorale text. The motets in Leipzig
were short and served to introduce the service.
 Performers:

o There were four choirs that were categorized according to the level of their
members. The first choir was the best one which performed the cantatas which were
conducted by the cantor.

o Orchestra: Members were partly from school, partly form town (stadtpfeifer), and
partly from collegium musicum of the conservatory.

Stadt Pfeifer
A professional musician employed by civic authorities. The term has been used in
German-speaking countries since the late 14th century (der statt pfiffer, 1378, Berne)
along with Ratsmusicus (Ratsmusikant), Stadtmusicus (Stadtmusikant), Instrumentist,
Kunstpfeifer and Zinkenist and is equivalent to the English ‘town wait’. Earlier titles
include speleman dere stat (1227, 1265, Brunswick), figellatori consulum (1335,
Lüneburg), des Rades Trometer (1339, Bremen), Stadtspielman or Stad spellude
(before 1401, Lüneburg). From the 17th century the Prinzipal of a town band was
sometimes also given the title Director der instrumentalen Musik or
Stadtmusikdirektor. While in smaller communities the position was usually held by a
master together with his apprentices and journeymen, the larger cities had up to ten
civic musicians of equal rank.
Heinrich W. Schwab www.oxfordmusiconline.com
 Collegium musicum’ generally denotes an organized association of music lovers and
amateur musicians that holds regular meetings for the performance of music.
Collegia musica were characteristic of bourgeois musical life from the 16th century to
the 18th; during that period they occupied a position between institutionalized
church music and the music of the princely courts. Emil Platen/Iain Fenlon
www.oxfordmusiconline.com

o Orchestra: 2fl., 2 ob., 2. bassoon, 3tr., timp., strings and continuo.

 Church Cantatas
o A new late Baroque genre started around 1700.
o Started in the west part of Saxony in Thuringia – North Central part of the
German Speaking Empire – then spread to Lutheran cities – Leipzig and Dresden
were in the electorate of Saxony
o Elector of Saxony converted to Catholic religion in 1697 in order to become the
king of Poland – the central part of Saxony influenced by Italian church music –
The Lutheran parts of Saxony created a new genre inspired by Italian Opera – its
power to inspire strong emotions that can lead the congregation to receive
Gospel and accept salvation.
o Order of Devine Service in Leipzig on the first Sunday in Advent (there are 4
Sundays before Christmas). See the vignette on page 398 NHWM in the 6 th
edition
o Subjects are linked to the content Gospel reading that preceded the cantata.
o Leipzig churches required:
 58 cantatas each year
 Passion music for Good Friday
 Passion: The North German tradition of Passion (The story of the
Crucifixion as recorded in the Gospels of Matthew) settings in
oratorio style.
 The St.Matthew Passion, BWV 244 for double chorus, soloists,
double orchestra and two organs which includes chorales, a
duet, many arias, arioso recitatives and narration in recitative
with the help of the chorus.
 Magnificats at Vespers for three festivals
 An annual cantata for the installation of the city council
 Occasional music for funeral motets and wedding cantatas

o Neumeister Cantatas
 According to Neumeister: “a segment out of an opera” – a relatively
short work consisting of recitatives and arias
 They were performed before the sermons-comment on the proceeding
biblical readings
 Cantata text follows an outline of a sermon: presentation and
interpretation of a biblical passage
 Starting with the earliest cantata cycles he used vocal ensembles
  His earliest cantatas were set to music by: Johann Philip Krieger, P.h.
Erlebach, Telemann

Erdmann Neumeister(b Uichteritz, nr Weissenfels, 12 May 1671; d Hamburg, 18 Aug

1756). German poet and theologian. The son of a schoolmaster, he received his
education at Schulpforta and the university in Leipzig, where he matriculated in 1689 to
study both theology and literature. After the completion in 1695 of his inaugural
dissertation, a critical bibliography of 17th-century German poets, he was appointed
Magister legens at the university and delivered a series of lectures on poetry that year.
These lectures were published without his permission in 1707 by Christian Friedrich
Hunold (‘Menantes’) under the title Die allerneueste Art, zur reinen und galanten Poesie
zu gelangen. Neumeister began his career as a pastor in Bad Bibra from 1697 to 1704; he
also served in Weissenfels (1704–6) and Sorau (1706–15) before becoming head pastor
at the Jacobikirche in Hamburg (1715), where he remained until his retirement in 1755.
Neumeister considered himself both a poet and a theologian. Although his early poetry
shows some influence of Pietism, in his theological writings he took a strongly polemical
stand against it. His importance for music history lies in the nine cycles of cantata texts
that he wrote between 1695 and 1742, each containing texts for all the Sundays of the
church year and many extra feasts. His first cycle was complete at the time of the poetry
lectures, and two cantatas from it appear in Die allerneueste Art as examples of his genre
‘oratorio’, which is made up of biblical verses and poetic aria texts, occasionally also a
chorale. This type of cantata had been widely cultivated in Germany since about 1680,
and Neumeister could have become acquainted with it in the works of Johann Schelle,
who was Thomaskantor in Leipzig while he was there. J.P. Krieger, Kapellmeister at
Weissenfels, composed cantatas for chorus and soloists on these texts beginning in 1696,
of which one, Rufet nicht die Weisheit, is still extant; this cycle of texts was not published,
however, until 1726.
Neumeister’s next cycle was radically different. These he specifically called cantatas, and
they consisted entirely of madrigalesque poetry for recitative and aria in the manner of
the Italian secular cantata or, as he put it in the 1695 lectures, ‘a piece out of an opera’.
Krieger set 79 cantatas from this cycle and performed them at Weissenfels, beginning in
1702; unfortunately, none is extant, but Krieger’s performance records indicate that they
were almost all for solo voice. The texts were published separately as librettos and
collectively in 1704, becoming Neumeister’s first published cycle (one example in
Flemming). C.C. Dedekind had previously composed similar texts, but they had not been
set to music (Steude, 1994).
Neumeister’s fame rests on his combination of these two types of text into the newer
mixed cantata, which became standard in the 18th century. Although others may have
combined these elements earlier, including Count Ernst Ludwig of Meiningen (Küster,
1987), it was Neumeister’s third cycle – prepared for the court at Eisenach, published in
1711 and set to music by G.P. Telemann – that established the new genre. Bach drew his
Neumeister texts (for bwv 18, 24, 28, 59 and 61) from the third and fourth cycles. Other
composers who set entire cycles of Neumeister texts included P.H. Erlebach, G.H. Stölzel
and J.P. Käfer.
Kerala J. Snyder www.oxfordmusiconline.com

o Bach and Cantata:

 He composed 5 cycles deriving from Neumeister type
 All of Bach’s positions were in Saxony in Thuringia or close to that region
see the explanations next to the map on page 443 NHWM; new cantata
emerged in his youth
 He began to write cantatas when he became the concertmeister at
Weimar
 In Cöthen the prince was a Calvinist – no cantatas
  In Leipzig, he neglected his teaching duties to compose and perform
cantatas and other church music.
 In his second year in Leipzig 1724-25, dominated by chorale cantatas

o Chorale Cantatas
 First and last stanza of the chorale text used in the first and last
movements of the work with the chorale melody.
 Interior movements: text-paraphrases of the chorale stanzas, free verse
for recitatives, designed poetic meters for arias. Music –freely composed
with incorporations of the chorale melody.
 The chorale texts and melodies are used in many different ways
 Wachet auf – 1731
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC35GS88OqA

 It was composed for the 27th Sunday after trinity (special day for
Lutheran church year), which occurred only twice in Bach’s
Liepzig period.
 The subject is linked to the Gospel read at the Sunday service,
about the ten virgins who watch by night for the arrival of the
bridegroom (Jesus).
 The stanzas of the chorale text by Philip Nikolai the remaining
text by unknown author.
Opening chorus:
-Orchestral ritornello (includes 4 different sections – resembling
the Vivaldi’s ritornellos)
- A - first A of the stolen corresponds to the first 3 lines of the
chorale
- Ritornello
- A - second A of the stolen corresponds to lines 4-6 of the
chorale
- Ritornello
- B Absegang corresponds to the lines 7-12 of the chorale. In the
9th line, the alleluia section, the chorus sings the motives of the
ritornello in a fugal texture.
- Ritornello
Secco Recitative (not based on the chorale text)
Aria Duet
Chorale: The second stanza of the chorale in gallant style. It uses
the same chorale melody. 2 stolen and absegang
Aria Duet: In Da capo form in gallant style
Recitative Accompagnato
Chorale: Third stanza of the chorale. It uses the same chorale
melody. 2 stolen and absegang.
  Listen and study NAWM 105 BWV 62
http://bilkent.naxosmusiclibrary.com/catalogue/item.asp?
cid=SDG162

o Mass in B Minor
 His only complete setting of the Catholic Mass Ordinary – assembled
between 1747 – 1749 – most of the music composed earlier
 He had already presented the Kyrie and Gloria to the Catholic Elector of
Saxony – in hopes of getting an honorary appointment to the electoral
chapel.
 Many sections quote from his earlier music. The several movements are
from choruses from cantatas. In which the German words are replaced
by Latin words
 The Confiteor is in the stile antico which uses a Gregorian chant melody
as a cantus firmus with a quasi-ostinato bass accompaniment. In the
adagio section the cantus firmus drops out and the music becomes
intensely chromatic and dissonant symbolizes the death defeated by the
resurrection.

St Matthew Passion BWV 244: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwVW1ttVhuQ