Bach, J.S. / Hoffmann / Telemann: Alto And Tenor Cantatas, Bwv 35, 55, 160, 189

Description

J. S. Bach (1685-1750) G. P. Telemann (1681-1767) M. Hoffmann (c. 1679-1715) Sacred Cantatas for Alto and for Tenor False attributions have not been unusual in the history of music. Some of these may be ascribed to the commercial sense of publishers, anxious to market their wares. This, however, is less likely to be the case in works of the late baroque period, where incorrect attributions may be put down to a general similarity of current musical language and practice, and, in the present case, to the fact that Bach, like others in his position, would copy out works that he admired or for which he had a use in the course of his employment. The present recording includes two solo sacred cantatas by Bach, one now correctly ascribed to his close contemporary Telemann, and another conjecturally to Melchior Hoffmann. The career of Johann Sebastian Bach had not been exclusively in the service of the church, and after early employment as an organist he had spent a happy time at Cothen from 1717 to 1723 as Court Kapellmeister to the young Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cothen. The prince's marriage to a woman who did not share his musical enthusiasm led Bach to seek a position elsewhere, and this he found in his appointment as Thomaskantor in Leipzig. There, as an employee of the city council, he had responsibility for the music of the principal churches of the city, coupled with teaching duties in the choir school where he and his family had their quarters. He retained his place in Leipzig for the rest of his life. By 1730 he had found an additional field of musical activity in his work with the semi-professional university collegium musicum, an ensemble that had weekly meetings and was called on to provide music for a variety of occasions. The first years in Leipzig, however, brought the need to provide a regular supply of music for the church, and this he met by the composition of five annual cycles of cantatas for every Sunday and feast day in the Lutheran church year. The quantity of such compositions may seem unusual, until compared with that of other composers under a similar obligation. There were musicians who were able to provide more than five cycles of such works, and Telemann himself, a prolific composer in many genres, wrote four cycles, in addition to other cantatas. The cantata, an Italian title seldom used by Bach himself, had come to play an important part in services of Sundays and feast days, performed before the lengthy sermon and generally related to the gospel of the day in its text in a service that would normally last some four hours. The Cantata 'Geist und Seele wird verwirret', BWV 35, belongs to Bach's varied third annual cycle, provided for use first in 1726. The text is taken from the annual cycle of texts by Georg Christian Lehms, published in 1711 in his Gottgefalliges Kirchen-Opffer and the setting was written for the twelfth Sunday after Trinity in 1726. In the music Bach has recourse to an earlier Cothen composition