Hi John, List, world...
When I mentioned "text" I was mainly thinking of the scriptural
passages and maybe traditional hymns - indeed they are known in
advance - but I'd be pretty confident that Bach didn't have any
advance knowledge of where the pastor would go with it - just as
the pastor didn't have any advance knowledge of Bach's music -
but Bach had to balance the appropriateness of his texts with
the availability of musicians - sounds like quite a task - so
I'm thinking that maybe a lot of arias had to be transposed at
the last minute subject to the availability of voices. I'm
thinking that movements must also have often been deleted at the
last minute. I realize this is all conjecture, but I can't help
feeling like we've opened up a picture of Bach's creative
process - cantatas taking shape over a period of time in bach's
mind, with his knowledge of what texts would be used, and at the
end being written down for the musical forces at hand - there
was often a librettist involved, too. I'm not sure whether the
poets who wrote the cantata texts for particular movements also
put them together into librettos or not - if so, Bach's burden
was lighter. But Bach also had advanced students and family
members to lend a hand if need be. I'm guessing he didn't
put too much thought into the libretti.
The thing that ties a whole cantata together, structurally
speaking, is the basso continuo - that's the only part that's
always there. all the other voices and instruments come and go
from movement to movement. And the continuo would have probably
been played by Bach at the organ, maybe moving to the
harpsichord during solo movements. It would be no challenge for
him to produce something wonderful in the way of continuo
realizations impromptu - including obligato lines if need be -
maybe reinforcing the chorus - or helping out a soloist in
trouble - perhaps by transposing the movement. So the overall
burden on any particular musician wasn't so enormous - except
for Bach himself - the burden on Bach was monumental - he was
producer, director, accompanist and more, as well as composer.
And he also had other compositional responsibilities!
Joel
At 09:20 AM 07/06/2000 -0500, John Alexander Blyth wrote:
>The particular Sundays would have their traditional readings. I'm pretty
>sure the pastor would have stuck to religious matters rather than the
>social and political excursions one might expect of a 20th century
>Protestant minister. He would also likely have written it down and
>rehearsed it according to the principles of rhetoric, quite a while before
>the occasion. I think. john
>
>
>At 01:35 AM 7/6/00 -0700, you wrote:
>...>
> >What I'm wondering is how he managed to get it all to happen on
> >the right days. Most of the cyclical cantatas are for particular
> >sundays - based on the text that was being preached on that particular
> >day.... large task...
>
>John Blyth
>Baritono robusto e lirico
>Brandon, Manitoba, Canada
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