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I am glad to inform you that I have just finished to upload to the BCW a complete set of Danish commentaries on all Bach Cantatas & Other Vocal Work, prepared and contributed by Lars Brix Nielsen.
This concert guide presents for the first time ever all of J.S. Bach's cantatas and passions in chronological order. This means that one can now orient themselves to the works and listen to them in roughly the order in which they were composed. That form itself provides many new insights.
Each entry begins with the cantata's original German title followed by its BWV number. That is, its number in the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis work directory. Thus, all the works are listed as, for example, Nach dir, Herr, verlanget mic (BWV 150), which is believed by many to be J.S. Bach's earliest cantata.
Then the point states Time and place when and where the work was first played. Some cantatas are uncertain in dating, but the vast majority have - quite impressively - been dated precisely, although it is approx. 300 years ago, they were composed.
The Text Author item contains references to scripture passages in the Bible, to hymns of a wide variety of German hymn poets, and to the writers who, over the years, supplied the texts by which J.S. Bach was inspired to write his immortal music. Often his music is more immortal than the lyrics, but there are also good writers in between. However, many of the cantatas only have texts of "unknown".
Crew gives the reader and listener an impression of which solo voices, choral voices and instruments are heard in the particular cantata. The information is not intended as a statement in a debate about how many singers J.S. Bach had on each voice, whether to use boy soprano as soloists, or whether it is good or bad with male singers who have trained the vocal to sing the alto vocals.
Likewise, it is not the intention to go into an assessment of whether J.S. Bach's cantatas sound best with modern instruments or with "original instruments". Finally, the term "continuo" is difficult, because how many musicians does it include exactly? In principle, a chordal instrument (harpsichord, organ or lute) and a bass instrument (bassoon, cello or double-bass) are required, but J.S. Bach is believed to prefer a rather full-fledged continuo group. Some questions about voice types, instruments and continuo groups are dealt with in the professional literature referred to in Read more after the text about each cantata.
In the individual movements the music is presented, and often all or part of the text is translated into Danish. It has been important to the author that all movements get a few words along the way. Many concert guides in German and English have the ability to jump easily and elegantly over everything that happens in the recitatives It may not be the greatest moments musically, but the recitatives are both concatenated and form part of an overall understanding of what is going on during a J.S. Bach cantata. Normally, reference numbers are included, but in some cantatas the term "versus" is used, which is Latin and means "verse" about the cantata's individual parts.
As part of the concert manager's form consists of experiencing the cantatas as chapters in J.S. Bach's development as a composer, it is also important that the scientific documentation of when the works were composed is in place. In Read more, reference is made to the main works on J.S. Bach by German musicologist Alfred Dürr, British conductor John Eliot Gardiner and American musicologist Christoph Wolff. It is on the basis of the information of one or more of these authors that the cantatas here are sorted chronologically.
In addition, references to other literature on the cantata or passion can be found.
The Danish commentary pages, marked as Nielsen [Danish], are linked from the Index to Commentary pages:
Commentaries on Cantatas:
- Cantatas BWV 1-50
- Cantatas BWV 51-100
- Cantatas BWV 101-150
- Cantatas BWV 151-200
- Cantatas BWV 201-224
Commentaries on Other Vocal Works BWV 225-524
And from the main pages of each Cantata in the line Commentaries.
Sincerely,
Aryeh Oron
Webmaster of Bach Cantatas Website (BCW)
https://www.bach-cantatas.com/
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