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William L. Hoffman wrote (March 21, 2015):
Early Wedding Works: Wedding-Quodlibet, BWV 524
Two of Bach’s earliest vocal works are wedding pieces composed in Mühlhausen: his secular Wedding-Quodlibet, BWV 524, and his sacred vocal concerto, BWV 196, “Der Herr denket an uns und segnet uns” (The Lord thinks of us and blesses us), although there is no firm evidence that either was presented at Bach’s wedding to Maria Barbara, 17 November 1707 in Dornheim. The latter is a biblical setting of Psalm 115:12:5 in traditional old-style. The former is both a most unusual composition with a mixture of earthy texts of narrative and commentary, as well as a study of his compositional interests and his involvement in the Bach Family tradition. Meanwhile, neither is connected to the 1708 “Stauber-Wedemann wedding, surely another music-making opportunity for the members of the Bach family,” says Christoph Wolff, while the latter was “suitable for the small Dornheim church.” 1
The Quodlibet survives in a score in Bach’s hand datable to 1707/08 while Cantata 196 survives in a copy made after Bach’s death. Scored for SATB and continuo and lasting about 11 minutes,1a this Quodlibet is potpourri of music and text discovered less than a hundred years ago, first explored in the early 1950s when modern Bach scholarship began, and finally about 2000 first studied and recorded extensively.
The annual gatherings of the wider Bach family in Erfurt, Arnstadt or Eisenach have long been the subject of interest and Bach’s Quodlibet embodies these annual celebrations. The event was “generally planned some time in advance” with “much music-making associated with weddings” observes Robin Leaver in his recently-published Bach research reference book.2 The observance included the couples’ processions to the church, the church service, and a “celebratory banquet and dance that might extend over two days.” Bach’s fragmentary Quodlibet, lacking the first and last pages, follows quite a tradition of its own and “was almost certainly intended for a wedding banquet,” says Leaver.
Bach’s music “seems to confirm that the annual Bach gatherings, at least on some occasions, did take place when such ecclesiastical rites of passage were being observed,” says Leaver (Ibid.: 146). The wedding Quodlibet, as well as the “more refined quodlibet in the Goldberg Variations. BWV 988 (variation 30, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_58R5g0xDsk), “is clearly light-hearted and humorous, as most of them were, but not exclusively so,” says Leaver, first citing Nikolaus Forkel’s description of quodlibets sung by the Bachs, but then showing Michael Praetorius’ much earlier definition.3 A third Sebastian Bach quodlibet is found in the Canonic Variations in which four lines of the chorale melody Vom Himmel hoch are combined together in BWV 769a/3 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l75O38jA538), Leaver points out (Ibid.: 147).
Quodlibet Origin, Bach Influences
Quodlibets began by using and mixing lines of German text from sacred motets, secular madrigals, and songs both sacred (chorales) and profane (folk songs), sometimes mixing them. Citing examples of chorale quodlibets and improvised combinations of chorales, as well as Bach’s use of multiple chorales in the same cantata (BWV 127), Leaver suggests that “when the Bachs came together for their family gatherings, they very possibly sang more than just one chorale at the beginning of their proceedings, and that their quodlibets were not exclusively jocular and secular but may well have been based on different chorales similar to the examples given by [Michael] Praetorius,” Leaver concludes (Ibid.:147f).
Further, Bach in his earliest Mühlhausen Cantatas 131 and 106 used chorale melodies with poetic texts (tropes), a Renaissance tradition. Early in the Reformation, mixed — sometimes satirical — songs evolved with layered rhythms, texts, and chorale melodies set by Martin Luther colleagues Heinrich Isaac, Thomas Stoltzer, Johann Walther, and Ludwg Senfl.4 The song topics include love, nature, soldiers and servants. In fact, some German hymns like the Passion chorale, “O sacred head now wounded,” evolved as contrafactions from Middle Ages drinking songs and other profane sources (Carmina Burana), used with new Latin texts as peasant teaching devices in Catholic Services.
4 See "In the middle of life 1517 (500 years of Reformation),” https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=https://www.amazon.de/Mitten-Leben-1517-Jahre-Reformation/dp/B01NA6OK31&prev=search.
Bach’s Quodlibet, BWV 524, shows some if its sacred influences in short passages sung as chorale melodies or hymns and has a passage near the end, the Latin passage Dominius Johannes (Master John), set palmodically as a parody of ecclesiastical chant (see below, “Quodlibet as Musical Theatre?”). The actual performance date and location is unknown but it dates to his Mühlhausen period, August 1707 to 14 July 1708, reports Leaver (Ibid.: 491f). The occasion and dating are possibly for a wedding in the Bach family or circle of friends (cf. G. Kraft, Bach Jahrbuch (1956), pp. 140-154); between 18 September and 17 October 1707?, Erfurt?, cited in Z. Philip Ambrose, English translation with textual footnotes, http://www.uvm.edu/~classics/faculty/bach/BWV524.html; German text (poet unknown), https://webdocs.cs.ualberta.ca/~wfb/cantatas/524.html.
Since its first publication in 1931, Bach “Wedding Quodlibet” has been subject to all manner of research and speculation, including the possibility that he composed it for his own wedding to Maria Barbara in 1707. Werner Neumann in his forward to the 1973 GDR publication (See FN1) cites “circumstances that weight against this”: the couple would have been the main target of jokes and references” while “a dozen people appear in it who may have belonged at least to the wider Bach family circle.” Bach’s “careful notation” probably was set down after the festivities as a recollection of the original improvised composition (an ex tempore musical play) and probably sent to the wedded couple later on.” Neumann suggests that the worked-out libretto of reminiscences may have been the work of Johann Friedrich Treiber, headmaster of the Arnstadt Lyceum.
Günther Kraft in the Afterward to the 1973 edition, provides extensive source-critical factual evidence of the background of the “Wedding Quodlibet.” He lists a catalog various communities associated with the work: Arnstadt and neighboring Dornheim sources, Erfurt people, Mühlhausen manuscript paper, and Eisenach (Bach’s birthplace) names and places. Kraft also points out the musical-textual elements such as echoes of folklore, Thuringian catch-singing and peasant spoonerisms, carousing, food traditions, irregular counterpoint, special and colloquial speech, and suggests a “chorale parody followed the [closing] ‘schöne Fugue’.”
Bach’s work also is known as “Der Back Trog” (The Baker’s Tub) and “alludes to a small vessel which bridegroom wishes to use for amatory adventures” says Wolfgang Marx. 4a “The 272 extant bars also depict in veiled form the career of the bride and groom and allude to the wedding guests.” The first performance may have been in Erfurt for the wedding of Daniel Friedrich Fuchs and Salome Römer (or ?Sedel, Bach’s sister) between 18 September and 17 October 1707.
Bach’s Quodlibet Musical Description
A description of the music is by Thomas Braatz is found in the BCML General Discussions (December 9, 2004; http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Vocal/BWV524-Gen.htm). <<The Quodlibet. Bach had composed two quodlibets that have come down to us. They are BWV 524 "Was seind das für große Schlösser" for 4 voices (SATB) and continuo (a fragment-this composition will be up for discussion during the week of December 19) and the more famous 30th variation of the Goldberg Variations BWV 988/30. The latter alludes successively or simultaneously to a number of popular melodies. As Peter Williams in his "The Goldberg Variations" [Cambridge University Press, 2001] puts it: "In any case, as with tunes of this kind popular far and wide, phrases probably migrated from one song to another, and it could well be part of the fun for No. 30 (as for the 'Peasant Cantata') to have the player search for them. Once again, the idea is not so very different from something found elsewhere in mature Bach: the 'Search and ye shall find' canons in the 'Musical Offering." (p. 90)
Here we have evidence for:
1. Bach's intention to make the player and/or listener search for and attempt to recognize all the tunes that Bach was able to compose into this variation, a variation which he simply entitled "Quodlibet" without divulging any of the allusions.
2. Bach deliberately hides musical materials in his compositions, leaving it up to the performer/listener to decipher/recognize which melodies are being alluded to.
3. Bach provides musical puzzles in which information in the form of recognizable melodies can be obtained only by solving the puzzle, i. e., listening carefully, even studying the score, in order to locate the hidden musical solution.
4. Bach addresses the performers/listeners on many levels simultaneously. Obviously the composition will sound like good music, even if the hidden aspects have not been uncovered, but there is a definite enhancement in playing/listening pleasure upon making the discovery personally without having the composer spell it out in all of its details. [Peter Williams indicates another level of possible allusions besides the usual "Kraut und Rüben" folk song which he compares with Frescobaldi's 'Bergamasca' in his 'Fiori musicali' of 1635 (with which Bach was acquainted and which Williams claims has a comparable "handling of imitation, different themes, beautiful harmonic turns, natural melodiousness, contrapuntal combination and changes of metre" (p. 91) to that of the Goldberg Variations in general and the 30th variation in particular.]>>
Quodlibet as Musical Theatre?
The off-color humor, theatricality, dramatic gesture and rhetoric, and other traits are discussed in Douglas Cowling’s commentary to the BCML Discussions (Ibid.) in the Week of July 11, 2010. << Commentary: The Quodlibet as Musical Theatre? This remarkable work is generally ignored because it is so unlike anything else in Bach¹s oeuvre. In fact, if we didn’t have the so-called “Peasant” (BWV 212) and “Coffee” (BWV 211) cantatas to show a little context, it would be hard to imagine The Great Composer indulging in such light-hearted, ephemeral music that often brushes the line of good taste. The closest examples are the many satirical off-colour canons and songs that Mozart wrote throughout his career. I suspect that both Bach and Mozart would be astonished that this flotsam and jetsam survived to be solemnly discussed by us.
Most commentators have focused on the quodlibet form and attempted to identify the various melodies in the work: most dismiss it in a footnote to the more famous quodlibet in the “Goldberg Variations” (BWV 988). I was struck by the theatricality of the piece and was reminded of the ensemble finales in several Mozart operas. The vaudeville that closes The Abduction from the Seraglio and the buffo elements in the Act 1 finale of The Marriage of Figaro came to mind (The patter of Figaro and Alfonso and the running thirds of the Countess and Susanna are all prefigured here.)
Although there is no dramatic narrative, the piece is full of dramatic gesture and rhetoric. The text may be nonsense, but the “characters” engage in dialogue, agreeing and disagreeing, expressing individual “opinions” and joining forces in argument. On the opening page, the soprano asks a question and the other voices debate the answer, moving with quicksilver ease from solo to duet to quartet. None of it makes any sense, but it feels like characters in a drama. Nowhere else did Bach attempt such fluidity of ensemble writing.
A couple of other moments are positively operatic. At “O ihr Gedanken,” the tenor begins an expressive adagio that is constantly interrupted by the other singers’ impatient interjections of “Back trog!”, as if they are poking a character on stage. In the allegro section, which follows, the musical lines fly from solos, to duets, to trios to quartets. As before, it has the feel of finale although it lacks any coherent narrative.
The least interesting section is the long list of silly items at Grosse Hochzeit, but there is real humour at the cry of Punctum! (Full stop!) followed by a parody of ecclesiastical chant at Dominus Johannes. Alas, the work is unfinished so we will never know how the finale ended.
As a corrective (or perhaps further proof!) to this suggestion that Bach is writing his equivalent of a Breitweg show, it should be noted that the technical demands of the music are very modest: the lines are primarily syllabic with very little passage work, the soprano rarely approaches the top of the staff, and the music hardly strays from F major. The latter feature could be a strong argument against Bach¹s authorship.
Yet Mozart wrote the role of Papageno for an actor who basically faked his songs. I wonder what a performance Bach’s Quodlibet in a cheeky new translation with Bernadette Peters, Elaine Strich, Matthew Broderick and Nathan Lane would sound like. There would have to be an exclamation mark on the theatre marquee: Opening Tonight / “Quodlibet!”>>
Further Details, BWV 524
Further details of Bach’s Quodlibet are found in Klaus Hofmann’s 2013 liner notes to the Masaaki Suzuki BIS Bach secular cantata recordings.5 <<Quodlibet, BWV 524. As with Weichet nur, betrübte Schatten [Cantata 202], this is a piece of wedding music, albeit of an entirely different kind and on a wholly different stylistic level. As for the genre, this is not a cantata as such but rather a so-called ‘catalogue quodlibet’, a folk form of humorous character, close to improvisation, that derives much of its effect from juxtaposing unrelated fragments, together with topical allusions. Traditionally such works combine quotations from songs, toasts, market traders’ and nightwatchmen’s calls, proverbs, puns and so on with witty, often boisterous and coarse references to the reason for and participants in a social gathering. Such quodlibets were especially popular at weddings, where they frequently got out of hand. In 1730 the literary scholar Johann Christoph Gottsched wrote in his Critische Dichtkunst with obvious reservations: ‘At weddings this sort of witty poem has its uses, if it does not become merely offensive.’
This Quodlibet poses all kinds of riddle. A fair copy from 1707/08, in Bach’s own hand, has survived but it is not intact. Apparently at some stage the outer sheets were removed, thereby depriving us of the beginning and ending of the piece – including the title as well as information about whose wedding it performed at. Above all, the name of the composer is missing, and it is thus by no means certain that it is Bach’s own work. It may, for instance, have been a collaboration between several of the wedding guests.
The type of occasion for which the piece was written is clear. The text mentions ‘Große Hochzeit, große Freuden’ (‘Great wedding, great joy’) and there are various intimations that leave no possibility for doubt. We do not know, however, whose wedding it was; nor can we be certain of the sort of people who were the guests, despite a whole series of indirect references, including one to ‘Salome’, possibly Bach’s sister Maria Salome, whose married name was Wiegand (1677−1727). Also unclear is the nature of a certain event to which ironic allusions are constantly being made, and which is associated with sea journeys to the Dutch East Indies. Apparently it concerned a spectacularly unsuccessful attempt − maybe by the bridegroom himself – to use a baker’s trough as a boat.
Almost as though it had been designed with subsequent Bach research in mind, the text of this Quodlibet contains a very precise chronological indication. Towards the end of the piece the tenor sings: ‘This year we have two eclipses of the sun’. There were two total eclipses in each of the years 1705, 1706 and 1708, and two slightly less impressive partial eclipses in 1707 too. This limits the possible dates of composition. The piece cannot, however, have been composed for Bach’s own marriage to Maria Barbara Bach in October 1707, as he himself wrote out the fair copy of the score that was in all probability intended as a dedication example for the bride and groom. © Klaus Hofmann 2013
Production Notes. Here I would like give a few brief comments in connection with the Quodlibet, BWV 524. As Klaus Hofmann mentions in his commentary, this work has been handed down in the form of J. S. Bach’s own manuscript of the full score, but at least one of the sheets of this score in folio is missing. The extant score consists of three sheets, each containing four pages of notation, and it would appear thus that the first two pages and the final section of approximately two pages has been lost. The composer’s name, which should of course appear at the head of the work, is missing, and the current situation is that only the central part of the work has been handed down for performance purposes. But the section that has survived is of considerable musical interest, and I decided therefore to include it in the programme. The fragment opens with a four-part chord on the word Steiß, meaning ‘backside’ and often referring to the tail of a bird or animal, but it is unclear what it could mean in this context. At the very end of the manuscript, the final line of text reads ‘What a nice fugue this is!’ in a passage on the dominant key, implying that this section was originally followed by a fugue. Unfortunately this fugue is now lost, meaning that all we can do is imagine it.
© Masaaki Suzuki 2013
Selective Discography
Recording (1964), Leonhardt, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7_91WXd0fQ, details http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Vocal/BWV524.htm, No. 1.
Recording Koopman 1995 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNDrsrWCR5o, details, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Vocal/BWV524.htm, No. 2.
Recording, Musica Antiqua Köln 1997, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhziPCfGZV4, Recording details, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Vocal/BWV524.htm, no. 3.
Recording, Rilling 1998, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fif2V0FIiSk, Recording details, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Performers/Rilling-Rec6.htm#L3, no.4.
Recording (video), Ensemble Sacrum & Profanum München 2008: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQMeJ7iVOWc, details, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Vocal/BWV524.htm, no. 5.
Recording (video 2011), Leonardo García-Alarcón https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2hjkeGaaco&feature=youtu.be, (var 30) of the Goldberg Variations; details http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Vocal/BWV524.htm, no. 6.
Recording (video), Collegium Vocale Frisingae 2011, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qs9-LFQuGNc.
Recording (video), Rudolf Grasman 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVlIryrv9Y0.
Bach Family Dialogue Concerti
Sebastian’s collection of the Alt Bachisches Archiv contains three vocal concertos, including a Johann Christoph Bach setting of the wedding work, Meine Freundin, du bist schön (My love, your are fair), based on the Song of Solomon (BCML “Dialogue Cantatas, Discussions (April10, 2014, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Topics/Dialogue-Cantatas.htm). <<About 1676-79, members of the Bach Family produced thee sacred dialogue concertos that Sebastian Bach preserved in his Alt Bachisches Archiv of music from the Bach Family.6 The Johann Michael Bach (1648-1694) 1676 “Liebster Jesu, hör mein Flehen” (Dearest Jesus, hear my supplication), a Dialogue for the Second Sunday in Lent (Reminiscere), and Johann Christoph Bach (1642-1703) undesignated 1676 Dialogue, “Herr, wende dich und sei mir Gnädig” (Lord, turn and be merciful to me, Job 11:16), and an extensive and influential Bach family wedding work, Meine Freundin, du bist schön (My love, your are fair), based on the Song of Solomon.
+“Liebster Jesu, hör mein Flehen” of Johann Michael Bach is a dramatic seven-minute dialogue between Christ (bass) and the Canaanitish woman (soprano) and three intercessory disciples (alto and two tenors), supported by strings of two violins (Christ) and two violas (woman), and the disciples (double bass). Based on the Gospel for the Second Sunday in Lent, it has the solos of the woman imploring Jesus to save her possessed daughter (Matthew 15:21-28), the disciples’ repeated intercession, and Jesus responses end with a tutti chorale, “As a father takes pity on his young children,” from Johann Gramann’s “Nun lob, mein Seel, den Herren (Now praise, my Soul, the Lord). “The form of the epic dialogue in which” various “17th century composers excelled apparently did not appeal Michael,” says Karl Geiringer in The Bach Family: Seven Generations of Creative Genius.7
+“Herr, wende dich und sei mir Gnädig” of Johann Christoph Bach is an 11 ½ minute undesignated dialogue for ATTB (with 2 vn 2 va, bc) with a brief introductory sinfonia followed by biblical vocal lines using passages from Job, various Psalms, Isaiah, and 2 Corinthians 6:12. It closes with the chorale “Frisch auf mein’ Seel’, verzage nicht” (Cheer up, my soul, fear not), in NLGB No. 283, “Cross, Persecution & Challenges; Zahn melody 7578), in Orgelbüchlein No. 103 (not set). Because the Dialogue has no service designation or Gospel reference, it is possible that it is for a home devotional. “Several of the pieces by Johann Christoph use rich and daring harmonies—for instance, the successive seventh chords of the dialogue ‘Herr, wende dich und sei mir gnädig’ . . . . Here there may be a precedent for Johann Sebastian's love of harmonic exploration,” says Peter Rose in a recording review.8
+Johann Christoph’s dialogue wedding cantata, Meine Freundin, du bist schön, seems to have had a major impact on Sebastian Bach, says John Eliot Gardiner in his new Bach musical biography, BACH: Music in the Castle of Heaven.9 Particularly in Bach’s cantatas and Passions, the Book of Solomon’s “transparent erotic imagery are invariably al, corralled [!!] into the service. They belong to a tradition that goes back to Origen (third century AD), which saw the church accept the male and female lovers as symbols, respectively, of Jesus and the individual Christian soul.” “The soprano-bass duet (‘Mein Freund ist mein / und ich bin sein’) from BWV 140, Wachet auf, riuft uns die Stimme, is merely the best known of several of Bach’s cantatas that treat this theme of the bridegroom (Jesus) eager to receive his bride (the Christian anima) in mystic union as part of a musical tradition that goes back to Palestrina and Clemens and then to Monteverdi, Grandi, and Schütz.”
“Bach was recalling the rich subtext and multiple double-entendres of his cousin Johann Christoph’s 1679 wedding cantata,” Meine Freundin, du bist schön (My love, your are fair), Gardiner suggests. He describes the cantata as an extended nuptial dialogue between bridegroom (bass) and bride (soprano) in which citations from the biblical Song of Songs (2-8) and Ecclesiastes 3 -- treated literally, topically or as poetic conceit -- are interspersed with written narrative description of the earthly lovers by Johann Ambrosius Bach. The 20-minute work is divided into three parts: The couple out strolling meet and in a duet plan an encounter in the groom’s garden. In the long chaconne scene, the woman bride a solo and then meets two companions (tenor and alto) and they accompany her to the garden where they meet the groom and the four celebrate with eat and drink. In the closing, a chorus joins the four in a song of grace.10
The dialogue wedding cantata “holds a unique position among the works of Johann Christoph,” says Geiringer (Ibid.: 53f). "It displays a robust sense of humor one is hardly led to expect from a composer of such lofty works as Ich lasse dich nicht or Der gerechte. To treat the venerated Song of Solomon, which was usually interpreted in a purely symbolic fashion, in so realistic a manner for a wedding celebration was highly unorthodox, and bound to create hilarity among the listeners."
The cantata story reminds Gardiner of the Bach family gatherings, beginning with a chorale and possibly including the Bach 1707 Wedding Quodlibet, BWV 524, as well as Bach’s two mature burlesques, the Coffee and Peasant Cantatas and a number of wedding cantatas. Although Bach did not compose such a nuptial dialogue, Gardiner points out that Bach in his sacred cantatas creates the allegory of the bridegroom and bride in mystic union as Jesus and the Christian soul in bass-soprano duets that show loving reciprocity and mutuality in a tradition dating to Palestrina. >>
FOOTNOTES
1 Christoph Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician (New York: W. W. Norton: 2013 Updated Ed.: 91f).
1a Wedding Quodlibet BWV 524, BCW Details & Discography http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Vocal/BWV524.htm. References, NBG XXXII, 2 (“Veröffentlichungen der Neuen Bachgesellschaft,” Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig, Max Schneider: 1932), https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neue_Bachgesellschaft&prev=search), NBA I/41 (Cantatas for various secular occasions, Andreas Glöckner 2000: 64; Critical report 2000: 50), Bach Compendium BC H 1. Published: Leipzig, 1973 http://imslp.org/wiki/Quodlibet,_BWV_524_%28Bach,_Johann_Sebastian%29
(scroll down to “Complete Score,” click on “View”), Faksimile-Reihe Bachscher Werke und Schriftstucke Hochzeitsquodlibet 1707, Ein Fragment BWV 524, Bd. 12 (score); Faksimile-Reihe Bachscher Werke und Schriftstucke Hochzeitsquodlibet, Ein Fragment BWV 524, Bd. 12 (score), Bach-Archiv Leipzig; VEB Deutscher Verlag fur Musik (1973); sheet music, Quodlibit BWV 524; GCH, Breitkopf und Härtel, Leipzig (1999), Bach: Hochzeitsquodlibet (BWV 524). Postkarte; Carus-Verlag (1999). Autograph score (facsimile) Leipzig 1973 (https://www.bach-digital.de/receive/BachDigitalSource_source_00003172, https://www.bach-digital.de/rsc/viewer/BachDigitalSource_derivate_00000059/BWV_524-01.jpg), Provenance: J. S. Bach - C. P. E. Bach - C. E. A. von Boineburg? - ? - M. Gorke - Stadtbibliothek Leipzig (1935) - Musikbibliothek Leipzig (1954) - Leipzig, Bach-Archiv (2006; continuous loan since 1952).
2 Robin A. Leaver, Part II, Contexts, “Churches: The Bach Family and the Church,” in The Routledge Research Companion to Johann Sebastian Bach, edited Robin A. Leaver (Abington, Oxon GB and New York, Routeledge: 2017: 145).
3 See Forkel and Praetorius sources in “Major Background Sources in Chronological Order,” Thomas Braatz's article BWV 524 Quodlibet (Fragment), beginning “Was seind das vor grosse Schlösser” (What sort are these mighty castles) (BCW December, 2004, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Articles/BWV524Quodlibet%5BBraatz%5D.htm. Contents: Description, Provenance, History, Major Background Sources in Chronological Order [including Christoph Wolff, David Humphreys, Konrad Küster], Translation, Detailed Commentary and Translation Problems with Possible Interpretations, Musical Elements, and The Recording.
4 See "In the middle of life 1517 (500 years of Reformation),” https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=https://www.amazon.de/Mitten-Leben-1517-Jahre-Reformation/dp/B01NA6OK31&prev=search.
4a Liner notes, (trans. Alfred Clayton, Leonhardt Consort, Teldec Bach 2000, vol. 7; recording details, BCW http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Performers/H&L-Rec4.htm#V-18), cited in “Cantata 202, Bach Family and Wedding Quodlibet (November 20, 2013), BCML Discussion, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/BWV202-D4.htm.
5 Hofmann/Suzuki notes, 9JbB43-Suzuki-S03c[BIS-2041-SACD_booklet].pdf; Recording, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L42jqvTYsiY; Recording details, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Performers/Suzuki-Rec5.htm#S3
6 Details of complete recording of the Alt Bachisches Archiv are found at BCW, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Vocal/AltBachische-CantusColln.htm, liner notes by Peter Wollny. All three Bach family works also are found in Reinhard Goebel’s recording, BCW http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Performers/Goebel.htm V-2.
7 Karl Geiringer in collaboration with Irene Geiringer (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1954:44).
8 Rose review in Early Music 33.1 (2005) 141-144, on line, http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/emu/summary/v033/33.1rose02.html.
9 Gardiner Bach biography, in Chapter 3, “The Bach Gene” (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 74-76).
10 A recording of the vocal concerto is found at http://www.allmusic.com/album/alt-bachisches-archiv-cantatas-by-members-of-the-bach-family-mw0001411965; facsimile, https://www.bach-digital.de/receive/BachDigitalSource_source_00018607.
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To Come, Music of Joy: Early Occasional Wedding Cantata 196. |
