Easter Festival 1724, Christological Church Year Cycle

William L. Hoffman wrote (April 11, 2024):
The final, triumphal portion of Bachs's Christological Cycle begins with the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, which symbolically represents the final part of the Great Parabola of descent-ascent, or the Uplifting in glory, also known as the anabasis or fulfillment, embracing the in-dwelling inhabitatio of unio mystica (mystical union) involving the sacred and divine, the eternal reincarnation of spirit and flesh (source, BCW). The Easter season/time of 50 days (six Sundays) is a unique period in the church year which, in Bach's Leipzig involved Easter Sunday to Misericordias Domini (second after Easter), designated de tempore (Proper Time) of the life of Jesus Christ, followed by the Gospel of John's Jesus' Farewell Discourse to His Disciples in the omnes tempore (Ordinary Time) tradition of the life of the church, embracing both times simultaneously in the paradoxes of humanity that is both sacred and profane and the Christ who is both truly man and God. The end of Easter is the eschatological celebration of God's eternal Time on Pentecost Sunday signifying God for us, with us, and within us in the Trinitarian divine dance, as Father Richard Rohr says,¹ as well as the birthday of the church.

Three-Day Easter Festival, Easter Season

The Easter season/time in Bach's Leipzig began and ended with two three-day festivals at Easter and Pentecost when Bach, following his annual presentation of an oratorio Passion on Good Friday — the fulcrum or rest/pivot of the Great Parabola — was required to present a cantata musical sermon also on Easter Monday and Tuesday. For Bach in his first years in Leipzig presenting three cycles of church year music, usually cantatas, this period theologically signified the centrality of Johannine theology with two versions of his St. John Passion that were followed by the St. Matthew Passion in 1727. Meanwhile, because Bach's Lenten endeavors were focused on the Passion sacred drama concluding Holy Week, he modified his compositional activities during Easter Season, which required six days of Easter and Pentecost festive cantatas, the Ascension Feast and the Trinity Festival. In his first Easter Season of 1724, Bach was able to present repeats of Weimar works on the two festive Sundays and then parodied Cöthen congratulatory vocal serenades for the two festive Mondays and Tuesdays of Easter and Pentecost. During the final period of his second cycle (Wikipedia), also requiring 14 cantatas for eight festival days, Bach in the 1725 Easter Season ceased composing new chorale cantatas, substituting works conceived possibly the previous year and followed by new works using commissioned texts of Leipzig poet Mariane von Ziegler from Jubilate to Trinity Sunday. The next year in the 1726 Easter Season (BCW), Bach substituted cantatas of cousin Ludwig Bach while composing the St. Matthew Passion.

Bach's Cantor Demands, Chorale Cantata Cycle Terminated

A second factor motivated Bach's Easter period Grand Design. As cantor at St. Thomas church and school, Bach focused these seven weeks on his cantor duties at the close of the school year on Trinity Sunday. In addition to his teaching duties, he gave final exams, auditioned new chorus members, chose assistants and special students for the coming school year, accounted for the musical and educational resources, and compiled annual reports involving a well-appointed church music for which he was steward. A third factor during the Easter Season and the termination of the chorale cantata cycle may have been because of the paucity of designated chorales in the Lutheran hymnbooks for the specific Sundays after Easter. "We possess a rich store of Passion music , but relatively few outstanding pieces of Easter music," observes Alfred Dürr.² "Such a disproportion is also perceptible in Bach's output. Settings of the Passion apparently laid such a strong claim on his creative power that no original Easter Sunday music survives from his mature years" after 1725.

Easter Saxon Reformation Traditions

The Leipzig observance of the Easter Season in Bach's time as music director involved a great tradition beginning with the city's acceptance of the Reformation in 1539 as part of its official establishment in Saxony through Duke Heinrich's Agenda, the same year it was published in Wittenberg as the governing document of the Lutheran church for almost 300 years. The services with music in the church year, first found in Valentin Schumann's hymn book published in Leipzig in 1539 and expanded in Valentin Bapst's edition in 1545, determined Bach's response with a well-ordered church music. "During Bach's tenure, the Dresden Hymnal served as a kind of model for others to follow," observes Martin Petzoldt.³ In addition, Johannes Bugenhagen's Evangeliumharmonie of the accounts of the Passion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ were prescribed for Holy Week and Easter.⁴ Along with the development of the Lutheran chorales central to Bach's calling was the unique Saxon Court tradition of musical Historia settings for the major observances of Christmas, the Passion, and Easter, particularly as found in the music of Kapellmeister Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672), with his first publication, Historia der Auferstehung Jesu Christi (Resurrection Story), SWV 50, Op. 3 (Dresden 1623) which uses the Bugenhagen text.⁵ The tradition of the liturgical-musical Passion was still found in Bach's Passion settings, observes Petzoldt (YouTube, 3:10). The tradition of an Easter setting began with the "Osterhistorie by Jacobus Haupt, singer at the Dresden chapel," followed by the Auferstehungshistorie of Antonio Scandello (1517–1580), says Wolfram Steude in "Passions, Resurrection History and Dialogues" (Brilliant Classics: Downloadable Booklet: 19, text 83-88). Schütz's setting was performed annually until 1675, replacing Scandello's Easter History and eventually succeeded by Easter Historiae of younger musicians of the Dresden chapel (Johann Müller, Johann Wilhelm Furchheim and Nikolaus Adam Strungk), as the Dresden Catholic Chapel Easter tradition from until 1700. These Easter works, with instruments, choruses and multiple voices singing the roles of Jesus, Mary Magdalene and the Angel at the Tomb, had no model in Catholic tradition, being part of a post-Lutheran German vernacular historia genre specific to Dresden and best known throughout Germany as oratorio Passions. Meanwhile, the Italian sacred vulgate oratorio tradition of Carissimi, Stradella, Scarlatti, Mazzocchi, Federici, Pistocchi, Caldara, and Colonna flourished from 1660 to 1720, particularly in palaces in Rome where the Papacy had forbidden opera at any time of the year. It was a frank substitute for opera, with elaborate sets and numerous da capo arias, but no staging or choruses -- thus being a closet or static drama.

Bach's Leipzig Master Plan

Bach the well-intentioned, resourceful, and calculating musical architect and recycler had a master plan (source, BCW). The first group of cantatas from Weimar, composed for the church year primarily from texts of court poet Salomo Franck, had all the ingredients of Bach's sacred musical sermons: choruses, arias, recitatives, ariosi, closing plain chorales, and chorale tropes with poetry. In most cases Bach would reperform them virtually unchanged. Church year pieces initially composed for the Weimar closed periods of Advent and Lent would be adapted with additional free-verse recitatives and closing chorales using texts appropriate for the new occasions (BWV 70a, 186a, 147a, 80a). The Cöthen works, all composed for profane occasions or non-liturgical Calvinist church services, contained da-capo arias and recitativeas well as ensembles that with new texts could be tailored to sacred services of the church year in Leipzig as well as special occasions. In particular, Bach could adapt celebratory music with appropriate affect for the festivals of Easter, Pentecost, and Trinity Sunday when he would be hard-pressed in late spring to compose a string of festive works while fulfilling his principal job as cantor and teacher at the Thomas School when completing the term on Pentecost Sunday and starting a new year. Bach also could add new commentary recitatives and select chorales settings emphasizing the specific sacred occasion. From the group of Cöthen sacred works, Bach selectively salvaged choruses and arias for new, occasional sacred compositions, such as the annual Leipzig Town Council installation with Cantatas 119, 69a, and 193.
"Bach's official inauguration was originally planned for Pentecost [Sunday, 16 May] 1723 but had to be postponed by two weeks for unknown reasons, says Christoph Wolff.⁶ Given the time pressure, Bach had reworked as parodies three Cöthen works for the three-day Pentecost Festival: BWV 59, 173 and 184. When the inauguration was moved back to the 1st Sunday after Trinity, he set the music aside for performance a year later to complete the first cycle. It is possible that Cantata 59 was presented on Pentecost Sunday 1723 at the University Church of St. Paul, says Wolff and Robin A. Leaver (Dok 5: B 137a).⁷ Bach's family arrived in Leipzig from Cöthen on 22 May, says Leaver (Ibid.: Dok 2: 138; NBR 102). Meanwhile Bach's performance schedule during this first cycle shows that he used Cöthen parodies for Cantata 69a for the 12th Sunday after Trinity and Cantata 119 for the Town Council election, says Wolff (Ibid.) as well as Cöthen serenade parodies for Easter Monday and Tuesday festivals, BWV 66 and 134, and BWV 194 for Trinity Sunday Festival.

Easter Festival Liturgy, Appropriate Music

Easter Sunday in the 3-year Revised Common Lectionary has three events to observe in this year's (B) for March 31: 1. Easter Vigil, readings Lectionary Library; 2. Resurrection of the Lord, readings Lectionary Library; 3. Easter Evening (optional), readings Lrctionary Library (includes Luke 24:13-49, Walk to Emmaus, Communion with Disciples. Bach also composed music for the three-day Easter festival: Easter Sunday (Resurrection, BWV 4, 31, 249.4 BCW, BCW), Easter Monday (Road to Emmaus, BWV 6, 66, Anh. 190 (Picander 1729 BCW, BCW; Easter Tuesday (Jesus appears to the twelve, BWV 134, 145, ?158 BCW, BCW). The three-day festival is established in the Leipzig Church Year and Agenda (BCW: 5, "the three high feasts Christmas, Easter and Pentecost each had three days devoted to them." However, by Bach’s time, the Third Day of Easter (Easter Tuesday) was becoming less important because the same event, Jesus’ appearance before the disciples, in Luke 24:36-47, "Der Friede sei mit dir," also is found on “Quasimodogeniti" (1st Sunday after Easter) in John’s Gospel, 20:19-31 (BCW) with Christ’s same greeting, “Friede sei mit euch!” (Peace be unto you, 20:19). The previous Lukan text, 24:13-35, the unique Walk to Emmaus, was the gospel reading in Bach's Time for Easter Monday. Now, the two readings are combined, Luke 24:13-49, and are the Gospel for Easter Evening while the Walk to Emmaus is a spiritual renewal movement, called Upper Room (Wikipedia).

The first two days of the Easter Festival had highly structured liturgy while the third day used the ordinary liturgy. Gradually since Bach's time, Easter Tuesday and then Monday disappeared from the festival celebration. Now, different gospel readings are retained in the three-cycle readings for Easter Monday and the next two Sundays, established by Vatican II a half-century ago and adopted by mainline Protestant denominations. An accounting of the liturgy and music in Bach's time for Easter (Wikipedia: scroll down to Easter) reveals a great range of music for Easter Sunday but considerably less for Easter Monday and Tuesday. Two centuries of music available (1585-1785) are found at IMSLP: Pieces for Easter Sunday . Easter hymns in the Neu Leipziger Gesangbuch of 1682 available to Bach are found at Wikipedia, Nos. 272-311). Easter Sunday works of other composers with connections to Bach (Johann Ludwig Bach, Georg Philipp Telemann, Christoph Graupner, Johann David Heinichen, Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel, Gottfried August Homilius, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach) are found at Wikipedia: scroll down to Easter). Easter Monday and Tuesday show fewer composers works, no designated chorales, but some works of Bach associates.

Easter Monday Walk to Emmaus

Throughout the day-long Easter Monday Walk to Emmaus, there is a sense of personal discovery, revelation, opportunity and commitment (source, BCW). The 20th Century Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhöffer speaks eloquently of this in his The Cost of Discipleship, of taking up the practice of unconditional, unquestioning "followship," especially in the pursuit of "costly grace" instead of "cheap grace." Today, mainline Protestant churches, particularly the Methodists, have an "Upper Room" renewal movement four-day program called, "Walk to Emmaus." The original Köthen serenade BWV 66a may have opened with a sinfonia, possibly later used to open Cantata BWV 42, "But in the evening of the same Sabbath, for the First Sunday in Easter (Quasimodogeniti) in the 1725 second cycle, according to Joshua Rifkin as cited in Dürr (p. 296). Norman Carrell in <Bach the Borrower> (1967, pp. 118, 185, said the sinfonia must have been written for a (lost) cantata which dealt with the walk to Emmaus." W. Gillies Whittaker in <Cantatas of JSB> I: 296, says the sinfonia, origin possibly as a Köthen double-chorus da capo concerto, "is a heavenly picture of evening. The throbbing chords remind one of the first chorus of (Cantata) No. 6, "Abide with us, for the Evening is far spent." It is possible that Bach in 1724 planned to retain this six-minute-long sinfonia in D Major, in the same key as Cantata 66a, but set it aside because Cantata 66, even without the omitted three movements from Cantata 66a, was too long, running a half an hour. While there is no "Lost Emmaus Cantata" there exist a sinfonia with a link to Köthen and a serenade later used for the Easter Monday Walk to Emmaus.

Easter Festival Text Booklets

Since Bach in 1724 already had on hand virtually all the music and original text of Cantata BWV 66, he easily could have assembled the new text, possible using the services of Picander and Pastor Christian Weiß Sr. It would have been relatively easy to assemble the printed text booklets containing cantatas for the three-day Easter Festival to the Second Sunday After Easter (Misericordias Domini), delivered to the printer no later than four weeks before Easter Sunday. Two such libretti booklets exists for that early Easter season period of five services in 1724 (first cycle) and in 1731 (BWV 31, BWV 66, BWV 134, BWV 42, and newBWV 112). For the initial 1724 cycle, Bach already had on hand the texts of repeat Weimar Easter Sunday, Cantatas BWV 4 and 31, and duplicated the parody process for Cantata BWV 134 for Easter Tuesday using the same resource team as BWV 66 for Easter Monday. For the first two Sundays following Easter, Bach composed new cantatas BWV 76 and BWV 104, possibly to texts of Christian Weiß Sr. Bach would have repeated this same libretto process for succeeding Easter festivals, since he had much material already on hand and would rely on reperformances of his as well as the cantatas of Telemann and Johann Ludwig Bach.

Bach Substitutions, Revisions

In 1726, as Bach was working on the St. Matthew Passion, he used some 18 works of cousin Johann Ludwig, notably three works for the Easter Festival, 21-23 April (BCW): Cantata "Denn du wirst meine Seele," for Easter Sunday, BWV 15=JLB-21 (Text: Rudolstadt); Cantata "Es ist aus der Angst und Gericht," for Easter Monday, JLB-10 (Text: Rudolstadt); and Cantata "Er machet uns lebendig," JB-11, for Easter Tuesday (Text: Rudolstadt). Bach was content to present three cantatas for each of the three-day Easter Festival services while in 1729 he may have been involved in the Picander cycle works for Easter Monday and Tuesday (Nos. 29-30), April 18 and 19, respectively, fragment "Ich bin ein Pilgrim auf der Welt" (I am a pilgrim in the world, Z. Philipp Ambrose trans.; Bach-Digital), BWV Anh.190, and pasticcio, "Ich lebe, mein Herze, zu deinem Ergötzen" (I live now, my spirit, to purest pleasure, Ambrose trans.; Baach-Digital, BCW. Bach's Köthen music survives in five serenades parodied as sacred cantatas in 1724 in Leipzig, Bach's first known efforts at text substitution: BWV 66 for Easter Monday, BWV 134 for Easter Tuesday, BWV 173 for Pentecost Monday, BWV 184 for Pentecost Tuesday, and BWV 194 for Trinity Sunday. In addition, Bach materials from Cöthen BWV 66a, 134a, 173a, 184a, and 194a (the first three extant) — enabled him to create five sacred cantatas — as well as possible sources for as many as seven sacred Leipzig cantatas (BWV 32, 59, 69a, 75, 97, 119, and 193) through the process of parody or new-text underlay. This music of sheer joy had brought happiness to Bach in a transition from faithful and prospering court servant to fulfill his calling of a "well-regulated church music to the glory of God."

Bach the well-intentioned, resourceful, and calculating musical architect and recycler had a master plan. The first group of cantatas from Weimar, composed for the church year primarily from texts of court poet Salomo Franck, had all the ingredients of Bach's sacred musical sermons: choruses, arias, recitatives, ariosi, closing plain chorales, and chorale tropes with poetry. In most cases Bach would reperform them virtually unchanged. Church year pieces initially composed for the Weimar closed periods of Advent and Lent would be adapted with additional free-verse recitatives and closing chorales using texts appropriate for the new occasions (BWV 70a, 186a, 147a, 80a). The Cöthen works, all composed for profane occasions or non-liturgical Calvinist church services, contained da-capo arias and recitatives as well as ensembles that with new texts could be tailored to sacred services of the church year in Leipzig as well as special occasions. In particular, Bach could adapt celebratory music with appropriate affect for the festivals of Easter, Pentecost, and Trinity Sunday when he would be hard-pressed in late spring to compose a string of festive works while fulfilling his principal job as cantor and teacher at the Thomas School when completing the term on Pentecost Sunday and starting a new year. Bach also could add new commentary recitatives and select chorales settings emphasizing the specific sacred occasion. From the group of Cöthen sacred works, Bach selectively salvaged choruses and arias for new, occasional sacred compositions, such as the annual Leipzig Town Council installation with Cantatas 119, 69a, and 193.
Postscript: The Passion Holy Week and the three-day Easter Festival were the most important compositional period for Bach. As a bridge from the Epiphany and pre-Lenten cantatas to the Christological culmination of the ministry of Jesus Christ on earth, the Passion oratorios and festive oratorio and cantatas provided Bach with a springboard to a "well-ordered church music," culminating in the revival and alteration of his St. John Passion, BWV 245.2 with chorales and the cantatas for Spring 1725 of Leipzig poetess Christiane Mariane von Ziegler (BCW in Eric Chafe's J. S. Bach's Johannine Theology.⁸

ENDNOTES

¹ Richard Rohr, Divine Dance: The Trinity and Your Transformation (New Kensington PA: Whitaker House,2016: 117), Amazon.com.
² Alfred Dürr, The Cantatas of J. S. Bach, ed. and trans. Richard D. P. Jones (Oxford University Press, 2005, 263), Amazon.com.
³ Martin Petzoldt: “Liturgy and Music in Leipzig’s Main Churches” in Die Welt der Bach Kantaten, ed. Christoph Wolff, vol. 3: Johann Sebastian Bachs Leipziger Kirchenkantaten (Metzler/Bärenreiter, Stuttgart/Weimar, Kassel, 1999) pp. 68-93, Translated by Thomas Braatz © 2013, Bach Cantata Website, BCW Article. See also, "Theology," BCW Articles, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Articles/Theology[Hoffman].htm.
⁴ Johannes Bugenhagen, Historia Domini nostri J Chr. Passi et glorificati, ex Evangelist fideliiter contracta, et annotationibus aucta (Wittenberg 1526),Historia des lydendes unde upstandige unses Heren Jesu Christi uth den veer Euangelisten = Niederdeutsche Passionsharmonie von Johannes Bugenhagen, ed. Norbert Buske, facsimile print after d. Barther Edition of 1586. Berlin and Altenburg 1985.
⁵ Historia der Auferstehung, YouTube, Carus-Media, Google Translate.
⁶ Christoph Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician, Updated ed. (New York: W. W.Norton & Company, 2013: xxiiif).
⁷ Robin A. Leaver, Part 6, Chronology, Chapter 20, "Life and Works 1685-1750," The Routledge Research Companion to Johann Sebastian Bach (London, New York: Routledge, 2017: 500).
8 Eric Chafe, J. S. Bach's Johannine Theology: The St. John Passion and the Cantatas for Spring 1725 (Oxford GB: Oxford University Press, 2013), Google Books; see also BCW: scroll down to "Easter Season Johannine Farewell Settings."

To Come: Easter Season: Jesus' Farewell Discourse to His Disciples