Comedy, Satire: Cantatas BWV 195.1, 212, Other Works
Discussions

Comedy, Satire: Cantatas BWV 195.1, 212, Other Works

William L. Hoffman wrote (September 12, 2018):
Amid the joy and sorrow occasional works in the mid 1730s, Bach as a progressive composer turned selectively to a new perspective of humor found in three Picander-texted profane cantatas BWV 201, "Dialogue Between Phoebus and Pan," 1729; BWV 211, "Coffee Cantata," 1734-35, and BWV 212, "Peasant Cantata," 1742, as well as the Goldberg Variations (Clavierübung IV) and the earlier stropic songs and the very early Wedding Quodlibet, BWV 524. The Coffee and Peasant Cantatas, as well as the two Italian Cantatas 203 and 209 and the home Cantata 204, replaced mythical and allegorical characters with real people in the German Singspiel tradition without the spoken dialogue and magic. The humorous works are also considered miniature comic opera, opera buffa or intermezzi and Bach was able to selectively utilize movements, particularly dance styles, through parody in works with similar affect. The lynch pin for the humor was Bach's librettist Picander, who began providing cantor Bach in 1723 with texts for sacred services while introducing the Leipzig music director to the progressive alliance of university professors and burghers with connections to the Saxon Court in Dresden. As Bach began in 1725 to compose drammi per musica he also started composing profane wedding works and birthday tributes.

Following his exploration and perfection of basic national musical styles in Weimar and Cöthen, Bach entered a new phase in the 1730s with a focus on the "new," popular style which involved a "fundamental simplification and clarification" of all musical elements," says Robert L. Marshall in his 1976 essay, “Bach the Progressive: Observations on his later works.”¹ They involved four ingredients. Melodies were modeled on folk songs and dances with more step-wise intervals supported by simpler rhythmic patterns in triple-time with enlivened syncopations and mixtures of longer and shorter note values such as Lombard style. The rich harmonic vocabulary was simplified and the harmonic rhythm was slowed down. Complex, multi-voiced textures also were simplified with the emphasis on melody and pulsating rhythm. Long, complex, varied phrases were replaced by shorter, balanced phrases in he manner of songs and dances. Most notable are the three comic cantatas 201, 211, and 212 (see below).

Humor in Bach is first found in his fragmentary 1707 Wedding Quodlibet, BWV 224, (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2hjkeGaaco).² It was part of the Bach Family tradition of annual gatherings in Erfurt, Arnstadt or Eisenach, often celebrating a wedding, to enjoy the tradition of the quodlibet which embodied the celebration. The mixed collection of melodies derived from folk and sacred songs set to free poetry, began with Luther's colleagues who wrote profane settings of topics including love, nature, soldiers and servants. While overall humorous and increasingly satirical, quodlibets used all manner of topical and geographical allusions with tell-tale parody and underlying wisdom. At the same time, quodlibets contained various musical puzzles and the dramatic element of musical theater designed to challenge and give pleasure.

Cantata 195: ?Comic Secular Origins

As early as 1727, the first version of parody Cantata 195.1 (original title unknown, https://www.bach-digital.de/receive/BachDigitalWork_work_00000240?lang=en, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/BWV195-D4.htm) may have been a comic piece for a distinguished Leipzig couple, based upon the Lombard-style jerky rhythm and jaunty melody of the bass aria (no. 3), now known in its sacred version of 1736, "Rühmet Gottes Güt und Treu" (Praise God's goodness and truth, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAYGsmun_x4: 6:43), as well as the sprightly opening prelude and gavotte-style 6/8 fugue (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAYGsmun_x4) and closing polonaise-style homophonic (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAYGsmun_x4: 12:19) choruses. Eventually Bach expanded it to a sacred wedding cantata in various iterations in 1736, 1742 and 1748-49. The author(s) of the texts of the three versions of Cantata 195 are unknown although Picander is a possibility, given his mid-1725 initial connection to members of the Saxon Court, which earned him appointments as Leipzig postmaster and tax collector.

The musical elements, including popular dance-styles with trumpets and drums suggest a couple of wealth and position honored with a comic secular piece. "Whether a sacred or secular work was plundered to provide a wedding gift it is not possible to say, but the prize was worth the crime [parody], even if it suffered in the violence," says W. Gillies Whittaker in his Bach cantata study.³ The two recitatives (no. 2 and 4) may be also be parodies from the original, given the over-elaborate treatment but faulty declamation, he says (Ibid.: 346). In the bass Lombard-style aria, "through the disappearance of the original text we are denied one of Bach's best secular songs," says Whittaker (Ibid.: 343). In the late 1740s, Bach planned to use the opening chorus and an arias from 1737 homage Cantata BWV 30a as parodied in an expanded Part 2, with new texts which are extant but not set.

Bach as cantor was responsible for all weddings in the two major churches, Nikolaus and Thomas, with some 31 full, two-part bridal masses documented during his 27-year tenure, and listed in the new Bach research guide, as well as numerous partial masses with hymns only, usually left to a prefect and secondary choir.⁴ Bach also was responsible for funerals, usually motets (BWV 226-231 and 118) or hymns, although few events were documented. Because of the work load, Bach may have relied on a core of music, most notably full wedding Cantatas 34a, 120a, 195-197 and 1144=Anh. 14 which is lost, and chorale settings, BWV 250-252. "For both funerals and wedding, works were probably adaptable in comparable ways, as is suggested by the three or more versions of the Wedding Cantata No. 195," says Peter Williams in his final Bach biography.⁵ In some cases with little notice, "there may have been a throwing together of movements to create pasticcios. Various forms of parody or new text underlay also were possible, particularly involving occasional sacred special events involving multiple uses for Reformation special observances, civic, thanksgiving, and weddings drawn from a corpus of proto sacred cantatas such as BWV 34, 69, 120, 190, and 1139.2=Anh. 4a, as well as undesignated pure-hymn cantatas composed mostly in the 1730s and appropriate for weddings, BWV 97, 100, 117, and 192.

As to the identity of the original couple in the first version of Cantata BWV 195.1, perhaps honored on their wedding anniversary, this is sheer conjecture. Contextual clues suggest that it could have been the Leipzig University distinguished professor, poet and interim rektor, Johann Burckhardt Mencke (1674-1732), and his wife, Katharina Margaretha Gleditsch (1684-1732) from the bookseller dynasty Gleditsch (married 1702, https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Burckhardt_Mencke&prev=search). At this time in the later 1720s Mencke, also Saxon Court Historian, published under the pseudonym Philander von der Linde his Gallant Poetry while Bach from 1725 to 1731 compiled his Clavierübung I, Partitas, BWV 525-530 (Opus 1), of popular dances and "other gallantries."

Poets Gottsched, Picander

In late 1725, Bach had teamed with noted poet Johann Christoph Gottsched to create a profane gallant serenadewith four allegorical figures (Nature, Modesty, Virtue, Destiny), BWV 1163=Anh. 196, "Auf! süß-entzückende Gewalt" (Up, sweet-enchanting force and pow'r; http://www.bach-cantatas.com/BWV210-D3.htm,

"Cantata BWV Anh. 196") for the wedding of Mencke daughter Christine Sibylla to Leipzig burgher Peter Hohmann in the Hohmann house on the market square, described as "the finest example of Baroque architecture," as cited in Martin Geck's Bach biography.⁶ Hohmann in 1736 was raised to the nobility under the name von Hohenthal by the Saxon Court. In 1735, Bach parodied two arias from the serenade for the Ascension Oratorio, BWV 11: alto, “Ach, bleibe doch, mein liebstes Leben” (Ah, stay yet, my dearest life, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeSTCTue-yY), and in 1749 the contrafaction "Agnus Dei" in the B Minor Mass, and soprano, “Jesu, deine Gnadenblicke” (Jesus, your gracious look, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HPzf3nH2Xs). The alto aria "gives us a glimpse of how well Bach has already mastered the gallant tone in his early Leipzig period, says Geck (Ibid.: 162). In 1724, Gottsched and Count Joachim Friedrich von Flemming had taken residence in Leipzig, the latter as Saxon-appointed Governor, who initially resided with the Menckes until the Pleissenburg Castle residence was remodeled. Both newcomers quickly gravitated to the progressive salon home of socialite and poet Mariane von Ziegler, librettist of nine Bach Easter season cantatas of 1725 to begin the third cycle, a situation described in detail in Katherine Goodman's Leipzig cultural essay.⁷

Picander (Christian Friedrich Henrici, 1700-64, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picander), while still controversial, was a versatile writer with numerous social connections and filled a valuable niche. He was best known as a satirical poet with a sarcastic wit, says James Day,⁸ and denigrated by the learned Gottsched, who also deplored opera with its Italian background. Picander's first significant profane work was Cantata 201, the Contest between Phoebus and Pan, while earlier he provided celebratory works for Count Flemming and others beginning in 1724-25. Meanwhile, Picander wrote a poetic Passion oratorio along the lines of the famous Brockes Passion, BWV Anh. 169, https://www.bach-digital.de/receive/BachDigitalWork_work_00001480?lang=en). His best-known humorous writings are the Coffee Cantata, BWV 211, of 1734-35, and the Peasant Cantata of 1742.

Cantata 201 Artistic Credo, Satire

The general dramma per musica, Cantata 201, Contest between Phoebus and Pan: "Geschwinde, ihr wirbelnden Winde" (Hurry, you whirling winds),⁹ was possibly Bach's premiere performance as director opening the Michaelmas fall Leipzig Fair at Zimmermann's, 31 September 1729. Not composed for a particular occasion, it was Bach's artistic credo as a Learned Musician, also found in other music and writings. The almost hour-long mini-moralist opera Cantata 201 has six characters and full orchestra in 15 movements of alternating arias and recitatives, was a defense of his artistry and his musical attitudes against the trends of the time, against philistinism, superficiality of artistic judgement and an unquestioning preference for easy fare. Bach reperformed Cantata 201 in the latter half of the 1730s, probably in response to the Johann Adolph Scheibe criticism, and in 1749 with textual additions. Bach later parodied two movements. The first is Cantata 201/7, Pan's simple "Zu Tanze, zu Sprunge, so wackelt das Herz" (In dancing and leaping my heart shakes, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9YkzSuIckI), which became the peasant man's aria (no. 20), "Dein Wachstum sei feste und lache vor Lust! (May your growth be steady and laugh with delight!, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtSx-Qn7vpU) The closing gigue-style chorus of Cantata 201/15, "Labt das Herz, ihr holden Saiten" (Refresh our hearts, lovely strings, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHIwh7Jx9QU) which became the closing (no. 7), "Lebe und grüne, grosser Flemming" (Live long and flourish, mighty Flemming), for the 1731 birthday Cantata BWV 1160=Anh. 10), "So kämpfet nur, ihr muntern Thöne" (Contend ye then, ye tones so lively) for Earl Joachim Friedrich von Flemming, and may have become the closing chorus (no. 9), "Labt das Herz, ihr holden Saiten" (Refresh our hearts, lovely strings) in the late 1734 Johann August Ernesti welcoming Cantata BWV Anh. 19, "Thomana saß annoch betrübt" (St. Thomas sat till now in grief, https://www.bach-digital.de/receive/BachDigitalWork_work_00001318?lang=en).

Cantata 201 describes "a musical competition between two Greek dieties. Pan, the god of shepherds and flocks and companion of the nymphs, with his own invention, the panpipes, challenges Phoebus (Apollo), the cithara-playing god of the arts, to a contest, " says Klaus Hofmann's 2016 liner notes to the Masaaki Suzuki recording (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Performers/Suzuki-Rec5.htm#S9). "They are accompanied by their seconds, the Lydian mountain god Tmolus and the Phrygian king Midas. Phoebus and Pan compete and, as might have been expected, Phoebus emerges victorious. Midas, however, had voted for Pan; and he is now punished by Phoebus, who gives him donkey ears. Picander’s libretto turns the instrumental competition into a singing contest. Two additional characters join in as well: Momus, the god of mockery, and Mercury, the versatile messenger of the gods, who as the patron of merchants was a familiar mythological figure in the trade fair city of Leipzig. To some extent it is these two characters who drive the action forwards." In the second version of the late 1730s, Midas is the critic Scheibe with donkey ears. "While the [musical] texture on the whole is rich, the music seems really to be permeated more by elements of the dance, then by systematic [multi-voiced] polyphony," says Marshall (Ibid.: 35) with the minuet of Apollo's 'Meistergesang' cast in underlying, periodic phrase structure" with a basic, undeveloped ritornello theme [instrumental introduction and interlude]. Thus Bach is "mocking pretentiousness in art at least as much as simplicity," he says (Ibid.: 37).

Coffee Cantata 211 Comedy

“Coffee” Cantata BWV 211, “Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht” (Keep quiet, don’t chatter, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuWJ3OA0OuI),¹⁰ was first performed by the Collegium Musicum in Zimmermann's Coffee House, in late 1734 to early 1735. There is a reperformance by Emmanuel, who inherited the score (https://www.bach-digital.de/receive/BachDigitalSource_source_00001008, in Frankfurt/Oder 1734–1738 (https://www.bach-digital.de/receive/BachDigitalSource_source_00002408, where he studied law. The text author is Picander for Movements Nos. 1-8, 1732, while Nos. 9-10 were added by Bach and attributed to Christiane Mariane von Ziegler and Bach, respectively. The dialogue opposes two players, the naive honest bourgeois Schlendrian (meaning "humdrum", sung by a bass) and his coffee-addicted daughter Liesgen (soprano), plus a narrator (tenor). Bach's autograph score calls the work a "comic cantata."

The closing trio bouree-style aria (no. 10), “Die Katze lässt das Mausen nicht” (The cat does not leave the mouse, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qpn0dq4kVfk), may have been the model for the terzetto aria (no. 8), "Ach, wenn wird die Zeit erscheinen?" (Ah, When will the time appear, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ka0MlojAv7w), in Part V of the Christmas Oratorio for the Sunday after New Year's 1735. This popular work's modernity, particularly the genre of opera buffa, has long been recognized, observes Marshall (Ibid.: 39f). Most obvious are the contemporary middle-class characters, plot and milieu as well as the simple scoring for chamber ensemble with soprano and bass and the parlando [speech-like] singing style. About the same time as Bach’s composition of Cantata 211, two works with similar features were quite popular: Pergolesi’s comedy, La serva pardona, and Sperontes best-selling song collection, Singende Muse an der Pleisse, “a volume which helped prepare the emergence of the modern German lied in the second half of the eighteenth century and which fulfilled a need among the new German middle class with a deliberately unpretentious poetry that affirms the middle class values and depicts everyday activities," says Marshall (Ibid.)

The coffeehouse culture, Bach’s involvement, and Picander’s settings are described in Katherine A Goodman’s 2006 account, "From Salon to Kaffeekranz" (Ibid.: Chapter 7) The title speaks volumes about the specific coffeehouse culture and the literary scene in Leipzig, as well as Bach's involvement through Zimmermann's. The most important characters in Goodman's closet drama, besides Bach and Picander, are the writers J. C. Gottsched and his wife, poetess Luise Kulmus, and another Bach librettist, Christiane Mariane von Ziegler, whose father was the notorious Mayor of Leipzig, F. C. Romanus. Sounds like a household French farce or a Western melodrama (villains, heroes, maidens)? Actually, we're dealing here with very learned, talented people. All they needed were outlets, or stages, whether a university lecture hall, moral weeklies, satirical songs like Sperontes' “The Singing Muse on the Pleisse,” or, of course, a coffeehouse, where everyone gathered for public concerts and, hopefully, there were no duels.

Picander's 1732 libretto of the Coffee Cantata was also set by other composers: 1. one by Johann Sigismund Buchberger, 2. the "comic cantata" by Bach with a similar text, 3. a 1754 source of Christian Friedrich Penzel (https://www.bach-digital.de/receive/BachDigitalSource_source_00002010), and 4. possibly another which Spitta found in a Frankfurt newspaper announcement, 7 April 1739. The score copied by Penzel is still extant, and its text lacks the two extra strophes of Bach's composition. Penzel's source could have been Anna Magdalena, who may have kept some drafts as well as a few early and very late Bach cantatas.

Bach had eight daughters and 12 sons. Of the daughters, Catharina Dorothea was his oldest child (1708-1774). She was a spinster and her "calling" was to assist her mother and especially her step-mother, Anna Magdalena raising the remaining offspring. Maria Sophia, born in Leipzig in 1713, between W.F. and C.P.E., lived three weeks and was the first of 10 offspring, including four more daughters, all by Anna Magdalena, to die in infancy. Surviving were: "Lieschen" (Elisabeth Juliana Friderica, 1726-1781), only daughter to marry (Johann Christoph Alnickol); Johanna Carolina (1737-1781), whose godparents included Johanna Elisabeth Henrici (Picander's wife); and the last child, Regina Susanna, 1742-1809). Picander probably was a frequent visitor to the Bach household, especially in the 1730s, and could have worked closely with Bach on the production of the BWV 211 text. Besides the drammi per musica productions, close sacred collaborations included the Augsburg Confession Bicentennial three-day festival in mid-1730, the St. Mark Passion (BWV 247) at Lent 1731, and the Christmas Oratorio (BWV 248) in late 1734 (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/BWV211-D2.htm), the Ascension Oratorio (BWV 11), and a possible Pentecost Oratorio in 1735.

Stimulants Tobacco, Wine, Coffee

There are three examples of Bach's "'endorsements' of contemporary stimulants" — tobacco wine, and coffee, according to Andreas Bomba in the Hänssler Bachakadamie Edition notes (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Vocal/BWV508-523.htm) for the Clavier-Büchlein for Anna Magdalena Bach (begun in 1725), V. 136. They are: 1. the Büchlein entry, "Erbauliche Gedanken eines Tobackrauchers: Sooft ich meine Tobackspfeife" (Edifying Thoughts of a Tobacco-Smoker: Whenever I take my good pipe), BWV 515(a), Bach Compendium BC H 2), written 1733-1735 in the Anna Magdalena Notebook (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notebook_for_Anna_Magdalena_Bach; 2. Bach in 1748 thanking a cousin for sending him a "barrel of fruit wine"; and 3. the Coffee Cantata BWV 211 of 1734-35.

The Bach household Buchlein entry for "Whenever I take my good pipe" shows a melody possibly by son Gottfried Heinrich Bach, and a text by an unknown author (https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Sooft+ich+meine+Tobackspfeife%2c+BWV+515+YouTube&view=detail&mid=FBAA4B3E682E5305F918FBAA4B3E682E5305F918&FORM=VIRE, https://www.bach-digital.de/receive/BachDigitalWork_work_00000586?lang=en). The melody and bass of this song are found, with its completion on the facing page, in the hand of Anna Magdalena transposed a fourth higher into the soprano register with first verse of text, and Sebastian filling out the bass system, as he often was want to do. All six text verses later were appended on a loose leaf (German text and Z. Philipp Ambrose translation (https://www.oxfordlieder.co.uk/song/1293.

2. On 2 November 1748, Bach expressed his gratitude to his Schweinfurt cousin Johann Elias Bach for the gift of wine, although noting that on arrival in Leipzig, "the excellent little cask" "was almost two third empty, and . . . contained no more than six quarts; and it is a pity that even the least drop of this noble gift of God should have been spilled." (BD 1, No. 50; cited in NBR: 235).

3. As for the Coffee Cantata, it has both an intriguing compositional history as well as an engaging and checkered reception history. Bach's Obituary of 1754 specifically cites under occasional sacred and secular unpublished vocal works "several comic vocal pieces" (NBR: 304). Forkel's Bach Biography of 1802/1820, repeats the Obituary's basic, almost verbatim, summary account of the vocal music and under occasional music adds "Italian (secular) Cantatas" but omits "several comic vocal pieces." Then, at the end of the section on Vocal Music, Forkel provides a detailed listing of the 31 works he knows first-hand from Prussian Princess Anna-Amalia's Bach collection. Near the end he cites "A Cantata, with recitatives, arias, a duet, and a chorus. This is a peasant cantata (BWV 212). To this last cantata is prefixed a notice" (NBR: 72f).

Phillip Spitta in his Bach biography traces the introduction of coffee into European Society, following wine and tobacco, and the extolling of its virtues in song in the first quarter of the 18th Century. In 1725, Leipzig had some eight licensed coffee houses. "In this Picander found material for satire" (p.641f), first in poetry and then as the subject of a comic cantata. In Bach's treatment, the three characters -- father, coffee-loving marriageable daughter, and narrator -- "are kept clear and distinct, and drawn with great power." "This original couple seem to have delighted the world," says Spitta. He cites an account in the Frankfurt News in 1739, and assumes that it is Bach's composition.

Leipzig Prosperity, Opportunity

Meanwhile, "Bach served the Leipzig community at the height of this economically burgeoning period its history," says Carol K. Baron in her Introduction to her essay collection on Leipzig in Bach's time.¹¹ Of particular note is that this leading German city of commerce also has a university and as "the primary center of the books trades for all of central Europe" with its winter, spring, and fall fairs of world renown. During Bach's time there the publications shifted from Latin works for scholars and theologians to German "devotional works and a wide variety of secular works for the public," she observes (Ibid.: 5). Leipzig was caught up in the Age of Enlightenment and Bach saw a "second generation of graduating students committed to the primary of rationalism, the implementation of empiricism, and the necessity of reason-based ethics," says John Van Cleve in Chapter 3, "Family Values and Dysfunctional Values: Home Life in the Moral Weeklies and Comedies of Bach's Leipzig" (Ibid.: 90f). University-trained professionals expanded the field of civil servants and complimented a growing middle-class of merchants, tradespeople, and artisans in classes and offices as a new social-stratification system emerged, replacing medieval with modern values.

A literary culture prospered, notably in two categories "Imaginative Literature" and "Popular-Moral Works," as three local family publishers flourished: Gleditsch, Fritsch, and Zedler, as well as the music publisher Breitkopf. The leading figure was Prussian-educated Johann Christoph Gottsched (1700-66, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Christoph_Gottsched), who came to Leipzig in 1724 with the goal of growing a distinct and elevated German literature and life while deploring the traces of the foreign influences of opera and low-brow comedy. He soon was lecturing in literature and philosophy on a university tenure track and published moral weeklies in the English tradition of The Tatler and The Spectator. First in 1725 was his weekly, Die vernünfftigen Tadlerinnen ("The Sensible [female] Scholds"), aimed at a reading female audience, followed in 1727 by Der Biedermann (The Man of Probity), with a "focus on the family as the locus of practical enlightenment" in the best German bourgeois tradition, says Van Cleve (Ibid.: 94). Here, the "father's active participation in the raising of his children" "is apparent in the gift of newly-published books from the Leipzig fair." "Despite "an abiding theistic faith" there is little mention of "the religious views and practices of Gottsched's model German family, with no specific orthodox confession or pietist gatherings found. Meanwhile, reactionary currents arose, mostly notably the style of Empfindsamkiet (sentimentality), "a rather manneristic denoument to the baroque era in Germany," says Marshall (Ibid.: 53), with its ties to German Pietism in the 1740s and 1750s, particularly its influence in the pre-classical music period and displacing the Baroque period.

In 1729, Gottsched began a courtship of Prussian Luise Kalmus (1713-62) and they married in 1735. She upheld the concept of the "hierarchy of gender roles" and "worked tirelessly as her husband's 'apprentice'" in the Lutheran and guild concept of Gehülfin, also helpmate or assistant. Eventually "known throughout Germany as the nation's most learned woman," says Gooodman (Ibid.: 196), in Leipzig she studied Latin and took music lessons from Bach's favorite pupil, Johann Ludwig Krebs (1713-80). In 1735, she published the enlightened comedy, Die Pietistery im Fischbeinrocke (Pietism in Petticoats) of a passionate housewife swayed by a pietist preacher which puts the family's fortune at risk, while comparing born-again religiosity with orthodoxy. While reason and virtue ultimately triumph, audiences "of the day were to recognize the defects, laugh at the characters so afflicted, and resolve to avoid the ethical pitfalls thus illustrated in their daily lives," says Van Cleve (Ibid.: 97).

Meanwhile, in the 1730s, following the era called “The Songless Time” (die liederlose Zeit) beginning in the 1680s with the advent of the Italian opera da-capo form, the simple strophic song, again became fashionably popular, in Germany and England where the vernacular Beggar's Opera spelled the doom of Italian Opera in 1734. The simple song with different verses dated to the middle ages of the Minnesingers and Meistersingers and was given new impetus in the "Bar Form" AAB Lutheran sacred chorale Stollen-Abgesang, and as melodic song developed at the beginning of the Baroque.

Strophic Song Collections

Major profane strophic song collections that were published mostly in Leipzig included: Johann Valentin Rathgeber’s Augsberger Tafel-Confect (Table Confections, songs and quodlibets) volumes (1733, 1737), Sperontes’ (Johann Sigismund Scholze) Singende Muse an der Pleisse (The singing muse on the Pleisee river, 1736), Johann Friedrich Gräfe Sammlung verschiedener und auslesener Oden (Collection of various and selective odes,1737), and Hagedorn’s Oden und Lieder (1740) (source, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Vocal/BWV1127-Gen.htm, "Discussions in the Week of August 25, 2013").

The Sperontes collection contains 250 satirical poems set (parodied) to short, originally instrumental pieces, either marches or popular dance forms: polonaises, minuets or murkies. These poems with simple musical settings depict scenes and activities from everyday Leipzig life (See Sperontes, BCW http://www.bachcantatas.com/Lib/Sperontes.htm). Bach has been credited (somewhat unconvincingly) with two of the settings: ‘Ich bin nun, wie ich bin’ and ‘Dir zu Liebe, wertes Herze,’ BWV Anh. II 40 and 41, respectively (NBA KB III/3; Frieder Rempp, Chorale Settings and Songs of Doubtful Authenticity with Critical reports on works which were mistakenly attributed to J.S. Bach as well as an appendix to the critical commentary Volume III/2, 2002). There are two appendices to the collection: Aria “Ihr Schönen, höret an,” variant to BWV Anh. 40, and “Menuet di Bache,” variant to BWV Anh. 41 (https://www.bach-digital.de/receive/BachDigitalWork_work_00001349?lang=en), still not accepted into the Bach BWV canon, 1-1163 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_compositions_by_Johann_Sebastian_Bach).

Collaboration between Bach and Gottshed with the song, BWV Anh. 40, “Ihr Schönen, höret an,” a parody of the text “Ich bin nun, wie ich bin” (https://www.bach-digital.de/receive/BachDigitalWork_work_00001348?lang=en) is considered in Goodman’s essay (Ibid: 190-215, especially 197-200). The assumption is based on the research of Philipp Spitta, Bach biographer who also identified “Sperontes” as the source of the love song, “Aria di Giovanini,” "Willst du dein Herz mir schenken," BWV 518 (https://www.bach-digital.de/receive/BachDigitalWork_work_00000590?lang=en). Goodman presents at length the arguments for and against the Gottsched-Bach collaboration and Bach’s authorship of the melody set to either text. Music: Tobi´s Notenarchiv - Johann Sebastian Bach - Anhang II; http://www.tobis-notenarchiv.de/bach/19-Anhang_II/01-Vokalwerke/index.htm, "BWV Anh. 40, Ich bin nun wie ich bin").

“The 1740s, mark a significant change in German cultural politics and practices, says Goodman (Ibid.: 199f). In fact this [Sperontes] songbook represents a new trend in music. It gave those who were upwardly mobile songs they could sing at home, and it quickly became a classic. It [the 1741 edition] supplied new, lighter, respected lyrics for well-known melodies and appeared in many editions throughout the 19th century.” “Ihr Schönen, höret an” “became a favorite of the rising middle class.” The Bach Compendium (BC, 1985), H-3 under Vokale Kammermusik, lists the song as a “Murky” for soprano (discant) and Basso continuo (“Murky-Bass,” octave-jumping) and provides information on the text, work history, sources, first printing, editions, and literature. The BC also lists the Quodlibet, BWV 524, and the Songbook tobacco song, BWV 515, as vocal chamber music.

Last Comic Work: Peasant Cantata 212

Almost a decade after the Coffee Cantata, Bach presented Peasant Cantata BWV 212, "Mer hahn en neue Oberkeet" (We have a new governor), a “Cantata Burlesque” in homage of Carl Heinrich von Dieskau of Klein-Zschocher (https://www.bach-digital.de/receive/BachDigitalWork_work_00000268?lang=en). It was first performed on Thursday, 30 August 1742, at the estate and is set to a text of Picander (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Texts/BWV212-Eng3.htm. It is a dialogue work involving a peasant girl (soprano), Mieke, and a young farmer. It "is Bach ultimate, and surely undeniably sympathetic tribute to folk dance and folk song," says Marshall (Ibid.: 40), whose literal and imitative elements need no disguise or elaboration. The Cantata 201 parodied Pan aria is transformed from a symbol of artistic mediocrity to "a kind of aesthetic tolerance and universality." Now Bach no longer needs to criticize naive style but "to accommodate it — with good, uninhibited humor and really without the patronizing , mocking posture he assumed in 1729 and 1730." That Bach even composed Cantatas 211 and 212 is significant as he "enjoyed doing so, knew so well what stylistic conventions were entailed, and that he succeeded so well — and naturally — in applying them."

Extensive details in Cantata 212 are found in Klaus Hofmann's 2016 liner notes to the Masaaki Suzuki recording (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Performers/Suzuki-Rec5.htm#S7, "Liner Notes"). << Among Bach’s secular cantatas, two works have long enjoyed particular popularity: the so-called ‘Coffee Cantata’ Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht (BWV 211) and the ‘Peasant Cantata’ Mer hahn en neue Oberkeet (We have a new governor). In both works Bach displays his ‘folk’ side. The Coffee Cantata presented a humorous version of an argument within a bourgeois family of the period. In the Peasant Cantata, however, Bach transports his listeners into a farming environment. The action is set at the manor of Klein-Zschocher, south-west of Leipzig. Here, on 30th August 1742, the cantata was performed in connection with the accession to the estate of the nobleman Carl Heinrich von Dieskau (1706–82). Dieskau had inherited the estate in the spring of 1742, and on 30th August that year Klein-Zschocher celebrated the customary hereditary homage. This was also the 36th birthday of the new lord of the manor. There were therefore twice as many reasons to celebrate.

The libretto is by Bach’s regular Leipzig collaborator, Christian Friedrich Henrici (1700–64), who as an author went by the name of Picander although in fact he was a tax officer and local tax collector by profession. Dieskau was ‘Kreishauptmann’ (regional governor) and, as head of the tax authority, Henrici’s boss. The cantata may, therefore, have been written at Henrici/Picander’s instigation. Picander’s libretto is based on exchanges between a peasant couple. The plot is simple: it all starts with a scene from the homage festivities, at which the peasant girl Mieke and a young farmer, enlivened by the free beer, flirt with each other. Picander skilfully uses the Upper Saxon dialect as a means of depicting the milieu. This also means that the slightly coarse aspect of the couple’s exchanges is toned down, and the lewd references to the guests and the ‘Kammerherr’ (Chamberlain) himself into which Mieke and her admirer soon descend are perceived as merry and ironical. For example the local priest is mentioned, reportedly scowling at the joyful goings-on (second movement). Even Dieskau himself is not spared: ‘Er weiß so gut als wir und auch wohl besser, wie schön ein bisschen Dahlen schmeckt’ (‘He knows as well as we do, indeed better, how fine a little smooching tastes’ – movement 3) – an allusion that possibly did not please Dieskau’s ‘noble Lady’. She herself is later praised: she is ‘nicht ein prinkel stolz’ (‘not the slightest bit proud’), ‘recht fromm, recht wirtlich und genau’ (‘very pious, hospitable and proper’) and so thrifty that she can turn a ‘Fledermaus’ (a small coin) into four thalers (movement 11). Later the hope is expressed that the ‘Schöne’ (‘fair lady’) may have ‘viel Söhne’ (‘many sons’; movement 18) – a wish that is not entirely free of irony, as the Dieskaus had hitherto had only daughters, five in all.

In addition there are all sorts of references to regional politics and tax collection. It was to Dieskau’s credit that in the most recent ‘Werbung’ (‘recruitment’) Klein-Zschocher had escaped lightly (movement 9), and that the neighbouring villages of Knauthain and Cospuden, which also belonged to the estate, were spared the ‘caducken Schocken’ (‘extra land-dues’, i.e. the property tax for fallow land; movement 10). In movement 5 a ‘Schösser’ (a tax collector and official), who is evidently a guest at the festivities, gets what is coming to him on account of the imposition of a ‘neu Schock’ (‘new tax’: two and a half thalers) ‘wenn man den Finger kaum ins kalte Wasser steckt’ (‘before we’ve hardly got our fingers wet’, i.e. by fishing without authorization). Later a certain ‘Herr Ludwig’ and an accountant are mentioned, who on this occasion – clearly contrary to their usual practice – are forced to visit the tavern together with the peasants (movement 23).

There is no parsimony with positive words about their lords and masters. Mieke sets about singing ‘der Obrigkeit zu Ehren ein neues Liedchen’ (‘in honour of our rulers, a new song’; movement 13) and performs a charming aria expressing good wishes for Klein-Zschocher (movement 14). But her friend remarks disparagingly that it is just a song ‘nach der Städter Weise’ (‘like they sing in town’); ‘wir Bauern singen nicht so leise’ (‘We peasants don’t sing so gently’; movement 15), and immediately strikes up a boisterous song in his own coarse style, in which he wishes the Chamberlain ten thousand ducats and a good glass of wine every day (movement 16). Now it is Mieke’s turn to criticize him when she also launches ironically into a peasant-style song (movement 18). The farmer then decides ‘auch was Städtisches zu singen’ (‘to sing something in the town style too’): a song full of good wishes for growth and prosperity (movement 20). This little stylistic dispute – ‘urban’ versus ‘peasant’ music – brings the action to an end: everyone goes to the tavern, where the bagpipes are already droning, and gives three cheers for Dieskau and his family (movement 24).

In Bach’s music we can plainly hear his enjoyment of how the scene is described in the libretto. With a small basic complement of two violins (mostly playing in unison), one viola and continuo, Bach may have had typical village music in mind; in passing these instruments are joined by a flute (movement 14) and hunting horn (movements 16 and 18). The folk style already characterizes the instrumental introduction, a ‘patchwork overture’ in which we hear a sequence of quite disparate sections, in the manner of a potpourri. From time to time Bach quotes folk songs: in movement 3, as the peasant couple is flirting, there is an instrumental reference to ‘Mit mir und dir ins Federbett, mit mir und dir ins Stroh’ (‘With thee and me in the featherbed, with thee and me in the hay’) or in the ‘ducat aria’ (movement 16), which alludes to the popular tune ‘Was helfen mir tausend Dukaten, wenn sie versoffen sind’ (‘What good are a thousand ducats to meif they are all drunk away’). Bach also strikes a folk note in the two duets at the beginning and end of his ‘Cantate burlesque’ and, like the overture, the arias also contain the rhythms of dances that were popular at the time such as the polonaise (movement 4), sarabande (movement 8, quoting the famous ‘Follia’ melody), mazurka (movement 12) and minuet (movement 14). Bach quotes himself in the ‘urban’ bass aria ‘Dein Wachstum sei feste’ (‘May your growth be strong’; movement 20): it is a parody of Pan’s aria ‘Zu Tanze, zu Sprunge, so wackelt das Herz’ (‘In dancing and leaping my heart shakes’ from the cantata Geschwinde, ihr wirbelnden Winde (Swift, you swirling winds, BWV 201). Probably the similarly ‘urban’ soprano aria ‘Klein-Zschocher müsse so zart und süße’ (‘Klein- Zschocher should be as tender and sweet’; movement 14) is also derived from an earlier work.

In addition we know that the festivities in Klein-Zschocher ended with a firework display. And apparently there was more music, too: according to the musicologist Hugo Riemann (1849–1919), a now lost trio sonata by Johann Gottlieb Graun (1702/03–71) bore the date ‘30th August 1742’ in Bach’s handwriting.>>

Postscript: Homage Cantatas, BWV 30a, Goldberg Variations.

The other five nobility cantatas honoring Leipzig area residents with strong connection to the Saxon Court involve the three “lost” congratulatory serenades (BWV 249a, Anh. 10, and 210a) for Joachim Friedrich Graft von Flemming, City Governor for the Saxon Court; the dramma per musica, homage cantata BWV 30a, "Angenehmes Wiederau" (http://www.bach-cantatas.com/BWV30-D5.htm), Johann Christian Hennicke, protégé of the all-powerful Count Heinrich von Brühl, leader of the Saxon Court Party faction on the Leipzig Town Council; and the major repertory parody, BWV 36c, Schwingt freudig euch empor, for an unknown old teacher probably with connections to the Saxon Court.

Picander in the Peasant Cantata 212 "was anything but insignificant; on the contrary he must have been a highly respected figure in Leipzig society," says Klaus Eidam in his Bach biography.¹² His text "observes all the proprieties of court homage, no less than the one Gottsched composed at Easter 1738 for the homage cantata to the King" (BWV 1161=Anh. 13, https://www.bach-digital.de/receive/BachDigitalWork_work_00001321?lang=en). Meanwhile, Bach had resumed conducting the Collegium musicum in 174l and continued as late as 1746, despite the abatement of occasional compositions. The comic nature of the Peasant Cantata 212 was quite a contrast to Bach's last homage serenade with allegorical figures, BWV 30a (https://www.bach-digital.de/receive/BachDigitalWork_work_00000039?lang=en) of 1737 for J. C. von Hennicke at his Wiederau manor near Leipzig. The familiar tone of Cantata 212 shows a "genuinely friendly relationship" to Dieskau, says Eidam (Ibid.: 286). "On this occasion a member of the landed gentry was being shown due respect combined with a heartfelt affection." "Chamberlin von Dieskau was not a parvenu like von Hennicke but a scion of ancient and venerable nobility."

While early Bach scholars questioned the significance of the Peasant Cantata, there also is the informality, intimacy, affection, and humor embedded in the inventive Goldberg Variations, BWV 988, published in 1741 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldberg_Variations, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFI_s93ltiA, https://www.bach-digital.de/receive/BachDigitalWork_work_00001166?lang=en). It uses stylized dances, popular songs, an opening aria and a closing quodlibet for the family friend, former Russian ambassador to the electoral court of Saxony, Count Keyserlingk, who visited Leipzig often. "It is a masterpiece of Bach counterpoint blended with "proof of his hearty humor," says Eidam (Ibid.: 285). Thus, while Bach in his final decade composed collections reaffirming polyphony, notably the Art of Fugue and Musical Offering, at the same time he still exploited fashionable musical styles in the latter as well as his B-Minor Mass, Goldberg Variations, and the little-known parody Pergolesi's "Stabat Mater," BWV 1083 (https://www.bach-digital.de/receive/BachDigitalWork_work_00001269?lang=en) of as Marshall pointed out more than 40 years ago. Also little recognized at that time were the Stölzel works as well as the poetic Passion pasticcios

FOOTNOTES

¹ Reprinted in Marshall’s collection of Bach essays, The Music of Johann Sebastian Bach: The Sources, the Style, the Significance (New York: Schirmir Books, 1989: 33f).
² Wedding Quodlibet, BWV 524, https://www.bach-digital.de/receive/BachDigitalWork_work_00000596?lang=en; http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Vocal/BWV524-Gen2.htm, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Articles/BWV524Quodlibet%5BBraatz%5D.htm), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quodlibet).
³ W. Gillies Whittaker, The Cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach: Sacred and Secular (London: Oxford University Press, 1959, I: 344).
⁴ See Part VI, Chronology; Chapter 20, "Life and Works 1685-1750, Routedge Research Companion to J. S. Bach, ed. Robin A. Leaver (London & New York: Routledge, 2017, 501-537).
⁵ Peter Williams: Bach: A Musical Biography (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 2016: 271).
⁶ Martin Geck, Johann Sebastian Bach: Life and Work, trans. John Hargraves (Orlando FL: Harcourt 2006: 162, 218)
⁷ Katherine R. Goodman, "From Salon to Kaffekranz: Gender Wars and the Coffee Cantata in Bach's Leipzig," Chapter 7, Bach's Changing World: Voices in the Community, ed. Carol K. Baron (University of Rochester (NY) Press, 2006).
⁸ James Day, The Literary Background to Bach's Cantatas (London: Dover Publications, 1961, 42).
⁹ Cantata 201, https://www.bach-digital.de/receive/BachDigitalWork_work_00000251?lang=en, https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/BachCantatas/conversations/messages/39600, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geschwinde,_ihr_wirbelnden_Winde,_BWV_201, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFVFmcZkRC8).
¹⁰ Cantata 211, https://www.bach-digital.de/receive/BachDigitalWork_work_00000267?lang=en, http://www.bach-cantatas.com/BWV211-D3.htm, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schweigt_stille,_plaudert_nicht,_BWV_211, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nifUBDgPhl4.
¹¹ Carol K. Baron, Chapter 1, "Transition, Transformations, Reversals: Rethinking Bach's World," in Bach's Changing World: Voices in the Community, ed. Baron (University of Rochester (NY) Press, 2006: 3).
12 Klaus Eidam, The True Life of J. S. Bach, trans. Hoy Rogers (New York: Basic Books, 2001: 282).

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To Come: Poetic Music of Sorrow, Sacred Music of Joy