Koopman Bach Cantata 18

Previously begun on Erato, Koopman's cantata cycle was taken over and completed in 2007 on Challenge Classics. It now looks set to surpass the famous Leonhardt-Harnoncourt set on Teldec (and indeed most of his other competitors). Koopman favours an intimate approach to the choruses - namely one voice to a part. Also, he opts for females soloists rather than boys, as would have been the case in Bach's day, and he favours mixed rather than solely male choirs. For many this will be a plus point, and it is good news for fans of Barbara Schlick. He goes for slightly higher than normal pitch - a semi-tone above present day pitch, which, as Christopher Wolff's notes point out, is what Bach used in Mühlhausen and Weimar, brightening the sonority quite a lot. The singing in virtually all the cantatas is pretty impressive and the instrumental playing is of a very high order.

The cantatas of volume 20 combine the concluding items from the "Picander" year of 1728-29 with a series of cantatas from the first half of the 1730s. A special feature is the inclusion of a hitherto completely unknown sacred work from Bach’s Weimar period, discovered as recently as May 2005 by Michael Maul (who works in the Bach-Archiv in Leipzig) in the Herzogin Anna Amalia Library, Weimar. This aria of praise dating from 1713, preserved in a newly discovered original source and now assigned the BWV number 1127, supplements Bach’s Weimar cantatas in a felicitous manner. Above all it is the first new work to add to Bach’s vocal output for 70 years, since the discovery of the cantata fragment “Bekennen will ich seinen Namen”, BWV 200.

Most of the Cantatas in this this last but one issue of the complete Cantata work has been composed between 1730 and 1740. This volume contains - among others - the famous cantata "Wachet auf ruft uns die Stimme" BWV 140, with the famous chorale "Zion hört die Wächter singen".

The present set is the debut of Ton Koopman on the Challenge Classics label and the re-start of the series of complete cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach. Volume 13 in this CD presentation contains the third series of chorale cantatas from the second annual cycle Bach composed for Leipzig. Music criticism in the modern sense did not exist in the eighteenth century, so we do not really know anything about how the public responded to Bach's music. One of the few comments we have is in a newspaper report of Bach's first appearance in the capacity of Cantor of St Thomas's, presenting a cantata on 30 May 1723,but we learn only that it was received with approbation, even applause.

The tenth volume of the complete recording of Bach's cantatas contains a final group of works (BWV 44, 73, 119 and 134) from the first cycle of 1723-1724. It continues with the first of a substantial series of chorale cantatas that give the second Leipzig cycle of 1724-1725 its particular character. This volume ends with the serenata BWV 134a, which completes the secular cantatas in Volumes 1 to 3; it provided the musical model for the Easter cantata BWV 134, which was composed in 1724. Bach's commitment in composing this second cycle of cantatas went well beyond his undertaking in the previous year. Whereas in the first cycle, existing cantatas from the Weimar period could be found alongside new pieces, the second cycle contains a sequence of newly composed works that continued uninterrupted until the spring of 1725.

The cantatas in this volume all date from Johann Sebastian Bach's second year of office as Thomaskantor in Leipzig. The series of chorale cantatas, which breaks off in early 1725, forms an almost complete yearly cycle which derives an exceptional unity of style and content from its debt to established Lutheran hymnody. Almost all the cantatas contain the first and last verse of a hymn, the other verses being paraphrased in recitatives and arias. Practically any selection of the chorale cantatas will display the unusually rich variety of form and colour that is one of their most distinctive features.

The cantatas in this fourteenth series fall into four unequal groups: BWV 26, 123,125 and 178 form part of the second yearly cycle of Leipzig church cantatas, which was abruptly broken off in March 1725.The chorale cantatas - based on strophes of church Lieder or church Lieder paraphrased into recitatives and arias - lent the cycle its distinct character. We do not know any tangible reason for the abrupt break-off, but we may assume that it is connected to the death of the author of Bach's texts, Andreas Stübel, deputy headmaster of the Thomasschule, who is presumed to have died on 31 January 1725.For evidently the composer had at his disposal only texts up to the Marian Feast of the Annunciation, 25 March 1725 (BWV 1).While the texts for BWV 6 and 42 are the work of an unknown poet, in Cantatas BWV 74,68 and 103 Bach set texts by the Leipzig poet Mariane von Ziegler, who evidently filled the gap left by the poet of the chorale cantatas. Finally, BWV 1045 is a sinfonia of a cantata dating from the mid-1740s, the other movements of which have not survived.

The third volume of our complete recording of Bach's cantatas comprises works drawn from three different categories. First comes a group of seven sacred cantatas from the years 1714-17, the majority of which were written for the Weimar Schloßkirche. Taken together with the cantatas contained in Volumes 1 and 2,these seven works - Cantatas 54,63,155, 161,162,163 and 165 - form the group of 23 sacred cantatas that have survived complete from the years leading up to the end of Bach's term of office as Konzertmeister to the Weimar court in 1717.

This seventh volume of the complete cantatas is exclusively given over to works from the first cycle of Leipzig cantatas of 1723/24. When Bach became Thomaskantor in Leipzig, he knew that he was taking on a post that was one of the richest in tradition and most important in the sphere of church music in Protestant Germany. From the latter part of the 17th century on, the cantata came to replace the Gospel motet, which had been used in church services in Protestant Germany since the time of the Reformation to underline the content of the prescribed reading from the Gospel.

The sixth volume of our complete recording of Bach's cantatas inaugurates the long series of sacred cantatas written during the composer's years in Leipzig. With a single exception, the cantatas included in the present release belong to the first annual cycle and date from 1723/24.The cycle begins with Cantatas 75 and 76, with which the recently installed Thomaskantor took up his new appointment in April 1723.