A Year with JSB's Cantatas

[verismissimo]

This Sunday completes a full year of listening to Bach’s Cantatas. Actually a year and a quarter - Bach continued after the church year-end to complete those final Sundays after Trinity. This Sunday is the 27th after Trinity and the cantata is one of the very finest - BWV 140 "Wachet auf", traditionally known in English as "Sleepers Awake!"

I started at Advent Sunday 2010 and have worked my way through Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost and all those Trinity Sundays. I've recently passed the 200 mark, having included all the other cantatas for church use.

I have a heard a range of different performers, but mostly recordings directed by Pieter Jan Leusink, Philippe Herreweghe, Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Gustav Leonhardt. It’s a collection that I’ve assembled over 35 years.

My pattern has been to listen to one cantata each day, first thing in the morning, before the rest of the house has stirred. And then to have breakfast.

It has been an amazing, life-enhancing journey.

[VodkaDilc]

How amazing that you have been able to do that. It's such a different position from, say 35 years ago, when recordings were so much rarer.

I am reminded of Paul Steinitz's achievement of performing them all with the London Bach Society; something which seemed quite outlandish when he began, but which he completed some years before his death. I hope his pioneering work is not forgotten; certainly it isn't forgotten by those who attended the concerts of the cantatas - and his annual St Matthew Passion in various London venues.

[Roehre]

That sounds familiar. I listened to the cantatas the Sundays or feast days (Oct 31st, June 24th e.g.) for which they were meant - meaning that with a late Easter the Trinity 24-27 may not occur, as was the case this year. I started in 2009 and completed basically early this year (2011). The only sundays for which we haven't got any Bach cantata are Advent 2 and 3, but these gaps can be filled with the ones for a special ocasion (funeral, marriage, installation of a new town council, etc).

It really is an amazing, life-enhancing experience, which I plan to repeat in a couple of years.

Btw, during the Bach-year 1935 the German Reichsfunk did broadcast all cantatas in their liturgical context live from the Leipzig Thomaskirche, an event AFAIK never repeated by any broadcaster.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

It has been an amazing, life-enhancing journey.

I am also on a "Bach Cantata Pilgrimage", with Leusnik, Harnoncourt and Leonhardt at the heart of my listening, too. I also play one in the early mornings before breakfast, but I devote an entire week to each Cantata, so over the past two years I've discovered just over 60 works (there are some "doublings" between CDs, which I don't at all mind.) Once I've completed the set, I intend to follow Roehre's example and play the works through on the feast days for which they were written.

The richness and variety of these glorious pieces is astonishing: each is individual, there are no "dull" or routine works and Bach responds to the challenges of producing Music "by the yard" by creating Music that is joyous, deeply moving and awe-inspiring. As Vodkadilc suggests, it makes me grateful to be alive at a time when it is possible to have this entire canon of works so readily available and so much easier to experience than in previous generations.

Best Wishes.

[David Underdown]

I sang in several as part of the complete cycle given at St Michael and All Angels, Turnham Green. In addition to the cantatas, we've performed the B Minor Mass, the St John Passion (I wasn't able to take part in that), and coming up at 7:30pm on 5 February 2012, the St Matthew Passion. All instrumentalists and singers are volunteers, entry is free (with a retiring collection for charities supported by the church). Directed by Sandy Burnett

[old khayyam]

That is indeed a wonderful achievement, i would never have the discipline, even if i had all the recordings.

As it happens, in this very week of all weeks, i had the profound good fortune to unearth a vintage vinyl box-set of the Christmas Oratorio in a charity shop. Best present i could ever have! I shall be playing it in it's entirety on the 25th, accompanied by a bottle of wine as i bury myself in the broad lyric/info sheet.

[Stanfordian]

Hello ferneyhoughgeliebte,

I understand that CBT is ideal for this type of OCD.

Seriously it sounds like a great idea. I went on Bach pilgrimage to Thuringia in April. Still have a bit more to do.

Stanfordian

[Biffo]

I have been listening to the Bach Cantata's in liturgical sequence but not quite as single-mindedly; I have the occasional break and then listen to three or four on successive days . I am up to the 8th Sunday after Trinity. I have been listening to Karl Richter and his Munich forces - a bit old-fashioned these days I suppose but deeply satisfying. Richter recorded a sequence of 64 cantatas, one for each Sunday plus major feasts (with a few duplications).

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I understand that CBT is ideal for this type of OCD.

I'll decide whether I'm a control freak or not!

Best Wishes,