JSB sacred cantatas: which are your favourites, and why?

[Pulcinella]

I have the old Das Alte Werk set of Bach's sacred cantatas (Leonhardt and Harnoncourt) but can't in all honesty say that I have listened to many of them.

I listened to BWV140 (in a recording not from that set) yesterday with the score (wretched Dover edition, with odd clefs for the top three vocal parts: good job I'm a bass!) in preparation for hearing a performance as part of evensong at York Minster on 25 November: it may be one of the more familiar ones, but surely deservedly so.

But there must be plenty of other gems in there that I ought (need?) to get to know, so any thoughts on your favourites (and why) would be very welcome.

[ardcarp]

OMG Where do you start?

[ardcarp]

That wasn't very helpful. Sorry. Is Gottes Zeit [No.106] in the multi-CD box? If so, why not start with that. It's a very early cantata, quite unlike the more sectionalised later ones, and IMHO very beautiful. I have it on an old Gonnenwein LP.

[Pulcinella]

OMG Where do you start?

That's the problem.

[Richard Barrett]

1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 12, 18, 39, 42, 51, 54, 65, 83, 104, 106, 108, 110, 124, 146, 161, offhand for starters. But there isn't a single one that doesn't contain something valuable really. Famous ones like 140 don't really stand out that much from the rest IMO.

[Pulcinella]

That wasn't very helpful. Sorry. Is Gottes Zeit [No.106] in the multi-CD box? If so, why not start with that. It's a very early cantata, quite unlike the more sectionalised later ones, and IMHO very beautiful. I have it on an old Gonnenwein LP.

It pretty much has 1–199, I think.
106 on as I type: perhaps not a fair hearing, as I'm doing some ironing, but a good way to get a bit familiar with it.

1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 12, 18, 39, 42, 51, 54, 65, 83, 104, 106, 108, 110, 124, 146, 161, offhand for starters. But there isn't a single one that doesn't contain something valuable really. Famous ones like 140 don't really stand out that much from the rest IMO.

That's what I thought (feared).
I haven't got that much ironing.


Many thanks.
A particular favourite (the only one I've taken an orchestral part in, on the harpsichord) is 51, but that of course is for solo voice (and a darned good trumpet!).

[rauschwerk]

That wasn't very helpful. Sorry. Is Gottes Zeit [No.106] in the multi-CD box? If so, why not start with that. It's a very early cantata, quite unlike the more sectionalised later ones, and IMHO very beautiful. I have it on an old Gonnenwein LP.

I love No. 106, but having sung it twice and listened often, I have come to prefer it OVPP + OIPP. My other favourites are rather too numerous to mention! I have heard them all, and am on my second journey through the Suzuki box (the first one took a year).

[gurnemanz]

OMG Where do you start?

If there is to be a starting point, mine would be "Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis", Cantata 21. The repeated "Ich, ich, ich!" right at the start expresses so starkly and poignantly the self-obsession of the care-worn state of mind. Bach offers beauty and profundity by way of consolation.

[teamsaint]

It would be interesting ( to me at least) to see if people know roughly at what point in Bach's life their favourites were written.

One of the things I want to find time to read about and listen around, is how Bach's writing developed , since I really don't have any idea , and which of the well known works clearly reflect that development.

Which may all seem very obvious to experts.......

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

My other favourites are rather too numerous to mention! I have heard them all, and am on my second journey through the Suzuki box (the first one took a year).

Yes - eight years ago, I decided I needed to know all the Cantatas much better than I did (most of them, at the time, not at all), so gave myself a Cantata each week, which I played first-ish thing in the morning as I was preparing and eating breakfast, "topped and tailed" by playing each following the score. Using a variety of performers (mainly Leonhardt/Harnoncourt and Leusink, but also Gardiner, Coin, Herreweghe, and individual others) it took me five glorious years to complete the set. Like Richard, there is so much marvellous Music here (and the six cantatas that make up the Christmas Oratorio should be added to BWV 1 - 199) that a "favourite" is beyond my powers - although BWV #67 is the only one that I have ever performed in, so that has a special "place" in my affections.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaEcrdkYPhg

Still hoping for someone to record a OVpP set using boys' voices - I'd help crowdfund that! And for the discovery of some/any/all of the missing Cantatas, too, come to that.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Still hoping for someone to record a OVpP set using boys' voices - I'd help crowdfund that!

... and young voices for the tenor & bass parts, too - I'd scour the Conservatoires for the best singers in their early twenties just starting their careers ... it's be wonderful ....

[MickyD]

I love the Naxos St John Passion by Edward Higginbottom and New College Oxford Choir..all male voices. I often think that it would have been great if this line-up could have done all the cantatas. But have had the Das Alte Werk set for years and love that, too, warts and all.

[vinteuil]

.

... it all depends on the mood I'm in

Sometimes I seek the robustness of bwv 50

http://allofbach.com/en/bwv/bwv-50/?gclid=CjwKCAiA8rnfBRB3EiwAhrhBGrdBFc885zsU6nDQuQttcAifti6TUK7uMeHclwOiMvjnT5C-xPKpYhoCOrEQAvD_BwE

other times the heartbreak of bwv 82

http://allofbach.com/en/bwv/bwv-82/

For bwv 82 Kuijken is wonderful -

http://amzn.eu/d/1Uj7kOw

.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

It would be interesting ( to me at least) to see if people know roughly at what point in Bach's life their favourites were written.

One of the things I want to find time to read about and listen around, is how Bach's writing developed , since I really don't have any idea , and which of the well known works clearly reflect that development.

Which may all seem very obvious to experts.......

It's difficult to talk very much about "development" in these works, ts, as so many of them were written within a period of two-three years (1723-25) - only about twenty were written before this period in his life. The differences in "style" within the remaining 180-ish Cantatas are more to do with the requirements of the text and occasion being marked - and the circumstances of the week that the composer wrote the work (for example if, on a Thursday, Bach discovered that one of his prize soloists had gone down with a cold - or his voice had broken - then it might have been a matter of writing a substitute aria [or adapting an already existing one if he had to do a pile of Latin marking] for whoever was available who wasn't sneezing). There is uncertainty in many instances of exactly which year in that "three" year period a Cantata was written ... and the BWV numbers are of little help in getting an idea of the chronological order of the works.

[Bryn]

.

... it all depends on the mood I'm in

Sometimes I seek the robustness of bwv 50

http://allofbach.com/en/bwv/bwv-50/?gclid=CjwKCAiA8rnfBRB3EiwAhrhBGrdBFc885zsU6nDQuQttcAifti6TUK7uMeHclwOiMvjnT5C-xPKpYhoCOrEQAvD_BwE

other times the heartbreak of bwv 82

http://allofbach.com/en/bwv/bwv-82/

For bwv 82 Kuijken is wonderful -

http://amzn.eu/d/1Uj7kOw

.

Possibly (probably?) because it was the first I listened to in earnest, O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort, BWV 60. How come it was my first? 'Simples':



That was half a century ago, and still I am drawn back to it again and again, though not now in that recording, which I only have on LP (indeed, I don't think it has ever made it to CD).