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

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

It beggars my imagination how he kept it up for even two years!

- and it wasn't as if that was all he had to do! (Train the performers; write/rehearse the organ solos; teach School Classes; teach Latin ... )

[Vox Humana]

write/rehearse the organ solos

What would those be? He wasn't the organist at Leipzig. The cantor's job didn't include that function.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

What would those be? He wasn't the organist at Leipzig. The cantor's job didn't include that function.

You are absolutely right, of course; I'd too hastily imagined the works for organ written/arranged/published in his Leipzig years were contemporaneous with his years of Cantata composition.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Incidentally - I found (and since lost) an online reference to CPE Bach having said that his father wrote five annual Cantata cycles. Also (elsewhere) that around 120 Cantatas have been "lost" in various ways.

Anyone else encountered these facts, and/or know if they're accurate?

[teamsaint]

Incidentally - I found (and since lost) an online reference to CPE Bach having said that his father wrote five annual Cantata cycles. Also (elsewhere) that around 120 Cantatas have been "lost" in various ways.

Anyone else encountered these facts, and/or know if they're accurate?

Here ?

http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Topics/Lost.htm

[ardcarp]

I think it was probably cataracts. He tried having them 'couched' by an English doctor, but the procedure failed and he probably died from infection.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

No, not that one (although I did use the Bach Cantata Website to look up the chronology of the organ works) - thanks for looking.

A quick check of my browsing history found one source for me - it was from a message on another Forum (one which I'd never previously encountered) devoted to Beethoven (of course!): posted by Robert Newman:

http://www.gyrix.com/forums/archive/index.php?t-2458.html

That "according to scholars" is a bit vague, and I can't find the reference to CPE Bach's comment ...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I think it was probably cataracts. He tried having them 'couched' by an English doctor, but the procedure failed and he probably died from infection.

Yes - John Taylor; the same English "doctor" who performed surgery (with the same result) on Handel!

https://www.med.wisc.edu/news-and-events/2009/december/handel-bach-blinded-18th-century-quackery/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Taylor_(oculist)

[chrisjstanley]

Certainly one of my favourites is BWV 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEhvfOS6uIQ

BTW there is a reference to the CPE 5 cycles by one of the BCWs experts John Pike in the link given #65 above.

John Pike wrote (June 14, 2004):
[To Juozas Rimas] It seems that a large number of works from Weimar and Cöthen are missing. We cannot be exact but CPE Bach refers in the obituary to pieces for many different combinations of instruments and in various genres, eg concertos, which were composed in Cöthen and which have just not survived. a large number of Weimar cantatas are probably missing but again it is difficult to quantify because of problems in the court that may have curtailed Bach's composing requirements. Many of the keyboard works have survived through copies made by students.

At Leipzig, according to CPE Bach, he composed 5 full cantata cycles, but only 3 remain. The loss may be even greater because for some weeks, 2 cantatas were performed, and there were sometimes extra cantatas on certain feast days.

Whatever the final figure, the loss is truly tragic.

bws
Chris S

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

At Leipzig, according to CPE Bach, he composed 5 full cantata cycles, but only 3 remain. The loss may be even greater because for some weeks, 2 cantatas were performed, and there were sometimes extra cantatas on certain feast days.

Whatever the final figure, the loss is truly tragic.

- and with massive apologies to ts: I didn't scroll down far enough - this is the quotation I remember having read.

I haven't encountered John Pike apart from the Bach Cantatas website.

[Vox Humana]

I think it was probably cataracts. He tried having them 'couched' by an English doctor, but the procedure failed and he probably died from infection.

Yes, most likely. The diabetes suggestion was a tentative one of the late Prof. Peter Williams (J. S. Bach: A Life in Music, p.263), commenting on the reference in the Obituary to Bach's poor eyesight:

"Thus it is that since cataracts normally give little actual pain or discomfort and are not life-threatening, it was felt necessary - by the Obituary writer or the composer? - to give reasons for trying to cure a condition probably brought on by untreated diabetes. (This diagnosis is conjectural.)"

[chrisjstanley]

Another favourite, although less well known than BWV 1, is extremely appropriate for these sad times when we live in many parallel and different universes and truth becomes lies, vice versa.

BWV 52 Falsche Welt, dir trau ich nicht!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDJwqrri130

Seppi Kronwitter gives a good account as boy soprano.

bws
Chris S