Johann Sebastian Bach

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Authors: Christoph Wolff
BWV 18 and the solo cantatas BWV 54 and 199 stem in all likelihood from before the concertmaster appointment. Articulating general theological themes, they seem not to have been conceived for specific dates within the ecclesiastical year. At least for BWV 199, however, a repeat performance is ascertainable, on the eleventh Sunday after Trinity (August 12, 1714). Thus, we can ascribe seven cantata performances (the others are BWV 12, 172, 21, 61, 63, and 152) to the year 1714 following the March 25 inaugural presentation of BWV 182. Yet according to the projected schedule of one cantata every four weeks (Palm Sunday, Jubilate Sunday, Whitsunday, Third Sunday after Trinity, etc.), eleven performances should have taken place from Visitation/Palm Sunday through the Sunday after Christmas (December 30); so four works are lost for 1714. The Christmas cantata BWV 63, in all likelihood performed on Christmas Day 1714, did not fall into the regular monthly schedule, but the musically demanding Christmas season may have called for an accelerated response on Bach’s part. Because of its atypically large instrumental ensemble (including 4 trumpets, timpani, and 3 oboes), it may also have been unsuitable for the more intimate performance space of the palace church. Since on high feast days the ducal family occasionally joined the town congregation for services at St. Peter and Paul’s Church, both BWV 63 and the similarly opulent Easter cantata BWV 31 (uniquely requiring a five-voice choir together with a large orchestra) may well have been performed there.
    Matching the projected schedule for the two subsequent years with the extant cantata repertoire yields similar results, even with the three-month state mourning period (from August 1, 1715) taken into account. The cantatas from Franck’s 1715 text collection Evangelisches Andachts-Opffer distribute over both years, with BWV 80a, 31, 165, 185, 163, and 132 apparently belonging to 1715 and BWV 155, 161, and 162 to the following year, toward the end of which Bach turned to Franck’s Evangelische Sonnund Festtages-Andachten , published in 1717 (BWV 70a, 186a, and 147a). So for twenty-four minus three months, only twelve works have survived. The apparent losses cannot be attributed solely to the dispersal of Bach’s estate in 1750 and its subsequent misfortunes. (Aside from Bach’s missing works, we have no extant compositions at all from the pen of either one of the Dreses.) On the other hand, not a single cantata performance can be traced to 1717, Bach’s final Weimar year, suggesting that traditional estimates of numerous material losses have been overstated. Bach may well have refrained from composing any cantatas at all that year, either on the order of a superior or owing to a personal decision. Indeed, events occurring in December 1716 point in that direction.
    Johann Samuel Drese died on December 1. Neither the cause of the old capellmeister’s death nor the length of time that he may have been completely incapacitated is known, but according to the source evidence for BWV 70a, 186a, and 147a, Bach took over all the musical responsibilities immediately following Drese’s death and wrote cantatas for three consecutive Advent Sundays, December 6, 13, and 20 of 1716. The performances on the first two Sundays apparently took place, but the autograph score for the third cantata, BWV 147a, was left unfinished (and completed only later in Leipzig). 35 What motivated Bach to break off the work so abruptly? The most plausible reason may be found in an emerging if not already boiling conflict about leadership responsibilities for the court capelle between vice-capellmeister Drese and concertmaster Bach. Not that Bach expected to be chosen over the vice-capellmeister as the new head of the court capelle; on the contrary, his promotion in 1714 to concertmaster “with official rank below that of Vice-Capellmeister Drese” should have made it clear to

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