Hi John, List, world...
When I mentioned "text" I was mainly thinking of the scriptural passages and maybe traditional hymns - indeed they are known in advance - but I'd be pretty confident that Bach didn't have any advance knowledge of where the pastor would go with it - just as the pastor didn't have any advance knowledge of Bach's music - but Bach had to balance the appropriateness of his texts with the availability of musicians - sounds like quite a task - so I'm thinking that maybe a lot of arias had to be transposed at the last minute subject to the availability of voices. I'm thinking that movements must also have often been deleted at the last minute. I realize this is all conjecture, but I can't help feeling like we've opened up a picture of Bach's creative process - cantatas taking shape over a period of time in bach's mind, with his knowledge of what texts would be used, and at the end being written down for the musical forces at hand - there was often a librettist involved, too. I'm not sure whether the poets who wrote the cantata texts for particular movements also put them together into librettos or not - if so, Bach's burden was lighter. But Bach also had advanced students and family members to lend a hand if need be. I'm guessing he didn't put too much thought into the libretti.
The thing that ties a whole cantata together, structurally speaking, is the basso continuo - that's the only part that's always there. all the other voices and instruments come and go from movement to movement. And the continuo would have probably been played by Bach at the organ, maybe moving to the harpsichord during solo movements. It would be no challenge for him to produce something wonderful in the way of continuo realizations impromptu - including obligato lines if need be - maybe reinforcing the chorus - or helping out a soloist in trouble - perhaps by transposing the movement. So the overall burden on any particular musician wasn't so enormous - except for Bach himself - the burden on Bach was monumental - he was producer, director, accompanist and more, as well as composer. And he also had other compositional responsibilities! Joel
At 09:20 AM 07/06/2000 -0500, John Alexander Blyth wrote: >The particular Sundays would have their traditional readings. I'm pretty >sure the pastor would have stuck to religious matters rather than the >social and political excursions one might expect of a 20th century >Protestant minister. He would also likely have written it down and >rehearsed it according to the principles of rhetoric, quite a while before >the occasion. I think. john > > >At 01:35 AM 7/6/00 -0700, you wrote: >...> > >What I'm wondering is how he managed to get it all to happen on > >the right days. Most of the cyclical cantatas are for particular > >sundays - based on the text that was being preached on that particular > >day.... large task... > >John Blyth >Baritono robusto e lirico >Brandon, Manitoba, Canada
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