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Everybody knows Bach, few people know his cantatas, and almost nobody knows them all. Bach wrote more than 300 cantatas during his life, of which about two-fifths are lost. These losses are due to the fact that only one of Bach's cantatas was printed during his lifetime and to the circumstances and peculiarities of Bach's legacy. Bach wrote quite a few secular cantatas, but most of his cantatas were written for the Lutheran church service and, naturally, involve a lot of texts related to that service. They also involve pompous and moralistic poetry that is often hard to appreciate for us at the end of the twentieth century (see the title page of poems by Bach's Leipzig poet Picander on the left). Robert L. Marshall calls the cantatas "Bach's most "parochial" works" and further concludes that "...such compositions were not intended primarily for the "delectation" of a concert public, but rather for the "edification" of a church congregation." (In: On Bach's Universality). Even Alfred Dürr, the most dedicated scholar and connoisseur of the Bach cantatas of this century, is somewhat defensive about Bach's cantata oeuvre in the introduction to his great two-volume work on the cantatas . The general public has little opportunity to get itself acquainted with Bach's cantatas in the concert hall, which is not the most suitable setting anyway. Churches and the like, with some notable exceptions, hardly have the means nowadays to organize cantata performances on a regular basis.
In spite of all these problems of acquaintance, some Bach enthusiasts (I among them) believe that Bach's cantata oeuvre contains some of the most grandiose music, not only of Bach himself but of Western music in general. As far as I am concerned, this has little to do with the particular texts or religious setting of these works. Most of Bach's cantata production can be enjoyed and fully appreciated in almost complete abstraction from its original goals. First of all, there is much purely instrumental music in the cantatas. For me, it has always been one of the mysteries of the phonographic industry that there are dozens of releases of the Brandenburg Concertos, but, to my knowledge, not a single anthology of the many sinfonias that can be found in the cantatas. Many of these works, like the long sinfonia at the beginning of BWV 42, are among the best instrumental works that Bach wrote, of a quality comparable to the Brandenburg Concertos.
Second, it is somewhat anachronistic to see Bach's church music as religious art per se. Unlike the later Romantics, the Baroque composer does not seek to express his personal religious feelings and other ego-emotions. Central to a Baroque composer's concerns is the expression of objectively conceived Affekten (passions), such as the elementary wonder, love, hatred, desire, joy, and sadness and their various composites. The Baroque composer disposes of a number of convential means to express these objective passions. Sadness, for instance, requires a slow movement and minor tonality. Within these conventions, there are certain margins for individual invention and expressiveness. It is with reference to such margins that we must characterize Bach's genius. With few exceptions, his music reaches the highest peaks of inspired inventivity and beauty within a fixed framework of conventions of Affekt-expression.
The crucial point of these considerations is that there are no exclusively religious Affekten. The passions in question are of a more universal nature and are the same in religious and non-religious contexts. This is not the wishful thinking of 20th century post-Christian Bach interpretation, but, on the contrary, the essence of Bach's own practice. A substantial percentage of Bach's church music has a worldly origin and was adapted for church use by rewriting the texts according to the so-called parody technique. Even such alleged pinnacles of religious inspiration as the St. Matthew Passion contain many key parts with a worldly origin, in this case a Trauermusik for Leopold von Anhalt-Köthen. In short, the view of Bach as the ultimate Christian composer expressing individual religious emotions probably is a Romantic distortion that does little justice to Baroque composition practice.
Since more or less convential Affekt-expression is so central to Bach's "method" of composition, a thorough study of the cantatas is crucial to the understanding of Bach's music in general. Since music was seen as related to rhetoric in Bach's time, the texts give important clues as to the intended emotional and intellectual content of the music. In general, one can learn from the cantatas what a certain type of music, including purely instrumental music, is supposed to express.
Personally, I believe that from the connection between text and musical expression we can also learn about Bach's private preoccupations. In spite of the supposedly objective character of Baroque music, it appears that Bach is more inspired by certain texts than by others. Although some caution seems desirable, it has, for instance, often been observed that Bach is always much inspired by texts evoking "the last hour", the moment of dying and the coming union with Christ. Although this theme has certain roots in Lutheran orthodoxy, it is by and large a form of mysticism of the kind stressed by the pietists in Bach's days. Arguably, this is not an orthodox Christian idea at all but a variant of the mysticism that can be found in all cultures and all times. In a double sense, then, Bach is not a narrow Christian composer but a composer of universal human Affekt-expression, with a particular sensitivity to the relation between dying and mystical union with a metaphorical Christ.
WEIMAR (first term): 1703
While awaiting the completion of the organ at Arnstadt, Johann Sebastian was offered, and accepted the post of violinist in the small chamber orchestra of Duke Johann Ernst, the younger brother of the Duke of Weimar. At Lüneburg Johann Sebastian had already experienced church choir music, violin, continuo and organ playing, as well as musical composition and performance in the French style. Here at Weimar he now came into contact with Italian instrumental music, and acted as deputy to the aging Court organist, Effler, an old friend of the Bach family, thus having a chance to keep his organ playing in practice. His stay here was short, but he was to return later.
In July 1703 the Arnstadt Town Council invited young Bach to try out the newly finished organ in the 'New Church'. He so impressed the people of Arnstadt with his brilliant playing at the dedication that he was immediately offered the post of organist on very favorable terms.
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