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On Trinity Sunday 27 May 1725 Johann Sebastian Bach had presented the last cantata of his second cantata cycle, the cycle which coincided with his second year in Leipzig. As director musices of the principal churches in Leipzig he presented a variety of cantatas over the next three years. New cantatas for occasions of the liturgical year composed in this period, except for a few in the chorale cantata format, are known as Bach's third cantata cycle. His next cycle of church cantatas, the Picander cycle, did not start before St. John's Day 24 June 1728.
Contents
- Annually returning services
- Other occasions
- Librettos
- Trinity III to Trinity VII 1725
- Trinity IX to Trinity XIII 1725
- Picander
- Lehms cycle of 1711
- Other cantatas between Council Election 1725 and Purification 1726
- Libretto cycle published in Meiningen
- Easter III 1726 or 1728
- Michaelmas to Trinity XVII 1726
- Birkmann cantatas
- Septuagesima to Pentecost Monday 1727
- References
Sacred music of this period by Bach which doesn't belong to a cantata cycle includes council election cantatas, Passion music for Good Friday, and music for weddings and funerals.
Annually returning services
After Trinity of 1725 Johann Sebastian Bach began a third annual cycle, but with less consistency than the previous two. The oldest extant cantata of the third cycle was composed for the ninth Sunday after Trinity 1725. The third cycle cantata for the first Sunday after Trinity was only composed in 1726. The cycle extends over several years. The cantatas from 1727 have however also been termed as "between the third and the fourth cycles".
There are 35 extant cantatas of the third cantata cycle, for a period with around 170 occasions. For about half of the other occasions a few new chorale cantatas by Bach (retrospectively added to the chorale cantata cycle), restagings of older compositions or presentations of works by other composers are known. Bach had acquired a cycle of cantatas by his second cousin Johann Ludwig Bach of Meiningen. Together with his assistants he provided performance material for at least 18 of these cantatas, for which the Leipzig premieres are known, from Purification (2 February) to Trinity XIII (15 September) 1726.
Johann Sebastian Bach's compositions have a number according to the BWV catalogue, while Johann Ludwig Bach's have a JLB number. Through an erroneous attribution to the former the cantata Denn du wirst meine Seele nicht in der Hölle lassen, JLB 21, is also known by a BWV number. The version of the St Mark Passion attributed to Keiser which Bach presented on Good Friday 1726, including the chorale harmonisations BWV 500a and 1084, is indicated by a Bach Compendium (BC) number. Known works staged under Bach's directorate can in most cases also be indicated by a Bach Digital Work (BDW) number provided by the Bach-digital website.
Historians of music studying the cycle have noted a greater use of solo organ parts, speculated to have been played by Bach or his son, a wide range of texts and movements apparently borrowed from previous instrumental works.
Very little is known about the cantatas for recurring occasions in the year preceding the fourth cantata cycle, at least there is no new composition extant that with certainty can be attributed to the period from Trinity I 1727 to the start of that next cycle.
Notes
Other occasions
Apart from secular cantatas Bach composed in his third to fifth year in Leipzig (BWV 205, Anh. 196, 36a, 249b, 207, 204, Anh. 9, 193a, 198 and 216) also a few cantatas for liturgical occasions likely originated in this period:
Also the motet for New Year Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, BWV 225, would have been first performed in this period.
Librettos
The librettos of the church cantatas presented for the first time in Leipzig during Bach's third to fifth year in that city have a diverse origin. The most substantial group of librettos with a similar structure derives from a 1704 cycle of cantata texts printed in Meiningen, which was used for most of the cantatas presented in the liturgical year 1725–26. In 1728 many of the librettos of cantatas associated with Bach's third to fifth year in Leipzig were grouped in a single publication by Christoph Birkmann.
Trinity III to Trinity VII 1725
A booklet printed in 1725, with the cantata texts from Trinity III to Trinity VI, was recovered in 1971. The period covered by the booklet included the feasts of St. John and Visitation:
The musical settings of these librettos as performed in Leipzig on these days have not been recovered. A Trinity VII cantata, only known by its title, is presumed to have been the cantata for the next Sunday,
It is not certain Bach composed any of the cantatas from Trinity III to Trinity VII 1725. Georg Philipp Telemann has been suggested as their possible composer: he had set all cantata librettos of Neumeister's 1711 cycle, and for the Trinity VII cantata there are two known Telemann cantatas that have the same title (TWV 1:617 and 616).
Trinity IX to Trinity XIII 1725
The ninth Sunday after Trinity is the first occasion with an extant new cantata by J. S. Bach after Trinity 1725:
The next extant cantata is for the 12th Sunday after Trinity:
The next Sunday Bach sets again a text by Franck:
Picander
The sacred cantata for the next occasion, Council Election (Ratswahl), does not belong to any cycle. Its libretto was published in 1725:
In this period Bach relied on Picander for the librettos of several of his secular cantatas, but also for a few more church cantatas:
Other early versions of librettos that were adopted by Picander in his 1728–29 cycle may have been set by Bach in 1727. Recent recovery of a copy of Birkmann's 1728 libretto cycle seems to suggest Welt, behalte du das Deine and Ich kann mich besser nicht versorgen for the first and the second Sunday after Easter respectively.
Lehms' cycle of 1711
A cantata with a libretto from a cycle by Georg Christian Lehms, published as Gottgefälliges Kirchen-Opffer in 1711, may have been presented on the 15th Sunday after Trinity 1725:
From Christmas 1725 to the second Sunday after Trinity 1726 Bach drew most of his cantata librettos from Lehms' 1711 libretto cycle:
In the Post Trinitatem season of 1726 there are two further cantatas from Lehms' 1711 cycle:
Other cantatas between Council Election 1725 and Purification 1726
Trinity XVII may have seen the performance of another cantata on a libretto by Franck:
From Council Election to the Christmas season of 1725 there is only one further cantata extant:
The cantata for the Sunday between Christmas 1725 and New Year 1726 has a libretto drawn from Erdman Neumeister's fourth cycle:
The cantata for the third Sunday after Epiphany 1726 has a libretto from Salomon Franck's Evangelisches Andachts=Opffer:
Libretto cycle published in Meiningen
In 1704 a cycle of cantata texts was published anonymously in Meiningen, under the title Sonn- und Fest-Andachten. Its third edition appeared under the title Sonntags- Und Fest-Andachten in 1719. Bach scholars have suggested that Ernst Ludwig I, Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, Johann Ludwig Bach's employer, might have been the author of these librettos. The librettos follow a strict format, in two variants. The short form applies to most of the cantatas:
The build is symmetrical around the central New Testament section. The long form has a strophic poem instead of the Aria and Recitative after the New Testament section. When the cantata is split in two parts, as was customary in Leipzig, the split was usually after the third item, so that both parts started with a prose Dictum (all other sections being versified). The 18 cantatas by Johann Ludwig Bach that were performed in Leipzig from Purification to Trinity XIII 1726 had a libretto from this cycle, as well as seven of the cantatas composed by Johann Sebastian Bach which were presented for the first time from Ascension to Trinity XIV 1726. Six of the extant cantatas of the latter used the short form, only the first one, for Ascension, has a libretto in the long form.
Further cantatas with a libretto from the Meiningen cycle may have been presented in Leipzig in 1726, for instance on the fourth and the ninth Sundays after Trinity. In chronological order:
For cantatas not belonging to the Meiningen libretto cycle, performed on the sixth and twelfth Sunday after Trinity 1726, see above in the section on Lehms' cycle of 1711. J. S. Bach's cantata for Trinity VI (with Lehms' libretto) was a short solo cantata. J. L. Bach's cantata for the same day, on a Meiningen libretto, required a chorus only for its last movement. Probably this cantata wasn't split: one of the two cantatas for this Sunday in 1726 was sung as part I, and the other as part II.