Bach in Baltimore’s Music Director T. Herbert Dimmock continues his conversation and insights into Bach’s unique Magnificat. It was written originally in Eb Major and included four hymn tune arrangements interpolated within the Magnificat text. One year later Bach lowered the pitch to D Major and left out the hymn arrangements. Bach sets the Magnificat in twelve movements. Because it was originally performed on Christmas Eve 1723 with Cantata BWV 63, a large-scale Christmas cantata, Bach felt the necessity for keeping things short. For all of its grandeur and, sometimes, expansiveness, the work is remarkably brief.

The Bach Magnificat is unique in the composer’s output. It was written originally in Eb Major and included four hymn tune arrangements interpolated within the Magnificat text. One year later Bach lowered the pitch to D Major and left out the hymn arrangements. Bach sets the Magnificat in twelve movements. Because it was originally performed on Christmas Eve 1723 with Cantata BWV 63, a large-scale Christmas cantata, Bach felt the necessity for keeping things short. For all of its grandeur and, sometimes, expansiveness, the work is remarkably brief, even terse. The first movement is a good example. After a rather lengthy orchestral introduction and a big flurry from the chorus, the movement seems like it is over almost before it starts. The first two arias, for two different sopranos, are a wonderful example of Bach’s portrayal of the young Mary. The first, energetic with boundless enthusiasm; she has the rest of her life before her. The second is plaintive and middle eastern sounding, the properly demure young maiden is shown here. The second aria is interrupted by the fiery “Omnes generationes” chorus. The angular bass aria is exceeded by the ravishing duet for alto and tenor accompanied by muted strings with flutes. This is characteristic of Bach’s use of the maximum contrast within this relatively confined space. The “Fecit potentiam” is one of Bach’s most energetic and difficult choruses, but is over in about two minutes. The tenor aria “Deposuit” is again fiery, followed by the adorable “Esurientes” with two flutes. Notice the emptiness at the very end illustrating the text. The women’s chorus sings the ethereal “Suscepit Israel” with the trumpet softly intoning the Magnificat chant tune. The “Sicut locutus est” is a rather pro forma choral fugue but is followed by the stirring “Gloria Patri,” a big buildup to the clever introduction of the opening material on the words “as it was in the beginning.”

© Craig Smith

Felix Mendelssohn was a precociously gifted child, so much so the finest musicians of the day hailed him as another Mozart. The comparison was by no means without foundation: by the time he had reached his mid-teens, Mendelssohn had composed a large number of mature works including twelve string symphonies. He composed a symphony for full orchestra when he was fifteen, a String Octet when he was sixteen and, when he was seventeen, the first concert overture, in this instance on William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In short, the prodigy looked to be the real thing. Mendelssohn’s father, himself the son of the celebrated philosopher, Moses Mendelssohn, liked to joke, “I used to be known as the son of my father; now I am known as the father of my son!”

The seminal event in Mendelssohn’s musical training occurred when the boy-prodigy worked with Carl Friedrich Zelter, director of the Berlin Singakademie. The institution was founded to promote the choral music of the Baroque period, especially that of J. S. Bach. While Bach’s keyboard and orchestral music was still played, his choral music had largely been forgotten, and Mendelssohn must have decided early on to rectify the situation. Zelter also taught Mendelssohn composition and theory, drilling him, for example, in counterpoint after the style of Bach. Looking back, we can say that Bach’s music made a profound impression on the 19^th century Mendelssohn, who, given his skills, wrote as much choral music as anybody in his league.

As he aged, it also became apparent that Felix Mendelssohn had other gifts besides those associated directly with the musical arts like playing and conducting. Possessed of a talent for organization and administration, he worked tirelessly with both the Leipzig Conservatory and Leipzig’s Gewandhaus Orchestra. An immediate result vis-à-vis the orchestra was the raising of performance standards in Europe to new heights. The conservatory, first of its kind in what we would call Germany, was tasked with producing future instrumentalists.

Mostly, however, Mendelssohn became a composer whose interests included what was then considered to be antiquity. In 1829, in Leipzig, at the age of twenty, he led a revival of J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. Here was the event providing the impetus for the 19^th century’s rediscovery of Bach’s choral music. Mendelssohn first paired the score down to a two-hour realization. With his forces gathered, he then conducted the whole with his right hand while playing the continuo part with his left. Felix Mendelssohn was a great admirer of the oratorios of both G. F. Handel and Franz Joseph Haydn, too. The prodigy, it was said, knew Messiah and Creation by heart.

Thus, it is no surprise to learn that Mendelssohn’s first oratorio, St. Paul, received its premiere at the Lower Rhine Festival in 1836. And that the composer was in contact with the Birmingham Festival in England soon afterwards with regard to a second oratorio. However, because of problems with the libretto, problems caused by disagreements over the dramatic element, Mendelsohn’s Elijah would have to wait.

Mendelssohn had conducted St. Paul at the Birmingham Festival in 1837, and in 1840 he had given his Lobgesang or Hymn of Praise there. On both occasions the results were success beyond the wildest of dreams.  When the festival offered a commission, the one-time prodigy now grown older could not refuse. Felix Mendelssohn’s second oratorio, Elijah, was first performed at the end of August, 1846, the composer conducting, the audience large and enthusiastic. Texturally, the dramatic issues had been solved. When the oratorio concluded, the applause bordered on the hysterical.

“No work of mine went so admirably the first time of execution, or was received with such enthusiasm by both the musicians and the audience,” Mendelssohn wrote in a letter to his brother in an attempt to describe the proceedings. The Times’ music correspondent was even more effusive when writing of Elijah’s premiere: “Never was there a more complete triumph; never a more thorough and speedy recognition of a great work of art,” he said. (1)

Felix Mendelssohn did not compose a third oratorio. As it happened, the premiere of Elijah was the last major triumph in his life. It was a lifetime of overworking as well. Felix Mendelssohn died in November of 1847.  He was thirty-eight years old.

Ever since Handel’s Messiah captivated audiences in the late 1740s, the oratorio genre has occupied a prominent position in the concert halls of England. After a resounding premiere, Elijah immediately established itself as second only to Messiah in the English public’s affection. The work received countless performances in the years following its composition, and some measure of its popularity may be judged by the fact that it was performed at the Three Choirs Festival every season from 1847 to 1930.

Structurally, the work is clearly influenced by the choral masterpieces of Bach and Handel, but its highly dramatic style, at times bordering on the operatic, constitutes a significant step forward from its Baroque predecessors. Elijah has many other outstanding qualities, too: an inventive orchestration, a counterpoint at once spontaneous and appealing, and a variety in the recitatives to ensure they always maintain the work’s impetus. Towering above all is the work’s considerable dramatic impact, a judgment given by posterity that would have pleased Mendelssohn to no end. –Ray Sprenkle

1. The Times (anonymous critic), 27 August 1846

Enjoy Part 2 of 2! Music Director T. Herbert Dimmock shares insights into Bach’s Cantata 140: Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme (Awake, calls the voice to us). Also known as Sleepers Wake, Maestro Dimmock noted that Cantata 140 is one of the most beloved of all the Bach compositions. ”Of the more than 200 surviving cantatas of J.S. Bach, “Wachet auf” is easily one of the most often performed and enjoyed of them all.” The music in this cantata is uplifting. Bach composed the chorale cantata in Leipzig for the 27th Sunday after Trinity and first performed it on 25 November 1731.

You’ve seen Part 1, now continue the journey with “Musical Notes with Maestro T. Herbert Dimmock: J.S. Bach’s B Minor Mass, Part 2. Bach in Baltimore’s Music Director T. Herbert Dimmock shares insights into the crown jewel in Bach’s oeuvre in this three part series on the work. Bach’s B Minor Mass represents Bach’s lifelong and tireless artistry as a composer and musician of the highest caliber and is a grand synthesis of his every musical innovation and contribution. Bach began the B Minor Mass early in his career and didn’t finish it until the very end of his life when he had already gone blind. Bach never got a chance to hear a full performance of his magnum opus, but his virtuosity lives on forever with the B Minor Mass.

This programming was made possible in part by the Howard County Arts Council through a grant from Howard County.

Complete your musical excursion into J.S. Bach’s crown jewel—the heavenly B Minor Mass. It represents Bach’s tireless artistry as a composer and musician of the highest caliber and is a grand synthesis of his every musical innovation and contribution. Bach began the B Minor Mass early in his career and didn’t finish it until the very end of his life when he had already gone blind. Bach never got a chance to hear a full performance of his magnum opus, but his virtuosity lives on forever with the B Minor Mass.

This programming was made possible in part by the Howard County Arts Council through a grant from Howard County.

The Mass in B minor, BWV 232, by Johann Sebastian Bach is a musical setting of the complete Ordinary of the Latin Mass. Finished the year before he died, it is one of Bach’s last compositions and is now widely regarded as one of the supreme achievements of classical music. Bach did not give his missa tota a title. Instead, he put the manuscript into four folders, each with its own heading and each capable of being performed separately. The first name given to the complete work was in the 1790 estate of the deceased C.P.E. Bach: the “Great Catholic Mass,” as the third child of J.S. Bach called it.  The first publication of the Kyrie and Gloria portions occurred in 1833 where the piece was simply referred to as “Mass”, albeit a Lutheran Mass, and in 1845 all four folders were published as a single entity with the title High Mass in B Minor. The adjective ‘high’ was influenced by the prominence then given to Beethoven’s Missa solemnis, but the word fell out of common usage as far as BWV 232 was concerned. The phrase in B minor survived, however, even though only five of the work’s 27 movements are in the key. It is a fact the final movements in each of the folders are in the key of D major.

A veritable cathedral in sound, many of the B minor’s constituent parts date from earlier points in Bach’s career. For example, the Crucifixus from the Credo is Bach’s parody of the opening chorus to his 1714 cantata Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen, BWV 12 (Weeping, Lamenting, Worrying, Fearing). Another example is the Sanctus, created initially by Bach for a 1724 Christmas service. Here, he re-fashions the four-voice original for trebles to make a six-voice SSAATB chorus. The first folder? A parody of a 1733 Kyrie-Gloria setting. The second folder? Parodies of various sources, but there is good evidence Bach wrote fresh music in stretches, and it may be that the Et incarnatus est of the Credo (Symbolum Nicenum) was his last substantive composition. As for the Agnus Dei, consider the G minor aria with which it opens, and ask yourself how the earliest version is part of a wedding serenade composed in 1725. The answer is parody. In sum, when assembling the B minor Bach often depended on vocal music he had composed formerly. Sometimes he left the music intact and simply changed the text. Sometimes he extensively revised the parts. Most of the time it was varying degrees of both.

“Specific models or fragments can be pinpointed for eleven of the work’s twenty-seven movements” noted a prominent scholar, who adds that “two other movements are most probably derived from specific, now lost sources.”(1) Concluding “there is undoubtedly much more borrowing than this,” the musicologist also joins the long list of those who argue that as Bach had summarized his contrapuntal thought in The Art of the Fugue, he was doing the same with regard to his vocal music when putting together the Mass in B minor. Another academic saw it differently: “By abstracting movements from what he evidently considered some of his finest vocal works…[Bach] was doubtless attempting to preserve the pieces within the more durable context of the Latin Ordinary.”(2)

Still another scholar explained why the Mass in B minor raises questions in the first place. Bach’s ‘Great Catholic Mass’ is “a summary of his writing for voice, not only in its variety of styles, compositional devices, and range of sonorities, but also in its high level of technical polish…,” he said (3). “The monumental work is a synthesis of every stylistic technical contribution the Cantor of Leipzig made to music,” agreed a second (4). “Bach’s mighty setting preserved the musical and artistic creed of its creator for posterity,” offered a third. (5)

There are more opinions, of course, too many to list here, but what follows represents yet another pattern of thought: “The work is…an ideal type, rather than being crafted for practical use.” In other words, the B minor is a pedagogical piece.

Almost forty years after Bach’s death, the Symbolum Nicenum from BWV 232 was performed under the title of Nicene Creed at a benefit concert in Hamburg. Thereafter, it became customary to present in public only parts of Bach’s magnum opus.  Truth be told, a complete rendition of the Mass did not happen until 1859 in Leipzig, and the American premiere waited until 1900. The campaign for the use of smaller performance forces when playing or singing Bach became prominent in the latter 1920s, and is still with us. “One to a part,” clarified an influential musician from our time, when asked how he had won a Gramophone Award for his recording of the B minor. (6)

J.S. Bach’s Mass in B minor was first recorded in 1929, with a symphony orchestra and large chorus. The initial American recording was made in 1947. Since the 1960s, the intensifying movement towards historically informed performances has paved the way for the use of smaller groups when recording the Mass. Boys’ choirs supported by instrumental ensembles playing period instruments have become the new normal, but there are many unanswered questions involving the present’s understanding of the past.

To those who wish for more information on Bach’s Mass in B minor, I highly recommend two book-length studies, one by John Butt (Cambridge University Press, 1991), the other by George B. Stauffer (Schirmer Books, 1997).

–Ray Sprenkle

1. Stauffer, Bach: The Mass in B Minor, pp. 48–49.
2. John Butt, “Mass in B Minor”, from Oxford Composer Companions: J. S. Bach, ed. Malcolm Boyd and John Butt, Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 285.
3. Christoph Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician, W. W. Norton & Company, 2000, ISBN 0-393-32256-4, pp. 441–42.
4. “The ‘Great Mass’ in B minor” in the booklet to the recording by Philippe Herreweghe and Collegium Vocale Gent, released from Harmonia Mundi, HML5901614.15, 1999.
5. Christoph Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician, W. W. Norton & Company, 2000, ISBN 0-393-32256-4, pp. 441–42.
6. Nonesuch 79036-2, 1982.

Libretto for Adam and Eve (adapted from John Milton’s Paradise Lost and John Donne’s Holy Sonnet 13) 

Part 1 

Eve: Our garden is again overgrown.

Adam: The weeds are impossible.

Eve: We cannot keep up with them all.

Adam: Well, Eve, what we should do with them?

Eve: Let me think about what we should do. We should divide our labors.

Adam: You mean work separately?

Eve: Yes, you could work here with woodbine and ivy.

Adam: And what would you do?

Eve: And I would work down the path on the myrtle and the roses. We could be done by noon easily.

Adam: And why the hurry, my love?

Eve: We often stop and talk with each other…

Adam: And lovingly embrace and kiss…

Eve: So, by the end of the day we have not accomplished very much. Adam: But, my dear, God has not imposed a strict schedule on us.  We are allowed refreshment: food for the body and talk for the mind. Eve: But, too often we are filled with such food and talk so that our work is starved. Adam: Ha!

Eve: You laugh, but it is true.

Adam: Ha!

Eve: You laugh, but it is true.

Adam: Yet, God has let us have sweet intercourse of looks and smiles. Eve: But, looks and smiles do not pull weeds.

Adam: Ha!

Eve: You laugh, but it is true.

Adam: Ha!

Eve: You laugh, but it is true.

Adam: God has made us for delight and reason not for tedious work. Eve: But delight and reason do not pull weeds.

Adam: Ha!

Eve: You laugh, but it is true.

Adam: Ha!

Eve: You laugh, but it is true.

Adam: Until we have some younger hands…

Eve: Younger hands, what do you mean by that?

Adam: Ha!

Eve: What do you mean…

Adam: Ha!

Eve: …by younger hands?

Adam: Solitude might be the best thing after all, a short break might then refresh us to a sweet return. Remember, though, that we have been warned about the one who seeks to deceive us when we least expect it.

Eve: Are you afraid that my firm faith and love will be by him shaken? If we fear this wily foe our life is but a prison here.

Adam: If we stay together and he comes we can withstand his temptations, gathering strength. However, God left our will free for what obeys reason is free and reason he made right. But, our reason must beware in case by some evil, seeming good, it is surprised and deceived dictates something false and misinforms the will to do what God expressly forbid.

Eve: For God has made all things good for us.  Our happiness would seem to be frail, and Eden would not be Paradise for us.

Adam: Firm we might be, yet God has given us the free will to freely swerve. Reason may meet some deception unaware not keeping strictest watch and swerve unknowingly.

Eve: Ha!

Adam: You laugh, but it is true.

Eve: Ha!

Adam: You laugh, but it is true. You must keep watch against the wily evil one.

Eve: I will keep watch against the evil one. Ha!

Adam: You laugh, but it is true.

Eve: Ha!

Adam: You laugh, but it is true. Go then armed with your innocence and beauty on your way alone.

Eve: But I suspect our foe would not stoop to tempt me first.

Adam: Ha!

Eve: You laugh, but it is true.

Adam: Ha!

Eve: You laugh, but it is true.

Adam: Why would you say that, why would you say such a foolish thing? Eve: He would want to tempt the stronger one first, not stooping low to tempt the weaker one.

Adam: Ha!

Eve: You laugh, but it is true.

Adam: Ha!

Eve: You laugh, but it is true. I go with your love in my heart.

Adam: I go with your love in my heart.

Eve: I will remember what you said to me.

Adam: Yes, beware against the wily one.

Eve: I will remember what you said to me.

Adam: He comes when you least expect it when you are not aware. Eve: I will stay firm and never swerve from the straight and narrow way. Oh, give me a kiss before I go.

Adam: Yes, I will give a kiss before you go.

Eve: A kiss and an embrace.

Adam: And, yes, I will give you a kiss and an embrace. Eve: I go with you in my heart.

Satan: But look, the woman is alone. Her husband is not near. His intellect and strength are strong, a wonderful creation. I am not what I was before when I was in Heaven. Hell has debased and weakened me. So, I must choose the weaker sex to work my woe through my deceit and bring about the end of man.

Part 2 

Eve and Adam: With you is life forever! With you my life is full!

Satan: Excuse me, beautiful Eve.

Eve: Where are you that speaks to me?

Satan: Oh, don’t be put off by my ugliness.

Eve: Who are you that speaks to me?

Satan: …by contrast you are beautiful, looked upon by all as the fairest resemblance of God… Eve: What are you that speaks to me?

Satan: …and every one adores your beauty. Yet, here in this garden…

Eve: How are you able to speak?

Satan: You are only surrounded by brute beasts, except for one man who sees your beauty.

Eve: You exaggerate, Sir.

Satan: You should be a goddess among gods…

Eve: You flatter me, kind Sir.

Satan: …adored and served by countless angels. At your request will I tell you how I came to speak to you. At first, I was like all the beasts…

Eve: Go on with your story, let me hear.

Satan: …until one day I saw a beautiful fruited tree.

Eve: Go on with your story, quickly.

Satan: I came near the tree, its sweetness filled the air, enticing my desire to taste the fruit. Eve: Go on with your story, please don’t stop.

Satan: …and that alluring fruit tempted me. With my serpent body…

Eve: Go on with your story to the end.

Satan: …I was able to wind myself around the tree to the fruit. I took one apple and ate.

Eve: It is too wonderful!

Satan: Oh, such a pleasure I have never felt.

Eve: It is too wonderful!

Satan: I felt a sudden change in me. Then I could reason and I could speak,  then turned to things fair and good.

Eve: But where does this tree grow? How far away are we from it? In Eden there are many trees and we have not known all of them.

Satan: Here is the tree with the bright fruit, it is the Tree of Good and Evil, for when you once eat the fruit you will become as a god.

Eve: God has commanded that we may not touch or taste this tree’s bright fruit, for if we touch or eat this fruit that very day we shall die.

Satan: Do not believe the threats of death…

Eve: But God has said that we will die.

Satan: You will not die. How should you by the fruit?

Eve: It seems to be a strange command.

Satan: The fruit gives you life. I have touched and tasted it and I am still alive.

Eve: That only this one tree we cannot have.

Satan: And I am more perfect now than what fate meant me to be.

Eve: When eating of its fruit will transform us!

Satan: Look at me. I can now think and talk, a transformation. Shall such a change not come to man…

Eve: Certainly, my friend.

Satan: …when it is open to mere beasts?

Eve: It would be so wonderful!

Satan: And would God be angry for such a little transgression? For God is just but loving, too.

Satan: Whatever death might be…

Eve: But God has said that we will die.

Satan: …a happier life and knowing good and evil comes… Eve: It seems to be a strange command.

Satan: …by eating the tree’s fruit. Can knowing good and evil be such a bad thing?

Eve: That only this one tree we cannot have.

Satan: Would God not want you to know how better to avoid it?

Eve: When eating of its fruit transforms us.

Satan: But, also may be God just wants to keep you low and ignorant, because if you eat this fruit…

Eve: What will I tell Adam?

Satan: …then you will be as like another god…

Eve: If I eat this fruit will I lose him forever?

Satan: …and then God would be jealous you not needing them as much anymore they would be envious of you.

Eve: I shall take the apple…

Eve and Adam: With you is life forever. With you life is full.

Part 3 

Eve: Adam, my love, I have missed you.

Adam: Eve, my love, I have missed you, also.

Eve: I have brought you something special from the garden. Adam: And what do you have in your hand?

Eve: I have some plump and tasty apples from a tree. Why don’t you take a look at these apples?

Adam: Where did you get these beautiful apples? Eve: On the tree in the center of the garden.

Adam: The one forbidden by God for us to eat?

Eve: Yes, these are from the forbidden tree. But that tree is not a tree of evil for us.

Adam: What do you mean? What do you mean? Eve: It is a divine tree that opens our eyes.

Adam: Who told you this? Who told you this?

Eve: A friendly serpent told me this.

Serpent: At first, I was like all the beasts…

Eve: So, Adam listen to me now.

Serpent: …until one day I saw a beautiful fruited tree.

Adam: I am listening to you.

Serpent: I came near the tree. Its sweetness filled the air, enticing me to taste the fruit. Eve: Then, listen carefully to me.

Serpent: I was tempted in that moment. With my serpent body…

Eve: The fruit is not evil it is good.

Serpent: …I was able to wind myself around the tree to the fruit. I took one apple and ate.

Eve: It is wonderful!

Serpent: Oh, such a pleasure I have never felt.

Adam: Yes, Eve it is too wonderful!

Serpent: I felt a sudden change in me. Then I could reason and I could speak, then turned to things fair and good.

Eve: I have brought you some fruit to eat.

Adam: What have you done? What have you done? Eve: So that you may join us as equal love.

Adam: You, once holy divine, good amiable, sweet. Eve: I have some plump and tasty apples from the tree. Why don’t you take a look at these apples?

Adam: Now, you are suddenly lost and facing death.

Eve: What’s done is done and cannot be undone.

Adam: How will I live without you, my love?

Eve: We can still be together if you take the fruit. Here, take the apple, Adam, then we will be free.

Adam: But what will God do to me and you?

Eve: He will not uncreate us, destroy us.

Adam: Then the serpent would seem to triumph over Him.

Eve: We are one heart and one soul in love.

Adam: I take the apple!

Eve: You, Lord have made us, shall your work decay?

Adam: Repair us now for soon our end draws near.

Eve: We run to death; death meets us soon.

Adam: And all our pleasures…

Eve: …do vanish like yesterday. We dare not move our eyes any way.

Adam: Despair behind and death before us now.

Eve: Such terror and our frail flesh wastes away.

Adam: By sin in it which it towards death does take us

Eve: By sin in it which it towards death does take us. But you, Lord, are far above us all.

Adam: We look to you for hope to rise again.

Eve: Our old subtle foe so tempted us…

Adam: that we cannot last one hour without your love and your grace.

Eve: We cannot last one hour without your love and your grace.

Adam and Eve, a one-act opera, is the second part of a Trilogy written by Hollis Thoms on favorite  classic texts. The first, Chanticleer, based on the “Nun’s Priest’s Tale” from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Petrarch’s Songbook, is scored for vocal quartet, string quintet, guitar and harpsichord. The second,  Adam and Eve, heard today, is based on “Book IX” from John Milton’s Paradise Lost and is scored for  vocal quartet, woodwind quintet, double bass and harp. The third, Prodigal, is based on William  Shakespeare’s The London Prodigal (apocryphal work) and is scored for five singers and five instruments. All three works are comedies dealing with love and morality. 

Eve is sung by a soprano, and Adam sung by a baritone. The Serpent/Satan is sung by the alto and tenor  together to suggest the duplicitous nature of the devil. Milton elaborates on the Creation Story in the  Bible. He gives to Eve, Adam, and Satan the gift of reason and the ability to converse in cleverly human  ways. Milton makes the fall of Adam and Eve a more believable human experience. 

Mr. Thoms wrote this work to commemorate his and Jacqueline’s upcoming 50th wedding anniversary.  As a couple they have experienced the very human journey of love, with all its temptations and  challenges, but have in the end, like Adam and Eve, resolved by faith to put their lives under the saving  grace of God. Cantata 165 by Johann Sebastian Bach complements the Adam and Eve opera. The fall of  Adam and Eve, as depicted in the opera, is redeemed through Christ’s suffering and death, and through  the power of baptism as described by Bach in his cantata.  

Presenter Tom May was a tutor (professor) at St. John’s College from 1979-2018. He was also Director  of the Graduate Institute in Liberal Education, St. John’s College, Annapolis, from 1986-1989 and 1995- 1998. 

Passion is a 75-minute work for vocal soloists, mixed chorus, oboe, horn, two violins, two cellos, string bass, marimba and amplified harpsichord. It is set at the trial and death of Jesus as seen through the eyes of Nicodemus. The work is also an homage to Johann Sebastian Bach, quoting from some of Bach’s works, and imitating a Bach Passion in its design, shape and scope.

The libretto is based on the Gospel of John and the Gospel of Nicodemus (considered at one time to be the 5th Gospel and appearing in 400 ancient manuscripts world wide) and selected religious poetry. It is Nicodemus’ journey of faith from the coming to Jesus in the middle of night in secret to ask him questions of faith, to his advocating for Jesus at the trial, and to finally his courageous and open act of taking the dead Jesus from the cross and preparing his body for burial.

Under the direction of Maestro T. Herbert Dimmock, Bach in Baltimore performed the World Premiere of Passion in 2011, featuring the Bach in Baltimore Choir and Orchestra.

Brahms – A German Requiem: A Requiem for Humankind

The Roman Catholic Mass of the dead begins with the Latin words: “requiem aeternam dona eis (“grant them eternal rest).” With those opening words, the title “requiem” was established for Roman Catholic masses said at a funeral. Brahms’s German Requiem begins quite differently and is, in fact, unique in the history of music. Unlike other Requiems, Brahms’s German Requiem is not a liturgical piece at all. It forgoes the use of both the Roman Catholic burial liturgy as well as the Protestant liturgy as found in the Lutheran lectionary. Rather, Brahms chose 15 citations from 11 books in the Old Testament, New Testament and Apocrypha. The texts that Brahms chose are full of imagery and fit together in an overarching architectural plan. For example, there are three beatitudes in the libretto: one in the beginning, one at the end, and one in the middle (at the end of the fourth movement).

The Beatitude that begins the work is from the Sermon on the Mount, a most unusual way to begin a piece of music that is ostensibly about the dead. In fact, the choice of this text effectively shifts the focus of the work from the dead to the living (“Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.”) Brahms’s goal was to write a universal requiem for those who heard it – for the living. As Brahms himself once said, a “human requiem.”

Throughout the score Brahms links images and activities together. The German Requiem deals not only with the grief of one person‘s demise but “also with all human mortality, including all forms of ‘going forth,’ all modes of ‘bearing seed for sowing,’ and all occasions that evoke tears. It is indeed a human requiem because of the range of experience conjured up by these cognate images.” [Death set to music by Paul S. Minear]

The second movement continues the theme of universality by inviting listeners to join a slow, somber procession to a graveyard. Here the focus is not centered on the death of a single person, but rather on “all flesh” which withers “as the grass.” As many commentators have noted, one of the greatest “Buts” in all of music follows: “the grass withers, the flower fades BUT the word of God abides forever.”

The third movement centers on human’s desire for wisdom as we confront our inevitable death. Here Brahms skillfully combines Biblical texts with his powerful music to transform the nearer horizon of death about which the bass soloist sings into an endlessly wider vista of eternal life opened up to mankind by hope in God.

The fourth movement is one of the loveliest, most reassuring movements of music ever written. The text centers on the imagery of God’s house and the souls dwelling there who sing God’s praise ceaselessly. Here we find the second of the three beatitudes that Brahms put into his Requiem: “blessed are the souls now dwelling in God’s house.”

Brahms added the fifth movement to the German Requiem about a year after the other movements were written in response to the death of his own mother. A soprano soloist (almost certainly chosen to represent a mother figure) is assigned the basic melody.  The choir replies to her singing with the assurance of the implied mother figure with the poignant words that so many of us have surely heard from our own mothers: “I will comfort you.”

The sixth movement is based on texts that explore the mysterious end of all things (in many ways, it continues the thoughts of what originally would have been the movement preceding it, the fourth movement. Here in the penultimate movement, we hear the word “death” for the first time. But as elsewhere in the German Requiem, the word is used not in conjunction with the demise of an individual but rather as the universal foe. “for the trumpet shall sound and the dead will be raised, and we shall all be changed…” Here at last the great cosmic struggle between the primeval foes – death and life – is ended with a great, everlasting victory.

The final movement of the German Requiem contains the last of the three beatitudes. “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord … that they rest from their labors for their deeds follow them.”

Brahms concludes his Requiem by repeating some of the musical material from the opening movement, “clearly indicating a desire to bind those who die with those who mourn their deaths, and perhaps to suggest that this bond, which death always appears to break, is forged by the common bond to God.” [Minears]

J.S. Bach’s Schau, lieber Gott, wie miene Feind (See, dear God, how my enemies), BWV 153 is a nine-movement church cantata designed for the Sunday after New Year’s Day, and was first performed at Thomaskirche in Leipzig on January 2, 1724. The librettist is unknown, but the text is based on two of the day’s readings, Herod’s Massacre of the Innocents and the Christ family’s Flight into Egypt. Soloists, four-part choir, two violins, viola and basso continuo make up the required forces.

Noteworthy are the three chorales that appear in the cantata, all of which Bach used again in subsequent works. The cantata begins with a chorale, places the second chorale in the center, and closes with yet another chorale. This is to say that architecture was paramount in the ThomasKantor’s mind. And the harmonic relationships are planned as well. Note the ambiguity of the first two chorales and the predictable harmonies of the third, not to mention its triple-meter bounce. All of this is in keeping with the cantata’s overall progression from minor to major, from “fear and trepidation” to “purpose and assurance.”

BWV 153 tells much of its story through its arias, the first of which comes down to us as an arioso where the familiar “Fear not” is announced. Aria two is a ‘rage’ aria, like Peter’s aria from Johannes Passion, which was written at the same time. The angularity and speed of both represents confusion. Aria three, on the other hand, can be likened to a minuet. It is here that Bach assumes the triple meter format that will continue to the end of the cantata where a major key conclusion becomes apparent.

2020 is finally over! We invite you to welcome in the New Year with J.S. Bach’s Cantata for the New Year! In this “Musical Notes with T. Herbert Dimmock,” learn about J.S. Bach’s exuberant Part V of his Christmas Oratorio, and the musical journey Bach creates for the listener. Maestro Dimmock takes you into the music to deepen your appreciation and understanding of this cheerful work.

J.S. Bach assembled his Christmas Oratorio (Weihnachts-Oratorium), BWV 248 for performance during the Christmas season of 1734-1735 at the St. Nicholas and St. Thomas churches in Leipzig. The librettist, Christian Henrici, a neighbor who published under the pseudonym, Picander, was a likely collaborator. The oratorio is a collection of six cantatas that were to be performed on church feasts running from Christmas day through Epiphany.  Bach composed two other oratorios for the season, one for Easter and one for Ascension Sunday, but neither is as involved as Weihnachts-Oratorium, whose fifth cantata, Ehre sei dir, Gott, gesungen (Let honor be sung to you, God) was intended to be performed on the first Sunday of the New Year at a service devoted to the journey of the Magi.  In order to convince fellow citizens that the work was a major oratorio in spite of its performance being spread out over the course of two weeks, the composer printed a copy of the libretto.

Bach parodied large portions of his Christmas Oratorio, by which is meant he used music he had already composed for a new purpose. For example, the music for the fifth cantata’s opening chorus Bach took from BWV 213, a piece he had originally written for the House of Saxony. And the succeeding bass aria first appeared in his BWV 215, a cantata initially composed for the King of Poland. One school of thought has it that Bach wrote the secular cantatas with a sacred adaptation in mind. However it may have been, transforming originals to make for idiomatic Christmas expression requires a special kind of talent, hence the speculation involving Henrici.

That Bach was successful in parodying previous works to write his Weihnachts-Oratorium is proved by the oratorio’s popularity. It should be added that Bach freshly composed portions of his Christmas Oratorio, too. Considerable lengths of the fifth cantata are newly written, including the celebrated trio, and this might account for why some portions strike the ear as so familiar. BWV 248, part five is also the chamber work of the Christmas Oratorio, meaning its instrumental requirements are the least of the six cantatas. The journey is thus one of ecstasy to intimacy, and the almost rustic closing chorale is explained. In retrospect, we can say with confidence that the 5^th cantata of Weihnachts-Oratorium is a jewel. Indeed, the oratorio is a succession of jewels, parodies and freshly-composed pieces alike. When Bach’s major works are listed, the oratorio is invariably included.

Arcangelo Corelli’s Concerto Grosso in G minor, commonly called The Christmas Concerto (Op. 6, No. 8) is a concerti da Chiesa (church concerto) made of six short movements. The last, a pastorelle, proceeds attacca from the fifth and is the distinguishing feature of the concerto, composed circa 1690. Corelli’s example made a deep impression on both J. S. Bach and G. F. Händel, so much so that Messiah and Weihnachts-Oratorium each feature the Italian pastorelle. In different words, both Bach and Händel paid homage to Corelli whose manuscript to Op. 6, No. 8 bears these words: Fatto per la note di Natale (Made for the night of the Nativity).

Bach in Baltimore presents Handel’s Messiah, Part 2. Recorded on Saturday, December 7, 2019 at First Lutheran Church in Ellicott City, Maryland. Under the direction of T. Herbert Dimmock, the recording features Elissa Edwards, Soprano; Jessica Renfro, Alto; Dr. Min Jin, Tenor; Lorenzo Zapata, Bass; and the Bach in Baltimore Choir & Orchestra.

This programming was made possible in part by the Howard County Arts Council through a grant from Howard County.

Bach in Baltimore invites you to become a music insider with this fascinating “Musical Notes with Maestro T. Herbert Dimmock” presented by Bach in Baltimore. In this video, Dimmock shares insights into Handel’s Messiah, arguably the greatest choral work ever created. The concert event “Handel’s Messiah” took place on December 7 & 8, 2019, and tickets are not available.

This programming was made possible in part by the Howard County Arts Council through a grant from Howard County.

Bach in Baltimore invites you to become a music insider with this fascinating “Musical Notes with Maestro T. Herbert Dimmock” presented by Bach in Baltimore. In this video, Maestro Dimmock continues his insights into Handel’s magnificent Messiah. Learn about word painting in “Oh we like sheep have gone astray.” The concert event “Handel’s Messiah” took place on December 7 & 8, 2019, and tickets are not available.

This programming was made possible in part by the Howard County Arts Council through a grant from Howard County.

Messiah is an “English anthem-oratorio” composed in 1741 by George Frideric Handel. (the German Hӓndel became a naturalized British subject in 1727). Charles Jennens, patron of the arts and close friend, provided the scriptural text. The work was first performed in Dublin, Ireland, on April 13, 1742. Played the following year in London to a lukewarm reception, the meditative oratorio gained in stature via repeated performances, and now stands as one of the best-known and most frequently produced choral works in Western music. Messiah calls for modest vocal and instrumental forces, and because it was presented by Handel under different circumstances during the composer’s final decades, optional settings exist for many of its fifty- three numbers. After Handel’s death in 1759, the score was adapted for performance on a much larger scale, including a revision and amplification of its orchestration (one of the many arrangements was by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Der Messias). “Big Messiah” productions continue to be mounted in our time, of course, but versions honoring the manuscript are becoming more numerous as fidelity to the composer’s intentions has increasingly become paramount. The first recording of a nearly complete Messiah was issued on 78 RPM discs in 1928. Since then, the oratorio has been recorded many times.

“It was some mortification to me to hear that instead of performing Messiah here he has gone into Ireland with it,” complained librettist Jennens in late 1741. Handel had just arrived in Dublin shortly before what Americans would call Thanksgiving. Afterwards, Handel organized a series of six subscription concerts at the Great Music Hall on Fishamble Street that proved to be so popular, a second set of six was called for. At these shows he did not present Messiah. In fact, it was not until Handel began discussions for a charity concert to be given on April 12 that the new oratorio was publicly mentioned. The composer sought and was given permission from St. Patrick’s and Christ Church cathedrals to use their choirs for the occasion. Amounting to 16 men and 16 boy choristers, the size of the chorus was thus limited. The orchestra was equally small in terms of instrumentation, but the number of players is not known. “At the request of persons of Distinction,” the performance was delayed for a day.

In its report on a public rehearsal, the Dublin News-Letter described Messiah as “…far surpass[ing] anything of that Nature which has been performed in this or any other Kingdom.” In order to accommodate the largest possible audience, gentlemen were requested to remove their swords, and ladies were asked not to wear hoops in their dresses. After the performance, a member of the press wrote, “Words are wanting to express the exquisite delight it afforded to the admiring and crowded (sic) Audience.” A success by any measure, attendance exceeded seven hundred, and the three nominated charities each received the equivalent of $25,000 in today’s currency. The release of 142 debtors was also secured. Handel produced Messiah a second time in Dublin, on June 3, 1742, for the benefit of the composer.

In London, when Handel introduced the work at Covent Garden’s theatre on March 23, 1743, the reception accorded Messiah in Ireland was not repeated. A view had formed that the oratorio’s subject matter was not suitable for a public space. Unperturbed, Handel advertised the piece as a “New Sacred Oratorio” and planned for six performances. By the third it was apparent that changes were necessary, and the composer was forced to rethink his inspiration. The time-out proved to be fruitful, so much so even the complaining Jennens admitted Handel “has made a fine entertainment out of it….” Handel presented a revised version of Messiah at Covent Garden in 1745. In yet another concert given in 1749, he used the now-standard quartet of soloists for the first time and restored the original title. Annual charity performances of Messiah at London’s Foundling Hospital began the next year.

Handel died in 1759, so he lived to see his excerpts from his oratorio performed increasingly at festivals and cathedrals throughout Britain. After the composer’s death, performances were given abroad: Florence (1768), New York (extracts in 1770), Hamburg (1772) and Mozart’s Mannheim (1777). For performances in Handel’s lifetime and in the decades following, the known details surrounding the Foundling Hospital versions are thought to be authoritative, including the ordinary size of the choir. The fashion for using overwhelming forces to perform Messiah occurred after Handel’s death. A plaque at Westminster Abbey, dated 1784, gives the number of musicians involved in a production at over five hundred. At the same venue, announcements for a performance in 1787 promised, “The Band will consist of Eight Hundred Performers.”

It is not so well-known that Handel was much honored in his lifetime. He was pensioned by the Court of George II; held the office of Composer of Musick of his Majesty’s Chappel Royal from 1723 onwards, and, while living, saw the now-familiar statue of himself erected in Vauxhall Gardens. Few composers have been so celebrated by the world they lived in. It is also not so well-known that before writing almost 30 oratorios—Messiah was his 11th —Handel composed operas. He is now thought to have presented more than 40 after moving to London from Rome in 1712. The old saw, “Handel was born in Germany, learned music from the Italians, and mastered the French ceremonial style before moving to England,” is not far from the mark.

King George III called Handel, “the Shakespeare of music.” Mozart spoke enthusiastically about Handel’s “thunderbolts” and Beethoven claimed that “Handel was the greatest composer that ever lived.” Playwright George Bernard Shaw has the last word: “Handel is not a mere composer in England: he is an institution. What is more, he is a sacred institution.”

Ludwig van Beethoven wrote his second symphony a year and a half after he composed his first, and the difference between the two is the difference between night and day. Beethoven’s first symphony is composed more or less by the book. Only rarely do we glimpse the future Beethoven who appears full blown in his Symphony No, 2, Op. 36, especially in the last two movements. Written at the end of his “period of imitation,” Beethoven’s second symphony at once announces his mastery of the style and his determination to push boundaries.

Note: Did you know Beethoven did not care for the term ‘composer?’ He preferred to be called a Tondichter, a ‘poet of tones.’ He wrote it while at Heiligenstadt where he realized his deafness might be incurable.

To repeat, the difference between Beethoven’s first symphony and his second is the difference between night and day. Consider their tessituras. Beethoven expanded the orchestra’s boundaries in his second symphony by asking the violins and woodwinds to reach higher and by asking the violoncellos to go further down. Perhaps as a result, he also wrote melodies for the orchestra’s middle register, and the result, high, low and middle, is a bigger ‘sound.’ Simply put, Op. 36 is larger than life. And not only did Beethoven write a scherzo for his third movement, he fashioned an astonishing rondo theme for his fourth movement, a study in gastronomy-gone-wrong, including hiccups, belches and flatulence followed by groans. Not everyone liked it. After the work’s public premiere, a newspaper critic said the piece was like “a hideously writhing, wounded dragon that refuses to die….” So now have a listen and draw your own conclusions!

Become a music insider with this fascinating “Musical Notes with Maestro T. Herbert Dimmock.” In this video, Maestro Dimmock shares insights into J.S. Bach’s Cantata 165: O heilges Geist- und Wasserbad, a very early work by Bach that shows signs of the extraordinary and deep composer he will become.

This video release is a part of the 2020 Virtual Free Fall Baltimore, presented by BGE and Maryland State Arts Council (MSAC) and produced by Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts (BOPA). The month long celebration, running October 1 through October 31, features free arts & cultural events from participating venues and organizations throughout Baltimore City. Learn more by visiting FreeFallBaltimore.org.

O heilges Geist und Wasserbad (O holy bath of spirit and water), BWV 165, is a church cantata by J. S. Bach. He composed it in Weimar for Trinity Sunday and led the first performance on June 16, 1715. Structured in six movements, the cantata features three arias that alternate with two recitatives before concluding with a chorale. Scored for a small ensemble, the work functions as a sermon in music.

The cantata’s libretto, based on the day’s prescribed gospel reading, is by poet Salomo Franck. Jesus and Nicodemus meet, the tale told in symbolic words, a rich allegory where the Trinity is connected to Baptism. The cantata’s topics, scripture, baptism and the Eucharist, are reinforced by the closing chorale, the ‘tune’ by Nikolaus Seinecker.

The voices are combined only in the chorale, the words coming from Ludwig Helmbold’s hymn of 1575. In retrospect, Bach’s adroit use of the base voice for the recitatives, when contrasted with the higher voices of the arias, enhances Franck’s religious imagery throughout the opening five movements of the cantata and provides some sense of Bach when at Leipzig. To ‘paint’ the text was an important part of his future.

The parts to BWV 165, when performed in Weimar, are lost. However, Bach’s assistant prepared parts for the composer when in Leipzig, and it is currently believed that Bach presented the cantata a second time on June 4, 1724.

For all of J.S. Bach’s genius as a court composer of chamber and orchestral music, he took on one of the most prominent musical positions in all of Protestant Germany when he was hired as ThomasKantor in Leipzig in 1723. One of his new obligations was to write the music for each Sunday and holiday of the liturgical year. A result was Bach’s undertaking of artistic projects on the largest possible scale scale of the day.

O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort, BWV 20, is the inaugural cantata of more than forty that comprise Bach’s second cantata cycle for Leipzig, and was first performed on June 11, 1724. Each one begins with a chorale fantasia. That said, the opening of BWV 20 is one of the most striking movements in all of Bach’s music. The structure—slow, dotted rhythms giving way to fast, quasi-fugal writing and concluding with a recall of the ‘pompous’ opening—is identical to that of the French overture, used here by Bach to portray the endless march of time. Meanwhile, the chorus, with sopranos on the chorale tune, depicts a harrowing journey. Almost all of Bach’s cantatas have redemption as their denouement. But no balm is provided in O Ewigkeit du Donnerwort (O, Eternity you word of Thunder). Instead, the recitatives and arias and duet concentrate on the “fate of the sinner in eternal suffering.” Numerous writers have commented on the work’s unceasing “wailing and gnashing of teeth,” its “unrelieved starkness.”  This said, one wonders what the church parishioners thought of the cantata when first hearing it.

BWV 20 is one of Bach’s largest cantatas. Organized in two portions, the eleven movements are split seven to four by the sermon, which, no doubt, plugged holes.  Johann Rist published the text and Johann Schop the chorale melody in 1642. Bach used parts of both, sometimes directly, sometimes in a paraphrased version, the variations by an unidentified poet. John Eliot Gardiner, one of the finest Bach interpreters of the present generation, commented on aspects of Cantata 20’s affekt by arguing that Bach was “fired up as never before” when writing about the “baffling and disquieting subject of eternity, and specifically the eternity of hell.” We can guess at how Rist and Schop felt. We can also respond to their pleas as expressed in the concluding words to BWV 20: “Take me, when it pleases You, to your fortress of joy!”

The longest and last symphony Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed is regarded by many critics as being among the finest symphonies in classical music. It was nicknamed the Jupiter by impresario Johann Peter Salomon who probably had in mind the chief of the ancient Roman gods. The third in a set of three symphonies Mozart may have written on speculation, the work was completed during the summer of 1788.

The first movement to K. 551 is in sonata form and announces the symphony’s serious intent. Marked Allegro vivace, the silence prior to the close of the exposition is exceptional and somehow exceeded by its resolution in the recapitulation.  The subdominant Andante continues the remarkable invention by running through a succession of chromatic harmonies that explore both major and minor tonalities, not to mention the on-going cantabile and the shifts in pulse from three to two.  The third movement of K. 551, a Menuetto marked allegretto, returns to the home or tonic key, and is similar to a Lӓndler, a popular Austrian folk dance form.

The tonic-key Finale is again in sonata form, but this time the movement is marked Molto allegro and features a five-voice fugato in the coda. A contrapuntal tour de force, Mozart here re-imagines the psychological impact of a symphony by placing the apotheosis at the very end. Prior to Jupiter, the first two movements of a symphony were the sober parts. The remainder was lighter in terms of weight, a kind of play. After Jupiter, the manner in which a symphony concluded was serious business. Prototype for aspects of Beethoven’s middle period and the Romantic symphonies of the 19^th century, Mozart’s last symphony predates the end of the Ancien Régime, a fact that is difficult to fathom.

Bach in Baltimore’s mission is to perform the choral and instrumental works of Johann Sebastian Bach (and his contemporaries) and to educate the concert-going public about the musical language of Bach and the texts he chose to set to music.

We strive each month to present these works in a historically informed way that will enrich the lives of our audience members and inspire creativity. We wish to foster an appreciation for the arts, particularly for Baroque music, within the entire community. We are committed to providing educational experiences for people of all ages in order to instill a lifelong connection to Bach’s music.

Music Director T. Herbert Dimmock continues the conversation regarding J.S. Bach’s Cantata 1. Bach in Baltimore is committed to presented virtual content to our current and future patrons because we believe in the healing power of music, especially the music of J.S. Bach.

Join Music Director T. Herbert Dimmock as he concludes his fascinating exploration of J.S. Bach’s Cantata 1. Bach in Baltimore is committed to presenting virtual content to our current and future patrons because we believe in the healing power of music, especially the music of J.S. Bach.

This video release is a part of the 2020 Virtual Free Fall Baltimore, presented by BGE and Maryland State Arts Council (MSAC) and produced by Baltimore Office of Promotion & The Arts (BOPA). The month long celebration, running October 1 through October 31, features free arts & cultural events from participating venues and organizations throughout Baltimore City. Learn more by visiting Free Fall Baltimore.

Wie schon leuchtet der Morgenstern (How beautifully shines the morning star) is one of J. S. Bach’s most memorable works. If only for the choral fantasia that opens the score, the cantata would be forever enshrined. Comprised of six movements, the first chorus is succeeded by two arias, each preceded by a recitative. The work’s destiny is seemingly the ending chorale, and if the description is correct, the design is curious: the variations have come before the theme. Be that as it may, the first performance took place at Thomaskirche in Leipzig on Palm Sunday, March 25, 1725. The identity of Bach’s librettist is not known, but the unidentified poet paraphrased the original for the work’s two recitatives and arias. Otherwise, the writer used Philipp Nicolai’s hymn, which dates back to 1599. The cantata’s scoring is rousing and communal.

Wie schon leuchtet der Morgenstern is not the first cantata written by Bach. It survives as the last of his second cantata cycle for Thomaskirche , a collection distinguished by its incorporation of chorales and paraphrases of their texts. Complicating matters is the composer’s practice of treating the first Sunday after Trinity and not Advent as the beginning the church year.

The autograph to the cantata has been lost. What we have today is reconstructed from surviving vocal and instrumental parts. Wie schon leuchtet der Morgenstern achieved such fame that a century after Bach’s death in 1750 it became known as the first of Bach’s many works, and the name stuck. Some proof of this can be seen in the Neue Bach-Ausgabe of 1995 where the 19th century practice was continued (Bach Werke Verzeichnis 1 or BWV 1).

Wie schon leuchtet der Morgenstern’s layout consists of a choral fantasia beginning, the sopranos towering above the whole by singing the chorale tune in long tones. Two recitatives and two arias follow. The last named are concertante pieces by which is meant they include obbligato instruments that ‘compete’ with the soloist. There is no recitative before the ending chorale, which contains an independent horn part cutting through a straight-forward chordal texture.