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20 crucial works
144pp

Bach has a reputation for being sober and serious but, in fact, he was romantic and vivacious, a maverick firebrand who drew his sword against a student who disagreed with him.

Notes on … (series)

CONRAD WILSON
The first six volumes in a series about the life and key works of the world’s greatest composers.

‘Conrad Wilson’s blend of erudition, wit and scrupulous accuracy, laced with racy anecdotal evidence, makes his writing approachable, whichever level of engagement the reader has with “classical” music. These volumes will be invaluable.’
John Wallace, Principal, The Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama

‘I hugely admire Conrad Wilson’s writing, and he ably achieves his aim of widening the audience for classical music.’
Sir Brian McMaster, Director and Chief Executive, Edinburgh International Festival

EXTRACT

From Chapter 16: Easter Oratorio
The Easter Oratorio, however, was not Bach’s only Easter journey. Producing ‘well-regulated church music to the glory of God,’ which in Bach’s case was synonymous with producing masterpieces, was a daily event in his life, certainly after he became Cantor at St Thomas’s, Leipzig, at the age of 38. Christmas, Easter, and Whitsun were highpoints of the religious year, when something special was expected of him, and his ability to deliver what was necessary, even under pressure, was confirmed by two great – and greatly contrasted – Easter cantatas, Nos 6 and 66.
How Bach dealt with pressure was sometimes, as in the Easter Oratorio, a matter of pragmatism. So, too, with the Cantata No. 66, commemorating (in 1724) his first Easter in Leipzig. Though something new must have been expected of him, the work he supplied had in fact been written five years earlier as a birthday present for Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cothen, whose musical interests were more secular than sacred, more instrumental than vocal. From that period dated many of Bach’s concertos, sonatas, and suites, as well as this cantata Erfreut euch, ihr Herzen (‘Rejoice, ye hearts’), whose long opening chorus sounds more like the start of an enthusiastically celebratory ode than that of a serious church cantata. In his Leipzig recycling of the music, Bach changed the words but retained the high-speed exuberance.
The Cantata No 6, Bleib’ bei uns (‘Abide with us’), on the other hand, is darker and more doleful. Composed for Easter the following year, it had been preceded on Good Friday by a revised version of the St John Passion, and its opening chorus sounds almost like a continuation of the sombre closing chorus of that work. The cantata expresses the sorrow of the disciples in music of haunting beauty, voiced by a solo contralto, tenor, and bass, with a central chorale through which is threaded the eloquent strains of a violoncello piccolo.
Recordings of Bach’s cantatas no longer possess rarity value, and John Eliot Gardiner’s pilgrimage through all these works, begun on the 250th anniversary of the composer’s death, is one of several such cycles. What separates this from the others, however, is that it is the outcome of a grand project whereby the works were to be performed on the correct feast days of the liturgical year in an array of atmospheric churches in Britain and elsewhere. Some of them were ones in which Bach himself had performed, though it was the remote Iona Abbey in Scotland – far beyond the composer’s reach – which, on 28 July 2000, was reserved for the exact anniversary of his death.
© Conrad Wilson

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