The Bach Experience
Marsh Chapel at Boston University THE BACH EXPERIENCE Listeners’ Companion 2018|2019 THE BACH EXPERIENCE Listeners’ Companion 2018|2019 Notes by Brett Kostrzewski Contents Foreword v September 30, 2018 Herr, gehe nicht ins Gerichtmit deinem Knecht BWV105 1 November 18, 2018 Schauet doch und sehet, ob irgendein Schmetz sei BWV46 5 February 10, 2019 Herr Jesu Christ,wahr’ Mensch und Gott BWV 127 9 April 7, 2019 Liebster Gott, wenn werd ich sterben? BWV8 13 Foreword The 2018–2019 Bach Experience at Marsh Chapel marks my fourth year of involvement as annotator, and the second that we have produced this expanded Listeners’ Companion. I remain as grateful, as I was in 2015, for Dr. Scott Allen Jarrett’s invitation to contribute my writing to the Bach Experience, and I am honored to share with you the fruits of my continued study of Johann Sebastian Bach’s remarkable corpus of church cantatas. This year’s Bach Experience divides neatly into two pairs. The first two cantatas were heard on successive Sundays in Leipzig—on 25 July and 1 August 1723, respectively—and you are fortunate to hear them in succession here. The pair, composed only two months after Bach took on his post as Thomaskantor, represent two of his finest accomplishments of the genre, all the more remarkable for appearing on ordinary Sundays in the middle of the summer. I point out some of the compositional elements that link the two cantatas; perhaps you will discover more. The second pair of cantatas were composed during Bach’s second full year in Leipzig, when he took to composing a complete cycle of cantatas primarily based on Lutheran chorales, known as his “chorale cantatas.” I often find the chorale cantatas difficult to write about at length; while their technical aspects are fascinating, particularly Bach’s integration of the chorale melodies, I find their aural experience far more rewarding than anything I could contribute in these notes.
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