During the 18th century, the musical centerpiece of Lutheran worship services was the cantata, a multi-movement piece featuring chorus, orchestra, and vocal soloists. Johann Sebastian Bach composed over 200 cantatas during his long career as a Lutheran church musician. Listen to a complete Bach cantata every Sunday afternoon on Discover Classical.
While the majority of his cantatas were written in the 1720s during his first few years in Leipzig, Bach wrote cantatas throughout his life, both for sacred and secular occasions. This week we'll hear a cantata written for a municipal event: the inauguration of the new town council of Mühlhausen on February 4th, 1708.
The season of Advent, while not as penitential as Lent, was still often marked in the 18th century by observing tempus clausum, or a time of silence, which for Bach meant that no large-scale musical works could be performed in the weeks leading up to Christmas. Bach composed cantatas for Advent during his days in Weimar, but he was unable to perform these in Leipzig, as the city observed tempus clausum. Ever the resourceful musician, Bach reworked several of his Advent cantatas for use at other times in the liturgical year. In this case, he took a work intended for the Third Sunday of Advent and moved it to the Seventh Sunday after Trinity, July 2nd, 1723.
Ärgre dich, o Seele, nicht (Do Not Be Confounded, O Soul), BWV 186
The four Gospels are filled with Christ's teachings, but a central discourse is his Sermon on the Mount, from Matthew, chapters five through seven (and possibly the fifth chapter of Luke). Bach focuses on a section of the sermon that warns against false teachers in this cantata from August 11th, 1726.
Es ist dir gesagt, Mensch, was gut ist (It has been told to you, man, what is good), BWV 45