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Commentaries on the Cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach: An Interactive Companion

Amore traditore BWV 203 / BC G 51

For Various Occasions: Köthen, 1718 or 1719

According to long-standing tradition, the cantata Amore traditore BWV 203 (Treacherous love) is the work of Johann Sebastian Bach. But the reliability of this attribution is by no means undisputed. Style analysts struggle with the question of authorship, and source studies run up against obstacles that are insurmountable at the moment. A copy from the first half of the nineteenth century refers to an “old handwritten notebook with cantatas by various composers” as its exemplar; another transmission names “an old notebook at Breitkopf & Härtel in which cantatas by Heinichen, Conti, Telemann, Linicke are to be found.” This notebook, of indeterminate age, was last documented in 1861; its contents can be described only hypothetically. The constellation of composer names—Johann David Heinichen, Francesco Bartolomeo Conti, Georg Philipp Telemann, and Johann Georg Linicke—points to the period around 1715 and thereby raises the question whether the cantata ascribed to Johann Sebastian Bach should be placed near this time period. Moreover, a connection was recently found between Conti and a copy/arrangement by Bach of a solo cantata with Latin text by Conti; the copy bears the date 1716. Thus the suspicion cannot be entirely discounted that the “old notebook” that once was owned by Breitkopf could indeed go back to a source written out by Bach but might not actually contain a work composed by him.

The Italian text of our cantata offers scarcely any clues to the answers of these questions. The author is unknown. Its content concerns a rejection of the chains of love, a healing of the deadly pain that vain hope has inflicted on one’s heart. The rhyme scheme is skillfully devised; only the title line lacks a rhyme partner. Among the works found in the library collection of the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin after its repatriation from Kiev in 2001 is a parallel composition by a contemporary of Bach in Naples, Francesco Nicola Fago. This would indicate that the text, often disparaged because of perceived linguistic inadequacies, actually does come from Italy after all.1

With its movement sequence aria–recitative–aria, the cantata adheres to principles that Johann Christoph Gottsched, in his Versuch einer Critischen Dichtkunst, would have found acceptable:

A cantata must properly begin and end with an aria, so that it may be heard in a good manner at the beginning, and also make a good impression at the end: however, one finds many in Italian that have a recitative right at the beginning. The shortest of these have only a recitative in the middle, and thus consist of only three parts. . . . Now, these arias may be iambic, trochaic, or dactylic as the poet finds to be good. However, to make the recitative anything other than iambic is not usual. The poet must, however, take care that he continue the meter with which he begins an aria to the end and not mix short and long lines together, if he wishes to please the composer. Even making the lines in the recitative very unequal, that is, several of two, several of twelve syllables: this is not pleasant. To throw the rhymes too far apart from one another, that is just as bad as making none at all. . . . Indeed, one cannot determine the length of a recitative: but the shorter it is, and the shorter the phrases it contains are, the better it is; because it is often so badly set that one must soon grow weary of it.2


One certainly cannot maintain that the recitative of our cantata is too long; it comprises exactly eight lines of admittedly different lengths, however, with densely layered rhymes. Musically it proceeds without incident. Of the two arias, the first one in A minor approximates Bach’s familiar writing style fairly closely. The opening section is dominated by an expansive theme that provides a perfect example of mastery and use of tonal space, with its subtle and superior handling of alternating rising and falling; diatonic and chromatic passages; quarter, eighth, and sixteenth notes; and scalar motion, leaps, and broken chords. Imitation and other sorts of contrapuntal writing are found in abundance, but the interweaving of voice and continuo is not so extreme that the singer is expected to perform figuration typical of accompaniment in exchange with the instrumental part. The middle section is similar and has no noticeable contrast with the framing sections. Instead, the contrast is essentially limited to the theme’s beginning again in a new key.

In view of these features of style, the final aria seems that much more strange and exceptional. For long stretches it is dominated by a mostly two-part toccata-like obbligato cembalo texture but time and again changes over to a freely voiced accompaniment with full-handed chords. The inconsistent and arbitrary texture of the obbligato cembalo is combined with a bass voice part that is led in a strangely ambitious fashion; it is, so to speak, detached from the course of the instrumental accompaniment. This wayward, idiosyncratic togetherness is hardly enough to decisively dispel the doubts as to the cantata’s authenticity raised at the beginning of this essay. Hypotheses regarding an early or late origin of the work do not lead any further. For the moment, the cantata will preserve its secrets. From today’s perspective we can agree only partly with the overwhelmingly positive view expressed by the Bach biographer Philipp Spitta in 1880:

In another [cantata], “Amore traditore,” a bass voice is accompanied by the harpsichord, which is treated in parts as an obbligato instrument. This is not, we believe, an innovation of Bach’s, but it is found moderately often both in the Italian composers of that time and in the Germans who formed themselves on the Italian style; thus it occurs in Porpora, Conti, Heinichen, and others. The fact is rather that even Bach appears to form himself on the pattern of the Italians in the harpsichord accompaniment that he appends to the second aria in his cantata. In other circumstances it was not his manner to write an obbligato part chiefly in broken harmonies, nor was he especially fond of using the obbligato treatment except now and then. The breadth of form exhibited in the work points to the time of his fullest maturity; he first came to a thorough knowledge of Italian vocal music through the intercourse that was kept up between Dresden and Leipzig.3


In our view, whether Spitta is right with his “fullest maturity” must be left aside. If there is a kernel of truth in Spitta’s conjecture, which would be no wonder, given his sure sense of style, one could consider the possibility that the second aria might be Bach’s arrangement of a foreign exemplar, for example, perhaps, his adding a voice to an existing composition. The cantor of St. Thomas was not indisposed to projects of this kind in his later years at Leipzig. The supposed early origin of the “lost manuscript” mentioned at the beginning, however, stands in the way of such a hypothesis.

Footnotes

  1. Schulze (2002a).↵
  2. “Eine Cantate muß sich ordentlicher Weise mit einer Arie anheben und schließen; damit sie theils im Anfange mit einer guten Art ins Gehör falle, theils auch zuletzt noch einen guten Eindruck mache: doch findet man im italienischen viele, die gleich von Anfang ein Rezitativ haben. Die kürzesten darunter, haben nur ein einzig Rezitativ in der Mitte; und bestehen also nur aus dreyen Theilen. . . . Diese Arien können nun jambisch, trochäisch oder daktylisch seyn, nachdem es der Poet für gut befindet: das Rezitativ aber anders als jambisch zu machen, das ist nicht gewöhnlich. Nur merke sich der Poet, daß es bey der Versart, womit er eine Arie anfängt, bis ans Ende bleibe; auch nicht kurze und lange Zeilen durcheinander menge, wenn er dem Komponisten gefallen will. Selbst die Zeilen im Rezitativ an Länge sehr ungleich, das ist etliche von zwey, etliche von zwölf Sylben zu machen, das ist nicht angenehm. Die Reime gar zu weit von einander zu werfen, das heißt eben so viel, als gar keine zu machen. . . . Die Länge eines Recitativs kann man zwar nicht bestimmen: aber je kürzer es fällt, und je kürzer die Perioden dachrinne sind, desto besser ist es; weil es insgemein so schlecht gesetzt wird, daß man es bald überdrüßig werden muß.”—Trans.↵
  3. Spitta (1899, 2:637 ff.).—Trans.↵

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