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• 1 2023-09-26T09:37:44+00:00 Non sa che chia dolore BWV 209 / BC G 50 9 Solo cantata. Various occasions. First performed in Leipzig after 1729. plain 2024-04-24T14:58:12+00:00 BWV 209 Leipzig BC G 50 Johann Sebastian Bach Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Non sa che chia dolore, BWV 209 / BC G 50" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 732 James A. Brokaw II after 1729

  For an Unknown Occasion, after 1729

  The cantata Non sa che sia dolore BWV 209 (He knows not what sorrow is) is among the most puzzling compositions that bear the name Johann Sebastian Bach. For more than a century, scholars have sought with greater and lesser degrees of persuasive power to illuminate the darkness that envelops its origins, its source transmission, and, above all, its authenticity. The first to attempt to blaze a trail through this thicket was that classic Bach biographer of the late nineteenth century, Philipp Spitta. His assertion that the Italian text, despite several poetic commonplaces, is linked to an actual event has not been refuted to this day. Admittedly, according to Spitta, this occasion

  can, however, only be made out dimly from the text, which is evidently put together by a German and consists of awkward and sometimes incorrect and meaningless Italian, with the admixture of scraps extracted from original Italian poetry. A friend wishes to return to his native country, that is, from Germany into Italy. He is supposed to have been resident for some time in Anspach and to congratulate himself on being once more able to be of service to his country, the more so that his work in foreign lands has not met with due recognition and support. But the poet tells us that the favorable opinion of some illustrious personage that he has gained while in Anspach will assist him in achieving great things in his own country. Personal circumstances in connection with Bach seem to play some part in this.¹

  
  A half century later, Arnold Schering, as chronicler of the music history of Leipzig and one of the most important Bach scholars of his era, attempted to pick up the thread left by Spitta and pursue it further.² According to Schering, the person celebrated in the cantata was a young married professor who was highly respected at the court of Ansbach, although his scholarship stood in opposition to traditional views. When he returned to Italy, he followed, as the text has it, a “sign from heaven” (cenni del cielo)—hence, in all probability, an appointment to a post. He completed the trip by water, at least in part, since the poem describes him as displaying courage during a sea voyage. With respect to the mention of Ansbach, Schering thought a connection to Bach by way of Johann Matthias Gesner to be possible. Like Bach, Gesner (six years Bach’s junior) was active in Weimar after completing his education in Ansbach and also had to leave his post because of strained relations with the reigning duke there, twelve years after Bach did. For a short time, Gesner worked near his hometown as rector of the Gymnasium in Ansbach before he took over the rectorship at Leipzig’s St. Thomas School and thus became Bach’s superior there for four years. According to Schering, the cantata could have been a commissioned work with which Gesner bid farewell to an Italian known to him from his time in Ansbach. Gesner himself may therefore have been the hitherto unknown librettist who made good and bad use of the Italian language. 
  
  In about 1950 Italian scholars criticized the poet’s poor mastery of the Italian language. At the same time, they corroborated the suspicion expressed by Spitta that certain parts of the text were borrowed from contemporary writers. However, only recently have we learned more precisely where these quotations come from. In 1981 Reinhard Strohm, one of the foremost authorities on Italian opera of the eighteenth century, identified a place in Pietro Metastasio’s opera libretto Semiramide riconosciuta (Semiramis recognized) as the source of the final aria of the cantata ascribed to Bach.³ The second act in Metastasio’s libretto contains the aria “Il pastor, se torna Aprile” (The shepherd, if April returns), whose middle section, beginning “Il nocchier, placato il vento” (The helmsman when the wind has calmed), is otherwise identical to the cantata:

  Qual nocchier, placato il vento
  Più non teme o si scolora,
  Ma contento in su la prora
  Va cantando in faccia al mar.
  
  Like the helmsman when the wind drops
  No longer fears nor turns pale
  But is content in his prow
  And goes singing in the face of the sea.

  
  In 1729 Metastasio’s opera text was set by Leonardo Vinci and Nicola Porpora in short order and then later by Geminiano Giacomelli and Giovanni Battista Lampugnani; after 1740 it was set by Johann Adolph Hasse, Christoph Willibald Gluck, and Baldassare Galuppi; and still much later it was set by Antonio Salieri and Giacomo Meyerbeer. In view of the astonishing vitality of this libretto, it is rather amazing that it took so long for the connection to Bach’s cantata to be discovered. However, it should be mentioned that the line beginnings in the cantata and the opera aria are often different and hence do not invite a systematic comparison. The situation is different with the cantata’s prominent beginning, “Non sa che sia dolore.” In 1990 Klaus Hofmann was able to show that the first two lines go back to a poem by Giovanni Battista Guarini printed in 1598 and entitled “Partita dolorosa” (Sorrowful departure).⁴ “Non sa che sia dolore,” it reads there, and continues, “Chi da la Donna sua parte, e non more” (Who parts from his beloved and does not die). The cantata librettist changed this to “Chi dell’amico suo parte, e non more” (Who parts from his friends and does not die).
  
  It is only the Metastasio text that provides a single clue as to the cantata’s genesis. Considering the opera libretto’s first performances in Rome and Venice, Bach’s composition cannot have originated before 1729. The question whether the proposed connections from Bach to Gesner—who served as rector of St. Thomas School from 1730 to 1735, very close to 1729—actually played a role must be left aside. Other considerations focus on Lorenz Christoph Mizler. Born in Franconia in 1711 and a member of Bach’s circle of students, Mizler studied in Leipzig until 1731. In the autumn of 1734 he traveled back to his hometown, perhaps hoping to establish a career in Ansbach. Admittedly, the question as to who might have commissioned the farewell cantata remains open. That Bach of his own volition might have offered a cantata in honor of a young scholar who, while certainly promising, was not exactly suffering from a lack of self-confidence is not quite the first supposition that comes to mind.
  
  Other things need to be reconsidered. The work’s source transmission is another reason that scholars have had such a hard time clarifying the genesis of this cantata. The only manuscript that preserves this work for posterity comes from the collection of the Göttingen music historian Johann Nikolaus Forkel, who spent the last three decades of his life searching out every possible trace of Bachiana. The copy of the cantata Non sa che sia dolore may have been commissioned by him and prepared in his presence because he himself entered the rather problematic Italian text. The question arises whether Forkel stumbled across the exemplar for his copy—unnamed by him and not preserved—or whether he found it after a deliberate search. His systematic research would have brought together names and branches of tradition known from the Bach biography or to Forkel himself. Such persons might have included Johann Matthias Gesner, Lorenz Christoph Mizler, or the Ansbach-born Johann Georg Voigt, one of Bach’s last students. On the other hand, a chance discovery would obviate premises such as these.
  
  All of these considerations have to do with the musical material and call for an explanation, directly or indirectly, for Bach’s composition “alla maniera italiana,” or perhaps just the extent of his revision of a foreign original. In Bach’s time at Leipzig, his engagement with Italian vocal music ranged from a copy of the solo cantata Armida abbandonata by Georg Friedrich Händel, about 1730, to his late recasting of the Stabat Mater by Giovanni Battista Pergolesi as the cantata Tilge, Höchster, meine Sünden BWV 1083. The cantata Non sa che sia dolore belongs to this context—presuming the work’s authenticity as a composition by Johann Sebastian Bach.
  
  Several factors speak in favor of Bach’s authorship: above all, the unusual prominence of the instrumental component in the arias and the extensive opening sinfonia, which, as a concerto movement in three-part da capo form, is entirely attuned to the cantata’s basic melancholic affect. In many aspects that are consistent with Bach’s concertos known to have originated in the 1730s, such as the Concerto in D Minor for Two Violins BWV 1043, the sinfonia anticipates the stylistic devices of later decades, such as the fragmented sigh motives. The first aria, “Parti pur e con dolore” (Go, then, and with sorrow), seems less ambivalent, at first devoting itself entirely to the pain of farewell, the voice rising to the point of sobbing, undeterred by the tendril-like figuration of the accompanying flute and only in the consoling middle section allowing the soprano to be carried away by the nimble coloratura of the instrument. In contrast to this wealth of expression and the form that is just as concentrated as it is convincing (with regard to its stylistic integration with the Bachian oeuvre), the happy final movement of the cantata seems to have been produced with somewhat too light a hand. The quick dance tempo of the final aria can certainly be reconciled with our understanding of Bach’s writing style; further, there are many parallels in Bach’s works after about 1730 for the syncopated rhythms of the “Lombardian taste” found here, whose qualities of expression Johann Joachim Quantz called “lively and fresh” (lebhaft und frech). Admittedly, the remarkable ninth chord in the theme of the final aria remains quite singular; thus not all doubt as to the authenticity of the composition can be resolved.

  Addendum

  In 2010 Schulze revisited the questions of the cantata’s date as well as the name of its dedicatee. In addition to the candidates identified in his 2006 essay (Johann Matthias Gesner, Lorenz Christoph Mizler, and Johann Georg Voigt the Younger), Schulze investigated several others with associations to Ansbach and J. S. Bach. He noted that in addition to the libretto’s quotation from Metastasio’s Semiramide, the third movement also contains a quote from Metastasio’s 1722 Naples libretto, Galatea. A setting of Metastasio’s Semiramide by J. A. Hasse was performed in Leipzig on May 6 and 9, 1746, by Ensemble Mingotti. Exactly half a year later, Georg Scheufer offered Galatea for the first time. Performances lasted into the following year, very close to a performance of Hasse’s Semiramide in Dresden.
  
  These dates, together with the clues in the text, provided Schulze the parameters he needed to develop a profile of the cantata’s dedicatee:
  • born in Franconia or, rather, Ansbach;
  • reputation dependent not on any “blue-blooded” heritage but on his own achievements; 
  • intended to return to his home in Ansbach in late 1746 at the earliest;
  • in Ansbach a quick ascent awaited him assisted by significant personages whose advocacy he had earned;
  • not a native Italian, who would have looked with bemusement upon the libretto if not taken offense at its inadequacies;
  • moreover, the dedicatee as well as those initiating the homage would have been aware that in Ansbach Italian had recently supplanted French as the preferred language for public discourse.
  
  Schulze selected all students at the University of Leipzig from 1729 to 1750 who listed their hometown as Ansbach and then compared them to various reference works, the most important of which was Johann August Vocke’s almanac of births and deaths of scholars, writers, and artists in Ansbach.⁵ 
  
  Schulze found a single candidate who matched all the criteria: Lorenz Albrecht Beck, listed in the calendar under his birthdate, December 30, 1723. His date of death, October 2, 1768, is also given: “Beck, Lorenz Albrecht. 1723. (from Ansbach) court government and justice councillor there, took public and special education at the Gymnasium of his hometown, studied from 1743 on for three and a half years in Leipzig, returned in 1746, and became justice councillor in 1747 and court and government councillor in 1752.”⁶ University of Leipzig matriculation records provided Schulze with Beck’s date of enrollment, baccalaureate, and master’s graduations: “Beck, Laurent. Albert. Al Beckius o. Becquius Onoldin. B.i. 24.V.1743, b.a. in December 1744, m. 16.II.1747.” Thus Beck completed his studies in early 1747; the date 1746 in Vocke may be based on a print of his dissertation. 
  
  Abraham Kriegel, tertius of Leipzig’s St. Thomas School, provided more detail about Beck’s academic career in an almanac he maintained regarding activities of scholars in Leipzig,⁷ though without saying anything about the position awaiting him in Ansbach. The court and state calendar shows, however, that he must have assumed it in 1747: although the 1747 edition, printed in advance, does not mention Beck, he is listed as a member of the judicial council in 1748.
  
  Schulze concluded that Lorenz Albrecht Beck (1723–68) of Ansbach must be regarded as the one to whom a circle of friends offered the cantata Non sa che sia dolore as a farewell performance shortly after February 16, 1747. Unfortunately, the questions of who prepared the problematic Italian text, whether the text was circulated in print, and what may have happened to the performing parts all must be left open. Bach would have retained his score; it may have been the exemplar from which Johann Nikolaus Forkel had a copy prepared for his collection of Bachiana. The question whether Bach may have composed all the movements new or relied on existing materials cannot be answered unless the score turns up. The same is true of the question whether he may have received assistance from his circle of students, perhaps from his student and later son-in-law, Johann Christoph Altnikol, in composing—perhaps—the final aria. 

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  Footnotes

  1. Spitta (1899, 2:639).—Trans.↵
  2. Schering (1933, 60 ff.).↵
  3. Strohm (1976, 206, 232); Strohm (1981, 81-99, esp. 84).↵
  4. Hofmann (1990).↵
  5. Vocke (1796).—Trans.↵
  6. “Beck, Lorenz Albrecht, 1723 (aus Ansbach) Hof- Regierungs- und Justizrath allda, genoss des oeffentlichen und besondern Unterrichts auf dem Gymnasium seiner Vaterstadt, studierte von 1743 an 3 1/2 Jahrein Leipzig, kehrte 1746 zurueck, und wurde 1747 Justizrath und 1752 Hof- und Regierungsrath.”—Trans.↵
  7. Kriegel (1747, 237, 242 ff.).—Trans.↵
• 1 2023-09-26T09:34:18+00:00 Was frag ich nach der Welt BWV 94 / BC A 115 5 Chorale cantata on hymn by Balthasar Kindermann. Ninth Sunday After Trinity. First performed 08/06/1724 in Leipzig (Cycle II). plain 2024-04-24T17:12:10+00:00 1724-08-06 BWV 94 Leipzig 51.340199, 12.360103 05Trinity09 Chorale Cantata Ninth Sunday After Trinity BC A 115 Johann Sebastian Bach Balthasar Kindermann Hans-Joachim Schulze, "Was frag ich nach der Welt, BWV 94 / BC A 115" in Die Bach Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs, (Leipzig: Evangelisches Verlagsanstalt 2007), p. 358 James A. Brokaw II Chorale Cantata Annual Cycle Leipzig II

  Ninth Sunday after Trinity, August 6, 1724

  This cantata belongs to Bach’s chorale cantata annual cycle; it originated in early August 1724. It is for the ninth Sunday after Trinity, whose Gospel lesson is found in Luke 16 and contains Jesus’s parable of the unrighteous steward:

  He, however, spoke to his disciples: There was a rich man who had a steward of whom it was rumored that he had wasted his goods. And he called him and spoke to him: How is it that I hear this of you? Give me an account of your stewardship, for henceforth you cannot be my steward! The steward said to himself: What shall I do? My lord has taken away my job; I cannot dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I am resolved to do that, if I am now discharged from my job, so that they take me into their homes. And he called all debtors to his lord and spoke to the first one: How much do you owe my lord? He spoke: A hundred casks of oil. And he spoke to him: Take your letter, sit down quickly, and write fifty. Then he spoke to the other: You, however, how much do you owe? He said a hundred bushels of wheat. And he said to him: Take your letter and write eighty. And the lord praised the unrighteous steward, that he had dealt cleverly; for the children of this world are more clever than the children of the light in their generation. And I say to you: Make friends with unrighteous mammon so that when you fail, they may take you into the eternal dwellings. (1–9)

  
  Balthasar Kindermann’s 1664 hymn Was frag ich nach der Welt (What do I ask of the world) and the Bach cantata text derived from it six decades later belong to the interpretive history of this parable recounted by Luke. Its wording deserves thorough reflection and careful examination. One must avoid the impression that Jesus means to praise the steward, who tries to escape the consequences of his embezzlement through deceit. Hence the interpretive tradition points to the intended recognition of “great speed, nimble cunning, and wise reflection”—meaning “the wisdom of the Christian to appear before God having done penance in a timely fashion” and “the prudence to look after eternal salvation with all the speed and shrewdness with which the children of this world seek their temporal well-being.” Similarly, it must not seem that one might gain heaven through good works alone. It instead concerns the Christian’s wisdom in dealing with impermanent goods, the “unrighteous mammon” that is not the true good. This is the subject of Kindermann’s hymn and the cantata text derived from it by an unknown author: “Its pervasive, multifariously varied theme is the opposition between the love of the world and that of Jesus; of the earthly, the transitory, and of the eternal.” Hymnaries of the eighteenth century assign the chorale Was frag ich nach der Welt to the chapter “Von der Welt Eitelkeit und menschlicher Mühseligkeit” (Of the vanity of the world and human hardship) and indicate its source, two verses from Psalm 73: “Wenn ich nur dich habe, so frage nichts nach Himmel und Erde. Wenn mir gleich Leib und Seele verschmachtet, so bist du doch, Gott, allezeit meines Herzens Trost und mein Teil” (25–26; If only I have you, I need ask nothing of heaven and earth. If both my body and soul fail, then you, God, are forever the strength of my heart and my portion).
  
  As usual in Bach’s chorale cantatas, the opening strophe is brought over to the cantata text without change: 

  Was frag ich nach der Welt
  Und allen ihren Schätzen,
  Wenn ich mich nur an dir,
  Mein Jesu, kann ergötzen.
  Dich hab ich einzig mir
  Zur Wollust fürgestellt,
  Du, du bist meine Ruh:
  Was frag ich nach der Welt!
  
  What do I ask of the world
  And all its treasures
  If I, only in you,
  My Jesus, can take delight.
  You alone have I imagined
  For my pleasure,
  You, you are my repose:
  What do I ask of the world!

  
  Similarly, the final two strophes of Kindermann’s poem, unchanged, form the conclusion of the cantata libretto. Some of the remaining five strophes were recast to become arias; others retained their original wording but were expanded with commentary in the form of interpolated, freely versified lines of recitative. Thus the third movement, a recitative, begins with two verses from Kindermann’s third strophe: 

  Die Welt sucht Ehr und Ruhm
  Bei hocherbabnen Leuten.
  
  The world seeks honor and fame
  Among highly exalted people.

  
  It then continues: 

  Ein Stolzer baut die prächtigsten Paläste,
  Er sucht das höchste Ehrenamt,
  Er kleidet sich aufs beste
  In Purpur, Gold, in Silber, Seid und Samt.
  Sein Name soll für allen
  In jedem Teil der Welt erschallen.
  Sein Hochmuts-Turm
  Soll durch die Luft bis an die wolken dringen,
  Er trachtet nur nach hohen Dingen.
  
  A proud man builds the most opulent palaces, 
  He seeks the post of highest honor,
  He clothes himself with the best
  In purple, gold, in silver, silk, and velvet.
  His name has to be heard by everyone
  In every part of the world.
  His tower of arrogant vanity
  Must penetrate the air up to the clouds, 
  He aims only for high things.

  
  The recitative then continues with the chorale verses: 

  Und denkt nicht einmal dran,
  Wie bald doch diese gleiten.
  
  And does not even once consider
  How quickly such things pass.

  
  The second movement of the cantata provides a classic example of the recasting of a chorale strophe to become an aria text. Kindermann’s verse is short and concise: 

  Die Welt ist wie ein Rauch,
  Der in der Luft vergehet,
  Und einem Schatten gleich,
  Der kurze Zeit bestehet,
  Mein Jesus aber bleibt, 
  Wenn alles bricht und fällt,
  Er ist mein starker Fels,
  Was frag ich nach der Welt?
  
  The world is like a cloud of smoke
  That vanishes in air
  And is like a shadow
  That only lasts a short time.
  My Jesus, however, abides
  When everything breaks and falls. 
  He is my powerful rock.
  What do I ask of the world?

  
  Eloquently, although not entirely rich in ideas, the cantata poet writes: 

  Die Welt ist wie ein Rauch und Schatten,
  Der bald verschwindet und vergeht,
  Weil sie nur kurze Zeht besteht
  Wenn aber alles fällt und bricht, 
  Bleibt Jesus meine Zuversicht,
  An dem sich mein e Seele hält.
  Darum: was frag ich nach der Welt!
  
  The world is like smoke and shadow,
  That soon vanishes and passes away, 
  Since it lasts only a short time.
  When, however, everything falls and breaks,
  Jesus remains my confidence,
  To which my soul holds fast.
  Therefore, what do I ask of the world?

  
  As always, Bach’s composition of this wide-ranging libretto places particular weight upon the opening movement. As is typical for its genre, it combines the chorale melody in large note values in the soprano with motet-like counterpoint or supporting chords in the other voices, along with an independent concerted orchestral part. In this case, a flute is juxtaposed to the subtle, closely woven texture of two oboes coupled with the strings. The flute conforms only partially to the thematic structure; whenever possible it soars to soloistic preeminence. It becomes clear how problematic if not impossible it is to represent a negative entity musically, such as in Kindermann’s first strophe. Instead, the music elucidates what is seen critically—here, the world with all its treasure—as if it were meant positively, as if one could, so to speak, place a negative sign before the composition as a whole.
  
  In the second movement, the first aria, this path is abandoned for the moment; the voice, the solo bass, is accompanied only by the basso continuo, which for its part does without the participation of the organ. A restless back-and-forth of scales and downward-directed arpeggios is clearly focused on the opening lines “Die Welt ist wie ein Rauch und Schatten, / Der bald verschwindet und vergeht” (The world is like smoke and shadow, / That soon vanishes and passes away); the composer may have had an instable, shadowy timbral image for the accompanying part in mind. In the fourth movement as well, an alto aria with obbligato flute, the composition hews closely to the text as key words such as “betörte Welt” (deluded world), “Betrug” (deceit), and “falscher Schein” (false appearance) are the occasion for unexpected melodic and harmonic divergences, which are strikingly absent later when the text reads, “Ich will dafür mein Jesum wählen” (I will instead choose my Jesus).
  
  In the sixth movement, an aria for tenor and strings, the text once again presents a negative statement that would not necessarily suggest a harmonic full sonority.

  Die Welt kann ihre Lust und Freud,
  Das Blendwerk schnöder Eitelkeit,
  Nicht hoch genug erhöhen.
  
  The world’s pleasures and its joy,
  The deception of contemptible vanity,
  It cannot exalt highly enough.

  
  Even so, it seems possible that the apparently ideal world of the dance-like, animated movement in its deliberate lack of conflict is meant as a musical realization of “Blendwerk” (deception). In the same fashion, parts of the penultimate cantata movement, an aria for soprano with obbligato oboe d’amore, are to be understood figuratively. The text begins: 

  Es halt es mit der blinden Welt, 
  Wer nichts auf seine Seele hält,
  Mir ekelt vor der Erden.
  
  Let him keep to the blind world
  Who cares nothing for his soul. 
  I am sickened by the earth.

  
  It is connected with a melody that—in the words of Arnold Schering—“is none other than one of those cheeky Bourrees as found among the French, in the ‘Musikalischen Rüstkammer’ and in Sperontes.¹ Whether Bach made use of a quotation cannot be established; the melody is probably his own. With all the crude vividness of a nondescript pop hit, it mocks not only the galante servility to fashion of the era, but—with its static bass—it taunts the artlessness of such a superficial way of making music.” Schering correctly noted in his reflections, published in 1933,² that the figurative meaning of the music transitions to the actual meaning after a few measures when the text speaks of being “sickened by the world.” Several of the preceding movements are similarly Janus-faced; one wonders what Bach’s contemporaries may have made of such provocative ambivalence (anspruchsvoller Ambivalenz). In any case, they would have had to bear a certain amount of uneasiness until the simple closing chorale led them back to familiar territories. 

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  Footnotes

  1. The Musikalischen Rüstkammer, auff der Harffe aus allerhand schönen und lustigen Arien, Menuetten, Sarabanden, Giguen und Märschen, bestehend aus allen Thonen (Musical armory, on the harp, from all sorts of beautiful and funny arias, minuets, sarabands, gigues, and marches in all keys) was published in Leipzig in 1719.—Trans.↵
  2. Schering (1933, 66–70).—Trans.↵