This page was created by James A. Brokaw II. The last update was by Angela Watters.
Translator's Note
It is impossible to overstate the pervasive influence and enduring place held by Hans-Joachim Schulze’s contributions to Bach scholarship over nearly three quarters of a century. Schulze began his long tenure with Bach-Archiv Leipzig in 1957, becoming its director in 1992 and serving until 2000. He is author of the first comprehensive study of the source traditions of Bach’s music in the eighteenth century; coeditor with Christoph Wolff of Bach-Jahrbuch from 1975 to 2000 and author of countless articles in its pages; and, also with Christoph Wolff, compiler of the Bach Compendium, a chronological catalog of the works of Bach. Schulze’s foundational contribution is undoubtedly his work with Werner Neumann in conceiving and preparing the supplemental volumes to the Neue Bach-Ausgabe (New Bach Edition), compiling and transcribing the first, second, third, and fifth volumes of the Bach-Dokumente (Bach Documents) series.
Although Schulze has dedicated the greater part of his work to the rarified, arcane world of Bach scholarship, he has occasionally directed his attention to a broader public. Beginning in 1991 and running until 1994, he presented a weekly series of half-hour radio broadcasts on all of the fully preserved cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach then known to be extant. Addressing the interested newcomer to Bach’s music directly but also keeping the seasoned connoisseur in mind, Schulze strenuously avoided technical language and musical examples, choosing instead to describe the cantatas in terms easily understood by nonprofessionals. The series was quite popular and was repeated several times until 2000. In 2006 Schulze published his scripts as Die Bach-Kantaten: Einführungen zu sämtlichen Kantaten Johann Sebastian Bachs (The Bach Cantatas: Introductions to the Complete Cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach). His lively and engaging discussions provide a wealth of rewarding insights and perspectives focused on individual cantatas and their particular features, their contexts, and the problems of chronology and evolution that attend them.
Schulze begins nearly every discussion with a careful examination of the work’s libretto, turning only afterward to describing the music’s structure and how it amplifies the text. In his foreword to the German edition of 2006, Schulze makes clear that this approach is intended to redress a long-standing bias. Since the early nineteenth century, Bach’s libretti—often rooted in the German Baroque poetic traditions of the seventeenth century—have been disparaged as mediocre and unsuitable (a judgment perhaps arising from the inevitable comparison with the classicists of the later eighteenth century). “The deliberate or careless disregard for the texts chosen by Bach for composition,” writes Schulze, “and the underestimation of their authors, known or unidentified, can easily lead into a dead end, perpetuating a hagiography that will inevitably loosen the connection between text and music, opening the door to a frivolous consideration of these elements.”1 For Schulze, text and music inherently belong together. Particularly in the church cantatas, the overwhelming majority of the works in question, theological ideas, language, and musical expression are inseparably unified.
Schulze uses minimal references: one to at most three endnotes per essay, indicated by asterisks. I have preserved these endnotes with the individual essays in numerical series. I have added my own endnotes (distinguished from Schulze's notes by "—Trans.") where I have deemed additional references or commentary useful, either to supply original language or to briefly describe advances since the publication of Schulze’s book in 2006.
Since that time there have in fact been several significant advances in our knowledge about Bach’s cantatas. An important body of new evidence has been discovered in St. Petersburg with direct bearing on the chronology of sacred cantatas at Leipzig: a large cache of text booklets distributed to congregations at St. Thomas Church. This discovery has resulted in the redating of several cantatas, in one case—O ewiges Feuer, o Ursprung der Liebe BWV 34—by several decades. Second, German musicologist Christine Blanken (2015a) has discovered a previously unknown annual cycle of cantata texts that was published in Nuremberg in 1728 by Christoph Birkmann, a theology student at the University of Leipzig from 1724 to 1727. The presence of several cantata texts set by Bach in the cycle makes it likely that their librettist, previously unidentified, was Birkmann.
I have done my best to preserve the author’s approachable and sympathetic voice while making several changes in format to make the essays more lucid for an English-speaking readership. Because Bach’s libretti and their origins, evolution, and structure are at the very center of Schulze’s discussions, I felt it important that the original German cantata texts be included with their English translations. Producing a felicitous English translation of texts used by Bach has frankly not been my primary goal. Rather, my aim has been to illuminate German syntax, structure, and meaning, even if this results in what might occasionally seem to be an awkward English rendering. In terms of word position, each line of translation corresponds as closely as possible to the German original.
I have striven to apply this same principle to the translation of the extensive biblical passages quoted in Schulze’s discussions, especially in order to make clear the relationship between cantata texts and their biblical origins where applicable. I provide the original German only when it is useful in understanding the libretto; I do not include German text for secondary literature. While my translations often echo the New Revised Standard Version, I have worked to stay as close as possible to the German as quoted by Schulze, presumably from a modern edition of the Lutheran Bible. I relied heavily on Richard Jones's translation of Alfred Dürr, The Cantatas of J. S. Bach, as well as Michael Marissen and Daniel Melamed’s website, BachCantataTexts, which presents historically informed translations of Bach’s cantata and oratorio texts. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.
I express my sincere thanks to mentors and colleagues who have assisted me in this project: Stephen Crist, who initially suggested it to me; Laurie Matheson, director of the University of Illinois Press, who received my proposal with immediate enthusiasm, as well as Dan Tracy, Alex Dryden and the staff at Illinois Open Publishing Network who were crucial in helping to build out this digital edition. Two anonymous peer readers offered substantive criticisms. Bernd Koska, Markus Rathey, and Peter Burkholder read extensive portions of the draft and offered very helpful suggestions. Christoph Wolff, Robert Marshall, and Russell Stinson offered encouragement and valuable advice. Hans-Joachim Schulze has enthusiastically supported the project from the very beginning. My wife, Mollie Sandock, carefully read every essay and offered wonderful observations and insights as to style. I dedicate this translation to the memory of Adelaide Brokaw Tolberg.
James A. Brokaw II
Brunswick, Maine
January 30, 2024
Footnotes
- “Die vorsätzlich oder fahrlässige Nichtachtung der von Johann Sebastian Bach zur Komposition ausgesuchten Texte und die Unterschätzung ihrer—bekannten oder unbekannten—Verfasser kann allerdings leicht in eine Sackgasse führen: Die Fortschreibung der anderweitig überwunden geglaubten Hagiographie wird unvermeidlich den Konnex zwischen Text und Musik lockern und damit einem leichtfertigen Um¬gang mit diesen Komponenten Tür und Tor öffnen” (Schulze 2006, 7).
↵