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Bach wrote at least 400 Church cantatas, of which half are missing. But, so far as the average music lover is concerned, most of those that did survive might as well have been used to line a Victorian dresser, or have been incinerated in a bombing raid. Only one movement from one work is seriously famous — ‘Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring’, from Cantata 147, Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben — and then as a piano arrangement rather than as a sturdy chorale pushing its way through lilting strings. A couple of solo cantatas are moderately celebrated showpieces. Around 20 of the other cantatas are judged to be musically on a par with the Passions and the B Minor Mass, so they cling on to the edges of the repertoire and have been recorded a respectable number of times; but, actually, many of the rarely performed cantatas display an equally jaw-dropping mastery.
Why the neglect? The Lutheran cantata isn’t a sexy genre. We think of po-faced burghers of Leipzig, scowling in the pews — and with good reason: the texts chosen by Bach dwell obsessively on the terrors of mortality. That’s all very well once in a while, but if you’re going to unearth all the treasures of the cantatas you’re going to have to get used to living on death row. Plus, if you don’t speak German and don’t have a memory for numbers, how are you supposed to remember the difference between the four cantatas whose title begins Lobe den Herrn (BWV 69, 69a, 137 and 143)?
And is it any wonder that satisfying recordings are thin on the ground, when Bach routinely tosses wild interval leaps into choral fugues that need to be sung very fast with pinpoint accuracy? Even when the choir is up to it, there’s a good chance that a vocal soloist will wobble over some agitated figuration, or that a sopranino recorder representing the morning star will squeak rather than twinkle.
But, in the end, none of these excuses is good enough — not now that John Eliot Gardiner’s ‘pilgrimage’ of live performances of the cantatas is available for just over £400, and Masaaki Suzuki is nearing the end of his near-flawless cycle with the Bach Collegium Japan. Sure, the morbidity of the librettos can be unnerving, but again and again the anxiety is balanced by hope: it’s a surprisingly modern sensibility, dripping with hypochondria, captured in harmonies that convey neurosis as effectively as Tristan — or Woody Allen. The happy movements have a contemporary feel, too. It’s embarrassing when Gardiner insists on talking about ‘jam sessions’ and ‘boogying on down’, but you can hear what he means.
Some Bach scholars take most delight in the arias. Actually, they’re my least favourite feature of the works, since some of those pleading souls do protest a bit too much. For me, the full thrill of the cantatas is to be found in their opening choruses, mighty fantasias in which, typically, a divided orchestra bounces fragments of a dance-like theme to and fro, the lower voices jump in with a syncopated choral fugue and then Bach floats a hymn tune on top of it all. It may even be one you know from your schooldays: ‘Now Thank We All Our God’ or ‘All People That On Earth Do Dwell’.
At a conservative estimate, there are 80 of these miraculous choruses to choose from, and any Bach lovers who haven’t yet invested in the Gardiner or Suzuki sets should do so without further delay. After all, we don’t live for ever and Cantata 94 does warn us that ‘Often a stale air all of a sudden/Blows the proud body into the grave’.
Also in Music and Opera
Also by Damian Thompson
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