Notes for: July 14, 2009
Bach wrote at least 200 sacred cantatas for performance in church as part of the religious service or for weddings, funerals, and other celebrations taking place in a church. In addition, he composed about 50 secular cantatas for such non-church functions as university ceremonies, festivities in the homes of prominent citizens, public tributes to members of the nobility, and celebrations at the St. Thomas School in Leipzig where he was music director. The texts of the sacred cantatas were quotations from the Bible or interpretations of such quotations, while those of the secular cantatas were informal verses written for the occasion by a local poet.
The secular cantatas have long been a frustration for Bach scholars. Only three have been completely preserved, and two more are known from subsequent copies or adaptations. Another 30 are known from texts or fragments used in later compositions. At least a dozen more are completely lost. Because of this dearth of documentation, less is known about the secular cantatas than any other category of Bach’s enormous output.
BWV 202 is a good example of the problem. Its manuscript was lost, and what has survived is a copy made by a student in 1730. There is no record of the date or location of the cantata’s composition, the name of its librettist, or the occasion for its performance. All we know is what the text tells us – that it was written for someone’s wedding celebration and that the event took place in the spring of the year. Some biographers speculate further that since the cantata embodies two lively French dances – a passepied and a gavotte – the wedding couple came from bourgeois rather than aristocratic families.
Like other Bach secular cantatas, BWV 202 is basically a duet for a singer (in this case, a soprano) and a featured woodwind instrument (here, an oboe). There are also accompanying strings and a continuo – a keyboard instrument to fill in the harmony plus a low-voiced instrument like the cello to reinforce the bass line.
The cantata’s text links the poetic images of the coming of spring and of young love. The opening aria announces the coming of spring to chase away winter’s melancholy shadows. The subsequent sections describe the revival of life and natural beauty; Phoebus Apollo with his swift horses racing across the new-born world; Cupid running joyfully through the fields whenever he sees a pair of lovers kissing; and the triumph of the young married couple.
Bach’s setting divides this text into nine movements – four solo arias alternating with four brief recitatives, plus a closing gavotte. The arias follow the Baroque format of an opening section, a contrasting middle section, and a repeat of the opening section. The recitatives are simple narratives, following the pattern of speech.
The cantata gives us several examples of Bach’s gift as a tone painter. At the start, for example, he uses rising arpeggios to describe the gently lifting wintry fog, followed by the oboe’s first long held note to depict the penetrating ray of sunlight. The oboe and the soprano then welcome the spring and express their “pure happiness” on seeing the flowers.
In the second aria (movement No. 3) , the moving bass line describes Phoebus’s prancing horses. In the third aria (No. 5), the violin impersonates the amorous Cupid. In the fourth aria (No. 7), Bach depicts the young lovers in the flirtatious triple rhythm of a passepied. And in the closing gay gavotte, all the instruments join the soprano in wishing the newlyweds “a thousand bright days of prosperity.”