Johann Sebastian Bach's chorale cantata cycle is the year-cycle of church cantatas he started composing in Leipzig from the first Sunday after Trinity in 1724. It followed the cantata cycle he had composed from his appointment as Thomaskantor after Trinity in 1723.
Bach's second cantata cycle is commonly used as a synonym for his chorale cantata cycle, but strictly speaking both cycles overlap only for 40 cantatas. Two further chorale cantatas may belong to both cycles: the final version of German: [[Christ lag in Todes Banden, BWV 4|''Christ lag in Todes Banden'', BWV 4]]|italic=unset, and the earliest version of German: [[Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, BWV 80|''Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott'', BWV 80]]|italic=unset; it is, however, uncertain whether these versions were first presented in Bach's second year in Leipzig. Bach composed a further 13 cantatas in his second year at Leipzig, none of them chorale cantatas, although two of them became associated with the chorale cantata cycle. After his second year in Leipzig, he composed at least eight further cantatas for inclusion in his chorale cantata cycle.
Around the start of the Bach Revival in the 19th century, almost no manuscripts of Bach's music remained in St. Thomas in Leipzig, apart from an incomplete chorale cantata cycle. In Leipzig the chorale cantatas were, after the motets, the second most often performed compositions of Bach between the composer's death and the Bach Revival. Philipp Spitta, in his 19th-century biography of the composer, praised the chorale cantatas, but failed to see them as a cycle tied to 1724–25. It took about a century after Spitta before Bach's cantata cycles were analysed in scholarly literature, but then Bach's ambitious project to write a chorale cantata for each occasion of the liturgical year was characterized as "the largest musical project that the composer ever undertook".
Possibly the idea for writing a series of chorale cantatas was inspired by the bicentennial anniversary of the first publications of Lutheran hymnals (1524).[1] The first of these early hymnals is the Achtliederbuch, containing eight hymns and five melodies. Four chorale cantatas use text and/or melody of a hymn in that early publication (BWV 2, 9, 38 and 117). Another 1524 hymnal is the Erfurt Enchiridion: BWV 62, 91, 96, 114, 121 and 178 are based on hymns from that publication. BWV 14 and 125 were based on hymns from Eyn geystlich Gesangk Buchleyn, also published in 1524.
Apart from some cantatas composed after Palm Sunday 1725, the chorale cantata cycle and the second cantata cycle overlap, and the two designations are often used interchangeably in scholarly literature. Otherwise the cycle is described as breaking off after Palm Sunday or Easter 1725. There are some cantatas that belong to one of both cycles, but not to the other, for instance the chorale cantata for Trinity 1727 replaces the Trinity cantata of the second cycle composed in 1725. Also, some cantatas traditionally seen as belonging to the chorale cantata cycle are not chorale cantatas in a strict sense, for instance the cantata for the Sunday between New Year and Epiphany added to the chorale cantata cycle in 1727. Neither the second cantata cycle, nor the chorale cantata cycle are complete annual cycles as extant. Even a merging of both cycles into one, with some occasions having two cantatas, which hardly can be seen as an intention of the composer, would still be missing a few cantatas (e.g. for Easter 3 and Trinity XXVI).
All extant church cantatas Bach composed for occasions from 11 June 1724 (Trinity I) to 25March 1725 (Palm Sunday) are chorale cantatas. As such these cantatas have consecutive "K" numbers in the chronological Zwang catalogue for Bach's cantatas published in 1982. In the Zwang catalogue the cantata for Reformation Day Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, BWV 80, is inserted between the cantatas for Trinity XXI and XII, as a cantata premiered in 1724.[2] More recently, this cantata is, however, no longer considered to have been composed in 1724.[3]
Bach's last newly composed chorale cantata in his second year in Leipzig was German: [[Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, BWV 1|''Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern'', BWV 1]]|italic=unset, for the feast of the Annunciation on 25March, which fell on Palm Sunday in 1725. Of the chorale cantatas composed up to Palm Sunday 1725 only K77, 84, 89, 95, 96 and 109 (BWV135, 113, 130, 80, 115 and 111) were not included in the chorale cantata cycle that was still extant in Leipzig in 1830.[4]
In 1724 the period of the Sundays after Trinity included St. John's Day (24June), Visitation (2July, that year coinciding with Trinity IV), St. Michael's Day (29September) and Reformation Day (31October). That year the last Sunday after Trinity, that is the last Sunday before Advent, was Trinity XXV:
| Occasion | Second cantata cycle | Chorale cantata cycle | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Advent I | BWV 62 | ||
| 2 | Christmas | BWV 91 | ||
| 3 | Christmas 2 | BWV 121 | ||
| 4 | Christmas 3 | BWV 133 | ||
| 5 | Christmas I | BWV 122 | ||
| 6 | New Year | BWV 41 | ||
| 7 | New Year I | — | (BWV 58) | |
| 8 | Epiphany | BWV 123 | ||
| 9 | Epiphany I | BWV 124 | ||
| 10 | Epiphany II | BWV 3 | ||
| 11 | Epiphany III | BWV 111 | ||
| 12 | Epiphany IV | — | BWV 14 | |
| 13 | Epiphany V | — | ||
| 14 | Epiphany VI | — | ||
| 15 | Septuagesima | BWV 92 | ||
| 16 | Purification | BWV 125 | ||
| 17 | Sexagesima | BWV 126 | ||
| 18 | Estomihi | BWV 127 | ||
| 19 | Annunciation Palm Sunday | BWV 1 | ||
| 20 | Easter | (BWV 4) (BWV 249) | BWV 4 | |
| 21 | Easter 2 | BWV 6 | — | |
| 22 | Easter 3 | (BWV 158?) | — | |
| 23 | Easter I | BWV 42 | — | |
| 24 | Easter II | BWV 85 | BWV 112 | |
| 25 | Easter III | BWV 103 | — | |
| 26 | Easter IV | BWV 108 | — | |
| 27 | Easter V | BWV 87 | — | |
| 28 | Ascension | BWV 128 | (BWV 128) | |
| 29 | Ascension I | BWV 183 | — | |
| 30 | Pentecost | BWV 74 | — | |
| 31 | Pentecost 2 | BWV 68 | (BWV 68) | |
| 32 | Pentecost 3 | BWV 175 | — | |
| 33 | Trinity | BWV 176 | BWV 129 | |
| 34 | Trinity I | BWV 20 | ||
| 35 | Trinity II | BWV 2 | ||
| 36 | St. John's D. | BWV 7 | ||
| 37 | Trinity III | BWV 135 | ||
| 38 | Trinity IV | — | BWV 177 | |
| 39 | Visitation | BWV 10 | ||
| 40 | Trinity V | BWV 93 | ||
| 41 | Trinity VI | — | BWV 9 | |
| 42 | Trinity VII | BWV 107 | ||
| 43 | Trinity VIII | BWV 178 | ||
| 44 | data-sort-value="Trinity VIIII" | Trinity IX | BWV 94 | |
| 45 | Trinity X | BWV 101 | ||
| 46 | Trinity XI | BWV 113 | ||
| 47 | Trinity XII | — | BWV 137 | |
| 48 | Trinity XIII | BWV 33 | ||
| 49 | Trinity XIV | BWV 78 | ||
| 50 | Trinity XV | BWV 99 | ||
| 51 | Trinity XVI | BWV 8 | ||
| 52 | St. Michael's D. | BWV 130 | ||
| 53 | Trinity XVII | BWV 114 | ||
| 54 | Trinity XVIII | BWV 96 | ||
| 55 | data-sort-value="Trinity XVIIII" | Trinity XIX | BWV 5 | |
| 56 | Trinity XX | BWV 180 | ||
| 57 | Trinity XXI | BWV 38 | ||
| 58 | Reformation D. | (BWV 80b) | BWV 80 | |
| 59 | Trinity XXII | BWV 115 | ||
| 60 | Trinity XXIII | BWV 139 | ||
| 61 | Trinity XXIV | BWV 26 | ||
| 62 | Trinity XXV | BWV 116 | ||
| 63 | Trinity XXVI | — | ||
| 64 | Trinity XXVII | — | BWV 140 | |
In Leipzig concerted music was not allowed for the second to fourth Sunday of Advent (silent time), so the next cantatas in the cycle are those for Christmas:
In 1725 the next occasion was Epiphany, while there was no Sunday between New Year and Epiphany:
There were six Sundays between Epiphany and Lent in 1725:
The three last Sundays before Ash Wednesday are called Septuagesima, Sexagesima and Estomihi. In 1725 the feast of Purification (2 February) fell between the first and the second of these Sundays:
In Leipzig there was no music during Lent (starting on Ash Wednesday), except for Annunciation (25March) and the Passion music on Good Friday. In 1725 Annunciation coincided with Palm Sunday:
After this cantata the consecutive set of chorale cantatas breaks off.
Newly composed cantatas, to make the year cycle complete up to Trinity Sunday, were no longer in the chorale cantata format, possibly because Bach lost his librettist, likely Andreas Stübel, who died on 31January 1725.[5]
Only three cantatas staged between Good Friday and Trinity of 1725 became associated with the chorale cantata cycle. Bach's second year cycle of cantatas is complete apart from the cantatas for ChristmasII, EpiphanyIV–VI, and TrinityIV, VI, XII and XXVI–XXVII. For most of the occasions that lack a cantata in the second cycle there are however extant chorale cantatas.
Bach did not present much newly composed music for the Good Friday and Easter services of 1725. The St John Passion, which was a repeat performance of the previous year, now in the St. Thomas church (where Bach had initially attempted to stage its premiere), did, however, contain four new movements (BWV 244/29, 245a, 245b and 245c).
On Easter,, Bach had two cantatas performed:
There are three extant Bach cantatas premiered in the period from Easter Monday to the second Sunday after Easter 1725. A shared characteristic of these cantatas is their structure: they start with a passage from the bible (vox Christi in the last of these cantatas), followed by an Aria, then a chorale for one or two voices, Recitative, Aria, and a concluding four-part chorale. The librettist of these cantatas is unknown, but is likely the same for all three.
The first Sunday after Easter, Quasimodogeniti, concludes the Octave of Easter, and the next Sunday is called Misericordias Domini:
None of these cantatas were included in the chorale cantata cycle remaining at St.Thomas in 1830: the EasterII cantata retained in that incomplete cycle was a later composition.
All further second cycle cantatas had Christiana Mariana von Ziegler as librettist. These cantatas are also the only ones for which Bach appears to have collaborated with this librettist. The occasions for which these cantatas were written include Jubilate, Cantate, Rogate, Ascension, Exaudi, Pentecost, and Trinity:
None of the von Ziegler cantatas are chorale cantatas in the strict sense, although the Ascension cantata and the Pentecost Monday cantata open with a chorale fantasia. These two cantatas (BWV128 and 68) are sometimes associated with the chorale cantata cycle, especially the second one while it was included in the chorale cantata cycle that remained at St.Thomas until the 19th century.
Bach continued to compose chorale cantatas after his second year in Leipzig, at least up to 1735. However, the chorale cantata cycle that survived the 18th century remains an incomplete cycle, primarily missing a few cantatas for the Easter to Trinity period.
See also: BWV 80. The chorale cantata for Reformation Day (31 October) Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott, BWV 80, originated in several stages:[6]
Bach composed more cantatas for his chorale cantata cycle after Trinity 1725, apparently in an effort to have a complete standard year cycle consisting exclusively of such cantatas:
All six of these chorale cantatas remained in the chorale cantata cycle kept at St.Thomas.
Two chorale cantatas replacing other cantatas composed for occasions between Easter and Trinity 1725 also remained in the St.Thomas collection:
There is uncertainty regarding four additional extant chorale cantatas as to time of origin (narrowed down to late 1720s–early 1730s) and occasion, all of them using hymn text without modification, but none of them included in the chorale cantata cycle kept at St.Thomas:
Some of these may have been intended for a wedding ceremony and/or as a generic cantata that could be used for any occasion.
Although we have no account of the reception of Bach's chorale cantatas by the congregation in Leipzig, we know that some of these cantatas were the only works that the city of Leipzig was interested in keeping alive after Bach's death: his successors performed several of them. After Doles, who was Thomaskantor until 1789, the practice of performing Bach cantatas in Leipzig was interrupted until Kantor Müller started to revive some of them from 1803.
Bach's early biographers (his son Carl Philipp Emanuel and Johann Friedrich Agricola in the Nekrolog and Forkel in his 1802 biography) gave little or no attention to individual cantatas, and confined themselves to mentioning that Bach had composed five complete cycles of church cantatas. Scholarship later indicated the chorale cantata cycle as Bach's second cycle of church cantatas. The performance parts of 44 chorale cantatas were about all that was left of Bach's music in the St.Thomas church by 1830. In 1878 Alfred Dörffel described this incomplete cantata cycle in the introduction of the thematic catalogue for the first 120 cantatas published by the Bach Gesellschaft.
Far from seeing a chorale cantata cycle tied to Bach's second year in Leipzig, Philipp Spitta, in the 1880 second volume of his Bach-biography, described the chorale cantata as a genre Bach only converged to in his later years.[13] Like Spitta, Reginald Lane Poole (1882) and Charles Sanford Terry (1920) saw the chorale cantata as a development of the composer's later years, and failed to list more than a handful, let alone a cycle, of such cantatas premiered between Trinity 1724 and Easter 1725 in their chronological lists of Bach's cantatas.[14] [15] Questionable chronologies and minor differences aside, they followed in Spitta's footsteps praising Bach's so-called "later" chorale cantatas as an epitome of the composer's art.[16] [17]
The three editions of the Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (BWV) that appeared in the second half of the 20th century gave little attention to the cycles of Bach's cantatas: the principles for assigning BWV numbers, as laid down by Wolfgang Schmieder for the catalogue's first edition in 1950, did not result in the chorale cantatas being identifiable as a group or cycle in the catalogue.[18] In the New Bach Edition cantatas were grouped by liturgical function (occasion), so also in that edition the chorale cantatas did not come out as a group or cycle.[19]
In the 21st century Klaus Hofmann has termed the cycle "the largest musical project that the composer ever undertook: the 'chorale cantata year.[20] The bach-digital.de website, managed by, among others, the Bach Archive, provided the "chorale cantata" qualification for all compositions belonging to this group (all other church cantatas at that website being indicated as sacred cantatas). It is the only cycle of Bach cantatas that is recognisable as a group on that website.[21]