July 24: Cantatas (BWV 97-103; Stuttgart Bach-Ensemble; Helmuth Rilling, conductor)
Steal these tunes!
I’m grateful to live downstream from centuries of genius composers, and rueful that my life is too short to internalize all of their music. (Same goes for books!)
People (and robots) are still churning out new music, taking inspiration from their personal canons (and programmed algorithms). Some of it’s great, most of it’s flat. I haven’t written any music I’ve loved in years — when I noodle around on the guitar these days, I find myself naturally pulled towards blues and folk tropes don’t even resonate with me anymore.
So I’m experimenting with a new tactic: abject theft. Can I start with an obscure melody and a pinch of harmony from JSB (or Tchaikovsky, or Schumann) and create a good contemporary tune around it? Jury’s out, I’m still in the early days…
As I listened to the recitative from Bach’s Cantata BWV 98, I heard nuggets of three potential songs. Bach was just bursting with ideas, maybe all of these little corners could have been fully explored if he lived 200 years. Maybe it’s our obligation to run with them.
YouTube of the full one-minute movement is linked below, and I’ve circled where you, too, can steal your next single:
That performance was by the Stuttgart Bach Ensemble conducted by Helmuth Rilling and sung by Lutz-Michael Harder. These recordings from 2000 are on the Hanssler Classic label. (I listened to BWV 97-103 for this post. (YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music.)
More highlights below:
Some superb violin moments in these cantatas! Lots of lovely double stops in the fourth movement of BWV 97:
And the violin is flitty in the second movement of BWV 101:
A charming and goofy piccolo/fife thing in the opening movement of BWV 103:
Lots of harmonic drama in the opening of BWV 101, Bach makes it very hard to grip onto the music, everything stays slippery throughout the movement:
In this aria from BWV 99 for soprano and alto, the oboe and flute are a sympathetic pair to the vocals. (As usual, the bassoon is crucial, but still a sideshow.)
Gutsy singing from Philippe Huttenlocher in the third movement of BWV 100:
I’ll close with choice singing from the great Peter Schreier in BWV 103, movement two:
Evan - I didn't know you were a Schumann fan. I've been listening to him a lot this past year, and I've enjoyed almost everything I've heard of his so far (I know many people feel the exact opposite). I respect that he can be tempestuous and unruly but also intimate and lyrical. That big tune at the beginning of the "Rhenish" symphony particularly sings to me. Also the slow movement from the piano quintet. It's almost minimalistic, gorgeous, and mournful. Though neither is obscure.
Tchaikovsky is SO lyrical. That "cantabile" from the 5th could be dropped right into an opera easily.
If singers like Billy Joel can take a Beethoven piano sonata, or the librettist for "Babe" can take Saint-Saens 3rd symphony and set it to words, and not to forget Blackbird - why not? (I wish I could, but I'm talentless).
Bach is loaded with those wonderful fragments for the picking. Happily, they yield extended original ideas which become the new tune. Having a Bach motive as a launching pad? You've got gems to be written, Evan. I look forward to it.