June 18: Cantatas (Bach-Collegium Stuttgart; Helmuth Rilling, conductor)

A barely known masterpiece

My favorite pop artists each released about eight total hours of studio-recorded music: The Beatles, Steely Dan, Radiohead, Michael Hedges, Paul Simon, Led Zeppelin. Another cohort of favorites — Stevie Wonder, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Crosby, Stills & Nash — boast catalogs of about eight prime hours when you snip off the less successful earlier and later bits. These are digestible and popular œuvres, and you can profess your love of deep album tracks like, “St. Judy’s Comet,” “Coyote,” and, “Doctor Wu,” and many people of good taste will nod and smile back.

We are blessed with roughly 250 hours of Bach’s music — just a staggering achievement. Though all of his compositions have been recorded multiple times, only dedicated scholars have a command over all the whole thing, and even then, come on. There are full-time Beatles scholars whose subject covers only 4% of Bach’s output — even if you include the band’s cultural impact, it’s bupkis in relative terms. (I love the Beatles, but I’m just saying.)

So it’s possible to uncover little gems in Bach’s catalog that are not well known to classical music fans or even to JSB stans. That’s what I want to do today. I’m featuring the Recitative, “O selger Tag!” (“O blessed day!”) from BWV 63, performed by the Hungarian contralto Julia Hamari with the Bach-Collegium Stuttgart, conducted by Helmuth Rilling and recorded in 2006. (YouTube, Apple Music, Spotify.)

I’ll risk some of my reader’s goodwill to call this work an unknown masterpiece, insofar as anything by Bach is ‘unknown.’

Here’s the full performance on YouTube:

Julia Hamari, contralto

And here’s a live performance conducted by Rilling with the slightly rushing contralto Lidia Vinyes Curtis if video enhances the vibe for you:

This is a Christmas cantata, but we’re not hanging at the manger in celebration. Bach seems to be getting a three century head start on putting Christ back in Christmas. In the text, the Messiah, “seeks from the imprisonment and slave chains of Satan to rescue Israel.” (Uh-oh, and I hope Bach meant, “humanity” when he said “Israel”, but I’m not optimistic. I’m getting cooler feet highlighting this, but I’ve wound up my pitch too far already to not release it.)

Maybe we’re actually on more solid “common humanity” ground, as these lyrics are more universally abasing:

Dear God, what are we then in our wretchedness?
A fallen people who forsake you, and nevertheless you do not choose to hate us.

Bach writes a languorous string arrangement to support an active alto. The chord changes are slow to unfold, often very surprising and beautiful. I love how Bach shifts harmonies mid-measure and carries them over the bar lines to keep us in a state of anticipation. Rilling melts the phrases into each other:

(Circled chords below are at 0:27 and 0:38 in the clip above.)

Not for nothing, lots of sharp notes when we start talking about Satan.

It would have felt satisfying to wrap up about two minutes in (0:15 below), but the genius gives us more. In measure 27 (0:29 below), check out how the strings — which have been subdued and supportive so far — get hot for the first time when the singer hits her first sustained note. (Separately, I also love the harmony in measure 23, 0:08):

Then the piece end on an unresolved chord after a line about the incomprehensibility of God’s decrees, just perfect:

This is such an amazing little piece. Thank you, JSB! (I sincerely hope it’s not virulently anti-Semitic.)

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A few more highlights from other BWV’s I listened to this week (including BWV 64 from this disc and BWV 7-9 from the same orchestra and conductor). The performances are bold and punchy, good listens all around.

Here’s a spicy chord in the third movement of BWV 7 (0:09):

I’ve mentioned Steve Reich before, but the flute in the opening of BWV 8 is pure proto-Reich, even featuring swelling dynamics. This is a new Bach vibe for me:

Great singing from the American soprano Arleen Augur to conclude the fifth movement of BWV 8:

I’ll conclude today with the final twisty moments of BWV 9: