Key Details

Sunset Center Theater
July 14 & 21 at 7:30 PM

Program Notes

By Georgeanne Banker

J.S. Bach - BWV 39, Brich dem Hungrigen dein Brot
In May 1723, Johann Sebastian Bach assumed the multipart role of Director Musices in Leipzig, where he became the cantor at the St. Thomas Church, music director of the St. Thomas School and the city’s three other churches, and music director for municipal events. While city higher-ups anticipated their busy new Thomaskantor would “play a crucial role in reshaping the city’s musical life,” as scholar Christoph Wolff notes, they ended up with someone who would shape Western music in the process.

Getting down to business, for the first Sunday after Trinity—a week and a day after his arrival in Leipzig—Bach performed the first of hundreds of genre-defining, sacred cantatas he would craft there over the following years (this debut was received “with good applause”). For the Sunday after Trinity three years later, Bach performed his BWV 39, Brich dem Hungrigen dein Brot, composed in two parts as occasioned by the liturgy. Scored for pairs of recorders and oboes, strings, and continuo, the libretto is derived in part from a cantata cycle from Meiningen, where Bach’s cousin, Johann Ludwig Bach, was kapellmeister.

Digging into the Old Testament text from Isaiah 58:7-8, Bach intensifies its call to action with a breaking apart of the music, as rhythmic figures crumble down from recorders to oboes to strings. Bach enhances the word Elend (misery) with chromaticism, imparting palpable moments of discomfort. Composed in mirrored symmetry, the second half opens with a New Testament passage from Hebrews 13:16, sung by the didactic bass evoking the Vox Christie. Bach illuminates the aria Höchster, was ich habe with solo soprano and soaring recorders, and concludes the cantata with a chorale borrowing its tune from Freu dich sehr, o meine Seele, itself derived from a 16th-century French song.

Antonio Lotti  - Missa Sapientiae

It is safe to assume that Bach would have been happy, if not honored, to have his music featured alongside that of Antonio Lotti, even more so that the music happens to be the Missa Sapientiae.

Born in Venice, Lotti’s life orbited around Basilica di San Marco, where as a young man he was employed as a singer, belonged to the same music society as Vivaldi’s violinist father, and at age 69 was elected its maestro di cappella. Outside of the church, Lotti had star power as an opera composer, and in 1717 enjoyed a two-year residence in Dresden by invitation of the Elector Augustus II.

Admired by audiences and princes alike (while away, Lotti and company performed with variety and virtuosity, “the like of which Dresden has never heard,” one listener said), through study and emulation the composer also received weighty endorsements from composers like Jan Dismas Zelenka, George Friedric Handel, and Johann Sebastian Bach—and it is this trio we have to thank for the Missa Sapientiae as we know it today.

Titled by Zelenka, the Missa Sapientiae originates with a 1729 copy Zelenka made, wherein he coupled a Lotti Kyrie in G minor and Gloria in G major. Zelenka, a composer at the Dresden court, tailored Lotti’s orchestration to suit his ensemble: doubling the violins with oboes, adding bassoon and trumpet, and replacing a solo violin line with flute in the Domine Deus Rex coelestis. Bach copied out the Missa Sapientiae in the 1730s, with some pointing to its influence on his B Minor Mass, while Handel made his copy in the 1740s, borrowing its material in his later works.

The Missa Sapientiae begins with a solemn Kyrie, whose complex sound is enhanced by Lotti’s five-part string writing (welcome, second viola). The sparkling Gloria is scored for a five-part chorus with second soprano, while the Et in terra pax text is grounded by the basses and altos alone. Here Zelenka adds some more panache by reassigning Lotti’s solo oboe part to the trumpet.

The Qui Tollis adds a sixth voice to the choir, a second tenor, with trios of upper and lower voices singing in alternation (Zelenka confects a similar conversation between winds and strings in the Laudamus te). An orchestral ostinato returns through the sublime Miserere Nobis, before the Missa concludes with a jubilant fugue, leaving little question as to why Lotti’s voice spoke so deeply to those listening.

Bach - BWV 105, Herr, gehe nicht ins Gericht mit deinem Knecht

In 1708 Bach noted an “ultimate goal, namely, a well-regulated church music” upon leaving his post in Mühlhausen. Fifteen years later, he evidently continued this pursuit with his brilliant first cantata cycle in Leipzig, which included his BWV 105, Herr, gehe nicht ins Gericht mit deinem Knecht. Performed in July 1723, the work proved that Bach was not only to well-regulate church music, but was to set the gold standard for sacred cantatas as profound, cohesive works of art.

Written to accompany the gospel reading from Luke 16, the Parable of the Unjust Steward, the cantata is scored for pairs of oboes, violins, viola, continuo, and what Bach indicates as the corno; given the key and range, likely the corno da tirarsi, a small horn with a side (ever a rarity, the part is more readily covered by a trumpet).

The cantata opens with a momentous chorus in G minor, where the alchemical treble timbre, pulse of the bassline, and swift chromaticism set the stage for the urgent supplications of its text, from Psalm 143. The soprano aria Wie zittern und wanken is scored for solo oboe with trembling treble strings. The remarkable absence of basso continuo heightens the aria’s disquiet, leaving the duetting voices to float on their own. The tenor aria Kann ich nur Jesum, gives us a wealth of virtuosity before the cantata closes with a chorale, uniquely set with obbligato upper strings. Moving in rhythmic augmentation, the violins and viola accentuate the tense text before finding calm, and landing, full of faith, on their own.