BWV 129 - Gelobet sei der Herr, mein Gott

This coming Sunday is Trinity Sunday, the Sunday which, for many Christian churches, effectively ends the half year of seasonal changes in the liturgical calendar, leaving the churchgoer with a sense of stability and presumably, boredom, until the church year ends with the coming of Advent.

It also happens to the day I was meant to conduct the above Bach Cantata 20 years ago.  For reasons not worth going into here, this was delayed until the Fall of 1999, making it less a liturgical experience and more of a service with an orchestral and choral accompaniment. 

If you read far enough back, I had a strange plan to blog through all of the Karl Richter recordings of the Bach Cantatas in 2009, doing a blog post for each and every one he'd chosen in order.  I managed to get the first one out, but then missed the second week, and I guess decided I needed to wait another year to start again (How silly of me!).  

Well, it's ten years later, and now I'm blogging about a second cantata, which also has the virtue of being one I've conducted, nearly 20 years ago. 

What can I say about it?  It's a really beautiful chorale cantata, which means, the cantata is based around a Lutheran chorale.  This one is by Johann Olearius, called, uh, "Gelobet sei der Herr, mein Gott".  As is common with Bach's chorale cantatas, there are five movements: the first movement has the first verse of the chorale as a cantus firmus in the top voice while the everyone else sings and plays around it.  In this case, the first movement is quite triumphant and a lot of fun to sing (and conduct).

The middle movements are solo sections with a reduced number of players, much like the solo sections of the St. Matthew or St. John Passions, with the text usually a commentary on the themes of the chorale text.  The final movement is then a harmonization of the chorale melody with orchestral accompaniment.  All in all very satisfying, although the chorale, interestingly enough, doesn't really have anything to do with the Trinity, which is probably for the best.

It's odd feeling listening to it all these years later- firstly, I'm currently the organist at the church where I first conducted this cantata.  Secondly, my German is a lot better - I can actually understand what they're saying in German instead of having to rely on the translation.  Thirdly, I am a much better musician and conductor than I was then.

Our doing this piece back 1999 had a lot more to do with my ambition than anything.  But we did pull it off, and some of the people who sang there, who I see occasionally back in the church, still comment on the performance, which remains a highlight for me, even if the video recording of it is long lost, and the orchestra we hired to perform with us is long since disbanded.

Indeed, the music is still at the church, sorted carefully away, probably never to be used again, although I suppose, given I'm the organist right now, that's an overly pessimistic view on my own part!