Last fall I purchased the box set of all of Bach’s sacred cantatas, performed by the English Baroque Soloists and the Monteverdi Choir under the direction of John Eliot Gardiner. (They're available at this link.) Beginning with the First Sunday of Advent, I’ve been listening to these cantatas on the appropriate days, as a year-long “spiritual journey.”
Over three weeks ago, when I listened to CD 11 for the last Sunday before Lent, I looked at CD 12, saw “Palm Sunday,” and thought the next installment of my listening would be in April. But today I realized that the same disc contained a cantata for the Third Sunday of Lent (Oculi Sunday), which was this past Sunday, and also two cantatas for the Feast of the Annunciation (yesterday, March 25), although the Annunciation cantatas are also Palm Sunday pieces. (Oculi Sunday is so named because the first Latin word of the day’s introit from Psalm 24:15 is oculi, or “eyes”.)
Just a little late, I listened to Disc 12 on this day after Annunciation. The two cantatas for that day are “Himmelskönig sei willkommen” (BWV 182, “King of Heaven, Thou art welcome”) and “Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern” (BWV 1, “How beautifully gleams the morning star”). The cantata for this past Sunday is “Widerstehe doch der Sünde” (BWV 54, “Stand firm against all sinning”). The cover photo (always international people, symbolizing the universality of Bach’s music) is of a turbaned man in Allahabad, India.
The next cantatas in the set are for Easter Sunday, so I’ll be back with Bach in a few weeks.
In the notes, Gardiner writes that in 1714, when BWV 182 premiered, Palm Sunday coincided with Annunciation. The cantata opens with a pretty overture for violin and recorder with pizzicato accompaniment, perhaps invoking Jesus’ donkey ride, while the songs invoke the crowd’s happy greeting of Christ---and our own greeting of our Savior who, we know, will shortly suffer on our behalf.
Let us thus enter joyful Salem,
attend the King in love and sorrow.
He leads the way
and prepares the path.
But Mary's sorrow is also suggested in the sad alto solo, accompanied by a recorder, beseeching us to give ourselves to Christ.
“Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern” is also a cantata for a year (1725) in which Annunciation and Palm Sunday coincided. Gardiner calls this a “jubliant spring-time cantata... opulent, regal and ‘eastern’, redolent of te Ephipany cantata BWV 65. He writes that the whole cantata is filled with dance rhythms and good spirits as the son of Mary and Son of God is “a joyous ray that has come to me from God... a perfect treasure, the Saviour’s Body and Blood... destined for us since eternity...”
BWV 54 for Oculi Sunday reminds us from the outset to “Stand firm against all sinning, or its poison will possess you.. Those who commit sin are of the devil, for he has invented sin, but if one resists his vile shackles with true devotion, sin will straightaway take flight.” Gardiner writes that Bach opens the first aria in a startling way “with a harsh dissonance, a dominant seventh chord over a tonic pedal point” which may have meant to jar listeners to do as the title says. In contrast to the cheerful “Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern,” the cantata is appropriate for its Lenten location as an urgent reminder to renounce the devil’s ways.
Annunciation is a fixed rather than moveable feast and will, most years, fall within the Lenten season. It is interesting that Bach twice had the chance to write for both Palm Sunday and Annunciation as the same day. My own Lent has been so busy with school responsibilities that I've sagged a bit on devotional reading and the like. So I felt happy I could return to the Bach cantatas sooner than I'd anticipated---to get a gentle push back into the penitential, introspective time. I was also happy to be reminded of the joyous announcement to Mary: the Savior will be born to the favored young woman. To put it foolishly, it feels like a reminder of Christmas cheer (the promised birth of Jesus) within Lenten solemnity. (And it did snow a little yesterday….)
As each set of CD notes indicate, the English translations of Bach's texts by Richard Stokes.
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