Naxos to release Cecilia's recording of "The Construction of Boston."
The CD of Composer in Residence Scott Wheeler's opera will be released during 2008. The libretto, as well as program notes from the April 2007 concert performance, are available now.

"Teeters and his classy cast and players offered the first truly satisfying performance I’ve heard... If I ever forget what a superb programmer he's been over his 39 years of directing Boston Cecilia, remind me of this concert."

-Lloyd Schwartz, The Boston Phoenix, Apr. 5, 2007. Read the review!

Introducing New Music: Recent and Right Now, presenting the music of up-and-coming composers, in collaboration with Scott Wheeler. Annual series debuts in June 2008!

Bach, like all of his contemporaries, borrowed freely from himself and others, altering and adapting materials from earlier use into the fabric of new works without qualm or fear of reproach. The custom was universal. Mattheson said, "Borrowing is an accepted thing, but what is borrowed must be repaid with interest."

In the late years of his life when it came time for summing up, Bach set about work on his sacred magnum opus, the Mass in B Minor. It is not surprising that instead of starting fresh from his always brimming reservoir of creative invention he opted to forge his monumental and monumentally congruent Mass from pre-existing sources: virtually every movement of the Mass has a recognizable vocal or instrumental antecedent. That a work of such splendor, symmetry and logic could derive from a grab bag of earlier efforts is astounding. It is also certification of a fundamental harmony governing Bach's life, labor and art.

The borrowing Bach does from himself meets a stringent test. Sometimes the reworked material is really made better and more beautiful. More often all we can say is that it suits both its original and its later setting equally well, so that we should hardly be able to decide on the basis of beauty or quality of workmanship alone which had been the original conception and which the adaptation. It is probably safe to say that all the choral works on this program were conceived long before Bach even thought of composing the B Minor Mass.

BWV 171 (Gott, wie dein Name), dating from 1730 is a New Year's Day cantata (Feast of the Holy Name), and the "name" of Jesus figures in every movement although the Gospel account of the circumstances around his naming (Luke 2:21) is not cited directly. The cantata's first movement, a choral fugue, was the source of the Patrem omnipotentem, the second movement of the Credo section of the Mass. The fugue subject and a good deal of the counterpoint were changed to accommodate the Mass text. The most interesting aspect of this adaptation is the way Bach connects it to the preceding Credo movement in the Mass. He prefixed to the fugue six measures in which the upper three parts exclaim the words Credo in unum Deum while the bass sings an extra, preliminary statement of the fugue subject; and then at the beginning of the original fugue, in the tenor, the exclamations are reiterated, so that the orderly fugue entrance of the voices is disguised. The cantata movement contains none of these devices; it is a straightforward fugue, in which the voices enter one after the other in the usual manner. The tenor aria which follows evokes the clouds mentioned in the text with the frolicking arabesques of its two-violin obbligato. An alto recitative leads to a soprano aria, itself a reworking of the same material in a secular cantata (BWV 205, Der zufriedengestellte Aeolus [The pacified Aeolus] of 1725). The bass recitative that follows is an interesting combination of arioso and accompagnato, the latter supported by woodwinds rather than the customary strings. The concluding chorale with its trumpet and drum fanfares is familiar from its use in Cantata 41.

Schauet doch und sehet, BWV 46, dates from Bach's early Leipzig years, 1723-1725. The text draws on Luke's account of Christ weeping over the coming destruction of Jerusalem, and on Jeremiah's lamentation over an earlier razing of that city. The early movements of the cantata reflect on the Old Testament account; the final ones suggest that Christians might want to adjust their own behavior in order to avoid a similar fate. The cantata's first chorus, minus its sixteen bar introduction and the fugue with which it concludes, became the Qui tollis of the Gloria section of the Mass. The change of key from d minor to b minor necessitated the substitution of transverse flutes for the original recorders, and the slide trumpet and oboes da caccia were dropped altogether in the Mass version. The cantata's dramatic climax is a splendid bass aria depicting the kind of storm that might have accompanied the destruction of Jerusalem. An alto recitative leads to an aria also for alto, enchantingly accompanied by recorders and oboes da caccia, in which images are called up of Jesus as Good Shepherd and even as mother hen protecting her flock. The serenity of her reverie is broken only once at Wenn Wetter der Rache die Sünder belohnen (When furious tempests assail the sinners). The final chorale is atypical, as in Cantata 171: here though it is recorders that decorate the intervals between phrases of the hymn with entwining roulades.

Cantata BWV 12, (for the third Sunday after Easter) dates from Bach's years in Weimar (1714). It begins with a solemn instrumental movement in the style of an Italian church sonata. The first chorus, Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen (Weeping, moaning, worrying, despairing) is the forerunner of the Crucifixus of the Mass, and is surely one of Bach's sublimest creations. It is fascinating to examine the process by which this early da capo movement running to 141 measures, was transformed by the mature master into the Mass's eloquent and compact fifty-three measure narrative of Christ's final moments. Its passacaglia bass is eminently fitting in its solemnity and chromaticism to the expression of woe in the cantata text, and equally to the tragic narration of the Crucifixion in the Mass. But the entrance of the four voices one after another, while it is not inappropriate to the Crucifixus text, was clearly designed for the four words of anguish with which the Cantata text begins. For the Mass, Bach changed the key (from f minor to e minor) and the orchestration (from strings, bassoon and organ to strings and organ, with flutes [brilliant stroke!] adding tear drops to the ensemble). He eliminated the middle section entirely and in so doing the need for repetition of the first; and, because he needed to connect Crucifixus to Et resurrexit he dropped the cantata's closing ritornello and substituted the miraculous modulation which leads to Et resurrexit's celebrational key of D. In addition, he changed details of melody and voice-leading here and there: a striking change was the flattening of the opening note in the alto part (corresponding to the first appearance of the word Klagen) — an effect which in the cantata he had reserved for a point much later in the movement. The alto recitative and aria, though still somber of text, remind us that this is after all a cantata for the Easter season; the bass sings in a happy step-motif of his willingness to follow after Christ in good times and bad; and the tenor, with obbligato trumpet playing the tune of Jesu, meine Freude, sings of the necessity of keeping faith until life's storms pass.

Cantata 120, Gott, man lobet dich was composed in 1730 for the centenary celebration of the Augsburg Confession and two months later was repeated as the Ratswahl (Town Council) cantata. It shares some of its music not only with the Mass, but also with an incomplete wedding cantata and with a sonata for violin and harpsichord. The first movement, based on a verse from Psalm 65, is a stirringly virtuosic alto aria, in which the singer spins lengthy melismas against a siciliana-like accompaniment played by oboes d'amore and strings. The second movement, Jauchzet, ihr erfreuten Stimmen is the one he adapted for the Et expecto--the final movement of the Credo section of the Mass. A secco recitative by the bass leads to a soprano aria, the substance of which Bach used in several different works, one being the sonata for violin and harpsichord mentioned above. The final chorale is a setting of the fourth verse of Martin Luther's German version of the Te Deum.

The idea for a cantata program containing early workings of pieces Bach adapted for use in the B Minor Mass came from the program book of a November 1951 concert by the New York Cantata Singers. That concert was conducted by the eminent musicologist and Bach scholar Arthur Mendel, who also contributed an informative essay to the program book. Cecilia made an earlier use of this idea in my first season as director in 1969, in a program that included two of today's choices (Nos. 46 and 120), but with different companion pieces. Boston Cecilia is pleased to honor the late Professor Mendel in this way, and to thank him for his good idea.

- Donald Teeters

The Boston Cecilia performed these pieces at New England Conservatory's Jordan Hall in Boston on October 23, 1994.

© 2004 Donald Teeters. All rights reserved.

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