Bach Festival 2023: Cantatas for Eternity

When Johann Sebastian Bach took over as Thomaskantor in Leipzig in 1723, he wrote his most beautiful cantatas for church services. He would never have dreamed that this “everyday music” would one day become pieces for eternity.

To commemorate Bach’s 300th anniversary as church cantor, cantatas were the focus of the Leipzig Bach Festival, which took place from 8 to 18 June.

Under the motto “Bach for Future”, more than 70,000 visitors from 56 countries came – a new international record for the festival, which scores points for its original Bach-era venues. “The more international the festival, the younger the audience,” Bach festival director Michael Maul told DW. “So I’m not worried about the future of his music. Bach is present all over the world and attracts people to Leipzig like never before.”

To close the festival, Bach’s acclaimed Mass in B Minor was heard at St. Thomas Church, performed by Bach Collegium Japan, under the direction of Masaaki Suzuki.

In 2015, Bach’s personal manuscript of the Mass held by the Berlin State Library was included in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register, a project to protect and preserve culturally significant documents and manuscripts.

Bach and Leipzig

Johann Sebastian Bach arrived in Leipzig at the age of 38 as the new Thomaskantor and municipal music director. Not only did he compose church cantatas for Sunday services, but he also conducted the “Thomanerchor” (St. Thomas boys’ choir), which was founded in 121 and remains one of the most famous boys’ choirs in Germany. Bach also oversaw the upkeep of the instruments and played at weddings and funerals.

In his first year in office, Bach invested a lot of energy in his cantatas.

At the Bach Festival, four of Bach’s best connoisseurs performed favorite cantatas with their ensembles, including conductors Philippe Herreweghe and Ton Koopman, known for their historic performance practice and whose shows can be heard on the “DW Classical Music” YouTube channel.

Music for all denominations

In his music, Johann Sebastian Bach created new musical forms with unfamiliar instruments and artistic blends of sounds, which today are often described as atmospheric or celestial. The composer placed special emphasis on composing the biblical texts and words of his cantatas in a musically expressive manner.

“The cantatas are perhaps the most complex and difficult of Bach’s music to access,” says artistic director Michael Maul. Even for Germans, he says, there are language barriers with the heavy Baroque texts. Also, people are not as God-fearing as they were in Bach’s day. “However, Bach is received across denominational, cultural and geographic boundaries.”

Bach Street Thomas Boys Choir

Contemporaries of the time still did not recognize Bach’s genius. “Bach is much more difficult to play than the music of his contemporaries. It’s also more complex to understand that people of that era could simply be overworked,” says Maul.

It is also said that Bach sometimes expected too much from his Thomaner boys. He complained to the chamber of the caliber of the chosen boys and after a few years-also due to other disagreements with the chamber-he turned more and more to profane music.

He created instructional pieces such as “The Art of Fugue” (1751) and composed works known as the “Goldberg Variations” (published 1741), which the Armenian pianist Sergei Babayan played from memory with virtuoso precision at the Bach Festival.

Surprise guest: rock legend Sting

The St. The Thomas Boys Choir was in particularly high demand this year. For the opening concert, he performed not only Bach’s inaugural cantata “Die Elenden sollen essen” (“The miserable will eat”), but also a world premiere by conductor, clarinetist and composer Jörg Widmann, which took the form of the cantata as a basis for talking about war and the hope for peace.

For Thomaskantor Andreas Reize, looking back, it was the biggest challenge of the 300th anniversary celebration. “We pushed the limits of what we could do on the premiere, but it was an incredible experience,” says Reize. “It was very difficult to sing, amazing for the orchestra to play and also for me to conduct.”

The Thomaners were awarded the Bach Medal for their services to the works of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Among the notable guests at St. Thomas Church for the “Boys’ Choir Summit” was English rock legend Sting, a reputed Bach lover. The director of the Bach festival, Michael Maul, is also aware that, from time to time, Sting plays a few bars of Bach on his guitar.

Global Ensembles Celebrating Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach’s inauguration in Leipzig will be celebrated throughout this year.

For example, the St. The Thomas Boys’ Choir will participate in the weekly Sunday services, where the same musical programs from the time of Bach will be heard.

The Bach Museum will present the special exhibition “Bühne frei für Johann Sebastian Bach!” (“Make way for Johann Sebastian Bach!”) until March 2024. Divided into three successive parts, the exhibition will focus on Bach’s sacred music, his music for keyboard instruments and how subsequent generations have dealt with his music.

Under the motto “Coral Total”, Bach Festival 2024 (7-16 June) will welcome Bach ensembles from around the world to sing Bach’s choral cantatas in his second year in charge of Thomaskantor (1724/25). In addition to German and European choirs, ensembles from the United States, Japan and Malaysia, among others, are expected. There will also be a festival choir, in which singers from all over the world will be able to enter.

This article was originally written in German.