Baby

The Christmas season is a great reason to listen to Johann Sebastian Bach's cantatas dedicated to this time. The Lutheran liturgy, which after the December feast does not devote much time to contemplating the mystery of the Incarnation, allowed the German artist to reach for a great wealth of theological threads. At the same time, there is also a simple emotion in these works at the sight of the crib and the newborn Savior lying in it. At NFM they will be performed by the Wrocław Baroque Ensemble under the direction of maestro Andrzej Kosendiak.

Dedicated to the Sunday after December 25, the 1724 cantata Das neugeborne Kindelein combines the celebration of the Nativity and the celebration of the New Year. The work opens with a gentle choral fantasy in the form of a lullaby. Calm storms dramatic bass aria urging sinners to abandon the wrong path. The three-flute soprano, however, reminds us of the New Covenant between God and men. The joyful mood lasts already until the end of the composition. Today is the time to sing,” the choir announces. The older Tritt auf die Glaubensbahn is also scheduled for the same day. It was built in Weimar, for the Schlosskirche there. Bach cantatas from this period have an extremely intimate character and this one is no exception. The master from Eisenach, which is rare in his works of this type, begins here with a fugue. The libretto of Solomon Franck in subsequent recitations and arias focuses on the evangelical comparison of Jesus Christ to the cornerstone, as well as the need for human conversion. In the final, surprisingly danceable dialogue of the Son of God and the Soul, the symbol of the adoption of such an attitude — and therefore of the ultimate state of unity and order — is the part played simultaneously (in unison) by all the melodic instruments.

The beginning of the second part of the concert Sie werden aus Saba alle kommen is already a piece for the Feast of the Epiphany. It presents the arrival of the Three Kings to the Holy Family as the fulfillment of the prophecy recorded by Isaiah and calls for the surrender of one's heart to God in the likeness of gold, frankincense and myrrh. The composer, following the evangelical information about the characters visiting the Child — the “wise men of the East” — by musical means suggests their cultural difference by including in the cast of longitudinal flutes, oboes da caccia and horns, thus a set of instruments in Baroque music evoking Asian associations. Here they have been used in such a way as to bring out the richness of their sound as much as possible. The attribution of the last cantata in the program to Johann Sebastian Bach is a highly questionable matter. The oldest surviving manuscript copy of the Christmas Uns ist ein Kind Geboren was made in 1755 by Christian Friedrich Penzel, a student of the artist. He already thought that the composition came from under the pen of his teacher. However, this attribution in the 20th century was rejected by experts. There is also no consensus on the actual creator of the work. Perhaps it was Johann Kuhnau, Bach's predecessor as cantor of St. Thomas Church in Leipzig. The ambiguities do not detract from the cantata itself. The music to the text based on Erdmann Neumeister's libretto captivates even with ingenious instrumentation. In the three arias for bass, tenor and alto voices, the soloist is accompanied — respectively — first by the violin, then both, and finally by the simple flutes.