J.S. Bach / Laß, Fürstin, laß noch einen Strahl ("Trauerode"), BWV 198 (Herreweghe)

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)

Cantata BWV 198: Laß, Fürstin, laß noch einen Strahl "Trauerode" (17 October 1727)

Part I.
1. Laß, Fürstin, laß noch einen Strahl (Chorus)
2. Dein Sachsen, dein bestürztes Meißen (Recitative: S) 05:58
3. Verstummt, verstummt, ihr holden Saiten! (Aria: S) 07:08
4. Der Glocken bebendes Getön (Recitative: A) 11:00
5. Wie starb die Heldin so vergnügt! (Aria: A) 11:58
6. Ihr Leben ließ die Kunst zu sterben (Recitative: T) 19:21
7. An dir, du Fürbild großer Frauen (Chorus) 20:29

Part II.
8. Der Ewigkeit saphirnes Haus (Aria: T) 22:37
9. Was Wunder ists? Du bist es wert (Recitative: B) 26:43
10. Doch, Königin! du stirbest nicht (Chorus) 29:11

Soloists:
Soprano: Ingrid Schmithüsen
Alto: Charles Brett
Tenor: Howard Crook
Bass: Peter Kooy

Performed by La Chapelle Royale under the direction of Philippe Herreweghe. Recorded by Harmonia Mundi France in 1988.

"The Trauerode BWV 198 occupies a special place among Bach's secular cantatas. It is at once his only surviving secular music of mourning and the only extant cantata that he contributed to an official university ceremony. The work's genesis is unusually well documented. The Electress of Saxony Christiane Eberhardine had died suddenly on 5 September 1727 at the age of fifty-six. She was highly respected in Saxony for resisting the pressure of the court to embrace the Roman Catholic faith which her husband had adopted in 1697 in order to become eligible as king of Poland. Since that time she had lived in retirement in the castle of Pretzsch on the Elbe. The ceremony planned by Leipzig University for 17 October was thus a political event of the first order. It would appear that the president of the Leipzig Deutsche Gesellschaft, Johann Christoph Gottsched, was the prime mover behind the event; but he clearly did not want to adopt too prominent a position with respect to the Saxon court, and therefore entrusted an aristocratic student from his circle, Hans Carl von Kirchbach, with the preparations for the ceremony, while he himself contributed the text for a large-scale mourning ode.

"Kirchbach commissioned a setting of Gottsched's poem from Bach, as the highest-ranking musician in the city, thereby passing over the figure who by rights should have received it, the university's music director Johann Gottlieb Görner. Once the project became known, Görner immediately lodged a protest with the university authorities, demanding that the commission be withdrawn from Bach and given to him instead. Although he had the university on his side, Görner was finally defeated by the obstinacy of Kirchbach - who threatened to call the whole event off -- and had to be content with a compensatory payment. In the meantime, Bach had already pressed ahead with his setting of Gottsched's ode. The end of the autograph score is dated 15 October, which means that the ten-movement work was finished just two days before the performance. The (now lost) parts must therefore have been copied out in the greatest of haste.

"The ceremony began at nine o'clock in the morning with a solemn procession of the town council and university professors from the Nikolaikirche to the Paulinerkirche, where Kirchbach pronounced his eulogy in memory of the Electress, framed by Bach's music. Since the ceremony took place during the Leipzig Michaelmas Fair, it was attended, as a contemporary account tells us, by 'many personalities, princes, and other persons of high rank, Saxon and foreign ministers, chevaliers from the court and elsewhere, along with numerous ladies'. After the guests had taken their seats in the church, the university beadles distributed the printed text of the music, the first part of which commenced immediately. The Leipzig chronicler Ernst Christoph Sicul reports that Bach had composed his music 'in the Italian style, with Clave di Cembalo, which Mr. Bach himself played, organ, viola da gamba, lutes, violins, recorders, transverse flutes, &c.'.

"Bach was well aware of the significance of this solemn occasion, for he provided it with music of matchless splendor. In order to realize his musical conception of a grandiose funeral cantata after the Italian model, he began by modifying the regular organization of Gottsched's poem--the stanzas were split up and regrouped to enable them to be set as choruses, recitatives, and arias. The scoring of the work, too, is exceptionally delicate. The standard orchestra of transverse flutes, oboes d'amore and strings was expanded to include two violas da gamba and two lutes, which give the work its distinctive sound, at once somber and silvery." - Peter Wollny

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