Schweitzer, no doubt, is correct in his conclusion[392] that Bach was drawn to Franck by his poetic insight, his mysticism, and innate feeling for nature. It must be remembered, too, that his libretti were, in some degree, official. On the other hand, Franck was Neumeister's inferior in ability to conceive a picture fit to express Bach's larger moods, and on occasion could descend to sheer bathos.[393] But his texts have a rhythmic swing and melody which Bach found agreeable. He set at least sixteen of them, and returned to them even after he settled at Leipzig.
The circumstances which terminated Bach's service at Weimar are familiar, and need not be restated. He received a new appointment at Cöthen on 1st August 1717, and took up his duties there, probably at Christmas, that year.[394] His position was that of Capellmeister to the princely Court. He never styles himself Court Organist,[395] and his duties severed him for five years from the service of the Church, to which he had declared his particular dedication in 1708. The Cöthen Court was unpretentious. The Prince was a Calvinist. Figurate music was not permitted in the Court Chapel, and its Organ was small and inadequate. Hence Bach devoted himself chiefly to chamber music, and only two genuine Church Cantatas belong to this period of his career. Both must have been written for performance elsewhere, possibly in connection with Bach's frequent Autumn tours as a performer.[396]
For both Cantatas Bach employed a librettist, otherwise little known, named Johann Friedrich Helbig, State Secretory to the Eisenach Court. In March 1720,[397] more than two years after Bach's arrival at Cöthen, Helbig published a cycle of “Musical Texts on the Sunday and Saints' Day Gospels throughout the year,” for performance “in God's honour by the Prince's Kapelle at Eisenach.”[398] How they came into Bach's hands we do not know, but can readily conjecture. They are indifferent poetry, judging them by the two specimens Bach made use of, and are uniform in construction. The first movement invariably is a Chorus upon a text from the Gospel for the Day, or a Scripture passage closely related to it. Two Arias separated by a Recitative follow. A Choral brings the libretto to an end.[399]
The first of the two Cantatas written to Helbig's words [pg 173] was designed for the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity, which fell in 1720 on September 22.[400] Spitta conjectures[401] that Bach intended it for performance at Hamburg. In fact, his wife's death postponed Bach's visit to that town until November, by which date the Sunday appropriate to the Cantata had passed. Spitta holds that the Cantata may have been performed, after all, during the visit. Schweitzer is sceptical.[402] But Bach certainly expended great pains upon the score.
The second Helbig Cantata[403] is for the Third Sunday in Advent, and the date of it would appear to have been 1721. It is one of the least agreeable of Bach's works. Spitta [404] declares it a juvenile composition hastily adapted to a new libretto. Schweitzer[405] expresses the same opinion, and Sir Hubert Parry[406] finds the work “rather commonplace.” Its genuineness is discussed by Max Schreyer in the “Bach-Jahrbuch” for 1912, and more recently Rudolf Wustmann has insisted that it does not bear the stamp of Bach's genius.[407] If it actually was composed in 1721, its production must have coincided with Bach's second marriage on December 3 of that year.[408] In that case, his resort to old material is explicable.
Only these two Cantatas were composed at Cöthen. But later, at Leipzig, two others were manufactured out of secular material written there.[409] It is unnecessary to refer to them, except to remark that in each case Bach appears to have been the author of the new libretto. In the first of them[410] it is clear that he was handicapped by the frankly secular metre of the original stanzas. The [pg 174] second of them,[411] originally a Birthday Ode to Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen, is a masterly conversion into a Whit-Monday text which, assuming that Bach wrote it, puts his literary facility beyond question.
Bach made the last move in his professional career on May 31, 1723, when he was inducted Cantor of St. Thomas' School at Leipzig, with particular charge of the Churches of St. Thomas and St. Nicolas. Here by far the greater number of his Cantatas appeared, and 172 of them survive. They are too numerous to be considered individually, and their classification is rendered difficult by the fact that the authorship of most of their libretti is conjectural and not ascertained. They fall, however, into two large categories, each of which exhibits characteristics of its own.
The dividing year, clearly but not arbitrarily, is 1734. Before it and after it Bach was aided by new writers. But the earlier period pre-eminently was one of experiment, out of which emerged the glorified hymn-libretto, or Choral Cantata, of Bach's last years. That it sprang, in some degree, from the difficulty of finding good original texts in sufficient number may be granted. That it was adopted as an avenue of escape from Picander's coarser work is a conjecture based, apparently, upon a prevalent exaggeration of Bach's dependence on that writer. The fundamental reason which led Bach to the hymn-libretto undoubtedly was the fact that it most closely fulfilled the ideals which informed his work.
The first Cantata performed during Bach's Cantorship[412] reveals a new author, whose assistance, if the conclusion is well grounded, was at Bach's disposal throughout the whole of the earlier Leipzig period. Spitta's keen insight failed him in this instance. He betrays no recognition of [pg 175] the new writer, and occasionally[413] attributes his libretti to Picander. The credit of the discovery belongs to Rudolf Wustmann, though he fails to work it out to its fullest conclusions.[414]
No one can read the early Leipzig libretti without being struck by the number of them that are not only uniform in structure, but similar in tone and point. They all begin with a Bible text, chosen frequently, but not invariably, from the Gospel for the Day. Every one of them ends with a hymn-stanza. Their Arias, with hardly an exception,[415] are written in what, compared with Picander's rollicking dactyls, may be held hymn-metres. Their Recitativi, almost invariably, are didactic or exegetical.[416] They do not display the vapid rhetoric of Picander. Nor do they express the reflective or prayerful mood that reveals Bach. They are essentially expositive and, it is noticeable, are studded with direct or veiled references to Bible passages which expand or enforce the lesson of the initial text. In a word, they suggest the work of a preacher casting his sermon notes into lyrical form, an impression which is strengthened by the fact that the libretto invariably opens with a Scripture passage and frequently blends the Gospel and Epistle for the Day in one harmonious teaching. Spitta detected this characteristic. But he failed to follow up the clue. He speaks[417] of one of these texts[418] as a “moralising homily,” a phrase concisely appropriate to them all. Moreover, a remark of his,[419] pointing the significance [pg 176] of the god-parents chosen by Bach for his children—Eilmar, for instance—as revealing Bach's intimate associates at the moment, affords another clue to the personality of the new writer.