Washington Bach Consort Noontime Cantata Trip

As you should know by now, we'll be taking a trip to see the Washington Bach Consort's Noontime Cantata performance on Tuesday April 2. To help you all get ready for that trip, I've added the two pieces we'll be hearing to the playlist. As a reminder, you can find the entire MUSC 320 playlist here.

Composer: J. S. Bach
BWV 540 - Toccata and Fugue in F Major
Score: HERE (it's a PDF)


It is thought that this piece was actually written originally as two separate works, the toccata sometime after 1714 and the fugue after 1731. Eventually, though, Bach joined them and created one of the more magnificent works in his organ oeuvre. The toccata begins with a quickly flowing canon for the two hands over an F pedal, which is then followed by a variation on the canon's theme in the pedals. This then is echoed, with the hands coming over the dominant pedal of C and the tonal center shifted a bit.

The toccata is so impressive that the fugue is often omitted in performance. It won't be at our concert, though. It is a sober contrast to the fireworks of the opening toccata. Here, we've got it performed by Ton Koopman.

Composer: J. S. Bach
BWV 6 - Bleib bei uns, denn es will Abend werden
Score: HERE (it's a PDF)


Here you've got just the opening chorale, but the entire cantata is on the Spotify playlist.

And this is a pretty fun opportunity, to hear a Bach cantata on nearly the day it is supposed to be performed. BWV 6 was written in Leipzig in 1725 for Easter Monday, the day after Easter Sunday. We'll be hearing it, obviously, on Easter Tuesday. You can find a translation of the text here. You'll notice that, in addition to biblical quotations, the cantata is based on chorales by Nikolaus Selnecker and Martin Luther.

You'll notice that the second movement is an aria for alto, continuo, and oboe da caccia. The oboe fulfills what we call an obbligato role here, it is as important to the music as is the alto soloist. In obbligato passages, you can almost think of the singer and instrumentalist as members of a duet.