The Leusink Bach cantatas revisited

[Sean]

Hi

I'm very enthusiastic about the Leusink set because it focuses on the primary nature and purpose of the cantata cycle- an exploration of a well defined expressive idiom. The Leusink project performed and recorded swathes of movements from different cantatas with the same forces, so that it could be completed in a year or so. As he remarks himself, recording the cantatas one by one with all forces present at all times would take ten years or more, which was the case for the other complete or partial sets.

And in the process he brings a totally refreshing and appropriate no-nonsense approach; Koopman and Suzuki for all their sincerity are not at all above perfume and cloyed affectation.

Indeed there is a loss of coherence on the individual cantata level, but much more is gained than lost. The cantatas are not individually characterized as romantic period works are.

The Leusink achievement provides a fantastic body of very great music to drown in and make sense of from the inside. They are an inward and minimalist exercise, not a matter of high characterization.

[Sean]

A while ago I wrote up my original notes with a little more coherence here   .

The vast sixty-hour block of Bach's sacred cantatas is his major achievement in holistic interconnection, heart and head or insight and rigour in balance in an extraordinarily rich detailing of a defined aesthetic area. The cantatas are designed as a whole with minimal individual conception, indeed most being written on an ongoing basis for an audience in three successive annual cycles in 1723-6 and comprising one of the largest sets of music in one genre by a composer. The divinely infinite and superabundant perspective of scale overshoots any confused attempts at overall grasp, determinate shaping or intellectual account- as with other motivic or intuition based works or sets of works.

The invention in the cantatas seethes all as the dynamic silence and coruscating potential of pure consciousness or the Self, this vast monolith sprung latent with all future developments of music. The attention looking ever further inward moreover compares with the attention in a Hindu temple to the idol in its narrow enclosure to provide an isolated self-referential loop and deepening vortex of impressions, supplications and re-evaluations returned to the observer. Indeed the Bach masterpieces outside the cantatas as three eighths of his output in terms of hours compare with momentary departures from the unified Dionysian field, or with the Hindu god Vishnu blinking so not to see clearly for just a moment.

Everything in the cantatas is a holographic encapsulation of everything else with no original forms and only unbounded ex nihilo variations and melodic lines referring back to themselves in endless proliferating complexity. Motivic working with its focus on aesthetic content per se through removal of boundaries then reorients individual artworks' critical reflectivity of life toward interconnected life itself.

The cantatas' monstrous human achievement of sustained insight exudes not only triumph but Bach smirking to himself in the knowledge that never-ending approaches are for life while those in art only have counterbalancing relevance in an Apollonian environment that has lost its real sense of infinity and the transcendent. The limitless, fabulous recombinations and recontextualizations that access a supra-musical area across works are dispatched with too much genius, confidence and self-awareness for a level of attention only within art.

The complete cantatas recording under Pieter Jan Leusink with the Netherlands Bach Collegium, Holland Boys Choir and soloists is the best available. It was uniquely recorded in 15 months in 1999-2000, a similar timescale to the composition to provide a parallel consistency while other available cycles took decades and inescapably subject the works to incongruous changes in approach, personnel, voice and technology.

Leusink doesn't record cantatas in single takes and instead saves greatly on organizational time by performing successively in the same sessions the movements of different cantatas involving the same forces, so that other performers don't have to be present. Some cohesion is lost on the individual level but hugely gained across works, avoiding wrongheaded distinctions and over-characterization. Performance requires a well-defined stylistic focus to access the music's phenomenal interlocking wealth of minimalist variety, aligned with a sustained listening programme after the listener gets to know the works.

In most repertory box sets are not the way to get to know music because they undermine timescales needed for the listener to assimilate works' individuality, different recordings, live performances, and make comparisons with related contemporary works and across music history, as well as researching backgrounds and talking with others. For instance it took me 25 years to get hold of all 28 Verdi operas, a similar amount of music to the cantatas.

But sets of music of singular purpose and strategy succeed in a unified presentation, especially those before the romantic and later notions of individually conceived artworks, such as the Scarlatti harpsichord sonatas, Haydn piano trios, and to some extent the Schumann keyboard works. Moreover the Leusink recording as a product of postmodernity with its brainless critique of the aesthetic category parallels the holistic nature of such music as leading away from art entirely and onto unbounded life.

Leusink brings thorough understanding of the idiom, refinement of judgement in clarity and balance of texture, and phrasing and tempo, along with contrapuntal dexterity and metrical accuracy helping focus the attention inward. His forces are rich yet transparent, no-nonsense and robust, with the boys' choir singing straight free of expressive baggage adults may bring from studying music of later periods, and who take instructions without big egos to argue with. All is couched in Dutch clear-headedness and freshness that let the music breathe for itself and issue its writhing inner content and Dionysian blur more effectively than the competition. The recording is excellent, microphone placing enhancing the terracing and definition of lines and instrumental groups; some of the fragmentary cantatas are included under other performing forces.

In other recorded surveys Rilling brings wayward tempos with dated sound while Leonhardt-Harnoncourt have substandard boy soloists and are likewise insufficiently historically informed and heavyweight. Among newer recordings Gardiner has incongruous English performing style, Koopman is precious and decorous, and Suzuki likewise affected and dirgeful despite technical expertise. Partially complete surveys include Richter with gravity and sophistication but again a dated perspective and sound, Kuijken with opaque counterpoint, and Herreweghe with dubious notions of Christian spirituality beyond the music.

[SimonNZ]

I'm not really sure that was "a little more coherent" (which I Freudian-slip typed as "coheren't" just then, lol).

I also can't find a single sentence in there I'd agree with on any level. Or one that seems backed up by book-readin'.

Nor can I agree with the terms you use for your broad generalizations regarding the other sets.

[Sean]

We have nothing in common, marvellous.

I won't ask about the Freudian worries.

[Mandryka]

. . . Bach's sacred cantatas [a]re . . . [an] achievement in holistic interconnection.

Can we focus on that one a little?

The first thing to say is that I'm not completely clear about which aspect of the cantatas your holism thesis is referring to, so I have used the term "sense" to act as a neutral place holder. I hope you can say a bit more about this.

I could distinguish three ideas about the nature of the cantatas.

1. Holism. The sense of each cantata can only be grasped by its relation to all the others.
2. Molecularism. The sense of each cantata can only be grasped by its relation to a subset of the others.
3. Atomism. The sense of each cantata is independent of all the others.

The fact that the cantatas were written in a short space of time with similar objectives for a similar audience seems independent of whether they are holistic, molecular or atomic.

If it's true that the cantatas are holistic, it still may be that each cantata has a particular and unique character. Holism does not imply similarity.

[Sean]

Hello Mandryka, yes indeed, the sense of each cantata can only be grasped, at least to an important extent, by its relation to all the others. From the 19th century and rising values of individualism we tend to think of artworks as separately conceived with their own character, but the great advantage of the complete recordings sets of earlier music is that overall conceptions and concerted efforts in specific areas emerge...

Bach here is working through the vast array of possibilities that are narrowly stylistically defined by the idiom in question. It's like listening to Philip Glass and relishing the material for its own quality sake while it works slowly though its full potential.

As I say he also very clearly has a smirk on his face at times. He beats Rossini at this in fact. He's saying to himself in his staggering ability I can do it this way! I can do it that way, any way you like!.

This definitely also undermines the regular simple view of Bach's spirituality- there's no way he was an orthodox Christian taking the Bible at face value.

[Mandryka]

Hello Mandryka, yes indeed, the sense of each cantata can only be grasped, at least to an important extent, by its relation to all the others. . .
Bach here is working through the vast array of possibilities that are narrowly stylistically defined by the idiom in question.

Well that's the sort of thing Bach may have been  up to in Art of Fugue, Musical Offering and the chorales in CU 3.

Early music was often conceived atomically, at least prima facie. Francois Couperin's keyboard pieces, and Louis Marchand's, for example (which I think Bach knew) and Forqueray's and Marais' music.  The Leipzig Chorales are, at first glance at least, atomistic, as is CU 1 (keyboard partitas.) You have quite a lot of work to do to make out a case for the cantatas being holistic. It doesn't just follow from the fact that he wrote before the  C19.

Your idea of holism reminds me of some very recent ideas about Bach's keyboard works. Richard Egarr has suggested that the English suites form a holistic set of suites, and Francesco Cera has done the same for the French suites. But the arguments are very schematic as far as I know: just journalistic claims in essays written for CD booklets, not real scholarship to be taken seriously.  I'd be interested to know what you make of these things -- similarly for Harnoncourt's ideas about the last three Mozart symphonies, which he also sees as holistic but he's been reluctant to provide any serious justification.

[Sean]

Yes that's right, though on a much smaller scale. I hadn't thought about the Chorale preludes in this way but will do so next time- might help to make them seem a bit less boring...

The cantatas are the most fantastic set of variations in music though. Get to know them and then play half a dozen of the Leusink CDs through successively and you'll see... The incredible opening choral movements are perhaps the best evidence.

Thanks a lot for the details about the English and French suites. Again there's an argument, although they're such abstract contrapuntal writing that the attention doesn't tend towards the links between the works.

As for the Mozart 39-41 they're indeed a set of grander works but not holistically conceived, bar the thematic combinations in the finale of the Jupiter I guess.

[prémont]

One can argue, that the two surviving Leipzig cantata cycles are holistic, while the individually surviving cantatas are atomistic. But to be frank, these assumptions do not change my listening experience the least.

The partitas and the French suites are definitely not holistic, at least not from the outset, while the English suites may be, since they seem to have been composed within a relatively short period.

The Orgelbüchlein is of course holistic from the outset but incomplete - breaking the holistic character. But Again, this has got no relevance to my listening experience.

Are the two parts of the WTC holistic or atomistic? They are both collections of pieces written during at least a number of years, and some of them even had to be transposed to other modes to make them fit into the scheme. And does it matter?

I do not participate in the usual detraction from Leusink's cantata set - whatever one thinks of Leusink and his business practices, since the set has some fine movements in between. But Sean's comments about (almost) all other cantata recordings are as meaningless as they are poorly reasoned, and for that reason I find it futile to comment upon them.

[Sean]

Much of Bach's keyboard writing can be seen as holistic in its homogeneity and intellectual abstraction, but indeed doesn't compare with the cantatas.

After Leusink the competing recorded sets do show up as a degree affected, partly I think related to the greater amounts of preparation time required between each cantata, with all forces present.

The cantatas are indeed all different and solve a particular set of initial issues but they were written to order and Bach took more interest in dealing with the overall form. Individualized conceptions quickly become anachronistic and self-conscious.

So there.