Духовные кантаты (Spiritual cantatas) by Various, Van (2015/2015), Dirigent Inessa Bodyako, Belarusian State Philharmonic, Minsk, Belarus

Bach's spiritual cantatas are the many-sided world of the artist's work. The composer probably composed five annuals of spiritual cantatas, that is, 295 works of this genre. Of these, more than 260 are in Leipzig. The composition of cantatas and their performance on Sundays and holidays alternately in the two main churches of Leipzig - St. Thomas and St. Nicholas - Bach considered it his main duty. All his life, even in the Calvinist Köthen, he treated the creation of cantatas as the first business of a musician. About two hundred cantatas have been preserved and come down to us. And this is the boundless area of ​​creativity of Johann Sebastian Bach. The variety of cantatas is extremely great. Among them are spiritual pastorals, biblical paintings, lyric-epic poems, dramatic scenes approaching oratorios, works of a prayerful and contemplative nature. Among Bach's cantatas there are monumental, two-movement ones; cantatas for two choirs, two or more soloists, solo and concert instruments, accompanying ensemble, with the participation of keyboards - organ and cembalo. There are cantatas for one solo voice and several instruments, even without a choir. Bach's cantatas include such forms that were established in his time as introductory symphonies, da capo arias, operatic ariosos and recitatives, overtures and dance suites, etc. Protestant chorale occupies a large place in cantatas. Surprisingly, it was precisely for the novelty that he introduced into sacred music that Bach heard reproaches from church leaders. The composer did not make a sharp distinction between the compositions of spiritual and secular cantatas; using the same techniques, he created music of different emotional warehouses. He had to use the often mediocre texts of librettists. But Bach subordinated the text to music to such an extent that it was thanks to the musical, and not literary, merits of his cantatas and oratorios that they retained their great significance in history. The performance of spiritual cantatas and oratorios directly connected the cantor-composer with the audience. This is a very important circumstance of Bach's biography. Not the guests of the feudal lord, not the secular concert audience, but the parishioners - people of different classes were witnesses of Bach's premieres in Leipzig churches. Cantatas were composed with the expectation of a large, heterogeneous composition of listeners and revealed the content through the great wealth of musical and rhetorical figures that the art of the Baroque era accumulated.