HE'S BACH, AND THIS TIME, HE'S BAD

New Year's Resolution 2017 Edition: Listen to all of Bach's cantatas according to their original performance dates (i.e., today features BWV 190, BWV 41 and BWV 16 from the first, second and third Leipzig cycles respectively, as well as BWVs 171 (pr. 1729), 143, 248/4 and 134a.)

Bach's cantatas follow the Lutheran calendar (obviously, in their capacity as liturgical pieces) and the seasonal flow of the year permeates their texts, so they lend themselves to a chronological listen-through.

I'm using John Eliot Gardiner's glorious Music in the Castle of Heaven (Gardiner's 2000 "Bach Pilgrimage" gave me the idea in the first place), the excellent Bach Cantata Website and whatever other internet goodies I can locate as sources.

We kick off with BWV 190, Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied, performed Jan. 1, 1724 in Leipzig. I prefer the punchier Gardiner performance to Koopman's Low Country mellow, as it seems more fitting for a New Years celebration where every second word is loben ("to praise").

The final line of the fifteen-ish minute piece is the most interesting. After rousing, jubilant music and psalmic ebullience, the choral concludes with "Die Heuchler mach zuschanden / Hier und an allem Ort" ("confound/ruin the hypocrite, here and in every place"). Oddly out of place, to a modern ear, for a piece entirely dedicated to ringing in the new year, but I suppose 18th century churchgoers were used to sterner admonitions.

Anyway, we'll see where this leads.