147: Is This Cantata Even By Bach?

Q: If, after you attended a Bach concert, someone told you that your favorite piece on the program was not, after all, by Bach… how would you feel?

Does this cantata actually fail to move us? Or does it fail to move us when we know its authenticity is up for debate? Can we truly hear some compositional weaknesses?

If we are to ascribe this music to Bach, it was probably from the years 1709-1711. No other cantatas from the period from his first years in Weimar (that is, before being promoted to concertmaster) survive. The early cantatas are occasional, sporadic, and very different to one another. Richard D. P. Jones says, on the extant early cantatas: “since at a later date Bach very likely came to regard these early works as outmoded—perhaps representing that ‘former style of music’ which ‘no longer seems to please our ears’—he seems to have made no attempt to preserve them, with the result that the few that survive do so by accident.”

Jones himself excludes this cantata from the canon, but, on the subject of authenticity, admits there must be some subjectivity when making such cuts: “No less thorny is the issue of authenticity. … There are inevitably borderline cases, however, and in this area the author has had to make up his own mind as to which compositions merit inclusion and which do not.” Among other scholars— as far as I can tell— this cantata’s authenticity is still up for debate.

Oh, Bach’s Art. The Prelude to my Heart.

Fun fact! If this indeed is Bach ca. 1709, that would make movement 3 the first recitativo in Bach’s works. It’s only five measures long!

I neglected to mention the text in the movements where Du Friedefürst Herr Jesu Christ is the cantus firmus, these are stanzas 1 and 3, sung in movements 2 and 7, respectively:

You prince of peace, Lord Jesus Christ,

true man and true God,

you are a strong helper in distress,

in life and death.

Therefore we only