The Mass continued to be the principal service in the Lutheran church after the Reformation, and music played a prominent role in its celebration on both Sundays and feast-days. In Bach’s day the Cantata was the most important musical part of the service, referred to as the ‘’Hauptmusik’’ of ‘’MusiK’’ - ‘’the music’’, quite simply. It comprised a service in miniature within the framework of the whole Mass, in its combination of a so-called ‘’dictum’’ (‘’it is said in the Scriptures’’ : a biblical text, that is, either quoted directly or paraphrased), a strophic hymn, and a madrigalian poetic text; this last, presented in the form of recitatives and arias, set out an explanation (‘explicatio’, literally ‘unfolding’) of the ‘dictum’, and of its significance and application in the Christian life. Just as an opera needs a libretto, therefore, the prerequisite for the composition of a cantata was a poetic text, and such texts were a recognised literary genre in the 18th century. The form of the Lutheran Mass was established long before Bach’s time, and the Cantata was an important component in it not only in Leipzig but everywhere else where figural music was cultivated. It came immediately after the Gospel, read by the minister, and before the Creed. If the Cantata was in two parts, the second part was sung after the sermon, which normally took its theme from the Gospel of the day. This position in the liturgy reflects the close connection between the cantata and the Gospel - the principal Bible reading of the day - and underlines its function; in its own way, the cantata interprets the passage that has just been read and is thus a kind of sermon in itself, using verse and music where the preacher uses speech. The closeness of the connection between the Cantata and the Gospel varied. It was closest when the text of the Cantata began with a direct quotation of a phrase from the Gospel. One example of this is the Cantata for Easter Monday, ‘’Bleib bei uns, denn es will Abend werden’’ (‘Abode with us, for it is towards evening’’, Luke 24:13-35), for these words come at the heart of the Gospel for the day, the story of the risen Christ’s meeting with two of His disciples on the way to Emmaus. The Cantata for Easter Tuesday is a meditation on the greeting ‘’Friede sei mit euch’’ (‘Please be unto you’, Luke 24:36-47), spoken by Jesus on His first appearance to a larger group of His followers after the Resurrection. The reference forges the link to the Gospel reading that the congregation has just heard, but the sermonizing function of the Cantata is underlined by the slight change in the text in the Cantata, where it takes the form ‘’Der Friede sei mit dir’’ : ‘Euch’ is plural but ‘dir’ is singular and therefore more universal, in that it does not address the group of disciples alone. Lines from the gospels for the fourth and fifth Sundays after Easter are also taken up in the cantatas for those days, ‘’Es its euch gut, bass ice hingehe’’ (‘It is expedient for you that i go away’, John 16:7) and ‘’Bisher habt ihr nichts gebeten in minem Namen’’ (‘Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my name, John 16:24). The Cantata for the fourth Sunday after Epiphany, ‘’Jesus schläft, was soll ich hoffen’’, is also based on the Gospel for that Sunday, but the words quoted directly - ‘’Ihr Kleingläubigen’’ (‘O ye of little faith’, Matthew 8:26) - do not come at the beginning but in the fourth movement. A second way to link a Cantata to the Gospel for the day is to take a text from elsewhere in the Bible that helps to explain the Gospel passage, in the spirit of the old theological maxim ‘’BIBLIA SUI IPSIUS INTERPRES’’ (‘the Bible is its own interpreter’). One example of this is found in the fourth movement of the Advent cantata ‘’Nun komm, der Heiden Heirland’’, where the verse ‘’Siehe, ice stehe vor der Tür und klopfe an’’ (‘Behold, I stand at the door, and knock’, Revelation 3:20) illuminates the significance of Advent-tide. In the Cantata for the second Sunday after Easter, the Old testament cry ‘’Du Hirte Israel, höre’’ (‘Give ear, o Shepherd of Israel’), introduces a meditation on the Gospel of the Good Shepherd (John 10:11-16), and in ‘’Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen’’, the Cantata for the third Sunday after Easter, the connection with the Gospel (John 16:16-23), with its climax at the words ‘’Eure Traurigkeit soll in Freude verkehrt werden’’ (‘Your sorrow shall be turned into joy’’), is sustained by words from Acts, ‘’Wir müssen lurch viel Trübsal in das Reich Gottes eingehen’’ (‘We must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God’’). This is sung as the only recitative in the Cantata and thus serves as the dictum. A third way to associate Cantata and Gospel is by means of direct allusion. The Cantata for Quinquagesima Sunday ‘’Du wahrer Gott and Davids Sohn’’ provides an example of this with the plea ‘’Ach! gehe nicht vorüber’’ in the tenor recitative, which relates to the narrative of the healing of the blind man, from the second part of the Gospel for the day, Luke 18:31-43. The fourth and final method of associating the two is especially significant. This is when the Cantata takes the form of a chorale cantata , based on a chorale, or ‘’de tempore hymn’’, on a subject appropriate to the character of the feast day or Sunday in question. No fewer than 22 (of 33) of the Cantatas in the collection belongs in this group. in the nature of things, in a chorale cantata the association between the hymn and the Gospel reading will be more general and at times downright elusive, depending on whether the madrigalian religious poem allied to the hymn in the text of the Cantata makes a specific reference to the Gospel for the day or not. It is possible that a cycle of hymns sung before the sermon, and relating to the character of the day (like the Cantata and the sermon itself), ran parallel with the cycle of chorale cantatas, although each individually would have been regarded as only the shorter, first part of the sermon as a whole. END
