I note that Jonathan
Woolf has already reviewed
this CD, so I shall try to come at it
from a different direction. I should
say at once, however, that I entirely
agree with my colleague’s praise for
the music and the performances and his
appreciation of how much Carus is currently
enriching the Buxtehude discography
in this tercentenary year: three of
the seven works are world première
recordings but all seven are well worth
hearing. I recently praised Raumklang
for assuming the mantle once worn by
Deutsche Harmonia Mundi in offering
fine performances of little-known early
and baroque music: if anything, Carus
have assumed that mantle even more fully.
Until their recent recordings of Homilius
appeared, for example, he had been little
more than a name in the histories of
music.
The standard catalogue
of Buxtehude’s works, the Buxtehude
Werke-Verzeichnis (BuxWV) is modelled
on the Schmieder catalogue of Bach’s
works (Bach Werke-Verzeichnis or
BWV). The first items in the Bach catalogue
are cantatas, so the first items in
the Buxtehude catalogue, BuxWV 1-112,
are also cantatas. This suggests both
that these works are similar to Bach’s
cantatas and that the cantata-form was
as important in Buxtehude’s career as
it was in Bach’s: both suggestions are
misleading. Bach’s church cantatas were
written for inclusion in the Hauptgottesdienst,
the chief liturgical celebration of
Sundays and major festivals – a lengthy
service comprising Matins, Litany and
Eucharist, with the cantata offering
a little light relief in the middle.
(Except in Advent and Lent when light
relief was deemed inappropriate.) They
usually relate in some way to the Epistle
or, more usually, the Gospel prescribed
for the day and they are usually fairly
substantial pieces.
Buxtehude’s cantatas
seem to have had no liturgical function
– they formed no part of his duties
as organist at Lübeck – but were
intended for the more intimate Abendmusiken
or evening concerts which he presented,
continuing a practice started by his
predecessor Franz Tunder as early as
1641. Originally these were organ recitals
but quickly expanded to include instrumental
and vocal works. The German notes in
the booklet explain what these concerts
were, but the English notes, being an
abridgement rather than a full translation,
omit the explanation. These Abendmusiken
were spiritual concerts, presented on
a number of Sundays after the afternoon
celebration of Vespers. They were so
popular that the town’s official watchmen
were charged with the regulation of
admission and the maintenance of peace
and order during their performance but
they presumably remained on the ‘large-domestic’
rather than congregational or concert-hall
scale. The performances here are appropriately
scaled: the booklet shows photographs
of ten singers, the Capella Angelica
– sadly not individually named – and
a slightly larger number of instrumentalists.
Being quite separate
from the liturgy, the form of these
cantatas is very different from those
of Bach – no congregation, therefore
no chorales for the congregation to
sing in unison, for example. (The nearest
thing here is the closing chorus of
Jesu, meine Freude, track 25.)
In fact, Buxtehude seems not to have
used the term ‘cantata’ for these works
at all, calling them instead ‘motets’
or ‘concertos’ – these usually based
on a text from the German Bible – or
‘arias’ or ‘songs’, usually based on
a poetic text expressing personal faith.
Many are in Latin and a few in Danish,
BuxWV8, for example, Att du, Jesu,
will mig höra, but all the
works on the current disc have German
texts. (Buxtehude was, in fact, born
in what is now Denmark: his first name
is more properly spelled Diderik.)
They are also much shorter than the
typical Bach cantata: the shortest here,
Befiehl dem Engel, and Erhalt
uns, Herr, last less than five minutes
each.
The longer works here,
Wo soll ich fliehen hin?, Dein
edles Herz, Jesu meine Freude
and Eins bitte ich approximate
more to the Bach model, with an opening
Sinfonia or Sonata and separate sections,
with alternating solo voices or solo
arias alternating with sections for
tutti or coro. Wo soll
ich fliehen hin? is cast in the
form of a dialogue between Christ and
the soul: in the first section the soul
asks where it may attain salvation;
the second, answering, section quotes
the biblical words "come unto me
all ye that are heavy laden" and
so throughout the piece, which closes
with a prayer to the Holy Spirit for
strength.
Sometimes the words
are more overtly ‘political’ than would
have been suitable for liturgical use:
Erhalt uns Herr asks God to keep
us true to His word and to "turn
aside the murderousness of the Pope
and the Turks, who seek to overturn
your Son Jesus Christ from his throne."
(The Anglican Litany soon dropped the
petition against the Bishop of Rome
and all his abominable works but until
recent liturgical reforms, the Anglican
Prayer Book and the Roman Missal included
a non-PC Good Friday collect that "all
Jews, Turks, Infidels and Hereticks"
might have taken from them their "ignorance,
hardness of heart and contempt of thy
word".)
Whatever Buxtehude’s
cantatas may lose in internal variety
by comparison with those of Bach the
music is just as beautiful and the variety
of texts from one work to another makes
up for the lack of variety within each
piece. The first piece, Nun danket
alle Gott, at first sight an abridgement
of Martin Rinckart’s well-known hymn
("Now thank we all our God"
in the best-known English version) is
a setting of an independent version
of the underlying text, Ecclesiasticus
50:24ff: if there is any reference to
the familiar Crüger setting, it
is too well hidden to be recognisable.
The texture of both the vocal music
and the instrumental accompaniment is
rich – some may even think it just a
little too much like a dessert wine,
though this is emphatically not an opinion
which I would share – with the cornetti
especially noticeable. Here and elsewhere
the instrumentalists do far more than
merely accompany the vocalists.
If anything, these
works are more intense than Bach. Many
of the texts are influenced by 17th-century
German pietist poetry, a Lutheran movement
which was influential among both those
of the most simple faith and intellectuals;
it stressed the relationship of the
individual with God and complete dedication
to his word, as revealed in the Bible.
Of course other movements within Christianity
had also stressed the individual, affective
relationship of the believer with God
but not to the same extent: it was,
indeed, the most important reform-movement
within Lutheranism and its effects are
to be seen in Bach’s cantatas and passion-settings.
Those with sufficient command of German
will find a good account of the movement,
with links to other articles, on-line.
As in Bach’s passions
a great deal of stress is laid on affective
identification with the passion of Christ,
an aspect of late-medieval devotion
which received new impetus at the time
of the pietist movement. Hence the "rich
intimacy and reflectiveness" which
Jonathan Woolf finds in Wo soll ich
fliehen hin? Those familiar with
Buxtehude’s setting of Membra Jesu
Nostri will know how the text dwells
on the suffering which Christ experienced
in each part of his body. So too here
Wo soll ich fliehen? closes with
an appeal to Christ to "heal with
your wounds" and "wash me
with your deathly sweat". This
is not the common language of modern
religion, except in the US Bible-belt,
but the modern listener who finds such
language off-putting will also have
to reject the scene in Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s
Progress where Christian finally
casts off his burden of sin at the foot
of the cross and the repeated references
to Christ’s bloodied and wounded head,
O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden,
in Bach’s St Matthew Passion.
In fact, neither composer stresses the
strong imagery, but rather objectifies
it with the beauty of the setting, just
as Bunyan is readable because of the
strength of his language, evocative
yet simple. I don’t wish to imply that
Buxtehude and Bach ignore the text –
both lay stress on the text and its
setting with what the German notes rightly
call due regard to the relationship
between word and music – rather that
the passion is set by the music in a
higher context, the context of eternity.
Dein edles Herz
is a setting of part of the same text,
Arnulf de Louvain’s Rhytmica Oratio,
which Buxtehude had already mined for
Membra Jesu nostri, this time
in Johann Rist’s translation. The similarity
of the text to the counter-reformation
devotion to the Sacred Heart serves
to remind us how close the pietism of
the late seventeenth-century is to late-medieval
popular theology, despite the anti-papal
rhetoric to which I have referred. That
Carus have chosen part of a renaissance
Italian painting of the Transfiguration
for the cover of this CD is therefore
entirely appropriate. (‘Raffaello Sanzi’
as he is named in the booklet is better
known in English simply as Raphael.)
Befiehl dem Engel
sets the final two stanzas of the German
translation of the Latin hymn Christe
qui lux es et dies, the original
words probably still fresh in the ears
of the audience, since it was regularly
sung at Lutheran Vespers. The German
notes make it clear that Buxtehude all
but abandons ("vernachlässigt",
literally ‘neglects’) the plainsong
melody but, if you listen very carefully,
there is just a hint of the original
chant.
Jesu meine Freude
is the best-known of the pieces on this
CD and the only one for which a free
score is available online.
(From the home page, you have to download
the opening instrumental sonata, then
each of the six vocal sections separately,
which is a bit inconvenient. Those seeking
scores of the other works here will
find that most of them are available
from Carus: the parent company of this
recording is a publishing business.)
Jesu meine Freude is a delightful
work – a miniature overture followed
by a chorus, two arias, a chorus, an
aria and a final chorus. The score of
the opening chorus looks deceptively
easy, with a very simple accompaniment
– first and second violins, bassoon
and bass continuo – but notice how that
accompaniment becomes more elaborate
at the words "Gottes Lamm, mein
Bräutigam": this is the art
that conceals art, from both Buxtehude
and the performers. I was less disturbed
than Jonathan Woolf by the slight flattening
of the strings in this piece – but then
I’m not a string player and I don’t
have perfect pitch – and by the positioning
of the soprano on the extreme left of
the sound-picture. (That is where
she was standing, as the photograph
in the booklet makes clear, and that
is how she would sound in the flesh.)
The booklet notes describe
in detail how Buxtehude employs Crüger’s
melody for Jesu meine Freude as
a cantus firmus, though sometimes
it is a virtual cantus firmus;
for once the English notes translate
the German here almost in full. Several
times I have said that the German
notes make a particular point. In fact,
though the English and French notes
are more than adequate, they are abridgements
of the original and omit some important
points. (French readers also have to
do without any translation of the texts.)
Otherwise the booklet is very informative.
(I’m pleased to see that the editors
at Carus still hang on to the occasional
scharfes s (ß); though
they mostly remember to follow the recent
reforms and write ‘ss’, old habits die
hard.)
The Buxtehude tercentenary
is bringing a number of very valuable
new releases, some of them from Carus,
advertised in the booklet of the current
CD. I am pleased, too, to see some old
friends being revived. I note, for example,
that Ricercar have released a mid-price
2-CD set of Buxtehude’s Cantatas on
RIC252 – no overlap with the present
Carus CD. If, as I presume, this set
is extracted from the series of German
Baroque Cantatas which Ricercar recorded
some twenty years ago, it should prove
a useful next step for anyone wishing
to explore further: good performances,
well recorded, though not to be preferred
to this Carus CD. (Message to Ricercar
- how about reissuing some of the works
by the other composers included in that
series – still my only recordings of
Tunder, Krieger, Bernhard, Ahle, Selle
and Weckman?) A Naxos CD (8.557041
: Aradia Ensemble/Kevin Mallon) was
recommended as Musicweb Bargain of the
Month in 2004; again, there are no overlaps
with the Carus disc. Otherwise there
are so many several good versions of
Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu nostri
in the catalogue that you could hardly
go wrong with any of them. The most
recent, on another Carus CD (83.234)
was judged "first class all round"
by Jonathan Woolf here on Musicweb.
Then there are the
ongoing series of recordings of Buxtehude’s
organ music from Naxos and, better still,
Ton Koopman’s projected series of the
Opera Omnia on Channel Classics,
of which the most recent volume, CC72244,
2 CDs at mid price, just one short item
overlapping with the Carus CD, was very
favourably reviewed by Robert Hugill
on Musicweb recently. The record industry
may currently be in a serious crisis
but the baroque end of the business
seems to be holding up well.
Brian Wilson
for details
Capella Angelica 
