Magnificat (Bach)
's Magnificat, BWV 243, is a musical setting of the biblical canticle Magnificat. It is scored for five vocal parts, and a Baroque orchestra including trumpets and timpani. It is the first major liturgical composition on a Latin text by Bach.
In 1723, after taking up his post as Thomaskantor in Leipzig, Bach set the text of the Magnificat in a twelve movement composition in the key of E-flat major. For a performance at Christmas he inserted four hymns related to that feast. This version, including the Christmas interpolations, was given the number 243.1 in the catalogue of Bach's works.
Likely for the feast of Visitation of 1733, or another feast in or around that year, Bach produced a new version of his Latin Magnificat, without the Christmas hymns: instrumentation of some movements was altered or expanded, and the key changed from E-flat major to D major, for performance reasons of the trumpet parts. This version of Bach's Magnificat is known as BWV 243.2.
After publication of both versions in the 19th century, the second became the standard for performance. It is one of Bach's most popular vocal works.
History
In Leipzig, the Magnificat was regularly part of Sunday services, sung in German on ordinary Sundays but more elaborately and in Latin on the high holidays and on the three Marian feasts Annunciation, Visitation and Purification.Bach's tenure as Thomaskantor in Leipzig
Apart from an early setting of the Kyrie, on a mixed Greek and German text, all of Bach's known liturgical compositions in Latin were composed during his tenure as Thomaskantor in Leipzig, from 1723 until his death in 1750. Compared to Lutheran practice elsewhere, an uncharacteristic amount of Latin was used in church services in Leipzig. An early account of Bach showing interest in liturgical practices in Leipzig dates from 1714, when he noted down the order of the service on the first Sunday in Advent during a visit to the town. At the time Johann Kuhnau was the Cantor in Leipzig. When Kuhnau died in 1722, one of the candidates applying for the post of Thomaskantor was Christoph Graupner, a former pupil of Kuhnau, who reused a Magnificat he had composed for Christmas 1722 as an audition piece in January 1723, three weeks before Bach presented his audition cantatas Jesus nahm zu sich die Zwölfe, BWV 22 and Du wahrer Gott und Davids Sohn, BWV 23. Bach assumed the position of Thomaskantor on 30 May 1723, the first Sunday after Trinity, performing an ambitious cantata in 14 movements, Die Elenden sollen essen, BWV 75, followed by a comparable cantata, Die Himmel erzählen die Ehre Gottes, BWV 76 the next Sunday.Traditional setting of the German Magnificat
The traditional setting of Luther's German translation of the Magnificat is a German variant of the tonus peregrinus, a rather exceptional psalm tone in Gregorian chant. The tonus peregrinus is associated with the ninth mode or Aeolian mode. For the traditional setting of Luther's German Magnificat that is the minor mode for which the last note of the melodic formula is the tonic, a fifth below its opening note.The tonus peregrinus variant that is associated with Luther's German Magnificat appears in compositions by, among others, Johann Hermann Schein, Heinrich Schütz, Johann Pachelbel and Dietrich Buxtehude. Bach uses the melodic formula as an instrumental cantus firmus in movement 10 of his Latin Magnificat. He uses it again in his "German Magnificat", i.e. the cantata Meine Seel erhebt den Herren, BWV 10 composed for Visitation of 1724, in the chorale harmonisations BWV 323 and 324, and in the fourth Schübler Chorale BWV 648. Also in BWV 733, Fuga sopra il Magnificat, the melodic formula is used as a theme: this chorale prelude may however be the work of Bach pupil Johann Ludwig Krebs.
Extended settings of the Magnificat
Being a quintessential part of vespers, evensong or matins, the Magnificat was, already for over a century before Bach's composition, the liturgical text that was most often set to music apart from the Mass ordinary. In Protestantism there was no Latin text more often set to music than the Magnificat. Also settings of the German text of the Magnificat were current from the early 17th century, without one form suppressing the other.Extended settings of the Magnificat, also indicated as settings in a concertato sectional construction, that is in several movements with chorus, orchestra and vocal soloists, and a non-linear treatment of the text, go back to the old Italian school of music. Such an example can be found in Claudio Monteverdi's Magnificat a 7 voci, one of two alternative Magnificat settings included in his Vespro della Beata Vergine. In a Lutheran tradition there is for example Schütz' Latin Magnificat, SWV 468. Magnificat composers like Johann Levini, Antonio Lotti and Francesco Durante are cited as possible inspirations for Bach. Around Bach's time there are also examples by Heinichen and by Vivaldi.
In many of these settings a single verse of the Magnificat can be sung by one or more soloists alternating with choral singing, as Bach does in his treatment of the third Magnificat verse: the soprano sings the first words of the verse, while the chorus concludes it. This particular split of the third verse, leaving only the last two words to the chorus, had been practised before by Ruggiero Fedeli, and in a Magnificat in G minor from 1720 which Bach probably knew. Also Graupner's 1722 Magnificat had this split.
Another characteristic of Bach's Magnificat is that it is set for a five-part chorus. Extending a standard SATB choir with more voice parts was however no novelty for Magnificat compositions: for example Johann Pachelbel, the teacher of Johann Sebastian's eldest brother, had composed half a dozen Magnificats for SSATB choir, and one for soli, SSATB double choir and orchestra. Kuhnau's Magnificat setting also used a SSATB choir. Bach had already composed for a SSATB choir in Weimar. He did the same in his funeral motet Jesu, meine Freude. Around the time when the D major version of the Magnificat originated, he composed for the same extended chorus in his Mass for the Dresden court. Other extended choral settings by Bach include his Sanctus for six vocal parts for Christmas 1724, and compositions for double choir like the St Matthew Passion and the secular cantata Preise dein Glücke, gesegnetes Sachsen, BWV 215. Such compositions with an extended choir are however outside Bach's usual routine for liturgical music.
Bach was not the first to include mixed German/Latin Christmas interpolations in a Magnificat sung in Latin: Hieronymus Praetorius published a Magnificat with such interpolations in 1622. Samuel Scheidt's Geistliche Konzerte III contained three Magnificats with interpolations, the first of these with the first stanza of "Vom Himmel hoch da komm ich her" as first interpolation.
The Visitation version(s)
In the Gospel of Luke the words of the Magnificat are spoken by Mary when she visits her cousin Elizabeth, both being pregnant, Mary with Jesus and Elizabeth with John the Baptist. In Christianity, the feast commemorating that visit is called Visitation. It is a chosen opportunity to give more than ordinary attention to the Magnificat canticle in liturgy, while the feast celebrates the event tied to its origin.In Bach's time the feast day of Visitation fell on 2 July. The D major version of Bach's Magnificat may have been performed on, as part of the church service in the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig. That year there had been a period of mourning after the death of the sovereign, Augustus the Strong. During that mourning period, which ran from Sexagesima Sunday to the fourth Sunday after Trinity, no concerted music was allowed in the churches. During that period Bach had been composing a Kyrie-Gloria mass in B minor which he dedicated to the successor, Frederick Augustus II, in a letter signed.
The first occasion after the mourning period that re-allowed concerted church music was the feast of Visitation, Thursday. It is possible that Bach produced his new version of the Magnificat for this occasion, although Christmas of the same year as first performance date for the new version is possible too: it can not be determined with certainty on which day around 1732–1735 the D major version of the Magnificat was first performed, and until when Bach amended the score to its final state. Around 1733 Bach filed two cantatas by Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel, for the fifth and the sixth Sunday after Trinity : Bach may have relied on church music by other composers for the services in Leipzig in July 1733, while composing and copying out the performance parts of the extensive first part of the Mass in B minor.
In 2003 Bach scholar Andreas Glöckner argued that the very first version of Bach's Magnificat, that is the E major version before the four Christmas interpolations were added to the autograph, was first performed on 2 July 1723. That would have been exactly ten years before the transposed version, and composed for the same Marian feast. Bach had taken up his post as Thomaskantor in Leipzig on 30 May, the first Sunday after Trinity in 1723. Visitation was the first feast day of his tenure, which called for exceptionally festive music.
The Christmas interpolations
Before Glöckner's 2003 article on the origin of the Magnificat, and for some authors still after that, it was generally assumed that Bach had composed his Magnificat in the quiet time of Advent 1723 for a first performance at the Christmas vespers. For that performance Bach composed four laudes, songs of praise partly in German, partly in Latin to be inserted at certain points in the E-flat major version of the Magnificat. The E-flat major version of the Magnificat including these interpolations is known as BWV 243.1.The text of these laudes had been used in Leipzig in a Christmas cantata by Bach's predecessor Kuhnau. Possibly those settings in C major of the same four texts as the laudes Bach had included in his Christmas Magnificat were not a self-contained cantata, but laudes Kuhnau had composed for insertion in his C major Magnificat when it was to be performed at Christmas. These laudes illustrate what the Gospels describe as the circumstances around Christ's birth, and were embedded in an old tradition named Kindleinwiegen.
As these laudes were to be performed with a very limited accompaniment of instruments, they were supposedly performed from the small loft in the high choir of the Thomaskirche, opposite to the large organ loft where the other movements of the Magnificat were performed. The autograph of the E-flat major version of the Magnificat suggests that Bach intended to perform the first version of his Magnificat also without the laudes, depending on circumstances, for example on other feasts than Christmas.