Johann Sebastian Bach held a variety of church and court positions in Weimar, Arnstadt, Mühlhausen, and Köthen before being appointed to his final and most prestigious role as the Thomaskantor in Leipzig in 1723. Bach was the Leipzig authorities’ third choice for this position, only being hired after both Georg Philipp Telemann and Johann Christoph Graupner declined to take the job. Bach’s professional responsibilities in Leipzig were substantial and included composing a cantata for each Sunday and feast day of the liturgical year.

During his first summer in Leipzig, Bach wrote the cantata “Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben” (“Heart and Mouth and Death and Life”) for the Feast of the Visitation. This festival commemorates the day that Mary, who was pregnant with Jesus, visited her cousin Elizabeth, who was pregnant with John the Baptist. John leapt in his mother’s womb and was filled with grace when he felt the presence of Jesus.

Some of the movements in “Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben” were drawn from an older Advent cantata that Bach had composed for the court chapel of Weimar. Borrowing music from previous compositions and reworking it for a new context was fairly common at the time. Bach substantially expanded the cantata in the Leipzig version, transforming it into a lengthy two-part work in ten movements. Today’s program includes the first and last movements of the Leipzig cantata. The grand opening chorus features full orchestra and contains fugal imitation that especially emphasizes the word “Leben” (life).

The last movement of this cantata has become one of Bach’s most well-known pieces. “Jesu bleibet meine Freude,” often called “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” has been adapted for numerous combinations of instruments and voices and is frequently performed separately from the rest of the cantata. The movement is in the rocking meter of 9/8, which has three pulses in each measure, and each pulse can be further divided into three equal parts.

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When he assumed the prestigious role of Thomaskantor in Leipzig in 1723, Johann Sebastian Bach was tasked with substantial professional responsibilities, including coordinating music for the four churches in the city, teaching music and Latin, and composing a cantata for each Sunday and feast day of the liturgical year. Although Bach is greatly revered today, he was actually the search committee’s third choice for the job, only being hired after the position was declined by Georg Philipp Telemann and Johann Christoph Graupner. Bach subsequently ran into trouble with the Leipzig authorities on several occasions for apparently using “strange and unusual harmonies” in his organ chorales.

Lutheran churches in Germany held services in the vernacular, but Latin remained an important language to the educated public in the university city of Leipzig. As such, it was customary to have sacred works in Latin for worship services on all major feast days. During his first year in Leipzig, Bach wrote the Sanctus in D to be performed on Christmas Day at the Thomaskirche. This was one of his first large-scale compositions with a Latin text.

The Sanctus is a part of the mass Ordinary and is typically proclaimed at the end of the Preface of the Eucharistic Prayer. The text comes from Isaiah 6:3, which describes the prophet Isaiah’s vision of six-winged seraphim surrounding the throne of God. Bach’s joyous setting of the text is for a four-part choir accompanied by orchestra. For the most part, the orchestral instruments double the four choral parts, but there are two independent solo lines (violin and bass). This creates a six-voiced texture, which is perhaps a reference to the six-winged seraphim in Isaiah.

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From 1717 to 1723, Johann Sebastian Bach worked as the Kapellmeister (music director) for Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Köthen. The Prince was very fond of music, but the Calvinist religious practices of his court did not permit elaborate music during worship. Therefore, most of the pieces Bach wrote during these years were secular instrumental works and included orchestral suites, solo cello suites, violin sonatas and partitas, and the Brandenburg Concertos.

Composers in the Baroque period often reused their pieces and reworked them for new instrumental configurations based on the performers they had available at the time. That is the case for Bach’s Concerto in C Minor for Oboe and Violin, which likely dates to c.1720 when he was working in Köthen. In the mid 1730s, Bach wrote a concerto in C minor for two harpsichords that is based on the earlier concerto for oboe and violin. It is quite fortuitous that this keyboard concerto survived, because the original score for the oboe and violin concerto has since been lost.

Contemporary reconstructions of the concerto for oboe and violin based on the score of the 1730s concerto for two harpsichords are regularly performed today. The rearranger of this concerto is uniquely tasked with working backwards to strip away the musical elements in the score that are primarily idiomatic to the harpsichord. Additionally, any features that are particularly characteristic of the oboe and violin that may have been eliminated when Bach created the version for two harpsichords must be added back into the score.

Bach’s musical works in C minor are often quite serious in nature, and this is certainly true of the Concerto in C Minor. Nuanced solo passages in the violin and oboe alternate with a somber orchestral ritornello throughout the first movement. An exquisite duet between the solo instruments in the second movement is full of dissonance, tension, and brief moments of temporary resolution. Even the sprightlier final movement conveys a sense of gravity, with short melodies traded back and forth between the orchestra and the soloists.

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When he was just thirty-two years old, Mexican composer and organist Manuel de Zumaya was appointed interim maestro de capilla (music director) of the Mexico City Cathedral. Five years later, in 1715, he was awarded the permanent position after a rigorous audition process. Zumaya remained at the Cathedral for twenty-four years, during which time he greatly expanded the music program and built an impressive library of musical manuscripts of earlier composers. This collection preserved the works of several composers that would have likely otherwise been lost.

Zumaya composed music in many genres for a variety of venues, including liturgical music for the Cathedral, theater music, and popular villancicos and chanzonetas. In 1711, Mexico City’s viceroy commissioned him to write an Italian-style opera, and Zumaya’s La Partenope was premiered that May in the viceroyal palace. The piece is the earliest known opera written by a North American-born composer and one of the first fully-staged operas in North America. Zumaya also oversaw the installation of a magnificent new pipe organ in the Cathedral, which was considered to be one of the wonders of the New World. Thousands of people attended the dedication recital for the instrument in 1735.

Music, theater, pageantry and religion were intricately woven together in eighteenth-century Mexico City life. Church and civic festivals were celebrated with lavish processions, elaborate pageants and staged allegorical plays. Villancicos were musical works written to be performed at religious festivals celebrating Christmas, the Nativity of Mary, the Assumption of Mary and Corpus Christi. Although they incorporated several popular elements of Hispanic musical theater, the villancicos were not acted or costumed. The musical style in the villancicos ranges from playful and virtuosic to poignant and lyrical. Dance-like rhythms, strong syncopations, and hemiolas (rhythmic displacement of three beats in the time of two) permeate these celebratory works.

Zumaya wrote at least forty villancicos for various celebrations, including Celebren, Publiquen for the feast of the Assumption of Mary. Celebrated each year on August 15, this festival commemorates Mary’s ascent in body and soul to heaven. Celebren, Publiquen is a joyous and triumphant dialogue between soloists, the choir, and the instrumentalists. The hosts of heaven welcome Mary with applause, and she is praised for her chastity, humility and generosity.

Paula Maust ©2022

When he was just thirty-two years old, Mexican composer and organist Manuel de Zumaya was appointed interim maestro de capilla (music director) of the Mexico City Cathedral. Five years later, in 1715, he was awarded the permanent position after a rigorous audition process. Zumaya remained at the Cathedral for twenty-four years, during which time he greatly expanded the music program and built an impressive library of musical manuscripts of earlier composers. This collection preserved the works of several composers that would have likely otherwise been lost.

Zumaya composed music in many genres for a variety of venues, including liturgical music for the Cathedral, theater music, and popular villancicos and chanzonetas. In 1711, Mexico City’s viceroy commissioned him to write an Italian-style opera, and Zumaya’s La Partenope was premiered that May in the viceroyal palace. The piece is the earliest known opera written by a North American-born composer and one of the first fully-staged operas in North America. Zumaya also oversaw the installation of a magnificent new pipe organ in the Cathedral, which was considered to be one of the wonders of the New World. Thousands of people attended the dedication recital for the instrument in 1735.

Music, theater, pageantry and religion were intricately woven together in eighteenth-century Mexico City life. Church and civic festivals were celebrated with lavish processions, elaborate pageants, and staged allegorical plays. Villancicos were musical works written to be performed at religious festivals celebrating Christmas, the Nativity of Mary, the Assumption of Mary, and Corpus Christi. Although they incorporated several popular elements of Hispanic musical theater, the villancicos were not acted or costumed. The musical style in the villancicos ranges from playful and virtuosic to poignant and lyrical. Dance-like rhythms, strong syncopations, and hemiolas (rhythmic displacement of three beats in the time of two) permeate these celebratory works.

Zumaya wrote at least forty villancicos for various celebrations, including Angélicas milicias for the feast of the Assumption of Mary. Celebrated each year on August 15, the festival commemorates Mary’s ascent in body and soul to heaven. In this jubilant villancico, an entire militia of angels anxiously waits for Mary to arrive. The full choir and orchestra proclaim the news of her arrival in the exuberant estribillo (refrain), while more intimate ensembles of soloists describe Mary’s virtues in the coplas (verses).

Paula Maust ©2022

When he was just thirty-two years old, Mexican composer and organist Manuel de Zumaya was appointed interim maestro de capilla (music director) of the Mexico City Cathedral. Five years later, in 1715, he was awarded the permanent position after a rigorous audition process. Zumaya remained at the Cathedral for twenty-four years, during which time he greatly expanded the music program and built an impressive library of musical manuscripts of earlier composers. This collection preserved the works of several composers that would have likely otherwise been lost.

Zumaya composed music in many genres for a variety of venues, including liturgical music for the Cathedral, theater music, and popular villancicos and chanzonetas. In 1711, Mexico City’s viceroy commissioned him to write an Italian-style opera, and Zumaya’s La Partenope was premiered that May in the viceroyal palace. The piece is the earliest known opera written by a North American-born composer and one of the first fully-staged operas in North America. Zumaya also oversaw the installation of a magnificent new pipe organ in the Cathedral, which was considered to be one of the wonders of the New World. Thousands of people attended the dedication recital for the instrument in 1735.

Music, theater, pageantry and religion were intricately woven together in eighteenth-century Mexico City life. Church and civic festivals were celebrated with lavish processions, elaborate pageants and staged allegorical plays. Villancicos were musical works written to be performed at religious festivals celebrating Christmas, the Nativity of Mary, the Assumption of Mary and Corpus Christi. Although they incorporated several popular elements of Hispanic musical theater, the villancicos were not acted or costumed. The musical style in the villancicos ranges from playful and virtuosic to poignant and lyrical. Dance-like rhythms, strong syncopations, and hemiolas (rhythmic displacement of three beats in the time of two) permeate these celebratory works.

Zumaya wrote at least forty villancicos for various celebrations, including Albricias mortales for Easter. In the estribillo (refrain), the boisterous choir and orchestra proclaim that the darkness has passed and that Christ’s Resurrection will bring a new dawn. Intimate ensembles of soloists in the coplas (verses) tell of the heaviness and sorrow of sin, the hope found in new life and everlasting peace.

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In the 1750s and early 1760s, the music program at the cathedral in Santiago de Cuba was in disarray. There were only a handful of singers in the choir, and an account of the time lamented that “in matters of sacred music, good taste was absolutely hopeless.” The church officials petitioned for financial assistance to hire a permanent maestro, which they were awarded in 1764. Immediately thereafter, Esteban Salas y Castro was hired to be the new cathedral maestro. Under his leadership, the cathedral was eventually transformed from an institution where “organists remained in their positions for less time than dogcatchers” to a prominent musical center.

The son of natives of the Canary Islands, Salas grew up in Havana and is considered to be the first significant Cuban composer of classical music. He was known to be extraordinarily deferential and humble, which caused the cathedral authorities in Santiago to doubt his abilities during his interview. In fact, they required him to compose both a hymn to the Virgin and a Psalm that were amenable to the most critical members of the governing board before they offered him the job. Despite their initial concerns, however, Salas quickly demonstrated that he was capable of successfully managing the position.

Just two years after Salas started work in Santiago, a devastating earthquake destroyed part of the cathedral. Salas and a poet colleague wrote and staged religious allegorical plays with music, and they earned enough money at the performances to rebuild the cathedral. Salas was also a tireless advocate for the musicians in his employ, making sure that they were paid a fair wage in a timely fashion. When the authorities tried to cut the musicians’ salaries, he negotiated on their behalf to raise their pay. Unfortunately, near the end of his life, the cathedral authorities betrayed Salas and demanded that he pay back the additional money he had negotiated for the musicians.

Salas’s ninety surviving compositions include psalms, litanies, sequences, masses and villancicos (Christmas carols). Toquen presto a fuego is a villancico that was written for Christmas in 1786. An estribillo (refrain) sung by the choir is alternated with coplas (verses) sung by soloists and small groups of singers. Virtuosic violin and bass parts are intricately woven into the texture. Toquen presto a fuego has a fiery introduction and refrain, and the verses reassure us that this fire is holy and should be revered.

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Very little is known about the Bolivian composer and organist Manuel Mesa y Carrizo. He was active as a choir boy, organist, and composer at the Cathedral in La Plata (Sucre) in the mid to late eighteenth century and composed masses, psalm settings, hymns, villancicos (Christmas carols) and jácaras (dance songs). His musical works, job titles and death date are often confused with those of his father Manuel de Mesa.

Mesa y Carrizo was particularly interested in the writings of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, and many of his villancicos utilize her texts. A Mexican philosopher, poet, feminist and Hieronymite nun, Sor Juana is often referred to as “the tenth muse” or “the phoenix of America.” She transformed her convent rooms into a salon that was frequented by Mexico’s most respected intellectual women, and her overt criticism of misogyny resulted in disciplinary action from the Bishop of Puebla.

As a cathedral musician, Mesa y Carrizo had access to the best acoustical venue and performing musicians in the city. As such, he could produce grand works such as the villancico Las Flores y las Estrellas for double choir, violins and continuo. Written for Christmas festivities, the text is an allegorical argument by Sor Juana. The flowers and stars are debating which is reflected more clearly in the baby Jesus — is it the carnation of his lips or the stars of his eyes?

Paula Maust ©2022