Pietism and cantata
Pietism and cantata |
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Influenced by Halle Pietism, Johann Jacob Rambach (1693-1735) published a complete cantata cycle in 1720. More than 30 composers, including the well-known Telemann, Wilhelm Friedmann Bach, Georg Anton Benda and Gottfried August Homilius, set these texts to music over a period of about 70 years. The geographic range of the performances of cantatas on texts by Rambach stretched across the entire German-speaking, Protestant area.
From Rambach's biography it can be assumed that his cantata texts are influenced by the religious practice in Pietism. Indeed, it is possible to read Rambach's cantata cycle as a variation of a pietistic approach.
Recurring themes are relevant to a pietistic life, such as religious zeal, conversion and afterlife etc. Whether these substantive topoi constitute a pietistic innovation or whether they differ only in degree from Lutheran Orthodoxy shall be the key question of a detailed source analysis.
Is it possible to identify substantive pietistic emphases in the texts, so the question, and can these be found in the music? Researchers have repeatedly tried to label musical settings as Pietist. However, considering the number of composers and musical settings of the period, it is likely that the composers did not receive Rambach's cantatas as strictly pietistic texts. My research approach therefore rather examines the question of which substantive topoi were taken up by individual composers and how they responded to the textual properties.
The methodological comparison of musical settings of the same text will indicate different techniques and formal solutions of various composers.