Bach's "Jesu, Meine Freude"

Synopsis

In Leipzig on today’s date in 1723 the funeral of Johanna Maria Kees, the wife of that city’s postmaster, took place at the St. Nicolas Church, where Johann Sebastian Bach served as music director.

For many years, some musicologists have speculated that for this occasion Bach composed a motet for solo voices entitled “Jesu, Meine Freude,” or “Jesus, My Joy” in English. Other musicologists have pointed out that there is no reference to this work in the surviving order of service for that funeral, so if the motet were performed, it might have been by a small group of singers at the gravesite for the consolation of the deceased’s family.

Bach’s music is both intricately constructed and heartfelt, which leads us to speculate Bach may have been thinking of another funeral that took place three years earlier, namely that of his own wife, Maria Barbara, who died at age 35, when he was away from home, and was buried on July 7, 1720.

In an age long before cell phones and text messaging, Bach’s son Carl Philip Emmanuel reported that his father was at Carlsbad when Maria Barbara died, writing, “The news that she had been ill and died reached him only when he entered his own house.”

Music Played in Today's Program

J. S. Bach (1685 - 1750) Jesu, meine Freude BWV 227 Monteverdi Choir; English Baroque Soloists; John Elliot Gardiner, dir. SDG 716

On This Day

Births

• 1670 - Italian opera composer Giovanni Bononcini, in Modena; In 1720 he joined the Royal Academy of Music in London, where one faction favored Bononcini's works over those by Handel

• 1821 - French mezzo-soprano PaulineViardot-Garcia; She arranged some of Chopin's mazurkas as songs and performed them with the composer in concert; She also wrote an opera, "La Derniére Sorcière," that was performed in Weimar in 1869, and a chamber opera version of "Cendrillon (Cinderella)" which was performed privately in 1904

• 1872 - Czech composer Julius Fucik, in Prague; A student of Dvorák's, he composed the famous "circus" march, "Entrance of the Gladiators";

• 1894 - Dutch-born American composer Bernard Wagenaar, in Arnhem; He was the son of the Dutch composer Johan Wagenaar (1862-1941); He came to the U.S. in 1920, was a violinist with the New York Philharmonic from 1921-23, and in 1927 became a composition teacher at the Juilliard Graduate School

• 1933 - Canadian composer R. Murray Schafrer, in Sarnia, Ontario

• 1954 - American composer Tobias Picker, in New York

Deaths

• 1949 - Czech composer Vitezslav Novák, age 78, in Skutec, Slovakia

Premieres

• 1713 - Handel: "Utrecht Te Deum," in London (Julian date: July 7)

• 1791 - Cherubini: opera, "Lodoiska, in Paris

• 1920 - Miaskovsky: Symphony No. 5, in Moscow

• 1972 - Panufnik: Violin Concerto, in London, with Yehudi Menuhin as soloist

• 1976 - Stockhausen: multi-media work "Sirius," in Washington, D.C., at the Smithsonian Institute

• 1984 - Sallinen: String Quartet No. 5 ("Pieces of Mosaic"), at the Kuhmo Festival in Finland, by the Kronos Quartet