Sinfonia from the cantata ‘Ich liebe den Höchsten von ganzem Gemüte’, BWV 174

Program notes

About the Work

This is a piece many listeners will half recognise. On Whit Monday, 6 June 1729, Bach performed a new cantata in Leipzig, ‘Ich liebe den Höchsten von ganzem Gemüte’ (I love the Most High with all my heart), on a text by Picander, the poet of the St Matthew Passion. For its instrumental introduction he went back to something written years earlier: the first movement of the third of the concertos he had dedicated to the Margrave of Brandenburg in 1721.

The original is for strings alone, three violins, three violas and three cellos over a bass line, nine players each with a part of their own. For the church Bach kept that music almost exactly as it was and added to it. Two hunting horns have new parts, and two oboes and a tenor oboe, each doubled by extra strings, form a second group that reinforces the texture. A piece of chamber music becomes a piece for full orchestra.

Why he did it is not recorded. It was a feast day, which called for something grand, and it has been suggested that the choice had to do with his having taken over the Collegium Musicum in Leipzig a few months earlier, which gave him a pool of able instrumentalists. The sinfonia takes up most of the cantata; the arias and the closing chorale that follow in church are modest by comparison. In this concert it stands alone, after the interval, as a companion to the violin concerto in the first half: another case of Bach reusing and transforming his own music.

The whole Brandenburg movement is built from the short, three-note figure heard in the first bar, tossed between the three groups of strings.

What to Listen For

If you know the Brandenburg Concerto, the fun lies in hearing what has changed. The busy string writing is all still there, the three violins, three violas and three cellos handing the opening figure from group to group, but it now has a halo around it. The horns sometimes ride above the strings with long held notes and sometimes punch out the rhythm, giving the music an outdoor ring. The oboes thicken the big moments when everyone plays together, so that the contrast between full orchestra and the lighter passages for the solo strings is stronger than in the original.

Listen also for the long stretch in the middle where the music moves into the minor and the violins have running passages over a pulsing bass, and for the return of the opening, which arrives with the horns in full cry. The movement lasts about six minutes and never stops for breath.