Talk:List of cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach

Comments
I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that some of the works at the back end of this list are not cantatas but motets. I suppose the list has been broken off from List of compositions of Johann Sebastian Bach, but it needs quite a bit of work, I think. --Camembert

Sorry. I just realized that I reversed your move of this page. I had thought I had made a mistake in naming it.--Ellmist Saturday, April 26, 02003

No problem - I just moved it because the "sacred and profane" seemed superfluous (they have to be one or the other). I'll move it back again if that's OK. --Camembert

Sure. --Ellmist Saturday, April 26th, 02003

Spelling: modern or anachronistic?
spelling (BWV 111): "gscheh" is also valid German spelling, and, I think, nowadays the more commonly used version. --Mst 21:30, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
 * in this special case it is rather a matter of taste. --Mst 09:53, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

The modern spelling isn't particularly relevant to a work that was written ~275 years ago, though. In all sources, both primary and secondary, that I've been able to find, the title of BWV 111 uses "g'scheh". Likewise, original sources do not capitalize after an exclamation point in the middle of an incipit (nouns are capitalized as usual in that case, of course). I saw that you corrected at least one example of this, and I think it should go back to a lower case, because that's how it's written in the musicological literature, and, AFAIK, in all the original sources.

There are also a few pieces whose original sources I think use  instead of <ß>, but I haven't gone through and corrected them, yet. In cases like these, where the correct form does not conform to modern German practice, I'm going to start leaving comments to that effect in the Wikimarkup. Something like "This text intentionally uses an anachronistic German spelling. Please do not change it to conform to modern German standards." Micro tonal  (Put your head on my shoulder) 23:36, 20 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Regarding the "ss": I can hardly believe that the original sources (you mean the autographs?) would use "ss" instead of "ß". The autographs are written in a blackletter handwriting, were generally the ligature "ß" is used. Of course I do not have them here to check ;-) --Mst 09:53, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

There is no need to stick to the original spelling (apart from musicological or historical interest). All editions of Bach's works adopt (at least to some extent) a modern spelling (e.g. "sein" (be) instead of "seyn", "Not" (misery) instead of "Noth"). This applies to other "old" composers, too, and also, e.g., for the works of Goethe. Otherwise these texts often would be nearly illegible for modern readers. Of course, the anachronistic diction or wording must not be touched, but the mere spelling is not a relevant part of the "work of art". --Mst 09:53, 21 July 2005 (UTC)

Disambiguating incipits
I've started disambiguating some of the cantatas with duplicate incipits- not systematically, just as I come across them. I've done it in the form Ach Gott, wie manches Herzeleid etc. It would be nice to be consistent about the way we do it, since we have more than one list to do it on (I'll copy this to List of Bach cantatas by liturgical function). Mark1 11:33, 5 January 2006 (UTC)

BWV redirection
I personally think that it should be possible to refer to each one of Bach's works by its BWV number, and so I've been creating redirect pages (protected from alternate capitalisation, i.e., bwv) to all the cantatas (that we have at the moment). So now, e.g., one can go to Ich habe genug via BWV 82. I reckon this will be quite handy. What's your view...? Trisdee 21:11, 31 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I've included this in my little piece of suggestions about new Bach articles below, indeed I came to the same conclusion as you. Linking to the articles or even finding them would be very hard work otherwise Clavecin 12:33, 2 July 2007 (UTC)


 * There are similar redirects for the individual Köchel numbers for Mozart's works (e.g., K. 626 redirects to Requiem (Mozart)), so to have a similar setup for the BWV catalogue seems perfectly reasonable to me. It also may be worth thinking about reformatting the list of compositions of Johann Sebastian Bach (and its daughter pages, such as this one) so that it looks more like the (rather nice looking, IMHO) Köchel-Verzeichnis article. Microtonal 21:43, 31 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I'd agree with both of you there, though I don't think I'll have time for prettifying lists myself. I'll try to remember to add BWV redirects as I go along for any new articles. 21:50, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Suggestions for creation of articles on individual Bach compositions
Every Bach composition should have its own article, though it is sensible to begin with that collections go in one article - e.g. French suites, English suites, well-tempered clavier, clavier-ubung 3, and so on. Every cantata should have its own article.

The title format for each article should be its name followed by BWV number in most cases - e.g. Prelude and Fugue in C major, BWV 531 - this makes it clear it is by Bach and also exactly which composition it refers to, in the commonly denoted way. In multiple-title names, it should be e.g. Partitas, BWV 825-830 - properly with a long-dash in the middle. For very well-known titles, such as 'well-tempered clavier' (and when Bach is clearly the only one to have written a piece with the title), the BWV numbers can be omitted. I've used (J. S. Bach) as a modifier for 'harpsichord concertos' because they are not continuous in BWV numbers and are not a unified set - so these naming rules can be modified where it is sensible to do so.

In each case, the BWV number should also be made as a redirect to the article in question: e.g. BWV 531 would redirect to Prelude and Fugue in C major, BWV 531. This makes linking to Bach compositions extremely easy - just use the BWV number - when otherwise confusion might arise about what the exact title was. It also makes it easier to find the article direct through a search.

In the case of multiple articles, each BWV number should be linked in a similar way to the title - so for Brandenburg Concertos, I've linked BWV 1046 and BWV 1047 and so on up to BWV 1051, all to the article. Only when the multiple articles get too long should there be an article about each piece in a unified set - and we are nowhere near this stage yet on any of the collections.

In writing articles on individual compositions, the use of pictures of musical examples, especially of themes, etc., should ideally be included - see Sonata on the 94th Psalm for an example of how I've done this. As the music is public domain in most editions, this can be easy to capture with picture editing software or a camera. A good source of imformation for writing articles on the cantatas will be http://www.bach-cantatas.com/ Clavecin 12:33, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

What's Up With...
Those entries where a BWV is repeated or repeated with a lowercase "a" and in some cases b, c, etc. This is not explained. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.0.238.70 (talk) 03:52, 23 January 2008 (UTC)
 * That's how it shows up in the BWV catalogue. In many cases, the 'a', 'b' or 'c' refers to a work that's linked to the unqualified BWV number somehow. (e.g. scored for different instruments or soloists).  I can't guarantee that these links are always there, though.  It could be a work that was found after the original BWV numbering was assigned so it has to be "squeezed" into the list.  DavidRF (talk) 02:19, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Proposal to write stubs on each cantata
My proposal is to write fast stubs of all remaining cantatas with basic links to get more info and possibly some music. What about the 1 minute samples of classical.com? Later, the complete info, like it has been greatly done so far on a few of them. Please let me know. Adrian Comollo (talk) 01:16, 13 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I'd be interested in creating stubs for the remaining cantatas, providing it won't take too much work to do that. RaymondYee (talk) 15:32, 22 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Kindly give me an example. Remaining are only those that are lost, no? classical.net isn't the greatest source, Bach Digital is. If we can't say more than what this table has, why not just make a redirect to the precise entry here? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:18, 14 February 2021 (UTC)