Coffee Cantata
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Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht ("Be still, stop chattering") (aka The Coffee Cantata) (BWV 211) is a secular cantata written by Johann Sebastian Bach between 1732 and 1734.
In a satirical commentary, the cantata amusingly tells of an addiction to coffee, a pressing social problem in eighteenth century Leipzig, where this work was premiered.
The cantata's libretto (written by Christian Friedrich Henrici) features lines such as "If I can't drink my bowl of coffee three times daily, then in my torment, I will shrivel up like a piece of roast goat"—a sentiment that would likely have been appreciated by the patrons of Zimmerman's Coffee House in Leipzig, where Bach's Collegium (the Collegium Musicum, founded by Georg Philipp Telemann in 1702) would have originally performed the work.
[edit] Libretto text
- Recitative Narrator
- Be quiet, stop chattering, and pay attention to what's taking place: here comes Herr Schlendrian with his daughter Lieschen; he's growling like a honey bear. Hear for yourselves, what she has done to him!
- Aria Schlendrian
- Don't one's children cause one endless trials & tribulations! What I say each day to my daughter Lieschen falls on stony ground.
- Recitative Schlendrian
- You wicked child, you disobedient girl, oh! When will I get my way? Give up coffee!
- Lieschen
- Father, don't be so severe! If I can't drink my bowl of coffee three times daily, then in my torment I will shrivel up like a piece of roast goat.
- Aria Lieschen
- Mm! how sweet the coffee tastes, more delicious than a thousand kisses, mellower than muscatel wine. Coffee, coffee I must have, and if someone wishes to give me a treat, ah, then pour me out some coffee!
- Recitative Schlendrian
- If you don't give up drinking coffee then you shan't go to any wedding feast, nor go out walking. Oh! when will I get my way? Give up coffee!
- Lieschen
- Oh well! Just leave me my coffee!
- Schlendrian
- Now I've got the little minx! I won't get you a whalebone skirt in the latest fashion.
- Lieschen
- I can easily live with that.
- Schlendrian
- You're not to stand at the window and watch people pass by!
- Lieschen
- That as well, only I beg of you, leave me my coffee!
- Schlendrian
- Furthermore, you shan't be getting any silver or gold ribbon for your bonnet from me!
- Lieschen
- Yes, yes! only leave me to my pleasure!
- Schlendrian
- You disobedient Lieschen you, so you go along with it all!
- Aria Schlendrian
- Hard-hearted girls are not so easily won over. Yet if one finds their weak spot, ah! then one comes away successful.
- Recitative Schlendrian
- Now take heed what your father says!
- Lieschen
- In everything but the coffee.
- Schlendrian
- Well then, you'll have to resign yourself to never taking a husband.
- Lieschen
- Oh yes! Father, a husband!
- Schlendrian
- I swear it won't happen.
- Lieschen
- Until I can forgo coffee? From now on, coffee, remain forever untouched! Father, listen, I won't drink any.
- Schlendrian
- Then you shall have a husband at last!
- Aria Lieschen
- Today even dear father, see to it! Oh, a husband! Really, that suits me splendidly! If it could only happen soon that at last, before I go to bed, instead of coffee I were to get a proper lover!
- Recitative Narrator
- Old Schlendrian goes off to see if he can find a husband forthwith for his daughter Lieschen; but Leischen secretly lets it be known: no suitor is to come to my house unless he promises me, and it is also written into the marriage contract, that I will be permitted to make myself coffee whenever I want.
- Trio
- A cat won't stop from catching mice, and maidens remain faithful to their coffee. The mother holds her coffee dear. The grandmother drank it also. Who can thus rebuke the daughters?
