Talk:List of cantatas by Johann Sebastian Bach

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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

[edit] 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 <ss> 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." Microtonal ^{(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)

[edit] 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 (BWV 58)|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)

[edit] 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)

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)