Gott, der Vater, wohn uns bei

PREFACE
When Johann Kuhnau died on 5 June 1722 after twentyone
years as cantor of St. Thomas’ Church, tribute was paid
to him in a Leipzig yearbook with a detailed obituary.
It said: “The pieces of music that he composed for the
church, especially since 1701 when he became cantor and
music director, may be difficult to count, for he never or
only very rarely made use of other people’s compositions at
his frequent musical performances; on the other hand, he
often had to help out others with his work.”
Only a fraction of this once extensive complex of works –
which quantitatively overshadowed that of his successor in
office, Johann Sebastian Bach – has survived to the present
day. Just over thirty “church pieces” by Kuhnau have stood
the test of time. They are stored in manuscript form in
central and northern German libraries: mostly in the Becker
Collection (Leipzig Municipal Library), in the music collection
of the Grimmaer Prince School (Dresden Municipal
Library) and in the Bokemeyer Collection (Berlin State
Library). The manuscripts and original parts to these can be
counted on the fingers of one hand, and with some secondary
sources the accuracy of the specification of the author
– “di Kuhnau” – is rather doubtful.
Nonetheless, Kuhnau’s church music is especially attractive
today for connoisseurs and lovers of baroque church music,
as it is for amateur and professional musicians alike – for a
number of reasons. Kuhnau’s works, composed between the
early 1680s – when he was still a pupil in Zittau and Dresden,
becoming organist at St. Thomas’ Church in Leipzig
starting in 1684 – and the years just before 1720, reveal a wide
variety of styles. The spectrum ranges from sacred arias and
spoken concertos of the 17 th century, chorale adaptations
and experimental forms to church cantatas setting texts by
Neumeister. And the diversity of Kuhnau’s musical language,
sometimes dramatic and theatrical, at other times flowing
like an aria and highly devotional, gives the lie to those
who would like to dismiss the church composer Kuhnau as
an ostensibly backward-looking artist who vehemently disallowed
the musical innovations of the early 18 th century.
This portrait drawn by earlier researchers, is a distorted one,
resulting from documents about the trench warfare carried
on by the St. Thomas cantor Kuhnau – unfortunately in a
maladroit fashion – against the young, innovative Leipzig
music scene at the Neukirche and the opera house, namely
the aspiring students Georg Philipp Telemann, Johann David
Heinichen and Johann Friedrich Fasch.
This new edition of all the surviving sacred works of
Kuhnau is intended to correct this erroneous image, and to
rescue the composer from the corner of the alleged “musical
horribilicribrifax” in which he was placed already at a very
early stage. For Kuhnau’s church music provides a testimonial
that is, in every respect, on a par with that of the gallant
novelist, innovative keyboard composer and even opera
composer. It is a testimonial, moreover, that makes clear why
Telemann could later maintain that the quill pen of Kuhnau,
widely famed as “polyhistoris in arte musica” had once
served him as a model: in order to fashion his own ecclesiastical
style after it. And above all, this new edition of Kuhnau’s
vocal works makes accessible an important musical facet of
the transitional phase between the sacred concertos of the
17 th century and the late baroque church cantata – an exciting
facet as regards the history of the genre and one whose
importance that can hardly be overestimated.
Michael Maul
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