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| The Arrowwood Viburnum along the Dykeman Walking Trail is in full bloom |
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| More Blackberry blossoms in the wetland |
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| Two Painted Turtles sunning in the bog pool |
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| Wade heads off to start the season's first haying |
When Bach was Kapellmeister in Weimar, he was responsible for the composition of one cantata per month. In his time there he also wrote large-scale works for some of the major holidays, Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. The librettist for most of Bach’s Weimar works was Salomo Franck, who doubled as the court poet and head of the mint. Franck was the finest poet that Bach ever collaborated with, and all of the Weimar works are notable for their passionate music and high literary quality.
The work begins with a joyful chorus with orchestra of trumpet and strings. As is typical of Bach’s early works the trumpet parts are mostly fanfares, the chorus reacts with suitably homophonic music. A simple fugue comprises the middle section of the work. The only recitative in the piece is an arioso setting of the passage from John for the bass. This leads into more fanfares from the trumpets accompanying the pomposo writing of the solo bass. The idea of the heavenly wind permeates the tenor aria, with its smoothly running violin part and gently expressive vocal line. Without a doubt, the high point of the cantata is the intricate, heavenly duet for soprano and alto with oboe obbligato. The complex metaphors and high literary quality of this marvelous text are paralleled by the detailed and elaborate voice parts. Woven into this texture is a highly ornamented version of the great Luther chorale, Komm Heiliger Geist. A beautiful setting of Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, with a high, descant first violin part ends the cantata.
© Craig SmithToday's performance is from a recording by the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists under the direction of John Eliot Gardiner. Enjoy!
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| Red, red Roses on King St. |
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| A porch planter on King St. |
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| A Rhododendron in the garden at the Widow Piper's Tavern |
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| Petunias in one of the King St. hanging baskets |
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| Begonias in one of the King St. hanging baskets |
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| English Ivy climbing the King St. bridge over Branch Creek |
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| The Multiflora Roses were definitely scenting the air today |
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| Looks like there's going to be a bumper crop of Blackberries this year |
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| Daisy Fleabane |
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| The hay is getting deep |
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| Looking north from the top of the meadow |
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| Looking across the meadow from the southern leg of the Meadow Trail |
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| Walking along the Rail Trail |
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| Leucauge venusta, the colorful Orchard Orb Weaver |
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| The same Venusta escaping my camera |
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| Harmonia axyridis, the Multicolored Asian Ladybug |
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| A small section of that large bank of Multiflora Roses |
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| The Multiflora Roses are adding their sweet scent throughout the park |
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| This Painted Turtle actually let me get quite close |
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| My favorite view in the park |
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| Daisy Fleabane along the trail in the wetland |
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| A Song Sparrow singing away |
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| Yellow Wood Sorrel along the trail in the wetland |
"And I can't help but wonder, now Willie McBride,
Do all those who lie here know why they died?
Did you really believe them when they told you 'The Cause'?
Did you really believe that this war would end wars?
Well the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame,
The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain.
For Willie McBride, it all happened again,
And again, and again, and again, and again."
– Eric Bogle, "No Man's Land"
"Either war is finished, or we are."
– Herman Wouk, War and Remembrance
"War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children."
– Jimmy Carter, Nobel Lecture, December 10, 2002
"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity."
– Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech, January 10, 1946
"If civilization has an opposite, it is war. Of these two things, you have either one, or the other. Not both."
– Ursula K. LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness
Dulce et Decorum Est - Wilfred Owen
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs,
And toward our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots,
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of gas-shells dropping softly behind.
Gas! GAS! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time,
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obsceneas cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, –
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est / Pro patria mori.
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| Stork's Bill blooming along the Dykeman WalkingTrail |
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| Yellow Flag in the marsh by the ball fields |
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| Here comes Peter Cottontail, hoppin' down the Dykeman Trail... |
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| After 10 years I still haven't figured out what this plant is |
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| A female Redwinged Blackbird keeping a wary eye on me by the north duck pond |
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| Blackberry blossoms up on the meadow |
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| Approaching Storm |
Sie werden euch in den Bann tun I, BWV 44 is the first of two settings of the quotation forming the text of the first two movements of this cantata, the other being the opening movement of BWV 183. In BWV 44 Bach sets the first two lines of text as a tenor/bass duet followed, without break, by a turba chorus. Somewhat surprisingly, in BWV 183 he presents it quite minimally as an accompanied recitative.
The theme of this cantata is principally one of heresy, false teaching and the combating of these abominable doctrines. In John 16, Jesus prophesies the persecution of his disciples by those who know not God or Himself. There is a tough, almost hard-bitten quality about BWV 44. The clangorous, hectoring tenor-bass duet with two obbligato oboes runs directly into an even more frenetic little chorus filled with paranoia and fear. Notice how Bach creates a menacing chromatic texture of sustained notes underpinned by unexpected harmonies on the text wer euch tötet (whosoever murders you).
The alto aria with obbligato oboe yields a hint of release in the gloom and agitation with an almost catatonic dread. The chorale for tenor and continuo is one of the strangest harmonizations in all of Bach. This central chorale is so forward looking that it seems almost to pre-empt harmonies of the twentieth century. As Julian Mincham notes, “there seems little doubt that the byzantine bass line represents the difficult road and the human effort needed to travel and surmount the narrow pathway of torment to heaven.”
The turning point in the cantata comes in the bass recitative encouraging the individual to prevail. The soprano aria weakly tries to emerge from the gloom with a brighter tone and employment of ebullient skips that Schweitzer calls Bach’s “joy motive.” The middle section, depicting the storms our troubled soul must weather, triumphantly emerges in the smiling joy of the sun. The final chorale is well known, versions of it appearing in both the St. Matthew and St. John Passions. This beautiful, yet personal harmonization of "Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen" is the only hint at a benediction in the piece.
© Craig Smith, with additions and edits by Ryan Turner
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| The Green Heron strikes a pose |
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| Burd Run at Fogelsonger Rd. |
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| Holsteins on Fogelsonger Rd. |
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| Daisy Fleabane by Middle Spring Creek |
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| The Pileated Woodpecker digging for lunch |
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| A Yellow Poplar, also known as Tulip Poplar |
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| The flowery, and shady, banks of Branch Creek |
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| A Catbird nattering away on a branch over the creek |
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| A small Willow grove by the creek |
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| Green Hawthorn, also known as Southern Hawthorn, growing by the creek |
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| The Green Heron pretending it's hiding |
