Three songs for three states of mind: in Saintes, Bach moves through fear, humility and hope in three cantatas brought together by Damien Guillon and Le Banquet Céleste, balancing dramatic tension, fervour and light. 
By 
2 minutes
In July 2020, Damien Guillon and his ensemble Le Banquet Céleste brought together at the Abbaye aux Dames in Saintes three cantatas that Bach had composed for different Sundays after Trinity1: BWV 47, 60 and 78. From the first work’s call to humility to the dialogue between fear of death and hope of salvation, they offer three very different ways of setting Lutheran faith to music. Céline Scheen, Damien Guillon, Thomas Hobbs and Benoît Arnould take the four vocal parts.
From pride to the fear of death
Under the title “Trinitatis”, Damien Guillon does not simply bring together three cantatas at random: all belong to the long liturgical season following Trinity Sunday, but each confronts humanity with a different trial. In Wer sich selbst erhöhet, der soll erniedriget werden BWV 47, Bach takes the Gospel warning “whoever exalts himself will be humbled” as the starting point for a confrontation between pride and humility.
In O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort BWV 60, the conflict becomes almost theatrical. The alto embodies Fear, seized by the approach of death; the tenor answers as Hope. Their confrontation is only resolved with the intervention of Christ and the final chorale Es ist genug. Jesu, der du meine Seele BWV 78 finally shifts the tension towards salvation: awareness of sin gives way to an impulse of trust, culminating in the celebrated duet Wir eilen mit schwachen, doch emsigen Schritten, in which soprano and alto seem literally to set off on their way.
In Saintes, playing through the silence
On 21 July 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic left the abbey church in Saintes without an audience and forced the Festival de Saintes to reinvent itself as “LABO 2020”: the musicians performed behind closed doors, while the concerts were broadcast on screens, radio, television and online. Six years later, this recording remains a testimony to that strange period, one to which the very themes of these three cantatas now lend a particular resonance.
Damien Guillon conducts Le Banquet Céleste while also singing the alto part, alongside Céline Scheen, Thomas Hobbs and Benoît Arnould. Around the four voices, a compact instrumental ensemble gives the cantatas a direct, chamber-like quality. The programme would take on a second life three years later, when the same singers recorded the three works for Alpha Classics under the title Trinitatis.
Programme
Johann Sebastian Bach:
Wer sich selbst erhöhet, der soll erniedriget werden, BWV 47
O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort, BWV 60
Jesu, der du meine Seele, BWV 78
Performers:
- Céline Scheen, soprano
- Damien Guillon, alto and director
- Thomas Hobbs, tenor
- Benoît Arnould, baritone
- Le Banquet Céleste
- Damien Guillon, director
At the Abbaye aux Dames in Saintes, as part of the Festival de Saintes – LABO 2020.
- Here, Trinity refers to a feast in the Christian calendar, celebrated on the Sunday after Pentecost. In the Lutheran calendar of Bach’s time, the following Sundays were then numbered as the “First Sunday after Trinity”, “Second Sunday after Trinity”, and so on, until the end of the liturgical year. ↩︎
You must be logged in to be able to post comments.
Sign in