Bach Cantata Day Information:
Advent III or Gaudete
The 2nd Sunday before Christmas. Liturgical period : Advent.
Occurrences: December 17 2023, December 15 2024, December 14 2025, December 13 2026, December 12 2027, December 17 2028, December 16 2029, December 15 2030, December 14 2031, December 12 2032, December 11 2033, December 17 2034, December 16 2035, December 14 2036.
Music for this day
-
Ärgre dich, o Seele, nicht, BWV 186a
(first performance 13 December 1716, expanded in 1723 to BWV 186 for , Weimar period) -
Die Freude reget sich, BWV 36b
(first performance ? May 1739, Leipzig period)
Advent III or Gaudete, is the second Sunday before Christmas. Again there is officially no cantata for this day because of Tempus Clausum observed in Leipzig (no music in mass), so the only possible cantatas come from Bach's Weimar period, where Tempus Clausum was not observed during Advent.
The cantata we know of, BWV 186a - Ärgre dich, o Seele, nicht, was first performed in Weimar, December 13th 1716. But just like with the cantata for Advent II, that score did not survive. So we stick to BWV 186, an expansion on the original that Bach created in Leipzig for Trinitatis VII (in the middle of summer!).
But in order to give you more than one cantata to listen to today, I'd like to add a cantata I only recently (november 2025) became aware of: Die Freude reget sich, BWV 36b. It is not a cantata for Advent III but one for which the reason is not known, so I can reuse it here.
Reason that I did not know this cantata until now is that it is a reconstructed cantata, part of the Schwingt freudig euch empor, BWV 36 family of cantatas - several cantatas that are parodies of one another, as I explained two weeks ago on Advent I.
It is not exactly known when this cantata was first performed; there are assumptions that it may have been for the appointment of Johann Florenz Rivinius (to whom the text pays hommage to) as rector of Leipzig University in May 1739.
The libretto is by Picander who used most of it for an earlier BWV 36 variation, Steigt freudig in die Luft, BWV 36a (from 1726), which is lost.
Playlist
WBC03-Advent III or Gaudete
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Image of the day
A reconstruction of the Bach familiy house in Weimar as it may have looked in his lifetime (view from the east). Don't try to look for the house on a visit to the city, because it is now... a parking lot. Visualisation done by the Hummel architecture office in 2011.