Classical Works:
Cantata No. 211, "Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht," (Coffee Cantata), BWV 211 (BC G48)
- Date: 1732 -1734
- Main Performer: Johann Sebastian Bach
- Genre: Choral
- Period: Baroque (1600-1749)
Review
It is neither the lessons of the Lutheran faith nor the depth of his own spiritual beliefs that J.S. Bach explores in his 211th cantata, Schweige stille, plaudert nicht, BWV 211; rather, it is a simple, earthly pleasure that had recently taken hold of European society, moving poets first to extoll and then, as in the case of Christian Friedrich Menrici Picander's text for BWV 211, to satirize: namely, coffee. The citizens of Leipzig, the city that Bach called home from 1723 on, were by all accounts especially enamored of this new, stimulating, and as some people of the time felt, dangerous beverage; in the Coffee Cantata, a concerned Leipzig father seeks to break his daughter from her addiction to it. Finally, by threat of preventing her from marrying, he succeeds in doing so; but after he leaves to find a husband for her, she turns full circle and proclaims that no suitor need bother her unless he is willing to insert a clause into the marriage contract that she can make coffee whenever and however she pleases!This most secular and comical work, which was probably composed sometime in the mid-1730s, is indeed a far cry from the Bach cantata as most people understand it. The Coffee Cantata has ten musical numbers (five of them recitatives) and three characters. Schlendrian, the father, is a bass; Lieschen, his daughter, is a soprano; and there is a tenor narrator. The orchestra is made up of strings, basso continuo and a single flute. The narrator sets the stage with a few brief measures of recitative (No. 1), and then Schlendrian grumbles his way through a D major aria, the strings twitching happily, the bass plodding steadily (No. 2). Schlendrian confronts his "naughty daughter" in No. 3. Lieschen sings lovingly of her favorite beverage in her first aria (No. 4), but tension arises between father and daughter again in No. 5. Then Schlendrian seems to get an idea (No. 6), and in the recitative of No. 7 he unleashes his secret weapon: she's grounded from going on any more dates until she gives up coffee forever. Lieschen, excited at the prospect of really getting a husband, sings a bouncing G major aria (No. 8); and then comes the punch line: the tenor narrator tells, in recitative (No. 9), that Lieschen is only playing a game with her father. An absurd final "chorus" (really just the three singers) in G major comments that if all the old maids and mothers and grandmas drink coffee, how can the daughters refuse it?
~ All Music Guide
