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| An 18th-century Coffee House interior |
The Coffee Cantata
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| J.S. Bach at a young age |
Johann Sebastian Bach
(English translation)
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| A typical 18th-century Coffee House exterior |
RECITATIVE
Narrator: Be quiet, do not chat, And listen to what happens now: Here comes Mr. Schlendrian with his daughter Liesgen, He grumbles like a grizzly bear; hear for yourselves, what she has done to him!
ARIA
Schlendrian (Liesgen's other) With children, aren't there a hundred thousand aggravations. Whatever I, all the time and every day, tell my daughter Liesgen, lides on by with no effect.
RECITATIVE
Schlendrian: You naughty child, you wild girl, ah! When will I achieve my goal: get rid of the coffee for my sake!
Liesgen: Father sir, but do not be so harsh! If I couldn't, three times a day, be allowed to drink my little cup of coffee, in my anguish I will turn into a shriveled-up roast goat.
ARIA
Liesgen: Ah! How sweet coffee tastes, more delicious than a thousand kisses, milder than muscatel wine. Coffee, I have to have coffee, and, if someone wants to pamper me, ah, then bring me coffee as a gift!
Schlendrien: If you don't give up coffee for me, you won't go to any wedding parties, or even go out for walks.
Liesgen: Okay then! Only leave my coffee alone!
Schlendrian: Now I've got the little monkey! I will buy you no whalebone dress of the latest fashion.
Liesgen: I can easily put up with that.
Schlendrian: You may not go to the window and watch anyone passing by!
Liesgen: This too; but be merciful and let my coffee stay!
Schlendrian: You'll also not receive from my hand a silver or gold ribbon for your bonnet!
Liesgen: Sure, sure! Just leave me my pleasure!
Schlendrian: You naughty Liesgen, you grant all of that to me?
ARIA
Narrator: Girls of stubborn mind are not easily won over. But if the right spot is touched, Oh! Then one can happily get far.
RECITATIVE
Schlendrian: Now do what your father says!
Liesgen: In everything but coffee.
<b>Schlendrian:</b> All right then! So you will have to content yourself with never having a husband.
Liesgen: Ah yes! Father, a husband!
Schlendrian: I swear that it will never happen.
Liesgen: Until I give up coffee? All right! Coffee, lie there now forever! Father sir, listen, I won't drink none.
Schlendrian: So finally you'll get one!
ARIA
Liesgen: Even today, dear father, make it happen. Ah, a husband! Indeed, this will suit me well! If it would only happen soon, that at last, instead of coffee, before I even go to bed, I might gain a sturdy lover!
RECITATIVE
Narrator: Now old Schlendrian goes and seeks How he, for his daughter Liesgen, might soon acquire a husband; but Liesgen secretly spreads the word: no suitor comes in my house unless he has promised to me himself and has it also inserted into the marriage contract, that I shall be permitted to brew coffee whenever I want.
CHORUS (Trio)
Cats do not give up mousing, girls remain coffee-sisters. The mother adores her coffee-habit, and grandma also drank it, so who can blame the daughters!
~ § ~
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| 18th -century coffee service, silver plate |
NOTICE:
WE DO NOT ACCEPT BOILERPLATE, PARTISAN DIATRIBES, PERSONAL CRITICISMS, SCOLDINGS, BLOG GOSSIP or REMARKS THAT MAKE NO ATTEMPT TO RELATE TO THE SUBSTANCE OF THE MATERIAL POSTED.
NO EXCEPTIONS.
PERIOD!
Decidedly a lighthearted –– even frivolous –– work, nicht wahr?
ReplyDeleteGerman Protestant Christans in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were not nearly as dour and grimly attentive to duty as some of us today might like imagine.
From the almost tongue-in-cheek tone of this eccentric secular text I have to conclude these folk were capable of fully appreciating irony while celebrating their "off times" with considerable merriment.
Bach, himself, fathered TWENTY children with two different wives , and was reportedly reprimanded and disciplined for fooling around with a servant maid in the crypt of one of the churches he served.
Where he found the time and energy to create a virtual FIVE-FOOT SHELF of immortal musical masterpieces in addition to being a thououghly human fellow I can't imagine, but then BACH could turn out a musical masterpiece more easily –– and in less time –– than I can write an email or a comment at a blog.
That he did what did in a mere SIXtY-FIVE years makes his colossal achievements all the more awe-inspiring.
Indeed. The man was prolific in many ways!
DeleteThat may be the understatement of the past 269 years, Silver.
Delete};^)>
...it sure beats paying a tea tax to the Brits!
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteMicturia Anustein said
ReplyDeleteNobody reads. Nobody listens. You offer a lot of good stuff, but nobody wants it Maybe it's time to give uo, and stop throwing jewels into the pigpen, eh Franco?
Not at all, Micturia. We regard this blog as something of an oasis in a vast brutally hotile desert.
DeleteHOWEVER, as the saying goes, "You can lead a horse (or camel) to water, but you cannot make him drink."
Those who cannot –– or will not –– make the effort to appreciate what we offer here are much the poorer for rejecting it, but that does US no harm whatsoever.
We do not work to achieve popularity, we work only to do something worthwhile.
Wat others choose to make pf it is strictly THEIR business.
Lavinia Parkhurst said:
ReplyDeleteYou should have told them the Narrator is a tenor, Schlendrian, the father, is a baritone, and Liesgen, the spirited, rehellious daughter who longs for a sturdy lover is a soprano.
I am drawn more to Bach's compositions that any of the other classical composers.
ReplyDeleteThat is a clear indication that you have a good mind, Kid.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI'll be Bach!
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteNOTICE:
DeleteWE DO NOT ACCEPT BOILERPLATE, PARTISAN DIATRIBES, PERSONAL CRITICISMS, SCOLDINGS, BLOG GOSSIP or REMARKS THAT MAKE NO ATTEMPT TO RELATE TO THE SUBSTANCE OF THE MATERIAL POSTED.
NO EXCEPTIONS. PERIOD!