The Coffee Cantata
Bach wrote many cantatas, religious and secular. Among the latter is the Coffee Cantata, a half-hour enactment of an obstinate love of coffee.
Bach loved coffee as much as anybody else in Leipzig during the early to mid-eighteenth century when coffee flavour found favour across town. He was the cantor at the St. Thomas Church, and the fresh-mushrooming coffee houses gave him space to engage in intellectual and artistic exchanges. The Cafe Zimmerman was the venue for his regular performances.
Bach didn't compose operas but wrote many cantatas, most of them religious and some secular. Among the latter is the Coffee Cantata, a half-hour enactment of an obstinate love of coffee. Because it's a cantata, there's no need for grandiose stage and costume, so the setting can be minimal—as it is in the performance in the video below, a cafe, with the performers weaving about the orchestra seated inside.
Lieschen loves coffee. Her father, Schlendrian, worries that her fondness for it is a bit much, although her need is a mere three cups daily. She feels like a "dried-up piece of roast goat" without them. The father wants her off of it, but she defies all the punishments he threatens her with if she sticks with the addiction. No, she says, no, no, no. Coffee is smoother than Muscatel wine! And lovelier than a thousand kisses. When all hope seems lost, he wins when he offers a carrot sheathed in a threat. "You'll not have a husband either," he says; she grabs the bait and sings of the myriad delights to be found in a "lusty man." The deal is done, but she has consumed coffee just then; it's working in her, and it rouses her wits to wedge a secret twist into the bargain.
It's a piece by Bach, a virtuoso treat. The humour is of German proportions, mild but sweet as Muscatel.
Did Lieschen like her coffee black? What about Johann Sebastian Bach? I used to smother blonde roast with almond milk, but these days, I addle my caffeine-intolerant brain with pure dark espresso.
Johann Sebastian Bach, Coffee Cantata, BMV 211
Juliette Appold