March 13, 2007
Coffee Cantata
Part of the reason I love my wife so much is that she humors my strangeness. The random calling out of words for no particular reason being the most obvious (and friends from college will recognize that habit) but also my perverse interest in trivia.
So to humor me, at Christmas she bought me a calendar with a new trivia fact for each and every day of the year. I have loved it! I learned how David Bowie was the inspiration for magnetic poetry, the name of the murder capital of the world (which I forget now) and strange things about people I always knew of, but knew little about.
Today's (March 13)was the best I have seen so far. It describes how Johann Sebastian Bach (yes, the Bach) wrote an entire cantata celebrating coffee. Amazing!
According to my calendar, the story is of a young woman who loves to drink coffee (apparently in Germany in 1732 this was all the rage) but whose father requires her to give up coffee to get married. The daughter does so, but secretly vows to require her new husband to sign (sing?) a contract allowing her to drink as much coffee as she likes, after they are married.
Such quotes as "If I can't drink my bowl of coffee three times daily, then in my torment I will shrivel up like a piece of roast goat." and "Mm! how sweet the coffee tastes, more delicious than a thousand kisses, mellower than muscatel wine." will have any lover of coffee nodding their heads, I certainly was.
Who knew opera could be this cool?
The text of the libretto can be found after the jump. A must read, it's hilarious!
Recitative Narrator
Be quiet, stop chattering, and pay attention to what's taking place: here comes Herr Schlendrian with his daughter Lieschen; he's growling like a honey bear. Hear for yourselves, what she has done to him!
Aria Schlendrian
Don't one's children cause one endless trials & tribulations! What I say each day to my daughter Lieschen falls on stony ground.
Recitative Schlendrian
You wicked child, you disobedient girl, oh! When will I get my way? Give up coffee!
Lieschen
Father, don't be so severe! If I can't drink my bowl of coffee three times daily, then in my torment I will shrivel up like a piece of roast goat.
Aria Lieschen
Mm! how sweet the coffee tastes, more delicious than a thousand kisses, mellower than muscatel wine. Coffee, coffee I must have, and if someone wishes to give me a treat, ah, then pour me out some coffee!
Recitative Schlendrian
If you don't give up drinking coffee then you shan't go to any wedding feast, nor go out walking. Oh! when will I get my way? Give up coffee!
Lieschen
Oh well! Just leave me my coffee!
Schlendrian
Now I've got the little minx! I won't get you a whalebone skirt in the latest fashion.
Lieschen
I can easily live with that.
Schlendrian
You're not to stand at the window and watch people pass by!
Lieschen
That as well, only I beg of you, leave me my coffee!
Schlendrian
Furthermore, you shan't be getting any silver or gold ribbon for your bonnet from me!
Lieschen
Yes, yes! only leave me to my pleasure!
Schlendrian
You disobedient Lieschen you, so you go along with it all!
Aria Schlendrian
Hard-hearted girls are not so easily won over. Yet if one finds their weak spot, ah! then one comes away successful.
Recitative Schlendrian
Now take heed what your father says!
Lieschen
In everything but the coffee.
Schlendrian
Well then, you'll have to resign yourself to never taking a husband.
Lieschen
Oh yes! Father, a husband!
Schlendrian
I swear it won't happen.
Lieschen
Until I can forgo coffee? From now on, coffee, remain forever untouched! Father, listen, I won't drink any.
Schlendrian
Then you shall have a husband at last!
Aria Lieschen
Today even dear father, see to it! Oh, a husband! Really, that suits me splendidly! If it could only happen soon that at last, before I go to bed, instead of coffee I were to get a proper lover!
Recitative Narrator
Old Schlendrian goes off to see if he can find a husband forthwith for his daughter Lieschen; but Lieschen secretly lets it be known: no suitor is to come to my house unless he promises me, and it is also written into the marriage contract, that I will be permitted to make myself coffee whenever I want.
Trio
A cat won't stop from catching mice, and maidens remain faithful to their coffee. The mother holds her coffee dear. The grandmother drank it also. Who can thus rebuke the daughters?
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Coffee was all the rage in 18th century Western Europe after the Turks invaded Vienna. They were valiantly rebuffed, but left behind a rather delicious bean that when ground and steeped, would put countless Tim Horton's into business. Okay that was a few years later. But despite their military defeats, the Turks managed to conquer the culinary landscape...a culture war that Western Europe might do well to remember today...
Posted by: funke on March 13, 2007 12:50 PMPPS The looming proximity of the Ottoman Empire was also another reason why Mozart wrote so many operas referencing the Turks. Just another fact to throw your way. I love trivial information, too.
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