Passing to the later Leipzig period, seventy-two surviving Cantatas are attributed to the years 1735-50. They reveal one, perhaps two, new writers. The first of them, Marianne von Ziegler, was identified by Spitta in 1892. She was the widow of an officer, resident in Leipzig, a cultured woman, in touch with University life, her house a salon for music and musicians.(443) There is no reason to suppose Bach to have been of her circle, or that he was acquainted with her literary gifts. Indeed the contrary is to be inferred from the fact that, though she published her poems in 1728,(444) he does not seem to have known them until seven years later, when he used them for nine consecutive Sundays and Festivals in 1735, beginning on the Third Sunday after Easter, and ending on Trinity Sunday.
In addition to these nine libretti, both Spitta(445)and Schweitzer(446) attribute to her the text of Bach’s Cantata for the Second Sunday after Easter in the same year.(447) It is uniform in construction with the authentic nine, but is not among the authoress’s published works. Wustmann(448) finds the tone of the libretto less ardent and its rhythm rougher than those published under her name. Admitting the soundness of Wustmann’s criticism, one hazards the opinion that the challenged text was written at the period when Bach set it, namely, in 1735, eight years after the poetess published her earlier texts. The difference of time may account for the difference of texture to which Wustmann draws attention, but leaves undecided the question whether Bach was drawn to the earlier through the later and unpublished texts or vice versa. It is quite probable that he set other libretti by the same writer, though Schweitzer’s(449) attribution to her of a second text for Ascension Day, 1735, must be rejected.(450)
It is worth noticing, since it certainly reveals Bach’s preference, that Marianne von Ziegler’s libretti are constructed almost invariably in the Weiss form. Every one of them but three(451) opens with a Bible passage, invariably taken from St. John’s Gospel, which provides the Gospel for the Day from the First Sunday after Easter down to Trinity Sunday, excepting Ascension Day. All but one (No. 68) of the libretti conclude with a Choral, and their Arias are hymn-like in metre. The tone of them, however, is warmer, more personal, less didactic than the Weiss texts. That Bach regarded them with particular favour is apparent in the circumstance that he took the trouble to revise all but one of them.(452) That they stirred his genius deeply is visible in the settings he gave them.