Christian Friedrich Henrici (1700-01-14)January 14, 1700 Stolpen, Germany
Died
May 10, 1764(1764-05-10) (aged 64) Leipzig, Germany
Pen name
Picander
Christian Friedrich Henrici (January 14, 1700 – May 10, 1764), writing under the pen name Picander, was a German poet and librettist for many of the cantatas which Johann Sebastian Bach composed in Leipzig.
Henrici was born in Stolpen. He studied law at Wittenberg and Leipzig. He wrote to supplement his income from tutoring and continued even after obtaining regular employment as a civil servant.
Bach moved to Leipzig in 1723. There is uncertainty as to who was writing the libretti he set during his first years in the city. The authors of the libretti for the Chorale cantata cycle of 1724/25 are anonymous. By 1725, Henrici and Bach were working together. Some of Bach's most important works used Henrici's libretti. Most notably their collaboration was on religious works in a Lutheran tradition such as the St Matthew Passion (BWV 244). However, they also produced secular works such as the Shepherds' Cantata of 1725 and the later Coffee Cantata and Peasant Cantata.
For a year from the start of Advent 1724 Picander had published spiritual poetry in weekly editions, which he collected in 1725 as Sammlung Erbaulicher Gedanken. This caught Bach's eye who started using Picander's poetry for his cantatas from 1725, and used poems from Picander's first collection in his St Matthew Passion.[1][2]
All volumes of Picander's Ernst-schertzhaffte und satyrische Gedichte (Leipzig, 1727–51) contain texts set to music by J. S. Bach, including those for the St Matthew Passion and its associated funeral music for Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen (Klagt, Kinder, klagt es aller Welt, BWV 244a).[3]
In some cases, Henrici's texts have survived and Bach's settings have not. The lost scores include cases where the music has vanished without trace and others where there are clues as to what music Bach used to set the words, allowing the possibility of reconstruction.
Examples of reconstructions include the funeral music for Prince Leopold and the St Mark Passion (BWV 247) where Bach's music can be reconstructed because it is known to have been used in surviving pieces. Bach sometimes returned to compositions commissioned for one-off occasions and recycled the music. Picander was able to help the composer in this process by providing metrically similar new texts, effectively setting words to Bach's music.
^However, since those compositions which have survived are spread widely over the liturgical year, it is not impossible then that J. S. Bach did indeed set to music all the texts in that volume, as claimed by the preface, and that those compositions are now lost.
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