J.S. Bach’s Coffee Cantata – The Original Coffee House Music

You think coffee is the “new” hot drink made popular and trendy in the 1990s?

Think again. Back in 1729 coffee houses were becoming the Starbucks of the 18th century Europe and everybody who was anybody was discovering the fad.

Johann Sebastian Bach was no different. He took the trend and built it into one of his most popular secular works.

The Coffee Contata concerns a coffee-drinking daughter and her disapproving father in a struggle over her caffeine habit. It’s actually a pretty funny little piece with all sorts of coffee references and lyrics like:

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!

The piece was originally performed, appropriately enough, in Zimmerman’s Coffee House in Leipzig.

You can listen to the music and read the lyrics or read more about the piece at the Good-Music-Guide or Wikipedia.