Christiana Mariana von Ziegler

Christiana Mariana von Ziegler (28 June 1695 – 1 May 1760) was a German poet and writer. She is best known for the texts of nine cantatas, which Johann Sebastian Bach composed after Easter of 1725.

Christiana Mariana Romanus was born in Leipzig, where her father served as mayor in 1701. She began her literary career after the death of her second husband, Captain von Ziegler in 1722. She returned to her home city, where despite difficult family circumstances - father had been imprisoned in the Königstein Fortress, where he spent the rest of his life - she lived in the family home, the Romanushaus, with her mother. The house became a literary and musical salon. Johann Christoph Gottsched encouraged her poetic activity. She became the first woman member of Gottsched's literary society, the Deutsche Gesellschaft.

In 1741 she married for the third time and her literary activity ceased.

She died in Frankfurt an der Oder.

Bach moved to Leipzig in 1723 to take up the post of Thomaskantor. In this role he set about composing a large number of cantatas for performance in the city's churches. There is some uncertainty about who was writing Bach's libretti in his first couple of years in Leipzig. Whoever his original librettist was, Bach appears to have been looking for a new librettist in 1724, and this may be when he met Ziegler. The nine cantatas set by Bach to texts by Ziegler are:

Ziegler published not only the texts set by Bach, but others not set by him which together make a complete cycle. There has been speculation as to whether Bach considered extending the collaboration after the 1725 performances (when he turned to other librettists such as Picander). John Eliot Gardiner suggests that the relationship between the two may have been strained by Bach's habit of amending her texts to suit his purposes. On the other hand, the collaboration appears to have been quite close (although in some cases Bach set Ziegler's words by adapting music he had composed earlier).

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