Or, the Coffee Cantata. Need to find someone to arrange this for tenor. :)

Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht (Be still, stop chattering), BWV 211,[a] also known as the Coffee Cantata, is a secular cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach. He composed it probably between 1732 and 1735. Although classified as a cantata, it is essentially a miniature comic opera. In a satirical commentary, the cantata amusingly tells of an addiction to coffee.

The work is scored lightly, for three solo voices (soprano, tenor, and bass), strings, flute, and continuo. Only in the final number, which bears the designation “coro” (usually indicating chorus), do all voices and instrumentalists participate. The use of the term “coro” was a common device in operatic works of the time; could Bach have been thinking of this as a miniature opera?

More than his other works, Bach’s Coffee Cantata presents a little drama. It begins with a recitative, rather than a concerted, melodic work, for solo tenor and continuo. The tenor, our narrator, appears only in this first and final numbers. He begins with the text:
Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht
und höret, was jetzund geschieht! Be quiet, stop chattering
And listen to what will happen now!

This serves the role of an overture, fanfare, or theatre bell; the narrator appears to be speaking to the invisible patrons in the coffee house, but his announcement helps quiet the audience and focus their attention on the drama about to unfold. The narrator then announces the arrival of Herr Schlendrian (solo bass) and his daughter, Lieschen (solo soprano). But the continuo serves as another character here, with its dotted rhythms (marked “con pompa” – with pomp) mocking Herr Schlendrian as he approaches the coffee house.

The drama unfolds between Schlendrian and his daughter. She will not obey him, he reveals in no. 2; in the following recitative (no. 3), we discover that the culprit, the vice causing her disobedience, is coffee, which fuses together two other genres with the solo aria: the trio sonata and the minuet. It is a trio sonata in that Bach includes two independent and equal melodic lines with continuo. The obbligato flute is completely independent of the soprano, sometimes standing entirely on its own (as at the beginning, the ending, and in transitions between verses); it never takes the deferential role of resorting to playing in parallel thirds or sixths with the voice. At the same time, this piece is a minuet (as identified by Little and Jenne, in Dean and the Music of J.S. Bach); that is, it is a medium tempo, triple meter movement which symbolizes elegance and nobility (the minuet may have started in the lower classes,but it eventually became strongly associated with the aristocracy). What is unusual, however, is that the phrases here are grouped in threes, where we are conditioned (by the Viennese Classicists, primarily) to expect four-measure phrases.

 

Libretto

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!