Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven

by Gardiner, John Eliot

  One marvels at how he and his performers could have met these challenges. We shall of course never know how well they acquitted themselves and just how well the music was performed under such pressure.p Signs that Bach had anticipated the problem of cumulative fatigue may be found in his use of colla parte instruments to bolster the choral lines of several opening choruses and the absence of soprano solos in five cantatas (BWV 40, 190, 153, 65 and 154). Open any one of these scores at random or listen to them and you cannot fail to be impressed by the stupefying scale of Bach’s undertaking and the technical demands he made of himself and his performing ensemble in composing and performing such a cornucopia of Christmas music at breakneck speed: one is left with what Dreyfus calls ‘inchoate feelings of awe’.10

  As Bach emerged from this punishing schedule, there was the need to think ahead, to plan and plot, scrabbling for time to conceive and then to flesh out his first Passion oratorio. We have already seen evidence of preparatory sketches for his John Passion, but how much of it had been completed at this stage? Already at Christmas-time we start to find signs of him preparing his listeners for shocks to come and giving hints of what lay in store for them. For example, he gave what might seem to us a curiously unseasonal theological twist to three consecutive works for the three days of Christmas. Bach provides none of the usual themes we are used to from his (later) Christmas Oratorio: no song of the Virgin, no music for the shepherds or for the angels, not even the standard Christmas chorales. The exception is the well-known Magnificat. In this first version in E Bach introduced so-called laudes. Mostly delightful, sometimes rather peculiar, these pieces are quite intricate for mere cradle songs and were apparently intended as a sop to local custom, to be sung by a separate ‘angelic’ choir from the swallow-nest gallery of the Thomaskirche. Inserted between the verses of Mary’s song, they form a summary of the Christmas story in miniature.

  Elsewhere he presents us with a decidedly Johannine view of the incarnation – as God’s descent in human form to save man and to bring joy through His defeat of the Devil – in clear anticipation of the message of his John Passion, now only a few months away. In three thrilling Christmas cantatas – BWV 63, 40 and 64 – Bach gives strong emphasis throughout to John’s depiction of Jesus as Christus victor.q Since the third day of Christmas is also the Feast of St John we see why Bach might have chosen to emphasise a division between the world ‘above’ (full of truth and light) and the one ‘below’ (full of darkness, sin and incomprehension). God descends in human form to save man from the sin that has poisoned him ever since his first encounter with the Devil (represented by a snake). Man’s aspiration is to ascend to a plane where he can be included as one of God’s children. But before this ascent can begin Jesus must first undergo his Passion and then, by his resurrection, defeat sin, death and the Devil. It is of course all too easy to describe Bach’s music mainly in terms of text and then forget why we were interested in it in the first place. In the cases of BWV 40, 64 and the glorious Epiphany cantata BWV 65 that follows ten days later, there are little pointers in the way many of the words and images seem to spring so easily from the biblical quotations and chorales and are then fused so naturally with the music, enough to suggest that Bach himself might have written their texts, or at least had a preponderant influence on their author.

  In Bach’s time the period between Christmas and Epiphany was called Raunächte – literally ‘rough nights’ – the German equivalent to the Roman Saturnalia and of similar pagan tradition. Yet there was no respite for him: there were nine weeks from Epiphany to the beginning of Lent for which six new cantatas were needed (with three earlier Weimar works available for revision) plus one for the Feast of the Purification (2 February). For Epiphany + 4, what must count as Bach’s most ‘operatic’ cantata bursts into life: BWV 81, Jesus schläft, was soll ich hoffen? Here he gives his listeners a foretaste of the enthralling music they could expect when his imagination was torched by a particularly dramatic incident. Based on Matthew’s description of Jesus’ calming a violent storm on the sea of Galilee that threatens to capsize the ship in which he and his disciples are sailing, it makes a sea voyage into a metaphor for the Christian life. It begins with Jesus asleep on board ship, the backdrop to an eerie meditation on the terrors of abandonment in a godless world – cue for a pair of old-fashioned recorders added to the string band for an aria for alto, the voice Bach regularly uses for expressions of contrition, fear and lamenting. Here he challenges the singer to a serious technical (and symbolic) test of endurance: to hold a low B without quavering for ten slow beats and then to negotiate a series of angular leaps and twists (through diminished and augmented intervals) to evoke the gaping abyss of approaching death. Life without Jesus – his somnolent silence lasts all the way through the first three numbers – causes his disciples, and of course Christians ever since, acute anguish and a sense of alienation that rises to the surface in the tenor recitative with its dislocated, dissonant harmonies. In the background of the night we hear the words of Psalm 13 – ‘How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord, for ever? How long wilt thou hide thy face from me?’ – and the image of the guiding star precious to all mariners and to the magi.

  Suddenly the storm bursts. A continuous spume of violent demisemiquavers in the first violins is set against an unabated thudding in the other instruments. It reaches a succession of ear-splitting cracks on diminished seventh chords conveying the rage of ‘Belial’s waters’ beating against the tiny vessel. It is similar to one of Handel’s powerful ‘rage’ arias, demanding an equivalent virtuosity of rapid passagework by both tenor and violins, but imbued with vastly more harmonic tension – what Paradise Lost might sound like if set as an opera. Three times Bach halts the momentum mid-storm for two-bar ‘close-ups’ of the storm-tossed mariner. Though it feels intensely real, the tempest is also an emblem of the godless forces that threaten to engulf the lone Christian as he stands up to his tormentors. It is extraordinary what a vivid scena Bach has created from its beginning in a simple allegro in G major for strings alone. Jesus, now awake (as if he could possibly have slept through all the mayhem), rebukes his disciples for their lack of faith. In an arioso with straightforward continuo accompaniment, almost a two-part invention, the bass soloist assumes the role of vox Christi. After the colourful drama of the preceding scena the very sparseness and deliberate repetitiveness of the music is striking. One wonders whether there is a pinch of dramatic realism here, of yawn-induced rebuke (the repetition of warum?) or even of mild satire – one of those occasions when Bach may be poking fun at one of his Leipzig theological task-masters. There follows a second seascape, almost as remarkable as the earlier tempest, this time as an aria for bass, two oboes d’amore and strings. The strings are locked in octaves, a symbol of order to show that even the pull of the tides, the undertow and the waves welling up can be checked just as they are about to break by Jesus’ commands Schweig! Schweig! (‘Be silent!’) and Verstumme! (‘Be still!’).r

  When might Bach, a landlocked Thuringian, have witnessed a maritime storm? It could only have been on the Baltic during his brief stay in Lübeck in 1705, if ever. However, one of his favourite authors, the seventeenth-century theologian Heinrich Müller, certainly did. Müller lived in Rostock on the Baltic coast and commentated eloquently on this particular incident in Matthew’s Gospel. For the true believer to travel in ‘Christ’s little ship’ is, metaphorically, to experience the buffetings of life and bad weather but to come through unscathed: ‘the paradox of total peace in the midst of turbulence’.11 Müller’s tropological interpretation of this biblical event – one to give moral guidance to the listener – may have prompted Bach’s exceptional treatment, a foretaste of the equally dramatic story-telling in music in his John Passion, whose première was fast approaching. No doubt it ruffled the feathers of Leipzig councilmen like Dr Steger, who, nine months earlier, had voted for Bach as cantor with the explicit proviso ‘that he should make compositions that were not too theatrical�
�.12 A work such as this suggests what kind of opera composer Bach might have made if he had been so inclined, for there is nothing in his secular cantatas (despite their titles as drammi per musica) that is as remotely theatrical as this amazing cantata.

  Assuming that he had a pre-eminent role in the choice of poetic texts and selection of chorales in the period leading up to Lent, it seems that Bach was carefully preparing the congregation for the communal response that the chorales were soon to fulfil in his first Passion setting, making sure also to establish a connection in their minds between a bass voice and the voice of Christ. That left Lent, its forty days interrupted by the Feast of the Annunciation (25 March), in which to complete the John Passion in time for Good Friday (7 April). This, as it turned out, would be his one opportunity to stamp his mark on the shape, style and purpose of music for this red-letter day with impunity. We can piece together the links in the narrative from the council minutes. In the lead up to Holy Week 1724 Bach had forged ahead, posting announcements, printing and issuing libretti of his John Passion scheduled for performance in the Thomaskirche. To the dismay of some in the council offices it must have seemed as though the new cantor simply did not grasp the elementary protocol of how things were done in Leipzig. Was he not aware of the local ‘tradition’ (established just three years before, in 1721) of alternating the Good Friday service between the city’s two main churches? The council minutes state that the cantor had been notified in advance that this year it was the turn of the Nikolaikirche. He was duly summoned to appear before the consistory to explain why he had flouted their instruction and to be told in no uncertain terms to ‘pay attention’ (darnach achten) and ‘to take better care in future’. The town clerk’s minutes indicate that Bach’s response was (surprisingly) measured and co-operative: ‘He would comply with the same [agreeing to switch venue to the Nikolaikirche in other words], but pointed out that the booklet had already been printed … [and] he requested at least that a little additional room be provided in the choir loft, so that he could place the persons needed for the music; also that the harpsichord be repaired.’ To this ‘The Honoured and Most Wise Council’ duly agreed, and a new leaflet announcing the change of venue was printed.13 That should have been the end of the matter, but it clearly wasn’t: there was still the clergy to deal with, as we shall see in the next chapter.

  Bach’s best-laid plans seem to have gone awry. The first performance of the John Passion on 7 April 1724 manifestly interfered with the subsequent unfolding of his first cantata cycle, though we can only guess whether this was because Bach had received a stern theological reproof or was simply a consequence of his having overextended himself. Fifteen church feasts remained for the ‘Great Fifty Days’ from Easter to Whit Sunday and its sequel, Trinity Sunday, before the cycle was complete, and with dense three-day pressure points at the Easter and Whitsun weekends.s For whatever reasons Bach was not able to keep to his original plan for a through-composed sequence, and as a consequence we find him being forced into makeshift solutions – resorting to four previously composed cantatas (BWV 31, 12, 172 and 194) and then recycling material from secular works composed in his Cöthen days (BWV 66, 134, 104, 173 and 184) for another five. That still left five new works leading up to Whit Sunday for him to compose. Their overall quality is consistently high, and here again he casts them to form a mini-cycle.

  The first in this sequence, BWV 67, Halt im Gedächtnis, is especially impressive: the music vibrates with a pulsating rhythmic energy and a wealth of invention. Bach’s task here is to depict the perplexed and vacillating feelings of the disciples, their hopes dashed after the Crucifixion. He conveys the palpable tension between Thomas’s doubts and the need within the group to keep faith (the corno blasts this out as a sustained single note in the opening chorus, an injunction to ‘hold’ Jesus in remembrance). Later, what starts out as a poised and chirpy gavotte for tenor, oboe and strings fragments abruptly in its second bar: ‘But what affrights me still?’ juxtaposes these contrary Affekts, one fretful, the other affirmative. He successfully captures the jittery mind-frame of the beleaguered Christian, his alto soloist exhorting the choir to keep their spirits up by singing the iconic Easter hymn ‘Erschienen ist der herrlich Tag’. Then at the climax of the cantata comes a dramatic scena in which the strings work up a storm to illustrate the raging of the enemy without. The three-voiced choir of stricken disciples, augmented by the furioso strings, conveys a sense of alienation of the Christian community in the here and now. Like a cinematic dissolve, Bach blends this into a slower, gently dotted triple-rhythm sequence for his three woodwind instruments – cue for Jesus’ sudden appearance to his disciples who are huddled together in a locked room. Three times their anxiety is quelled by Jesus’ beatific utterance Friede sei mit euch (‘Peace be unto you’). At its fourth and final appearance the strings abandon their storm-rousing and symbolically melt into the woodwind’s lulling rhythms. In this way the scene ends peacefully, the concluding chorale acknowledging the Prince of Peace as ‘a strong helper in need, in life and in death’.

  Now, without so much as a week to reflect or take stock, Bach plunges ahead with his Second Leipzig Cycle on 11 June 1724 (see diagram, Plate 16). There is an unmistakable shift in his approach but not the slightest diminution in quality. The first cycle was boldly experimental – in the diversity of its forms, in its varied instrumentation and in the huge challenges it posed to Bach’s performing forces – but the second is, if anything, bolder still. The technique of his players and singers is to be stretched still further, the new music demanding an instant responsiveness to the pulse and mood of the moment: singers need to match the instruments for precision and agility; players reciprocally need to shape and inflect their lines like singers. There will also be fewer concessions to his listeners’ scruples. That much is clear from the outset of his first cantata, BWV 20, O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort. It is an astonishing piece, one that sets the tone for the whole cycle and sums up so many of the original features we will encounter – a new range of expression, the use of operatic technique to enliven the doctrinal message and wild contrasts of mood. In this instance Bach takes his lead from the Epistle’s plea for ‘boldness in the day of judgement’ (1 John 4: 16–21) to fire his imagination and powers of musical invention. We seem to be already in the death-throes of the Trinity season, not at its start – but then Bach’s was an age that had the taste for apocalypse, and the theme crops up regularly and unexpectedly.t While the tune of Johann Rist’s hymn was familiar enough to his congregation, Bach’s treatment of it was novel and shocking. Where the previous year’s vision was of a faith-propelled anticipation of eternity in BWV 21, fear, rather than comfort, is now the subtext of BWV 20 – the chilling prospect of an eternity of torture and pain. It is the spur to man to save his soul: the only way towards salvation is for him to renounce sin. The hymn tune dominates all three segments of the opening chorale fantasia (fast – slow – fast). Bach saw to it that the combined energies of the Thomaner trebles were channelled into the rising melodic cantus firmus (O Ewigkeit) (‘O eternity’) and reinforced by the martial slide trumpet propelling the three lower voices in its wake before they splinter off in the sharply dotted style of the instruments (du Donnerwort) (‘thou thunder-word’). Powerful cross-accents and a huge upward sweep for the basses on Traurigkeit (‘grief’) characterise the double fugue. Abruptly the orchestra screeches to a halt on a diminished seventh. Only a bold dramatist would risk stopping the forward momentum to convey trepidation – personal and petrifying – and Bach had good reason to be proud of this. (Any late-coming worshippers entering at that point would have been frozen to the spot, their neighbourly greetings silenced.) Out of the ensuing silence, terse and angular fragments are tossed from oboes to strings and back again in anticipation of the choir’s resumption: ‘My terrified heart quakes’ – with actual breaks in the voice – ‘so that my tongue cleaves to my gums.’ Disjointed discourse of this intensity seems unimaginable in a pre-Beethovenian wo
rld. Bach understood the physiology of the voice far more than he is given credit for and makes it very much part of the expression. Suddenly we realise why he has chosen a French overture form as the structural basis of this movement:u far from its traditional evocation of order and grandeur, the jagged dotted rhythms and extravagant rhetorical gestures that typify the form delineate here a world disintegrating. Once underpinned by destabilising harmonies, the effect gains in potency – still more so when the pace quickens to vivace. Bach makes us instantly aware that the region of eternal condemnation will be peopled by ghoulish minions of the Devil, herding and spearing the souls of the damned into a subterranean corral.

  Nor does the apocalyptic vision fade at the close of this opening tirade. A tenor soloist steps forward and piles on the agony: ‘there is no redemption from the pain of eternity … it drives on and on in its play of torment.’ Bach draws on a varied armoury for this aria – long notes and undulating quavers to imply eternity, tortuous intervals paired in quavers to suggest trepidation, broken fragments, chromatic and syncopated, for the quaking heart, wild coloratura runs for ‘flames that burn for ever’, sudden silences to underscore the terror. This profusion of dramatic imagery is seamlessly integrated into his overall design. The turbulence of the bass line is a destabilising feature of the entire cantata (we need only glance at the original basso continuo part to see how exceptionally angular are its gestures).

  Climbing back into his pulpit, the bass delivers the harrowing prospect of ‘a thousand million years with all the demons’. Then, as he moves from recitative into aria, he abruptly changes tack and tone. We appear to have been shunted into the world of opera buffa, or, rather, of ducks – three of them (all oboes) and a bassoon (a token drake?) – quacking in genial assent as the singer declaims Gott ist gerecht (‘God is just’) over and over again. The mood seems to jar horribly. Was it not a prototype of Beethoven we were listening to a moment ago? Have we been misled by all the fire and brimstone? Perhaps Bach could see no further way to develop the theme of eternity before offering a speck of hope to the Christian soul now thoroughly battered and bruised. He reminds us that the solution to life’s problems is childlike in its simplicity: all it takes is to put one’s trust in God. It is a deliberate ploy to dissipate the gloom and tension – like opening a window in a smoke-filled room. Having cleared the air, you can almost picture him sitting back in his favourite chair, lighting a fresh pipe and contentedly blowing smoke circles.