All three of the cantata’s final movements are equally stern and uncompromising. Bach marks the recitative for soprano a battuta – unusually, to be sung in strict tempo – while the continuo thunders out the old tune as if daring the believer to give in to doubts in a magnificent reversal of usual practice, the singer’s weakened faith scarcely having time to express its frailty. Signs and wonders abound. The very word for signs (Zeichen) is given expressive, symbolic expression – a diminished seventh chord in the soprano recitative, formed by all three ‘signs’, one sharp (F), one flat (E) and one natural (C).aa In place of a second aria Bach inserts a terzetto for soprano, alto and tenor to describe how soon the rise of the ‘morning of comfort’ succeeds ‘this night of distress and cares’. Chains of suspensions precipitate a downward cycle of fifths through the minor keys (D, G, C, F then B major), whereas the dawning of faith reverses the direction upwards until the idea of the troubled night turns it back again. Different as they may seem, these three final movements flow easily from one to the next. As with his cantata for this Sunday from the previous year (BWV 109), he delays the provision and granting of help until the last possible moment. With all the voices given full orchestral doubling (including those four trombones), this chorale is not simply impressive, it is even intimidating in its Lutheran zeal – especially its final Phrygian cadence, with the bass trombone plummeting to bottom E.
Less than a month later the need for comfort in times of distress is unchanged, but Bach’s musical treatment is radically different. The instrumental ritornello to the opening chorale fantasia of BWV 26, Ach wie flüchtig, ach wie nichtig, is a stupendous musical confectionery illustrating the brevity of human life and the futility of earthly hopes. Long before the first statement of the hymn tune, Bach establishes the likeness of man’s life to a rising mist that will soon disperse. Fleet-footed scales, crossing and re-crossing, joining and dividing, create a mood of phantasmal vapour – a brilliant elaboration of an idea that first came to him ten years earlier in Weimar when composing an organ chorale (BWV 644) to a simplified version of this hymn. In his second stanza Melchior Franck (c. 1579–1639) compares the course of human life to rushing water shooting down a mountainside before disappearing in the depths, an image dear to the Romantic poets. Did Goethe have Franck’s hymn in mind when he wrote his marvellous ‘Gesang der Geister über den Wassern’ (‘Song of the spirits over the waters’) in Weimar sometime in the 1780s? Schubert set it to music for male voice choir on four separate occasions. There does seem to be a proto-Romantic Gestalt to the way Bach set it as an aria for tenor, flute, violin and continuo: each musician is constantly required to change functions – to respond, imitate, echo or double one another – while contributing to the inexorable forward motion of the tumbling torrent and a brief episode of falling raindrops. Human life first as mist and spray, then as a mountain torrent; next, Bach turns to the inevitability of beauty’s withering like a flower and the moment when man succumbs to earthly pleasures and ‘all things shatter and collapse in ruin.’ He scores this for three oboes and continuo supporting his bass soloist in a mock bourrée that develops into a grim dance of death. Where one might have expected this trio of oboes to establish a mood of earthly (even evangelical) pomp, with the stirring entry of the singer their role becomes rapidly more subversive and realistic: first in the throbbing accompaniment that seems to undermine the fabric of those ‘earthly pleasures’ by which men are seduced; then through jagged figures to represent the tongues of flame which will soon reduce them to ashes; and finally in hurtling semiquaver scales of chords for those ‘foaming floods’ that will tear all worldly things apart.
With seven new cantatas and a Sanctus to compose for seven feast-days within twelve days, Christmas 1724 cannot have been any less frenzied than the previous year. The celebrations on Christmas Day itself began with BWV 91, Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ, Bach’s majestic setting of Luther’s hymn, whose opening ritornello has the special sense of expectation that is the hallmark of Bach in Christmas mode: fanfares for the horns and running G major scales in the oboes that suggest the dancing of angels. In the unselfconscious abandon of his setting of das ist wahr (‘this is true’) and the syncopated Kyrie eleis! (reminiscent of a similar word-setting in the Zwiegesänge of Michael Praetorius), Bach’s seventeenth-century roots are exposed; and this mood persists in the soprano recitative interwoven with the second verse of the hymn and in the festive tenor aria set for three oboes swinging along in genial accompaniment. But even at Christmas-time Bach would not be Bach without a reference to the ‘vale of tears’ from which the newly incarnate Christ will lead us. He duly obliges with a slow, chromatic accompagnato (No. 4) for bass and strings in contrary motion, calculated to bring the listener up short. An extended duet for soprano and alto postulates the poverty that God assumed by coming into the world and the ‘brimming store of heaven’s treasures’ He bestowed on the believer.
When Bach came to re-work this cantata during the 1730s, in order to illustrate the human aspiration to sing (and, by implication, dance) like the angels, he added lilting syncopations to the vocal lines that clash with the violins’ dotted figure. The polarity between them is reinforced by means of upward modulations, once in sharps (as if to symbolise man’s angel-directed aspirations), once in flats (as if to represent Jesus’ humanity). The music brings to mind the vivid imagery of Botticelli’s dancing angels or Filippino Lippi’s angelic band in full cry on the walls of the Carafa Chapel in Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome. As with the Sanctus that followed in the same Christmas Day Mass, surely the most imposing of all of Bach’s D major choruses, he may have been inspired by the vision of St John Chrysostom (c. 347–407), which he surely knew – those ‘thousands of Archangels and ten thousands of Angels … six-winged, full of eyes, and soar aloft on their wings, singing, crying, shouting, and saying Agios! Agios! Agios! Kyrie Sabaoth! Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts! Heaven and Earth are full of Thy Glory! Hosanna in the Highest!’16
Bach adopts a wholly different strategy for its sequel the next day. More than in any other cantata you sense a primitive root, an early Christian origin for the Marian text of BWV 121, Christum wir sollen loben schon, one of the oldest-feeling of all Bach’s cantatas. Luther had appropriated and translated a famous fifth-century Latin hymn, ‘A solis ortus cardine’ (‘From the rising of the sun’), used for Lauds during the Christmas season, and Bach sets its opening verse in motet style, the voices doubled by a cornett and three trombones in addition to the usual oboes and strings. There is something mystical about this tune, not least in the way it seems to start in the Dorian mode and end in the Phrygian (or, in the language of diatonic harmony, on the dominant of the dominant). Replacing the portrayals of dancing seraphim are images of those angular, earnest faces that fifteenth-century Flemish painters use to depict the shepherds gazing into the manger-stall at the reinen Magd Marien Sohn (‘little son born of a spotless maid’). The archaic feel of the opening chorus seems perfectly attuned to the mystery of the Incarnation.
Unequivocally modern, however, is the startling enharmonic progression – a symbolic ‘transformation’ no less – at the end of the alto recitative (No. 3) describing the miracle of the virgin birth. This is the tonal pivot of the entire work and, appropriately, it occurs on the word kehren (‘to turn or reverse direction’); with wundervoller Art (Bach’s play on words is his cue for a ‘wondrous’ tritonal shift) God descends and takes on human form, symbolically represented by the last-minute swerve to C major. It is the perfect preparation for the bass aria (No. 4), where bold Italianate string writing and solid diatonic harmonies are used to describe how John the Baptist ‘leapt for joy in the womb when he recognised Jesus’. Bach’s design for this cantata mirrors the change from darkness to light and shows how the moment when Christians celebrate the coming of God’s light into the world coincides with the turning of the sun at the winter solstice. Beyond that, his purpose is to emphasise the benefit of the Incarnation for mankin
d and (again) that the supreme goal is to join the angelic choir (cue for a tough audition for the lead treble, who is required to reach a top B in the penultimate recitative). Any other composer would have been tempted to set the final chorale in some glittering stratospheric tessitura; instead, by returning to the cantata’s opening tonality (E major with its ambiguous and inconclusive modal twist to F), and by retaining the coppery timbre of the cornett and trombones to intensify the choral sound, he finds other, subtler ways of achieving a luminous summation. It is the believer’s hope – not the certainty – of eternal life Bach evokes here.
One of the crowning glories of Bach’s first Christmas season was BWV 65, Sie werden aus Saba alle kommen, for Epiphany 1724, and it is fascinating to observe him attaining the same peak the following year in BWV 123, Liebster Immanuel, Herzog der Frommen – but via a different route. One of the keys to this lies in the instrumentation. Where the atmosphere of the earlier work is oriental and pageant-like, the second opens with a graceful chorus in a little reminiscent of an Elizabethan dance, with paired transverse flutes, oboes and violins presented in alternation. Its choral interjections form a Mendelssohnian love-song that sticks in the mind days after the music has ended. For the earlier ‘Saba’ cantata, by contrast, Bach uses high horns to convey majesty and antiquity, recorders to represent the high pitches traditionally associated with oriental music and, still more, oboes da caccia so redolent – to the modern ear – of the Macedonian zurla, the sahnai of Hindustan and the nadaswaram from Tamil Nadu in the southernmost part of the Indian Peninsula (which surely qualifies as the world’s loudest non-brass acoustic instrument). With their haunting sonority these ‘hunting oboes’ seem to belong to the world of Marco Polo – of caravans traversing the Silk Route – and it remains something of a mystery how a specialist wind-instrument-maker, Herr Johann Eichentopf of Leipzig, could have invented this magnificent modern tenor oboe with its curved tube and flared brass bell around 1722 unless he had heard one of these oriental prototypes played by visitors to one of Leipzig’s trade fairs (see Plate 21).
Bach was clearly intrigued by this new apparition (rather as Berlioz was a century later when Adolphe Sax was inventing the saxhorn), and was to make extensive use of it in at least thirty of his choral works, not least in the opening ritornello to BWV 65. Here he shows off the glittery sheen of his exotic orchestra to advantage, so that even before the voices enter in canonic order he succeeds in parading before our eyes the stately procession of the three magi and the ‘multitude of camels’ (Isaiah 60:6) laden with gifts. This imposing fantasia concludes with a restatement of the octave unison theme, this time by all the voices and instruments spread over five octaves, as the caravan comes to a halt in front of the manger. Now there is a sudden shift in scale and mood, from the outward pomp of the royal procession to the intimacy of the simple stable and the oblations offered to the child in the crib, as the choir intone the sober German version of the Latin ‘Puer natus in Bethlehem’ traditionally sung in Leipzig at this feast.
We can be so taken and dazzled by the glamour of these cantatas’ opening movements as to be in danger of overlooking those in the middle. The earlier work features a secco recitative exemplary in its word-setting, its arching melodies and its rich chromatic harmonies, culminating in an affecting arioso. This leads to an aria for bass (No. 4) in which the two oboes da caccia engage in a triple canon with the continuo, evidently to portray the gifts of gold, incense and myrrh. To depict ‘the most abundant wealth’ (des größten Reichtum) mentioned in the recitative (No. 5), Bach draws on a most opulent scoring for this entrancing triple-rhythm aria for tenor (No. 6). Pairs of recorders, violins, horns, and oboes da caccia operate independently and in consort, exchanging one-bar riffs in kaleidoscopic varieties of timbre.bb
The quality of the arias in BWV 123 is more telling still: a tenor aria (No. 3), with two oboes d’amore, describes the ‘cross’s cruel journey’ to Calvary with heavy tread and almost unbearable pathos belying the words ‘[these] do not frighten me.’ Four bars in a quicker tempo to evoke ‘when the tempests rage’ dissolve in a tranquil return to the lente tempo as ‘Jesus sends me from heaven salvation and light.’ This is followed by what is surely one of the finest, but also loneliest, arias Bach ever composed, ‘Lass, o Welt, mich aus Verachtung’ (‘Leave me, O scornful world / To sadness and loneliness!’). The fragile vocal line, bleak in its isolation, is offset by the flute accompanying the bass singer like some consoling guardian angel trying to inspire him with purpose and resolve. Even the B section (‘Jesus … shall stay with me for all my days’) offers only a temporary reprieve because of the expected da capo. Here voice and instrument are intimately linked, but with the wordless flute left to complete what the singer cannot bring himself to utter. A year later Bach returned to this mood of Epiphany blues with a second hugely demanding bass aria, ‘Ächzen und erbärmlich Weinen’ from BWV 13, Meine Seufzer, meine Tränen, describing how ‘groaning and piteous weeping cannot ease sorrow’s sickness.’ With the white, sepulchral sound of twin recorders playing an octave above a solo violin, Bach seems determined to impress on his listeners the full misery and wretchedness of life here below. Just where the text mentions a ‘beam of joy’ appearing, Bach momentarily lifts the shroud of dissonant angular harmony prior to a full-scale recapitulation in the subdominant, the music plunging again into darkness as though intent on exploring new agonies of mind and soul. With pulse and mind slowed down, our senses sharpened, we become alert to each tiny detail of Bach’s mood-painting.
Quinquagesima, the last Sunday before Lent, held a special significance for Bach, for it was on this Sunday in 1723 that he had performed the twin trial-pieces (BWV 23 and 22) that were to clinch his appointment as Thomascantor, and he revived BWV 22 on the same Sunday the following year. Quinquagesima 1725 was his last opportunity to present a cantata to his Leipzig audience as a foretaste of a Passion performance and the biggest musical event in the Lutheran calendar, and, in this last regard, BWV 127, Herr Jesu Christ, wahr’ Mensch und Gott, occupies a crucial role, for Bach placed a ‘chorale Passion’ like a jewel at its centre, just as he had done the year before. There are features of BWV 127, a strikingly experimental cantata, that function in the same way. The first occurs in the elegiac chorale fantasia that opens the work: here Bach weaves together no fewer than three chorale tunes – an instrumental presentation of the Lutheran Agnus Dei with its clear reference to Christ’s Passion, a funeral lament by the French composer Claude Goudimel (1565), and finally several strains of a chorale melody we recognise as that of the Passion chorale, Herzlich tut mich verlangen, which will feature so prominently in the Matthew Passion. Next, it is noticeable that the following recitative for tenor links the individual’s thoughts of death to the path prepared by Jesus’ own patient journey towards his Crucifixion. Most telling of all is the fourth movement, a grand, tableau-like evocation of the Last Judgement, part accompanied recitative, part aria, made up of three alternating sections: a restless accompagnato, with no discernible tonal centre, an arioso in G minor (Fürwahr, fürwahr) quoting Goudimel’s choral melody on which the whole cantata is based, and finally a wild section signalling man’s rescue from the violent bonds of death.
It is in this last segment, with trumpet fanfares and scurrying strings, that we come across a glaring instance of self-quotation unique in Bach’s church music: for the solo part for bass is identical with the four choral entries of the spectacular double chorus ‘Sind Blitze, sind Donner’, one of the highpoints of the Matthew Passion and rightly identified as ‘one of the most violent and grandiose descriptions of unloosed passion produced in the Baroque era’.17 A comparison of the two settings suggests that the Passion chorus was composed before the cantata aria. (We caught a glimpse of Bach’s stressful preparation of the performing material of this number in Chapter 7.) Though not conclusive proof in itself of a planned premiere for Good Friday, 30 March 1725, this ‘pre-echo’ of the ‘Sind Blitze’ chorus in BWV 127 sug
gests a consistent frame of mind and an indication that up to this point the Matthew Passion was still on course.
Those who attended Mendelssohn’s famous revival of the Matthew Passion in Berlin in 1829 were told that they were celebrating the exact centenary of its first performance on Good Friday 1729. Since 1975 that date has been brought forward by two years.18 But if, as suggested, Bach was actively engaged in preparing the Matthew as he was composing his second cantata cycle of 1724/5, the point at which it became clear to him that he would not have it ready for performance on Good Friday 1725 remains to be established. Had he miscalculated the time needed to allow him to bring it in on schedule? Was it simply a case of exhaustion, or had there been further dispiriting disputes with the clergy during the past year? No one has so far come up with convincing answers, and it could well be that the truth lies in a combination of all of these, with the decision to abort made very close to Holy Week 1725. By failing to complete the Matthew on time for Good Friday, Bach found himself boxed in. We do not even know at what point he officially informed the consistory of his solution to the problem of providing a Passion for that year – or whether the decision to fill the vacuum with a substantially revised version of the John Passion was imposed on him by the consistory with instructions to adjust its doctrinal tone (see Chapter 10). One new aria in particular, ‘Zerschmettert mich, ihr Felsen’ for tenor, has echoes of the climactic sequence of BWV 127, suggesting that Bach still had the material of that cantata in his mind when he sat down to compose this revision, as though determined to salvage something of its intended pre-announcement.
Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven Page 44
