t In this Bach was following the tradition of seventeenth-century Passion sermons, as Elke Axmacher points out (Aus Liebe will mein Heyland sterben’ (1984), p. 155), in which Peter’s denial and the second Matthew interpolation (the ‘earthquake’ scene – see below) were introduced in order to reinforce the need for repentance.
u The Jews regarded Gentile houses – and these of course included the Roman Praetorium – as unclean, and purity was at a premium at Passover.
v To get an idea of quite how successful Bach is here in his dramatic pacing, one need only compare his setting of the Roman trial with the equivalent portion in Johann Mattheson’s Passion oratorio, Das Lied des Lammes (1723), a work Bach may have known. Both composers draw on a common literary source, a libretto by Christian Heinrich Postel; both divide John’s narrative at the same points; both begin with the chorale ‘Christus, der uns selig macht’; both use Postel’s text for ‘Durch dein Gefängnis’ (Mattheson as a duet, Bach as a chorale); and both place it midway through Verse 12. Quite apart from the enormous discrepancy in musical style and substance, the main difference is one of pacing and proportion. As Don O. Franklin observes (op. cit., pp. 188–9), where Mattheson, following Postel, places his greatest emphasis on the arias – seven of them being lengthy ariosi for Jesus and Pilate – Bach breaks the flow of the action only three times (for ‘Betrachte/Erwäge’, the pseudo-chorale ‘Durch dein Gefängnis’ and the dialogue aria ‘Eilt’) and is thus able to drive the action forwards, focusing our attention on the intense interaction between Jesus, Pilate and the crowd – something beyond Mattheson’s capabilities – and framing the entire scene with two chorales.
w Part of the trouble here, as Chafe notes, is that ‘contemporary theologians interested in Bach and historical Lutheranism, who are the likeliest to understand why Bach might have done what he did in the John Passion, have seldom had much grounding in music, whereas musicians [or, rather, musicologists, I suggest] almost never have sufficient involvement in the necessary theological modes for his decisions. Thus questions of symmetry in the design of the Passion are continually addressed as a “problem” of musical form, and one, it seems, that can be speculated on with no particular knowledge of its theological correlates. Such interpretations give very much the sense of being pulled from a hat’ (J. S. Bach’s Johannine Theology: The St John Passion and the Cantatas for Spring 1725).
x To this Chafe’s very reasonable response is that ‘the boundary between the “audible” and the “inaudible” is not a certain one, that the whole person is a compound of intellectual and affective qualities whose separation does violence to the whole. In this respect, what Bach achieved in the design of the St John Passion is what most sets him apart from his many lesser contemporaries.’ Earlier in the same chapter he conceded that ‘sometimes there appear to be multiple, even overlapping patterns, or partial patterns, no one of which can be considered to represent the “structure” of the work’ (J. S. Bach’s Johannine Theology: The St John Passion and the Cantatas for Spring 1725, Chapter 5).
y John Butt concedes that theological inquiry into the inspirational roots of Bach’s Passion music ‘could be useful if it suggests thought processes that are of a piece with the thinking behind the music as an aesthetic art’ (‘Interpreting Bach’s Passions: Outline of Proposed Scheme of Research’ submitted to the Leverhulme Foundation (2005)) – balancing different forms of complexity, ‘heard’ and ‘unheard’ elements, the counterpointing of ideas, speakers and historical times.
z Perhaps more than might have been the case in 1724, this may be more a function of our own agnostic age than of Bach’s portrayal of the man. The question ‘What if he’d done the right thing and set Jesus free?’ lurks somewhere in the background of our response to him nowadays. He, of course, ‘stands at the centre of the Christian story and God’s plan of redemption. Without his climactic judgement of Jesus, the world would not have been saved. Without Christ’s death … there would have been no Resurrection, no founding Christian miracle’ (Ann Wroe, Pilate: Biography of an Invented Man (2000), p. xii). As head of the occupying forces in the troublesome province of Judaea, and with an estimated 6,000 legionaries to control a population of approximately 2.5 million, Pilate faced a major problem of governance, particularly at the explosive time of the Jewish Passover, the key festival of the foundation of the nation, when many congregated in Jerusalem to celebrate it. (John Drury, ‘Bach: John Passion’, pre-concert talk, 22 Apr. 2011, Snape Maltings, p. 1).
aa By altering a single word of Postel’s text – ist in place of muss – Bach alters the entire meaning of the chorale in line with his Christus victor theological stance. Man’s freedom is no longer a fond hope but an accomplished fact.
bb Chafe refers us to ‘the traditional image of Christ in majesty portrayed … seated in judgement on the rainbow, a sword protruding from one ear and a lily from the other – symbols of the division of humanity that John continually emphasizes’ (Tonal Allegory in the Vocal Music of J. S. Bach (1991), pp. 316–17). According to Roland Bainton, ‘Luther had seen pictures such as these and testified that he was utterly terror-stricken at the sight of Christ the Judge’ (Here I stand: A Life of Martin Luther (1950), pp. 22–5).
cc Perhaps taking his cue from Albert Schweitzer, who found ‘an indescribable felicity’ in these two movements (J. S. Bach (1911), Vol. 2, p. 181), Wilfrid Mellers (op. cit., pp. 118–24) waxes lyrical on the deceptive ‘balm-dispensing repose’ of the preceding bass arioso – outwardly calm due to the soothing combination of lute and viole d’amore, but tonally unstable. He connects it to the Orpheus myth (which had eventually been validated by the Christian mystics and by medieval Platonists), both in the singing and via the lute – as post-Renaissance substitute for Orpheus’ lyre. If at this point Bach was consciously tapping in to the perceived analogy between Orpheus and Christ, it would make sense of a kind – the balm of the seven-stringed lyre the means by which the Christian soul (while contemplating its ‘highest good’ as a result of Jesus’ suffering) makes its journey heavenwards, returning ‘to the origin of music’s magic, that is, to heaven’ (Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, quoted by Joscelyn Godwin, Harmonies of Heaven and Earth (1987), p. 61). Tenuous as is the link here, one might speculate on how far Bach might have agreed with Johann Mattheson’s attempt to prove that there must be music in heaven, far superior to anything we can imagine, that it existed before the creation of Man, just as it will last for ever (Behauptung der Himmlischen Kunst (1747), pp. 3, 6, 19). From here it is but a short step to considering how, as on other occasions already explored in the course of this book, Bach sought here to emulate ‘heavenly’ music, and the extent to which it embodied a type of therapeutic wholeness and perfection (see illustration p. 553).
dd Here, as John Drury notes, ‘ambiguous subjectivity could not be more extreme. Quite clearly the texts of both arioso and aria are conscious of their ambivalence between grief and pain, delight and grief … the ambiguity … rooted in the ancient institution of sacrifice, whereby the innocent victim bears the suffering, even death, which would otherwise fall on the votaries. The affliction of the victim is their deliverance’ (op. cit.). In other words, Bach and his librettist are injecting a strong dosage of the ‘satisfaction’ theory (see p. 389) to balance the Johannine image of Jesus in glory.
ee Normal violin and viola bridges are not evenly elliptical: the curve is more pronounced to accommodate the two lower and thicker gut strings. Given the ravishing timbre of the viola d’amore (quite apart from their symbolic appropriateness) it is puzzling to find Bach replacing them in movements 31 and 32 with muted violins (and substituting organ or harpsichord in place of the lute) in later revivals. As Dürr rather drily comments, ‘It seems appropriate to review the replacement of the original instruments as a makeshift solution to which the modern performer should adhere only if he finds himself confronted with the same problems as Bach’ (Johann Sebastian Bach’s St John Passion: Genesis, Transmission
and Meaning (2000), p. 112).
ff In the process he inscribes the symbol of the Cross in the Evangelist’s melodic line, just as he had done as a 22-year-old in BWV 4 – see Chapter 5, pp. 135, 136), using it like a branding iron in order to fix it in his listeners’ consciousness.
gg Another way of looking at it (as suggested to me by Robert Quinney) is that the behaviour of the soldiers is strangely neutral and disengaged, set as it is: it is almost as if we step out of the narrative proper, cutting away to a scene which, though it is actually happening at the foot of the Cross, could be a million miles away. The very lack of engagement of the soldiers in the momentous events taking place around them might provoke the faithful listener to even greater involvement and (self-) reflection.
hh Bach’s use of the extreme dotted rhythms associated with Lully’s majestic style is only superficially ‘heroic’. As Michael Marissen says, ‘only on the page, which listeners do not see, does the music appear majestic. As Bach’s music has it, then, Jesus’ majesty is “hidden” in its opposite, which is very much a Lutheran approach’ (Lutheranism, Anti-Judaism, and Bach’s St John Passion (1998), p. 19).
ii Admittedly this was only at its revival in 1725 when he came to make his first of four revisions. Prior to that the sources indicate that both flute and oboe da caccia were to be doubled, while in the fourth version the flute was doubled by a muted violin (see Alfred Dürr, op. cit., p. 114).
jj ‘It is a very odd thing about St John that while much of the time he is Platonic and Greek and high-minded, just occasionally, and particularly with Christ’s wounds (as with Thomas, who puts his finger into them), there are occasional bursts of quite disconcerting physicality in his Gospel account’ (John Drury, private correspondence).
kk Wilfrid Mellers singles it out as ‘a dance of God … fulfilling the vision of the early Christian mystics who saw the lyre- or viol- or flute-playing Christ as “leader of the dance; he knows how to touch the strings, to lead from joy to joy, with cherubim and seraphim the soul dances in the round” ’ (Bach and the Dance of God, p. 148).
ll Where John celebrates Jesus’ triumph over the forces of evil and the law (which he describes as a ‘curse’ or ‘wrath’), Matthew underscores Christ’s work of atonement to God’s ‘satisfaction’. That Luther left no clearly defined statement on the subject of atonement does not mean that he necessarily held a preference for one of these two different, though not mutually exclusive, theories, or that the two could not have coexisted in his theology. Aulén’s view is that over time Luther was gradually drawn back to the far older Johannine (Christus victor) view ‘with a greater intensity and power than ever before’. As he says, ‘we have only to listen to Luther’s hymns to feel how they thrill with triumph, like a fanfare of trumpets.’ This is equally true of Bach’s settings of them in his cantatas.
mm Telemann, for example, who was required to compose a new Passion for each year he was musical director of Hamburg’s five main churches (1721–67), did not seem to have felt the need to differentiate the theological leanings of the four Gospel writers. On the other hand, he adopted a technique much used by Bach in his cantatas, that of inserting a parallel Old Testament text as preparation for each of the five sections into which he divided up the Passion story.
nn Even here the textural alterations to the restored 1724 movements show signs of theological decree and perhaps reflect changing literary tastes as well: the fresh joyousness of the original ‘Ich folge dir’ soprano aria is diminished by a reference to ‘my anxious path’ and the need to ‘suffer in patience’. The arioso ‘Betrachte’ loses its metaphor of heaven’s primroses flowing out of the crown of thorns, and refers now more closely to the scourging of Jesus. The tenor aria ‘Erwäge’ loses its glorious rainbow simile for something much blander, though the new words ‘Mein Jesu, ach!’ are slightly easier to sing.
11
His ‘Great Passion’
Whatsoever is harmonically composed delights in harmony; which makes me much distrust the symmetry of those heads which declaim against all Church-Musick. For my self, not only for my obedience, but my particular Genius, I do embrace it: for even that vulgar and Tavern-Musick, which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of the First Composer. There is something in it of Divinity more than the ear discovers: it is an Hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the whole World, and creatures of GOD; such a melody to the ear, as the whole World, well understood, would afford the understanding. In brief, it is a sensible fit of that harmony which intellectually sounds in the ears of GOD.
– Thomas Browne, Religio medici (1642)
Bach’s autograph manuscript score of the Matthew Passion is a calligraphic miracle. It is by far the most precious survivor of that ‘big pile of Passion music’1 entered into the second catalogue of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach’s estate in 1805.2 Phenomenal elegance and fluency of notation characteristic of Bach in his forties contrasts with passages made in the crabbed, rigid handwriting of his later eye-damaged years, with corrections entered on glued-on strips of paper meticulously inserted. The care and the effort it cost him are everywhere to be seen. In common with a handful of other composers (Rameau, Debussy, Stravinsky) Bach plans every part of the page and leaves a minimum of unused staves, all signs of a resolve to capture every polished detail of this immense creation. Uniquely among his autographs, he uses red ink – but generally only for the Gospel words, which thus stand out from the rest like some medieval missal and from the brown-black sepia that was his norm. Twice in its existence the manuscript has been damaged. Once, in his very last years, Bach himself repaired sections which had frayed through accidental use. Then, during the early years of the Second World War, ominous signs appeared that the paper itself had begun to thin – the gallotannate ink had started to oxidise, making the paper brittle. In 1941, in an ingenious labour of love, the Berlin restorer Hugo Ibscher stretched the finest chiffon silk over each of the damaged pages to hold it in place by means of rice starch. It worked – for quite some time, but now the red ink has begun to fade.
The impression of a meticulously constructed autograph score, worked over, revised, repaired and left in a condition aspiring to some sort of ideal, is at one with the monumental scale of the work itself. Yet, with only this fair-copy score dating from the mid 1730s and one set of performing parts to go on, generations of Bach scholars have so far been unable to trace the inception, planning or successive stages of the Passion’s evolution with any degree of certainty. There are single-part books for the two four-voiced ensembles which identify the tenor and bass lines in Choir 1 as Evangelista and Jesus respectively, as well as separate copies for the minor characters and the soprano in ripieno required for ‘O Lamm Gottes, unschuldig’, the German Agnus Dei in the opening chorus. We do not know exactly who took part in any of the performances given under the composer’s direction – neither the make-up of his vocal and orchestral forces, nor their precise number, nor how they were deployed in the western choir loft of the Thomaskirche (though we have a reasonable idea – see illustration on this page). And we have no contemporary reaction to it – not the smallest shard of evidence of what people thought about it at the time.
So what can we say with confidence? From the evidence of the autograph score, that the work is unique in its scope and grandeur, that Bach had an enormous personal investment in its composition, and that he had prepared himself for its unprecedented compositional challenges with typical thoroughness. But that does not begin to account for the overpowering experience of the work in performance. We have already suggested that he had prepared his audience for it by means of unmistakable musical anticipations and adumbrations of theological themes in the cantatas leading up to Good Friday 1725 (see Chapter 9). There is, as we have also seen, a distinct possibility – but no proof – that the Matthew Passion was planned as part of his second annual cycle of Leipzig cantatas, that of 1724/5, sharing with it an emphasis on chosen c
horales as the basis or focal point of each cantata. The Passion could have been designed for – and would have fitted perfectly at – its centre, like the boss of a shield. Yet it was not to be: its first airing was delayed by a further two years. We saw how the problems he had completing it in time in 1725 had a knock-on effect on the post-Resurrection cantatas, disrupting the completion of the chorale cantata cycle (see ‘Second Leipzig Cycle’ diagram, Plate 16). Nevertheless, I believe that we stand to gain in our understanding of the Matthew Passion – draw closer to its purpose, its fine braiding together of musical and theological themes – if we approach it not as an isolated work but from the perspective of that cantata cycle. Bach went on modifying it in the course of the 1730s and 1740s, never as drastically as he did the John Passion, but always meticulously and with unflinching resolve. Again, simply from the appearance of the autograph score, we gain the strongest impression of an intention to leave the music in a state that could surpass and outlive its original liturgical function – of an aesthetic entity sui generis and entrusted to posterity. This impression is supported by the potency the Matthew Passion has had ever since Felix Mendelssohn’s famous revival in 1829, and remains undiminished by time.
After two consecutive outings in 1724 and 1725 of the fast-paced John Passion in two very different versions, and the controversy that seems to have surrounded that work, Bach appears to have been minded to come up with something which gave his listeners more time to reflect and contemplate between scenes in the Gospel accounts. The acid test for him, then, was whether his new Passion music – conceived on a still grander scale – would hold their attention for over two and a half hours. The very length of the Matthew Passion and the complexity of its musical elaboration can be daunting even to those hearing it for the second or third time – and we should not forget, as John Butt points out, that ‘one of the greatest ironies about Bach’s Passions is that their original audiences were far less familiar with the genre than we are; moreover – as is the case with all Bach’s most celebrated music – we might have heard them many more times than did the original performers or even Bach himself.’ This is especially true of the Matthew Passion: when approached with the expectations or the memory of the John Passion it is easy to be wrong-footed, puzzled – even to feel excluded. As a listener, your primary focus is on the linear progression of the story. Where this is interrupted by extended movements of contemplation, the stop-go nature of the twin timeframes of reported speech and the contemporary response to events can be perplexing. Where are we now? Is this an historical event or a reaction to it? If the latter, by whom: Jesus’ disciples, the ‘Daughter of Zion’, the Christian community or mankind as a whole? And when are things occurring? In the first century AD, in the Lutheran timeframe of the chorale, in the 1720s, 1730s and 1740s of Bach’s Leipzig congregation or in the present, as they affect us now? Despite the captivating beauty of individual numbers, the overall impression can be one of a juddering rhythm: no sooner are you launched into the story of the betrayal and trial of Jesus than the forward momentum is halted.
Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven Page 54
