Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven

by Gardiner, John Eliot

  Viewed in this way, Bach’s opening chorus is presented to us as an immense tableau – an aural equivalent, say, to a grand altarpiece by Veronese or Tintoretto – in which, with Albert Schweitzer, we can discern Jesus being led captive through the city and along the Via crucis, the voices of the crowd calling to one another in tragic antiphony.9 The music seems entirely complete – an architectural structure with a chorale prelude superimposed upon an autonomous four-voiced chorus (Choir I) – and we marvel at how smoothly he makes room for a series of antiphonal exchanges between his two choirs and orchestras. But there is still more to come: at the moment when the first choir refers to Jesus as a ‘bridegroom’, and then ‘as a lamb’, Bach brings in a third choir with the chorale ‘O Lamb of God, unspotted’ in an abrupt expansion of the sound spectrum: G major within an E minor context.h Sung in unison by a group of trebles (soprano in ripieno) placed in the ‘swallows’ nest’ organ loft in the Thomaskirche – then (but now, alas, no longer) situated a whole nave’s length east of the main performing area – the effect must have been stunning – a magical use of space and acoustic, quite the equal of those celebrated Venetian polychoral antiphonies developed in the late 1500s by Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli to exploit the mysterious spatial configuration of St Mark’s Basilica. Yet Bach’s purpose is not confined to a spatial expansion of sonorities. By choosing to superimpose on to his choral tableau the timeless Agnus Dei of the liturgy in its German versification – which would already have been heard earlier that day at the conclusion of the morning service – he was able to contrast the historic Jerusalem as the site of Christ’s imminent trial and Passion with the celestial city whose ruler, according to the Apocalypse, is the Lamb. The repeated acknowledgement of guilt – auf unsre Schuld in Choir 1 – is answered down along the Gothic vault by the children – All Sünd hast du getragen (‘All sin hast thou borne for us … have mercy on us, O Jesus’). This is the essential dichotomy – the innocent Lamb of God and the world of errant humanity whose sins Jesus must bear – which will underlie the whole Passion, the fate of the one yoked to that of the other. Bach here gives it an added symbolic tonal form: E minor for the main chorale fantasia, G major for the Agnus Dei – distinct, coexisting, colliding, yet never resolved. He has set out his stall. Now the biblical narrative can begin.

  From the outset we are offered stark new juxtapositions of texture and sonority – wide-arching secco recitative for the narrator, a ‘halo’ of four-voiced strings surrounding each of Jesus’ statements, tense antiphonal interventions by the crowd (sometimes divided, as in No. 4b, between chief priests and scribes), a reduction to single choir for the disciples (No. 4d) and a coming together again for collective prayer. Soon we can discern a series of trifoliar patterns emerging: biblical narrative (in recitative), comment (in arioso) and prayer (in aria). Gradually these begin to take on the appearance of an ordered sequence of discrete scenes, as though borrowed from contemporary opera, each one building towards either an individual (aria) or collective (chorale) response to the preceding narration. Here was ample precedent for dividing up the Gospel narrative into separate ‘acts’. Johann Jacob Bendeler, for example, proposed a division of Matthew’s account into six principal ‘actions’:10 the preparation of the Passion; the Garden (Actus hortus); the Sanhedrin trial (Actus pontífices); the Roman trial (Actus Pilatus); the Crucifixion (Actus crux); the Burial (Actus sepulchrum). Although Bach’s autograph indicates no such clear-cut subdivisions, this may be a helpful way of tracing the Passion’s structural outline – as one would a tragédie lyrique by Bach’s French contemporary, Rameau, one comprising a prologue and five acts, each divided into scenes:i

  Part I

  EXORDIUM

  Chorus: ‘Kommt, ihr Töchter’ No. 1

  PROLOGUE – The preparation of the Passion (Matthew 26:1–29)

  Sc. i Jesus foretells his Crucifixion Nos. 2–3

  Sc. ii The plot to kill Jesus Nos. 4a-4b

  Sc. iii The anointing at Bethany Nos. 4c-6

  Sc. iv Judas’ betrayal Nos. 7–8

  Sc. v The preparation of the Passover Nos. 9a-10

  Sc. vi The Last Supper Nos. 11–13

  ACT I – ACTUS HORTUS – ‘The Garden Act’ (Matthew 26:30–56)

  Sc. i The Mount of Olives I Nos. 14–15

  Sc. ii The Mount of Olives II Nos. 16–17

  Sc. iii Gethsemane: Jesus warns his disciples Nos. 18–20

  Sc. iv The Agony in the Garden I: Jesus’ first appeal to God Nos. 21–3

  Sc. v The Agony in the Garden II: Jesus’ second appeal to God Nos. 24–5

  Sc. vi Jesus’ betrayal and arrest Nos. 26–27a

  Sc. vii The dispersal of the flock Nos. 28–9

  THE SERMON

  Part II

  EXORDIUM

  Aria: ‘Ach! nun ist mein Jesus hin!’ No. 30

  ACT II – ACTUS PONTIFICES – ‘The High Priests’ Act’ (Matthew 26: 57–75)

  Sc. i Jesus before Caiaphas Nos. 31–2

  Sc. ii Deposition by false witnesses Nos. 33–5

  Sc. iii False accusation and mockery Nos. 36a–37

  Sc. iv Peter’s denial Nos. 38a–40

  ACT III – ACTUS PILATUS – ‘Pilate’s Act’ (Matthew 27:1–29)

  Sc. i Judas’ remorse Nos. 41a–42

  Sc. ii Jesus before Pilate Nos. 43–4

  Sc. iii Pilate confronts the mob Nos. 45a–46

  Sc. iv Pilate’s dilemma Nos. 47–9

  Sc. v Pilate succumbs to the mob’s demands Nos. 50a–52

  Sc. vi Jesus’ mock coronation Nos. 53a–54

  ACT IV – ACTUS CRUX – ‘The Act of the Cross’ (Matthew 27:30–50)

  Sc. i Via Dolorosa Nos. 55–7

  Sc. ii Golgotha Nos. 58a–60

  Sc. iii The death of Jesus Nos. 61a–62

  ACT V – ACTUS SEPULCHRUM – ‘The Act of the Sepulchre’ (Matthew 27:51–60)

  Sc. i Earthquake and revelation Nos. 63a–65

  Sc. ii The entombment of Jesus Nos. 66a–66c

  CONCLUSIO

  Recit.: ‘Nun ist der Herr zur Ruh gebracht’ No. 67

  Chorus: ‘Wir setzen uns mit Tränen nieder’ No. 68

  As with Baroque opera, each ‘act’ implies a scene-shift or change of location and a shuffling of the principal players. The individual ‘scenes’ into which Bach appears to divide the five ‘acts’ of Matthew’s narration are of variable length. For example, the purely narrative element in the fourth scene of the Actus Pilatus – the turning-point of Part II, when Jesus’ fate hangs in the balance – is a mere two bars long (No. 47). But for him each ‘scene’ evidently required some punctuation and comment, as though he, as an implicated onlooker, had temporarily to avert his eyes from the action: sufficient time for him – and for us – to ponder its implications. These were the critical junctures at which he enlisted Picander: to gloss the long Passion story with poetic reflections with which the congregation could easily identify, and then to fill those reflections with contemplative music or to round off the scenes with a chorale at moments (there are fourteen in all) when Bach considered a congregational reflection was apposite. In this way his listeners could assent or respond to the feelings expressed by the singer in the previous number by means of reassessing hymns with which they were familiar.

  The type and mood of the contemplative commentary inserted by Picander and set to music by Bach vary enormously, both in tracing the way of the Cross and at the same time in articulating the three stages of Luther’s ‘Meditation on Christ’s Passion’: first, recognition and acknowledgement of sin; second, the growth of faith through love and the unburdening of one’s sins in Christ; and third, seeing Jesus’ Passion as the model for Christian love.11 Thus the opening arioso/aria pairing in Part I – ‘Du lieber Heiland, du’ (No. 5), followed by ‘Buß und Reu’ (No. 6) – establishes the emphasis on guilt not in an abstract way external to the action, but in response to the disciples’ bickering over the ‘waste’ of precious ointment. Even at so early a st
age Bach succeeds in bringing the action and reaction into the present, bolstering the sense of guilt (Buß) and remorse (Reu) by the contours of the aria’s melodic line – short epigrammatic phrases with variable emphases, having little in common with the flutes’ ritornello, indeed giving the impression of being a spontaneous response to it. Bach finds an initial means to impart the crunching (knirscht) of body and spirit that will become such a feature of his Matthew Passion.

  The second aria, ‘Blute nur’ (No. 8), points to the direct connection between Jesus’ innocence and suffering and the way man has been instrumental in his betrayal. It takes up the theme of the sacrificial Lamb of the opening chorus – of innocent blood spilt – and adds to this the image of the serpent suckled at a mother’s breast. The figure of Judas, a leader in the community and a favoured friend of Jesus poised to betray him, is implied, but so are all of us by association. The third interpolation, in total contrast, moves from tears at the prospect of Jesus’ imminent departure (the arioso ‘Wiewohl’, No. 12) to gratitude for the institution of the Eucharist (the aria ‘Ich will dir’, No. 13). Fittingly, it is the only genuinely joyful music in the Passion; it is also overtly sexual in its imagery – the idea of merging or ‘sinking myself into thee.’

  The fourth pairing – ‘O Schmerz’ (No. 19) and ‘Ich will bei meinem Jesus wachen’ (No. 20) – comes at the midpoint of Part I and again is constructed as a dialogue. Responding to Jesus’ injunction at Gethsemane to watch and pray, the tenor stands for the night watchman – observing Jesus’ tortured soul and determined to stay vigilant (just as generations of Bach’s ancestors had done professionally as Türmer). Yet, as the answering soft-voiced chorus makes clear, he is helpless and cannot alleviate the burden of sin, which, Luther insisted, mankind places on Jesus’ shoulders through faith in his resurrection. This imbues it with a mysterious quality, almost as though a muted drama is taking place at a distance from the main action – Christ’s ‘Agony in the Garden’ and his acceptance of his role as Saviour.

  The fifth pair (Nos. 22 and 23), a reaction to Jesus’ agonised appeal to his Father to be spared the cup, voices the believer’s eagerness to participate in Christ’s suffering and to accept Luther’s injunction to follow the way of the Cross. Bitterness and sweetness – of taste and experience – are juxtaposed; but, in accepting to drink from the ‘cup of death’s bitterness’, Jesus renders it sweet and offers it to humanity at large. The aria’s melodic line lurches in intoxicated imitation of the chalice draught: with here a yodel-like upward seventh, there a chain of drunken emphases on a single word (gerne/’gladly’), and a constantly shifting beat swinging across the bar-line, it barely stays within the proprieties of Baroque gracefulness. But it does divert our attention from the banality of Picander’s rhyming couplet, provided, that is, the singer flows through Bach’s crafty hemiolas and ignores the poet’s line-divisions: Gerne will ich mich bequemen, / Kreuz und Becher anzunehmen (‘Gladly will I, fear disdaining, / Drink the cup without complaining’). The B section of the aria irons out some of the earlier inebriated irregularities (apart from des Leidens herbe Schmach / ‘sorrow’s bitter taste’), but throws a fresh challenge to the singer to inflect the melody without losing the overall triple-rhythmed shape and line (see above).

  Square brackets have been added to highlight Bach’s way of swinging the beat across the bars in order to preserve the correct verbal emphasis. (illustration credit 52)

  Part I culminates with the third strategically placed dialogue, ‘So ist mein Jesus nun gefangen’ (No. 27a). Here the cello and bass – the bedrock of the music – are silent, leaving the upper strings as the bassetchen to portray the stumbling and faltering steps of Jesus, nudged and prodded by the armed pressgang all the way from Gethsemane towards the courtroom, where he will shortly face trial by the Sanhedrin. The soprano and alto of Choir 1 join in a desolate lament for the captive (and in so doing indulge in that ‘wrong way to meditate on the Passion’ against which Luther warned), while an eerie conjunction of flute and oboe in mixed pairings enact an obsessive circling overhead like dragonflies. The open texture of the music allows one to pick out the disciples (Choir 2) in the middle distance moving from tree to tree through the darkened olive grove, affronted but impotent, not daring to intervene, but bold enough to voice from time to time their muttered protest – to stop molesting Jesus.

  This bleak, spellbinding tableau runs counter to the Baroque doctrine which allows for only a single Affekt to be portrayed at any one time. Rather than engineer a collision, Bach sets his two unequally constituted ensembles to work on different planes simultaneously, their two Affekts being offset in sophisticated dynamic tension like two separate planets rotating on different trajectories around the same sun. Their opposition is thrown into relief the moment both ensembles, now equal and at full strength, converge and unite to voice the outrage of the whole Christian community at Jesus’ capture: ‘Sind Blitze, sind Donner’ (No. 27b). With its quick-fire exchanges calling on the forces of nature to erupt and destroy Judas and the High Priests’ mob, this is double-choir writing of bristling excitement and power. While it could be said to spring from the Venetian tradition of cori spezzati, no German composer had come up with anything like this since the days of Hans Leo Hassler and Schütz in the previous century. It is characteristic of the amazing vigour and amplitude Bach brings to his double-choir writing even in quite short turba choruses depicting the threat of mob violence (No. 4b), the hideous reality of it (Nos. 45b and 50b), and the cold-blooded mocking of its principal victim (No. 58b).

  Having introduced the preceding dialogue with the words ‘after Jesus’ capture’, Picander, in his printed libretto – which includes none of Matthew’s words (assumed to be familiar) nor any of the chorales except those woven into his verse – ends at this point. One musicologist muses ‘what an enormous effect this savage chorus would have made had it come at the very end of the first part’,12 which is certainly true; ending Don Giovanni at the conclusion of the banqueting scene might have had (and can have) a similar effect. But this is not a ‘curtain’ as in real staged opera, and I doubt whether Bach would have been seriously tempted to conclude Part I in this way. In the church cantatas he composed in Leipzig, and indeed in his John Passion, his usual practice was to end with a prayer – a chorale to focus the mind on all that has happened so far – and that is exactly what he does here. Besides, there was an extended speech by Jesus at this juncture in response to a physical intervention by his disciples (the incident of Peter and Malchus’ ear), after which Matthew concludes with the line ‘Then all the disciples forsook him and fled.’ If Bach had even momentarily wavered from setting this line at the conclusion of Part I, the preacher would surely have brought him quickly to order, for that might often have constituted his sermon text – the scattering of the flock.j Bach’s initial musical bridge to the sermon was a straightforward harmonisation of the chorale ‘Jesum lass ich nicht von mir’. When he came to revise and copy out the score in the mid 1730s, he must have seen that this fell a long way short of balancing the structural mass of his opening chorus after the emphatic double-choir movement ‘Sind Blitze, sind Donner’. Now came the decision to replace it with the far more elaborate chorale fantasia, a setting of Sebald Heyden’s Passiontide hymn ‘O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde groß’ (No. 29). A matching pillar to the grand chorale prologue was now in place, and as a conclusion to Part I it provided the ideal meditative opportunity for the Christian community to unite in contrition, drawing out Luther’s meaning of the Passion story and acting as a direct response to Jesus’ last words about ‘fulfilling’ the Scriptures. Outwardly the ‘fit’ seems perfect and is confirmed by little details such as the fluttering semiquavers in the flutes to illustrate the scattering of the flock. Just at the point where the preacher mounts the pulpit stair, the ‘flock’ disappears from view as the music trails off into the ether. Bach’s tact on this occasion ensures a seamless join to the Good Friday sermon.

  For years e
very scholar assumed this chorus to be an integral part of the Matthew Passion, yet it was in fact skilfully shoe-horned into it nine years after its first performance, having originated – at the very least – some ten years before that. There is nothing intrinsically odd about his desire to find a new home for one of the grandest and most impressive of his chorale fantasias, one that would be validated in its new position. Not many of us are disturbed, for example, by the frequent side-by-side placing in the B minor Mass of movements whose provenance is separated by thirty years or more (as we shall see in Chapter 13). Nonetheless, despite the details that suggest its appropriateness here, in the context of the Matthew Passion, where the music in its variety of forms is of phenomenal stylistic coherence, this chorale fantasia draws attention to itself. Each time I conduct the Passion I sense a structural shift at this point, a momentary change of gears: it lasts only a few seconds and then all is well again.k

  With the resumption of music after the sermon, it takes a second or two to realise where we have got to in the story. Superficially nothing appears to have changed. The scene is still Gethsemane, now after nightfall. The Daughter of Zion is found distractedly searching for her captured lover, though Jesus, bound hand and foot, has long since gone, taken to face trial in front of the High Priests. To understand why this allegorical figure is re-introduced at this point by Bach and Picander, we need to remind ourselves of the huge appeal to their audiences of the imagery of the Song of Songs and the vigour of the tradition (which goes back to Origen in the first half of the third century AD) by which the male and female spouses symbolise Christ and the Christian soul. The palpably erotic language of the Song of Songs had long been legitimised by the Roman church, was adopted enthusiastically by the Protestant reformers in the guise of an unio mystica, and had been extremely popular with composers for the past 150 years in both Italy and Germany (see this page and this page). The Daughter of Zion equates with the bride of Christ and symbol of the Christian church, while the soul (anima) passionately yearns for union with Christ. The day of their wedding is the first day of Christ’s Passion – the day on which he demonstrated his willingness to become the sacrificial offering in atonement for man’s sins. This is why the Daughter of Zion figures in the prologue to both parts of the Matthew Passion: so that the contemporary believer could grasp that his own thwarted love for the suffering figure of Jesus is his lot or fortune (sein Glück). The dialogue movements (which are strategically placed throughout the Matthew Passion) articulate this perceived need for a coherent relationship to Christ, even if it means losing him now to regain him later in another form. So, in this new exordium (No. 30), the role of the second chorus questioning the distraught bride in words borrowed from the Song of Songs (6:1) – ‘Whither is thy beloved gone, O thou fairest among women?’ – is to proffer comfort on behalf of the community of believers. Their music is madrigalian, light and amiable in contrast with the sobbing anguish of the alto soloist’s reference to her ‘lamb [caught] in a tiger’s claws’. Again, Bach has found a clever way of combining dual Affekts of drastically different character, yet linked by an identical dance metre in triple time.l