Thursday 27 December 2012

It's not the Messiah: Christmas Oratorio- Part Two, the Second Day of Christmas

A pastoral symphony portrays shepherds watching their flocks; an angel appears, telling them not to be afraid; a jubilant heavenly chorus sings “Glory to God in the highest”. Anyone who’s been near a concert hall over Christmas might well be humming Handel at this point. But given that the name of this blog is A Year With Bach, it’s a fairly safe bet that we’re still in Leipzig and revelling in the Christmas Oratorio- day two, for December 26, 1734 (Day three will follow shortly. Is that a threat?). Bach’s depiction of the angel’s message to the shepherds is subtly different to Handel’s; possibly less purely serene and celestial, but ultimately more subtle and true to the paradoxical mixing of heaven and earth in the Christmas story.

We start with that familiar Messiah moment; a lilting triple-time string melody conveying the serenity of flocks grazing on winter hillsides. But Bach’s version has more harmonic tension than Handel’s pastoral symphony- clearly these shepherds are going somewhere. And the instrumentation is subtly different too; Bach specifies oboi da caccia, literally hunting oboes, with a broader, slightly coarser tone than the refined standard instruments. They have all the resonances of the pifa- the rustic reed instrument like a shawm that shepherds are stereotypically supposed to have used. And, just like in the Messiah, a sudden moment of cinematic transition takes us from serenity to shock as the angel appears. Interestingly, it’s not the angel who takes the lead in comforting the shepherds’ fear; rather, it’s the voice of the worshipping community in the chorale. They reach out across the ages and declare that the news is “unser Trost und Freude”- our trust and joy, for a community of faith that extends from first century shepherds in Palestine all the way to eighteenth-century German townspeople.

And this breaking down of temporal barriers carries on in the bass’s recitative that follows. Bach and his unknown librettist reach back a thousand years further into the past, and tie the first century shepherds’ experience to that of Abraham- a shepherd too, and one who heard an unexpected message that reached across boundaries of time and space. The tenor aria that follows us calls us all to be frohe Hirten- joyful shepherds; and The bass recitative that follows directly identifies the “gesamte Chor”, the full choir, with the shepherds and calls them to worship. But it’s not so much that the shepherds are being depicted by the choir. They aren’t- the next aria is a solo and as we’ve seen,  the characteristic shorthand for the shepherds is those bleating oboi da caccia. It makes more sense to turn the identification round- the choir, as members and representatives of the congregation, are being called to the role of shepherds again. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter that Bach’s congregation in urban Leipzig probably didn’t see a sheep from week to week any more than I do. The call- to calm your fear, refresh yourself, rejoice, worship- is the same for all the hearers in all places and times.

The alto lullaby that follows intriguingly calls on the Christ-child to share the good things about being human. The refreshment that a few lines earlier was being offered to the people listening is offered to the sleeping baby: “Labe die Brust, empfinde die Lust, wo wir unser Herz erfreuen”- “refresh your breast, experience the joy, there where we make our hearts joyful”.  It’s an unusual theological point; that the gift of humanity is being bestowed on Christ, and this is something for him to rejoice in too. “Lo, he abhors not the Virgin’s womb”, that slightly obscure line from the unavoidable carol O Come All Ye Faithful, has its point made clearer here; it’s good to be human. Christ becoming human is a source of joy for all, even the poor baby in the middle of it all who has to put up with it.

Finally, after the shepherds’ lullaby is completed, we’re woken up with a bang. At last we return to the familiar narrative and the heavenly host turns up. The three-fold message- glory in heaven, peace on earth, good will to men- is perfectly depicted in the three musical segments of the next chorus; exalted upper register fanfares, falling motifs and then a return to the heights with an even more marvellous fugal section depicting the working-out of the good-will. The bass soloist addresses the chorus, no longer shepherds, as Ihr Engel- you angels; and the final chorale alternates the rustic oboes on earth with the ecstatic heavenly host. In Handel’s Messiah at this point, the angels float away in a charming diminuendo; for Bach, this only happens once shepherds and angels have joined together in praise. Unity is achieved between heaven and earth; and the end is peace, as the shepherd’s pipes gently die away.


Christmas Liebestod- Christmas Oratorio, Day 1

Christmas Day- Christmas Oratorio, Part 1

Rejoice! Advent has passed. Suddenly we hear something different. A totally new tone of suppressed excitement and simple, unalloyed excitement- and the chorus impatiently cuts off the elegant line of the trumpet’s fanfare to shout with unharmonised roughness- Jauchzet! Be joyful! Even then, the lines can’t restrain themselves from flowing into one another- the last syllable of getan on Ruhmet was heute das Hoechste getan ("Praise what the Highest has done today") melts into the flowing fugue of Lasset das Zagen ("Set aside fear"). Something too exciting for the ordinary language of musical word-painting is happening; for a moment, there's a harmonic crunch on Klage ("lamentation"), but it's swept aside. Similarly, the middle section of  returns us to a cerebral, considered Bach we thought we knew from the Advent cantatas. But it's all punched away by a return to the unison command- Jauchzet!

And the differences continue. The next movement isn't just a tenor recitative like in the other cantatas we've looked at so far; rather, the tenor's an Evangelist; less impassioned, sticking to the Scriptural text, but with a noble austerity. It takes the entry of the richly accompanied alto recitative to bring emotion to us on a passionate operatic scale. Just as in any other opera of Bach's time, the recitative sets out the narrative logic and facts behind the emotion- "Now shall my beloved Bridegroom be born"; the aria that follows enables us to inhabit the emotion and drink it in. Time stops and we are able to feel the bosom-heaving desire for the Bridegroom Christ; I do no justice to the flirtatious sensuality of the music simply by quoting the words Eile den Braeutigam sehnlichtst zu lieben- "Hurry to love the Bridegroom ardently". You have to listen to it and feel the heartbeat of the lover quickening.

But this isn't opera. This isn't some accompaniment to an overheated boudoir scene. Perhaps you, like me, can imagine a buxom singer-actress winking and flirting with an audience on the cheeky gaps after the words "Den Schoensten, den Lieben"- "the most beautiful, the lovely". Easy, tigers. This music would probably have been sung by a boy with an unbroken voice from a gallery where he would have been all but invisible to the congregation (who were definitely not an audience). So why write such passionate music, and set it to a libretto that drips with sexuality?  It's all in the Bible, I'm afraid. All the imagery comes from the Song of Solomon. That journey of self-preparation, of preening yourself for the arrival of your dream lover, and of eventual uniting in ecstasy are part of the rich centuries-old metaphor of Christ as Bridegroom and the Church as Bride. Bach, in his genius, has gone even further and made the Church an operatic character as passionate as any heroine.

But that's not the end of it. For any good Lutheran, the voice of the Church is found in its congregation, and in particular through the chorale. And the chorale that follows is indeed a love song. It's a secular tune used for centuries before Bach for a harmless little love ditty, Herzlich mich thut verlangen. It means more or less “I mourn for you passionately”; and the words set to it here resonate with that, asking “How shall I receive thee and how shall I encounter thee, Desired One of all the world?”. But there’s another darker side to this love. By 1734, when Bach wrote the Christmas Oratorio, Bach had used this tune as the heart of the St Matthew Passion- the chorale O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden. It’s a Liebestod a century before Wagner; a mingling of present passionate longing and the certainty that the love will culminate in agonized death. And by combining those two concepts in a chorale, Bach is allowing every member of the congregation who heard it on Christmas Day in 1734 to share in a bitter-sweet mixture of emotion worthy of Wagner’s Isolde.

And after another simple, noble declamation of the scripture for today from the Evangelist- “And she brought forth her first-born son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger because there was no room at the inn…” the solo recitative of the bass and the soprano chorale melody wrap around one another in a dance of indescribable beauty- so I won’t even try. (This is a problem I fear I may increasingly have- Bach’s music is just too good for words…) All I’ll point out is the the conclusion- the bass’s declaration of the form Christ’s love took (“So he will himself be born as man”) leads directly to the chorale’s Kyrieleis. The individual’s recognition of Jesus’s love leads to the communal, confident plea for mercy.

And the bass gives us a glorious depiction of the paradox of Christmas. His swaggering aria is in an almost martial duple time, with courtly flourishes from the strings and the brass. But the words deflate this depiction of secular power- O wie wenig achtest du der Erden Pracht- “O how little do you esteem earthly power!”. All this pomp and ceremony is for an ultimately powerless baby in poverty at the heart of a hostile regime, who only has a harten Krippen- a hard manger- to sleep on. And this irony is brought out by the fact that much of the music for this section is taken from an earlier, secular cantata named Toenet, ihr Pauken. It celebrated one of Bach’s princeling employers. But by reappropriating the music for Christmas and the birth of that baby, Bach himself is turning upside down the idea of secular power. We end the cantata with the last chorale, accompanied by the full glory of the orchestra- but muted (particularly well done in Harry Christophers’s recording with the Sixteen). I think quiet, sustained grandeur works well at this point, especially when  the chorale’s words are almost verging on baby-talk:“Ach mein herzliebes Jesulein, Mach dir ein rein sanft Bettelein”- Ah, my darling little Jesus, make yourself a clean safe little bed” doesn’t get the child-like feel of the repeated diminutives ending in –lein. (Perhaps “Jesusy-Weesusy” and “beddy-wed” might do it. Or perhaps not.)

We’ve just seen the first act in a monumental new work, superficially similar to the cantatas, but moving their idiom closer to that of opera. But it’s an opera where the congregation are themselves represented through the singing of the chorales, as sacramentally and effectually as Christ was present for them under forms of bread and wine. The congregation, with Joseph and Mary and the Christ child are crucial characters here. On Christmas Day, Bach tells them to rejoice; and they rejoice as figures in a divine work of art.


Sunday 23 December 2012

Rocks in the head- Cantata for the fourth Sunday of Advent, Bereitet die Wege, bereitet die Bahn!

“And what do you do?” Apparently it's the question the Queen tends to ask her nervous subjects when opening the latest motorway flyover or widget factory. Everyone's heard it at a party- a safe way to cut through the conversational permafrost that builds up if the host has been too stingy with the gin. I'm a troublesome sort of sociopath, and I like to answer along the lines of “I eat, I walk around, I sometimes talk to people...”. Just watch their faces as they put you down in the Clearly Mad category. But it is quite ridiculous to equate what someone does for most of their life with who they are. Otherwise parties would be full of people saying “Oh! You sleep too! I do quite a lot of that myself- I'm hoping to turn professional...”

All this is a roundabout way of getting to the theme of this week's cantata. We need to clear some rocks from our mental pathways to answer the most crucial question of our life- “Who are you?”(closely followed by “What are you doing here?” and “Where is this bloody bus anyway?”). Unusually, we're plunged right into an aria from the beginning; a clarion soprano tells us to “clear the road, clear the way!”. The command is backed up by swinging orchestral ritornelli. It must have got the court of Weimar tapping their silver-buckled shoes- rather like Charles II of England, who could never abide music which he couldn't tap his foot to. The oboe struts its stuff, and the scoring gets richer and more complex until the line “Messias kömmt an”- the Anointed One comes. Suddenly, all the orchestra falls away to leave the soloist hanging in the air like a herald at a ballroom- which suddenly falls silent at the arrival of a scandalous guest. But the shock doesn't last long, and with a flourish the aria returns to the beginning and the dance begins again.

So far, so Advent- it all fits with the Old Testament command to prepare the way of the Lord, make his path straight, look busy etc. But here it's given a new twist. Rather than a social revolution, the call is to an internal turn-around and spring-clean. It chimes in with the themes of Pietism- roughly speaking, a movement that was present in the German states towards deeper spiritual devotion and mysticism and away from rationalism. Bach's librettist for this cantata, Salomon Franck, certainly had pietist tendencies; lines like “Machet die Stege im Glauben und Leben dem Höchsten ganz eben”- “make the flagstones in your faith and life completely even” certainly fit in with this focus on inward reform.

But Pietism wasn't just about ignoring the world in favour of achieving internal spiritual ecstasies. In fact, in Bach's time Pietists founded hospitals and orphanages across Germany. And the cantata sternly declaims in the tenor recitative that follows:

So müssen Herz und Mund den Heiland frei bekennen.
Ja, Mensch, dein ganzes Leben
Muß von dem Glauben Zeugnis geben!

(“So must heart and mouth freely acknowledge the Saviour; yes, O Man, your whole live must give witness to your faith!”.) And when he calls on us to roll away the “schweren Sündensteine”- the heavy stones of sin- then we can hear in the lumbering, rolling bass line quite how heavy and resistant to being pushed around these spiritual boulders are.

And it's a theme that Bach returned to exactly a year later, in 1716. In the opening chorus of his cantata BWV 147- again written for the fourth Sunday of Advent at Weimar- he set the very similar words:

Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben
Muß von Christo Zeugnis geben”
(“Heart and mouth and deed and life
must give witness to Christ”.)

So clearly we're dealing with a subject that resonated with Bach- the total integration of human existence, with one purpose alone and one identity as a Christian. And that theme of integration and identity leads us straight into the bass aria. “Wer bist du?”, it starts. Who are you, indeed? As a whole, how does your life show the identity you want? But this isn't a journey towards self-discovery in a fluffy, going-to-Thailand-on-a-gap-year sense. For Bach and his librettist, the process is a shocking and saddening one. There's a wonderful harmonic sag on the words “Ein Kind des Zorns in Satans Netze” -a child of wrath, in Satan's nets”. It feels like the stone tower of self-regard that sustains us is starting to collapse.

And it won't do you any good to point to what good Lutherans you are, warns the alto recitative that follows.  We know that on that particular Sunday, Bach's congregation would have heard a portion of the story of John the Baptist earlier in the service; and the resonance with this section is clear. Just as John the Baptist called the Pharisees (who had rather pompously pointed out that they happened to be descended from Abraham) a nest of vipers, the alto recitative gives a picture of baptism as a Taufbund- a baptismal contract- where the recipients have failed to live up to their side of the bargain. It's not comfortable listening- indeed, a strict rationalist Lutheran of the time might say that it verges on heresy. But Bach pushes us to the edge of despair in order to show the depth of redemption

The only path left is for the soloist, once again, to sing Erbarme dich- have mercy- in a tiny prefiguring of the great desolate alto aria of the St Matthew Passion. And then at last the hope arrives- the violin melody flows over the top of the final redemptive aria like an endless stream of cleansing water.

We're left with the strange and disturbing request in the final chorale: “Ertöt uns durch deine Güte, Erweck uns durch deine Gnad!”. "Slay us in your goodness, wake us through your grace”. The demolition of all the stones of the old person might seem like a death. But only once all that rubble has been cleared from the soul's path, can we give a true answer to the question at the heart of the cantata and of all of us: “Who are you?”.


Monday 17 December 2012

Ärgre dich, o Seele, nicht- Cantata for the Third Sunday of Advent, BWV 186(a)

Light in darkness- with a touch of over-eating. We're coming into that strange turning point of the year. The earliest sunset has already passed; but in defiance of that hope the days still shorten. So for this week, Bach gives us a meditation on concealed light. Well, mostly. Although Bach originally composed the cantata for performance in Weimar in December 1716, we only have it in its revised form which he re-used in Leipzig in 11 July 1723 where the topic of preaching was to be the feeding of the five thousand. Hence there's a slight dissonance between the new, slightly food-obsessed recitatives written for a Sunday in July, and the the older arias on the theme of light in darkness. To avoid indigestion, I'll concentrate on the Advent arias, and skip over the recitatives.

The opening chorus is gentle and muted, especially in Ton Koopman's recording, which I found displays all his usual qualities- subtle, carefully crafted and possibly a tiny bit unexciting. There's a lovely bittersweet call-and-response figure as the upper parts sing “Ärgre dich nicht” - "do not be concerned" on a descending phrase a minor sixth apart:



(Bars 28-30, soprano and alto parts)

...which is transformed from slightly melancholy falling comfort into rising hope when the tenors and basses sing the same words in the subsequent bars:


                                                                                         (Bars 31-32, tenor and bass parts)

But overall, the tone of the opening chorus is summed up by the line“Der allerhoechste Licht... sich in Knechtsgestalt verhuellt”- The all-highest light hides himself in servanthood. It's that time of year when the sun of righteousness only shines for a few hours a day.
The bass aria that follows in the original version of the cantata continues the theme of comfort, but for a new, very modern sort of angst. The believer's internal doubts don't stem from a sense of his sinfulness. Here, the source of spiritual pain is Vernunft- reason, rationality; call it what you like, the spirit of the age that flowered into the Enlightenment. The soloist, accompanied by the slightly archaic sounds of a viola da gamba, calls the listener back to the old, comforting philosophy of a Lutheranism that rooted itself in familiarity with the German Bible: “Laß Vernunft dich nicht bestricken. Deinen Helfer, Jakobs Licht, Kannst du in der Schrift erblicken.”: Let reason not beguile you; you can see your your helper, the light of Jacob, in Scripture. It's a interesting message for a conservative like Bach's librettist, Salomon Franck, to write for his masters at the court at Weimar; a prod in their wealth and intellectual self-confidence. But Bach makes the message a matter of comfort, not rebuke, with another one of those beautiful calming bass arias in triple time like Mache dir, mein seele, rein at the end of the St Matthew Passion. The father of the prodigal son is reassuring, not angry.

The words for the tenor's aria betray the fact that the cantata was polished up for non-Advent use: the Leipzig version heard on all the recordings starts “Mein Heiland läßt sich merken in seinen Gnadenwerken”- my Saviour lets himself be seen in his acts of grace. But Franck's words originally started with Messias- “The Messiah lets himself be seen”, pointing towards the original and ultimate act of grace in the impending Incarnation. Personally, I think the original works slightly better, but I'm not going to argue with Bach's changes.

And this focus on the person of the Messiah leads us into the real emotional heart of the piece- a gorgeous duet for soprano and alto, locked together in a close and intimate gigue. “Laß, Seele, kein Leiden Von Jesu dich scheiden, Sei, Seele, getreu!”- Soul, let no pain separate you from Jesus, be faithful, Soul!”. Those two voices winding their way around each other might represent the unity of Christ and the soul in an eternal dance of love. Matoko Sakurada and Robin Blaze are positively ecstatic here in the recording conducted by Masaaki Suzuki with the Bach Collegium Japan. As Christmas approaches, it's always good to combine courtly dignity with a touch of red-hot passion.

Monday 10 December 2012

Wachet! Betet! Betet! Wachet!- Cantata for the Second Sunday of Advent

Sometimes Bach's message is subtle and obscure. Sometimes he stands at the end of your bed shouting “Oi! Get up, you lazy heretic!”. That was my experience yesterday. I had overslept, but was woken up by the opening chorus of this week's cantata on BBC Radio 3. Brass, strings and chorus hammered the words “Wake! Pray! Pray! Wake! PrayWakePrayWakePray” etc into my ears. Sometimes you can't argue with the greatest musical genius the world has ever seen, so I did as I was told and hauled myself into the shower.

After doing the waking-up thing (and indeed the praying thing), I had another listen. It's a two part cantata, extended for its second performance in Weimar. I apologise for concentrating on the first part alone, but I think it has both the meat of the message and the best music. The opening is a wonder. The music rises through the keys, building up more and more harmonic tension- then, just when you think it's going to release, Bach leaves us teetering on the edge of the cliff. Handel does a very similar thing with the opening of the coronation anthem Zadok the Priest- and the delayed choral entry here is just as exciting. A rising figure on “Wachet!”- “Awake!”, appropriately enough, is mirrored by a calmer “Betet”- “pray”. But the intensity is maintained. John Eliot Gardiner's recording from his 2000 Bach Cantata Pilgrimage puts a crescendo on Betet , making it all the more exciting. The words of command dance from one side of the choir to the other in a stereo effect that makes it all the more riveting. But amidst the fireworks, there's an unnerving line- “Bis der Herr der Herrlichkeit dieser Welt ein Ende Machet”- “until the Lord of Lordliness makes an end of this world”. There's no time to reflect on that abrupt shift (which is backed up by a quick darkening of the harmony); we're immediately back to the beginning of the chorus.

But the theme of the End Times grows ever stronger. After the first chorus, the bass soloist crashes in with “Erschrecket!”- “Be afraid!”. But there's more than just terror here. There are two sides of the Day of Judgement. Firstly, the tumults of earthly powers being overthrown: Bach depicts that brilliantly in with the earthquake-like tremors in the bass line and the rushing motifs from the strings. But the other side of judgement is consolation, the hope for freedom. The nineteenth-century slave spiritual Steal Away tells us that “the trumpet sounds within my soul”. No terror there, just a hope of vindication. So Bach sets Freude in the phrase “Ist er ein Anfang wahrer Freude”- “it is the beginning of true joy” to an overflowing melisma of joy. And the section leads with a gentle trumpet call fading into the distance, to the alto's wish to depart “from the Egypt of this world”.

But here we see an interesting shift. Rather than talking solely about slavery imposed by earthly aggressors, the libretto starts to focus on an internal slavery- mind-forged manacles, as William Blake has it. The alto aria calls us: “Wacht, Seelen, auf von Sicherheit”- “wake up, souls, out of your security”. It's an interesting image. Usually security is seen as a good thing, but here it's talking about the complacent satisfaction that can chain the soul in slavery to itself.

And I think this concept of self-slavery is at the root of the cantata. The tenor recitative that follows laments the eternal cry of the lazy would-be do-gooder- the spirit is willing, yet the flesh is weak. But all that can result from this is ein jammervolles Ach!- a sorrowful Alas! It's all the more painful as the soul realises its agony is caused by its own internal conflicts.

Yet Bach has a remedy for the dualism of body and soul that causes that Ach. It's summed up in the very first line of the cantata: awake, to activity; then pray. Praying without activity leads to nothing more than an ever- more gorgeous series of interior mental states; activity without prayer becomes exhausted. Only a proper integration of external and internal activity can lead to unity. Those ever-more interlaced and overlapping commands in the first chorus, “WachetBetetWachetBetet” are not just a diverting bit of musical-showing off; they express a soul-reviving truth.

Sunday 2 December 2012

Cantata for the First Sunday of Advent- Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland (second setting, BWV 62)


Now as the world starts to freeze, we make up for it with bursts of excess. Here we see Bach pointing the way to Christmas with flashes of intense beauty and vigorous theatricality. On 3 December 1724, as the Leipzig sun rose behind the windows of St Thomas's, it must have given his congregation a kick in their Sunday morning sleepiness. The long sequence of Sundays after Trinity has ended; the liturgical year has turned. On we go!

We start off with a hard-driven chorus. Underneath the string figures that descend like birds of prey on a fieldmouse, the bass line booms out a stern elongated melody. Even without the words, the congregation would have recognised it as the opening line of one of Martin Luther's own chorales- “Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland”- “Now come, Saviour of the Nations”, itself a translation and musical adaptation of the ancient Advent plainchant hymn Veni Redemptor Gentium. This is music that had been at the heart of German worship for centuries, and always at this very time of year. Almost as a confirmation- “yes, it is really that one”- the oboes take up the unmistakable tune at a quicker speed; the anticipation heightens as the lower voices begin to sing the words, but not yet to the tune- and at last, the trebles soar above the whole array with words and music united in their most resonant, familiar form. It's a moment of brilliant release. At last, “not yet” gives way to “now”. And the pattern repeats itself; the melody is heard rising through all the parts four times, until the last moment of the chorus, just after the oboes have again sounded the fanfare- it stops. It's a masterpiece of misdirection: “not yet”.is here to stay, at least for the next few weeks of Advent. We must look forward still.

What do we have to look forward to? We all know that Christmas is coming, and the tenor aria that follows gives us a view of the astounding plenitude of that gift. On the words Der höchste Beherrscher erscheinet der Welt”- the highest Ruler appears to the world- there's a wonderful flowing arabesque line, and the second section gives us a beautiful swinging triple-time lilt when it talks about the treasures of heaven and divine Manna. It's a long aria, and it's always nice to think about what Christmas presents we're getting.

But we're not there yet. And the bass recitative and aria that follow show us that the presents have to be earned. We're in a heroic, operatic mode here: a quick declamatory recitative addresses Christ as “Held aus Juda”- the hero from Judah. The resonances are with Judas Maccabeus, the 2nd century B.C. Jewish rebel. He's described in the Apocrypha of the Bible as a general all-round freedom fighter against the forces of Greek imperialism. And the aria that follows is absolutely in the spirit of Handel's oratorio Judas Maccabeus- exciting, dynamic, dramatic, and ever so slightly clunking if you're not careful with the performance.

The orchestra plays in unison under the bass's voice- no filigree string figuration here. And the words are essentially a call to war. Christ isn't adored as passive weeping sufferer here, condemned to be emptied out in flesh for the pain of humanity. We address him as the super-hero, enfleshed to make man stronger than he's ever been. “Streite, siege, starker Held! Sei vor uns im Fleische kräftig!”- Fight and win, strong hero! Be strong in flesh for us!” It reminds me of the amazing Norman font at Eardisley in Herefordshire, carved by unknown masters six hundred years before Bach's time. There, Christ bodily rips the figure of the sinner out of the knots of Hell with a weight-lifter's thrust of the quadriceps. Here, the struggle is depicted in a hard, but triumphant pattern of fast semiquaver turns, gradually fighting higher and higher.

You're coming with me, mate! (Carving on the font at Eardisley Church, Herefordshire, c. 1160)
We're left with a two tantalisingly brief movements to end, rather like a “coming next week” trailer. First there's a soprano-alto duet that lasts barely a minute; then half a verse of chorale to finish with a threefold shout of praise. They're a moment of extraordinary beauty that sparks interest, but is a little unsatisfying in itself: like a tiny box of incense given to a royal baby before he comes into his Kingdom.

(A note: Bach had already written another cantata in around 1716 with this title for the first Sunday of Advent, which has the catalogue number BWV 61. The general consensus seems to be that it's more satisfying than BWV 62. But who wants to be completely full up by the first week of December?)

Wednesday 28 November 2012

Cantata for the Twenty-Fifth Sunday after Trinity- Du Friedefürst, Herr Jesu Christ


G sharp minor isn't a friendly key to play in at the best of times. With its four sharps and a double-sharp, it's the musical equivalent of picking over barbed wire. In Bach's day, it would have been even more painful. The tuning systems that were used made nice friendly keys like C major and G major sound even more rich and in tune than they do today. But the pay-back was that if you played in remote keys with more than a few sharps and flats, the effect was unnerving at best- and at worst like having pins driven into your forehead. This necessarily wasn't considered a bad thing. Bach's generation liked to keep the characters of the individual keys, without smoothing them all out like modern tuning systems (A much more technical explanation of this is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_temperament) . And so when you hear a sudden chord of G sharp minor played on instruments of Bach's time, it shoots right through you.

And unbalanced discord shooting through harmonious relationship is precisely what this week's cantata is all about. It all starts off very solidly and almost pompously. A stately opening chorus, with fanfare-like interjections for the “Friedefürst”- the Prince of Peace- ends with a solid, confident declaration: “D'rum wir allein in Namen dein Zu deinen Vater schreien”. It's a common enough sentiment in Lutheran theology: only through Jesus' name do we call to the Father. And the word “schreien” resolves downwards in a confident A major chord.

But the second movement tears this apart- it's a direct criticism of the first movement's confidence. We start with the repeated word “Ach!” from the alto.Ach” is a remarkable word. It's not just a cry of pain, despite the resemblance to “ouch” in English; it literally means pain. The only words that the singer can express are “pain, pain, pain”. Bach's vision is terrifying. This is the cry we make to the Father through Jesus: not confident Lutheran foursquare chorale singing, but weeping with pain. When we finally get to some more actual words in the rest of the line, ironically they can only emphasise the inarticulacy of the tormented soul: “Unaussprechlich ist die Not”: the agony is indescribable, and all that can be expressed is agony itself.

Here is the alto's “Ach!”. Instead of a solid, falling resolution like at the end of the first movement, it rises up, un-grounded and uncertain:


Du Friedefürst, second movement, bars 11-15

And if we look more closely, we see it's sung to two jagged fragments of the movement's opening melody. It's almost as if the singer is too overwhelmed with the pain to complete the lyrical line- a musical depiction of angst that is unaussprechlich, fear of sin combining with fear of God to break the song into pieces.



Du Friedefürst, second movement, bars 1-4 (keyboard reduction)

With the third movement's brief recitative link for the tenor, we begin the fourth movement with an unsettling thought: we can scarcely cry to the Father through Christ if he turns away from us. But here we are taken from uncertainty into a new sublime sound-world, one very rare even for Bach: a terzett or trio of voices, the soprano, tenor and basses weaving round each other hypnotically. Only the yearning of the cello underneath reminds us of the pain of the previous movement, as the three voices repeat the phrase “wir bekennen unsre Schuld, wir bekennen” again and again- “we confess our guilt, we confess”; and there's a lovely thinning of the textures as the voices sing “wir... bitten nichts als um Geduld”- we ask for nothing but patience.

Yet the outside world crashes back in. The next alto ario takes us from E major to F sharp minor, and then on the words “die scharfen Ruthen”- the harsh rod- we have a chord of the dreaded G sharp minor (with an added F sharp for extra spice):
It's the very edge of usability in the tuning system that Bach would have used. And although we return to a more tuneful A major by the end of the recitative to lead into a muted chorale, the cantata as a whole still seems a strange and unsettled.

What is going on? Well, one suggestion is that Bach isn't only on the edge of tuneful harmony in the music. In the words, he and his librettist are flirting with a controversial theological doctrine that some people think is on the edge of heresy. The key words are in the wonderful serene trio: “Es brach ja dein erbarmend Herz, Als der Gefallnen Schmerz Dich zu uns in die Welt getrieben”. “Your merciful heart yielded, for the pain of the fallen drove you to us in the world.”. This is actually dangerous stuff; it suggests that within the eternal and unsuffering Trinity, the pain of a fallen world reached all the way up to the Godhead. It may be heretical, but it explains why at the heart of this cantata there is a moment of stillness- a trinity of voices, dancing round each other- which is suddenly interrupted when we are thrown back to a world of pain. Bach's music follows the journey of God's Son to a world of anguish. And it's appropriate that in journeying from heavenly harmony to the moment of the deepest earthly discord, we reach a key with four sharps and a double-sharp. For the German word for a sharp is kreuz- a cross. Only there do we see the Friedefürst, the prince of peace.


Sunday 18 November 2012

Ach, wie Fluechtig, ach wie Nichtig- Cantata for the 24th Sunday after Trinity

Bach goes all urban on Baroque good manners
The year accelerates toward its end. The few mocking green leaves tease us: it can't really be December in less than two weeks' time! Our human instinct to delineate time just serves to increase our anxieties. Now it's November, what has happened to all the plans we made in May? How transitory and meaningless it all is- or “Wie fluechtig! Wie nichtig!” as Bach set it for this week in 1724.

And how he set it. Just like last week, the first movement is a fantasia on the basic chorale tune. But this is miles away from the pleasant swinging hummability of last week's meditation on child-like friendship. Instead, we have two musical worlds violently colliding. The treble voices sing the chorale melody, and the orchestra supports them with exciting rising and falling scales, giving an impression of instability and tension. That, on its own, would make it beautiful and exciting, and all within the bounds of good taste and civilisation. But the lower voices of the choir break free at the end of the line. Altos, tenors and basses sing in blatant unison: “Ach, wie fluechtig! Ach, wie nichtig!”- and continue to offer their blaring commentary throughout the chorus.

Having almost the whole choir singing in unison octaves is rare in this sort of music- it overbalances the structure and makes the line stick out, rather like an graffiti in day-glo colours on a beautiful Baroque facade. To me, it feels like a commentary on the piece itself- a piece of self-criticism that strains at the edge of the music. How transitory and vain even this sort of human skill is in the face of eternity, it says. In a neat palindromic pun, what we think of as life (Leben) is declared to be nothing more than mist (Nebel). Like mist, human endeavour suddenly appears and just as suddenly it goes again:- “Wie ein Nebel bald entstehet / Und auch wieder bald vergehet”.

So the cantata is paradoxically denying the value of human skill- while using that skill to create a masterpiece. It's a fascinating tension. As human beings, can we acknowledge that we are always falling away from perfection physically and mentally?And at the same time use our imperfect powers confidently to strive for something better?

The second movement is all about- well, movement. The flow of semiquavers is almost ceaseless, passing from the lovely flutes to the tenor soloist, who sings that “as quickly as rushing water flies, so the days of our life hasten”. All the while, repeated notes in the bass serve to build up the tension. It doesn't start off despondent; but the darkness grows in the middle section of the aria, and we hear a wonderful depiction of the hours falling away like individual water-drops separating (“Wie sich die Tropfen ploetzlich teilen”). Are they raindrops, or tear-drops? It hardly seems to matter:“Alles in Abgrund schießt”- it all falls into the abyss. And when we return to the initial theme at the beginning, that unstoppable flow of time that we found beautiful before seems more ominous...

The flow of notes continues into the third movement, a little recitative for the alto, who starts singing about Freude- joy- but it is suddenly stopped by the word “Traurigkeit”- happiness turns into sadness. All the virtuosic exuberance is turned into a bare and stark sentence- knowledge, all human writings, everything ends up in the grave. The majority of Bach's cantatas are now dust- never to be heard again.

And the picture gets darker. The bass aria returns to the virtuosic flow when describing “irdische Schaetze”- earthly treasures. But instead of the carefree song we heard from the tenor, here the process of collapse seems to be a dark mocking inevitability, accompanied by sardonic oboes. There's even a moment where the melody seems to get completely harmonically lost. The bass soloist searches for the key-note amidst a slithering chromatic scale – appropriately enough, on the words “eine Verführung der törichten Welt”- “a deception of the foolish world”. And there's no comfort from the soprano recitative that follows sombrely accompanied on the lower strings to give a strange hollow emptiness.

The verdict comes in the austere and archaic-sounding final chorale. Only at the very last moment does Bach allow the harmony to slip into the major. The sun finally comes out on the last word of “Wer Gott fürcht', bleibt ewig stehen.”- he who fears God, will forever stand. And no doubt some in the congregation shivered slightly (although not as much as the Quivering Brethren at this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5evsxRdkJw).

So what are we to make of this beautiful and skilful denial of the lasting value of skill and beauty? It's a troubling theme, but one the Church tends to play with as it leads up to Advent, both in Bach's time and now. You see it in the reading now set for this very week in the Church of England's lectionary (http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+13%3A1-8&version=KJV). Jesus slaps down a disciple for some innocent tourist-gawping at the Temple in Jerusalem, saying it'll all be knocked down in a few years time. Well, it was. And now tourists go and gawp at the one wall that survived the Roman onslaught in 70 AD. Plenty of scholars have pointed out that this suspiciously accurate bit of prophecy might actually have been inserted after the fact. But the point remains. No matter how much we love impressive architecture, or beautiful sculptures, or even Bach cantatas, it's all ultimately handfuls of dust- the epitome of fluechtig and nichtig.

Yet on the other hand, fluechtig doesn't just signify transitory dissolution into nothingness. It also means flowing, re-circulating, combining. And every piece of organic matter on Earth was originally dust too: star-dust, forged in the heart of a dying star and destined to circulate and re-combine across aeons of time. And if that image isn't enough to lighten the mood, one particular very noticeable star might point a way out of that cycle of death. But we have to wait a month for that, as we travel from the grey nothingness of November to the darkest heart of Winter.

Monday 12 November 2012

Wohl dem der sich auf seinen Gott- 23rd Sunday after Trinity


When a friend of mine was about ten years old, she went to a new school. Rather nervously, she went up to some other girls and asked if they could play together. “Oh no,” they replied. “We don't play. We socialise”. It sometimes seems a bit childish to have friends. You can have partners, work colleagues, drinking mates, people who you make a cursory nod to in the bus queue. But saying “you're my best friend” to someone seems a bit playground-like. But as the brilliant xkcd.com cartoon at http://xkcd.com/150/ says, being grown-up means getting to decide what being grown-up actually means. And here we have Bach fighting for our right as adults to put aside so-called grown-up things- and just to say “God is my friend”.

The first movement of the cantata is another one of those flowing pastoral accompanied chorales. Everyone loves them- and that's why Jesu bleibet meine Freude (or Jesu, joy of man's desiring, if we're being English) from Cantata 147 regularly turns up on Soooooothing Classics compilations. But there's a difference here; the melody is strongly led by the treble line, as sung by the youngest boys in Bach's ensemble. The lower parts sing a more complicated harmony, following a beat or two later; but it's the children that lead the way, musically speaking. And this is perfectly in line with what the cantata actually says in the first sentence “Wohl dem, der sich auf seinen Gott recht kindlich kann verlassen!”; good for him, who can rely on God truly like a child. (And good for him too, who can write less rubbish translations than I do...)

And so the second movement gives us a wonderfully naif illustration of this. Last week's cantata had a tenor's anguished lament of self-doubt. This week, Bach gives us an almost laughably simple repetition: “Gott ist mein Freund”, again and again, declaimed with the clarity and directness of a road sign. God. Is. My Friend. Underneath the soloist, there is a simple chugging bass line, of the sort that Bach wrote for his amateur viola da gamba playing boss in the sixth Brandenburg concerto, a sort of eighteenth-century equivalent of letting the manager win at golf. Everything about the music implies simplicity until Bach sets the tenor free to indulge in a little vocal gymnastics on the words “Was hilft das Toben?”. Toben is a wonderful word, meaning bluster, raging, clamour. What good is all this musical showing-off, in the face of a child-like faith? And so we return to that mantra: God is my Friend, repeated enough to embarrass a twenty-first century audience.
But being recht kindlich- truly child-like- doesn't just mean being simple and unaffected. It also means being able to grow into true maturity and complexity. After a brief alto recitative with bare harpsichord accompaniment, it's the bass soloist's turn to show the contrast between the simple and the complex. But here, it's the opposite of the tenor aria.. The tenor contrasted a simple faith statement with a melismatic depiction of the bluster of the adult world. Now, Bach uses a stentorian, almost clumping setting for the words “Das Unglück schlägt auf allen Seiten um mich ein zentnerschweres Band”- “Misfortune, on all sides, winds me up in a hundredweight of chains”. Yet suddenly the music breaks free on the words erscheinet die helfender Hand- “the helping hand appears”. The brakes come off, and the music has the freedom to run virtuosically! All the vigour of a child prodigy is combined with the poise and beauty of an adult craftsman. And the conclusion of this quick flourishing? It's our old theme- daß Gott allein der Menschen bester Freund muß sein, that God alone must be the best friend of Man.

From here, it's a quick run to the end of the cantata. There's another quick interjection of recitative, but not accompanied austerely on the harpsichord alone any more; this time it's given a halo of strings around it. It's the same trick that Bach uses for the words of Jesus in the St Matthew Passion. The higher-pitched accompaniment gives it a more exalted feeling; but there's also more emotional intensity as, unlike the harpsichord, the strings can sustain and even increase their volume after the notes are initially played.

Finally, the chorale brings us to a close. The word Trotz- usually translated “defiance” appears three times in successive lines:

Trotz der Höllen Heer!
Trotz auch des Todes Rachen!
Trotz aller Welt!”

“Defiance to the army of Hell! And defiance to the sting of Death! Defiance to all the world!” would be a perfectly good translation. But Trotz can also have a connotation of sulkiness, rudeness, naughtiness. In the context of the child-like values of the rest of the cantata, I like to think of it as sticking one's tongue out at the Devil. So ner-ner-na-ner-ner to the hosts of hell, 'cos my best Friend's bigger than you.


Tuesday 6 November 2012

Ich Armer Mensch (cantata for the twenty-second Sunday after Trinity)- Passion in the workshop

First thoughts aren't always best, in music or in life. Lawn tennis was originally called Sphairistike by its inventor, an Englishman with more eye to the Classics than marketing. Christopher Wren's original design for the dome of St Paul's Cathedral had an enormous golden pineapple on top. But Bach is different. His first thoughts are good enough to cherish. Cantata No.55, Ich Armer Mensch is a masterpiece in its own right. But it also shows how Bach's thoughts were working towards what is arguably the greatest piece of music ever written- the St Matthew Passion.

The cantata isn't easy to listen to- but great music usually isn't (be quiet, Mozart). We start off with self-condemnation. A single tenor voice at the extremes of his range confesses that he is an armer Mensch- a wretched, worthless man. Indeed, he is a Suenden-knecht. Worse than simply being sin's slave, the world knecht implies that he is sin's henchman, willing and helpful.

After a brief recitative, we're at the emotional heart of the cantata- a near desolate call on God. Erbarme dich, have mercy, heed our tears, soften your heart, only have mercy on us! The picture is only softened slightly in the last recitative, where the singer states that he will not be judged, but only by holding up the image of Jesus' own suffering will he be able to return to God's grace. And the closing chorale gives a communal counterpoint to the individual's anguish. But it's not a joyful expression of certain redemption; instead, we are all on the first step of a long journey of repentance:

I do not deny my guilt,
but Your grace and mercy
is much greater than the sin
that I constantly discover in me.


Not exactly cheery. So is this cantata hamstrung by an excess of gloom and an emphasis on God's wrath over God's love? It's impossible to deny there's an overall atmosphere of anguish. But this makes perfect sense if we look at the deep resonances with the St Matthew Passion. Bach wrote this cantata to be performed in St Thomas's, Leipzig on 17 November 1726. The Passion was first performed less than five months later in the same church. By comparing the cantata to the Passion, we can see Bach's thought processes as he honed and polished his material. And by looking at the cantata in the light of the Passion, we can understand that strange gloomy Lutheran theology.

At the very beginning of the cantata, we hear a repeated crotchet-quaver heartbeat pattern in the bass. (Ignore the slurring- Bach didn't write it, only a 19th century editor).

(Bass part of Ich Armer Mensch, First movement, bars 4-6)

This is rhythmically identical to the bass line of the Passion's opening chorus:
(Bass part of the St Matthew Passion, bars 1-3)

So from the very opening, Bach is creating a similar musical effect- a pulsating, nervous beat. Not all the recordings bring this out: it's very obvious in Fabio Biondi's impassioned reading with Ian Bostridge as the singer, but it's pretty much lost in Gustav Leonhardt's stern scholarly version. Either way, it's definitely there in the score. There's an even more obvious correspondence between the cantata and the Passion. We saw that the heart of the cantata was a desperate call to God: Erbarme dich, have mercy. A solo instrument weeps with the singer in music of unutterably sad beauty;



(Ich Armer Mensch, 3rd movement, solo tenor line, bars 6-7)

And, at the centre of the Passion is a desperate call to God, Erbarme dich, etc. etc., unutterably sad... I'm sure you get the picture, but there's no better evidence of the close correspondence between the pieces than the first vocal entries. (Apologies for the awkward break between "Er-" and "barme"- the page turn in the score flummoxed my rudimentary HTML skills!):



(St Matthew Passion, No. 47, solo alto bars 8-10)

It's not just that they have the same opening text and penitential tone. The melodies are almost identical! Both the cantata version and the Passion version start with that yearning leap from “er” to “bar” of a minor sixth. Then there's a downward movement on “bar” and a little turn of a semitone on “me” to “dich”- identical in both pieces.

Of course, Bach is too good to just copy things out completely. There are a few magical differences. Most obviously, the tune is given to an alto in the Passion rather than a tenor in the cantata. But this difference isn't as significant as it might seem. Bach used young men for both voice parts, although his alto's voice might not have broken yet. (Back in those good old days of malnutrition, it wasn't uncommon for 17 and 18 year old men to be singing high treble parts still. Now we feed choirboys up and cathedral choir directors suddenly find that they have a load of 12-year old baritones.)

Bach did put an extra flat on the second note of “bar” in the cantata version; that gives it a little more dissonant pain compared to the serenity of the Passion version. That Passion version also has some more passing notes and swings along in a lilting triple time. By contrast, the cantata melody is much starker in four-square metre. But the two melodies are sisters, even though the cantata version has an intriguing beauty spot and the Passion version has more sensual curves.

But there's yet another link between the cantata and the Passion. After the Erbarme Dich aria and a short recitative, the cantata closes with the chorale, Bin ich gleich von dir gewichen. And the same sequence occurs in the Passion: its own Erbarme Dich aria is followed immediately by exactly the same chorale as in the cantata. The chorale harmony is slightly different, admittedly- but the words, melody and theological message are carried straight over.

And from this we can read back the context that gives some explanation to the seemingly harsh words of the cantata. In the Passion, Peter sings Erbarme Dich- have mercy- and the chorus sings that chorale from the cantata at the very blackest depths of his desolation, when he has not only failed to protect Jesus from arrest but denied him three times. Peter realises that he is indeed the armer Mensch, the henchman of sin; he goes and and weeps bitterly. But it's actually a moment of hope. At this point, the trajectory of descent into self-hatred is arrested; Peter accepts his guilt, and his sin is accepted for what it is.

And so in the light of the Passion, we can see why the opening of the cantata is so terrified, so ludicrously self-abnegating to our twenty-first century ears. In the scene of Peter's denial and subsequent grief, Bach would delineate the darkest part of human conversion; the recognition that God loves sinners as they are and as a whole, with all the shame and baggage that we would like to lock away. So in late 1726, Bach is using the cantata as a sort of workshop to intimately explore a central theme he would bring out just a few months later when writing the St Matthew Passion in early 1727. The cantata clearly allowed Bach to turn his musical genius to that theme earlier.

But in the end, it would be a mistake to look at the cantata as an “out-take” or a dry run for the greater piece of music It has its own life and spiritual profundity. The fact that the cantata is sung by only one soloist allows us to identify with him as Everyman, speaking for a whole community. And the links to the Passion give every man and woman in Bach's congregation the opportunity to identify with Peter. Frightened by their own great unrighteousness, yes; but ultimately loved and saved through a greater grace.