Rejoice!
It's Easter! Away with sin, sorrow, gout, debt and other things that
afflict grumpy eighteenth century composers (and twenty-first century
bloggers, for that matter) Well, that's the message that the first
hearers of this cantata in Weimar might have expected. It was 12
April 1714, they were in the middle of the Easter season, and even
the name of this particular Sunday in the Lutheran calendar-
Jubilate- means nothing more than Rejoice! And yet Bach and
his librettist Salomon Franck gave them a cantata that plunges to the
depths of despair. The title is an almost parodically intense
depiction of everything people wouldn't expect to hear this Sunday:
“Weeping, wailing, fretting, fearing”. So what's going on here?
True,
the readings that the congregation would have heard that day weren't
exactly a barrel of laughs. The reading from the first letter of
Peter concluded with a less-than-rousing reassurance: “when
you do well and suffer for it, if you take it patiently, this is
acceptable with God”. Well,
thanks. And the Gospel reading, from John 16, compares the suffering
the disciples are going to experience with that of childbirth. This
isn't going to be easy- especially when the only consolation is the
idea that “ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall
be turned into joy.”.
And
so the music is rooted in the mood of these forbidding texts. The
impression I got of the opening instrumental sinfonia was weariness:
a certain nobility, but ultimately a soul that was being sapped.
Cantus Cölln's one-to-a-part performance brings out the leaden
heaviness of the bass line . It gives a real feeling of a spirit of
desolation afflicting a believer after the fireworks of Easter. The
unstable harmonies add to the sense that we are plodding over
shifting sands. Essentially, the listeners are being placed in the
same situation as the post-Easter disciples: not despondent, still
awaiting something to enter their lives- but at the moment dispirited
and confused as to what will happen next.
And
the second movement gets even more emotionally dark. The plodding
breaks out into a lament- shockingly so in Phillipe Herreweghe's
recording with Collegium Vocale Ghent, which brings out the beauty
and sad serenity of the opening sinfonia only to introduce the second
movement with a sudden stabbing chord. Bach's genius in depicting the
blackest spiritual pain in music of the greatest beauty is at its
height here; it's a movement that defies description again. (Eagle
eyed readers may note that it's taken me a year since the last entry
to pluck up the courage to write about it).
Clearly
Bach thought this was good stuff too, because he re-worked this
chorus decades later to form the Crucifixus of his great
musical testament, the Mass in B Minor. But in some ways it's even
more perfect here in its original form. After the widely-spaced howls
of “Weinen! Klagen!” , full of open-mouthed “a” and
“ei” sounds, the voices focus in close together for the
words “Angst und Not” (anguish and trouble). The clusters
of consonants make almost it necessary to sing those words with
gritted teeth; it's like a desperate attempt to return to some sort
of control after a breakdown. We do hear a tiny bit of major-key
tonality here; Bach takes us from C minor into G major and it's like
a shaft of sunlight. Bach uses major-key emotional colours of music
in a predominantly minor-key context like Rembrandt uses shafts of
light in a dark painting. For me it's all the more effective for
portraying awful resignation, the quiet sorrow of the damaged. And
even after a well-mannered bit of counterpoint on the words “sind
der Christen Tranenbrot” (“These things are the Christian's
bread of tears”) which might point towards acceptance, if not
actual happiness, the anguish of the weeping, wailing breakdown
returns as the opening section is repeated in full.
Little
overt theatricality is needed in the perfomance of this second
movement. This music has all the emotional expression in itself. I
found the EMI recording of this cantata with King's College Cambridge
under Stephen Cleobury utterly spellbinding here. It's something
about their combination of incisiveness and calm. Combined with the
generous acoustic of King's it weaves an even more disturbing
texture, like faraway childrens' weeping that we are powerless to
stop.
After
the utter desolation of this second movement, where can we go? It
still looks bad. A brief alto recitative has a fourfold repetition of
the statement that we must enter the Kingdom of Heaven “durch
viel Trübsal”-
through
much trouble. The alto aria that follows lightens the mood as much as
you might expect: “Kreuz
und Krone sind verbunden, Kampf und Kleinod sind vereint.”- Cross
and Crown are bound together, struggle and reward are one. There's
even a strange slow-motion parody of a trill on the word Kampf,
struggle- rather than a sign of exuberant joy, it feels like the
melody is trapped in an up-and-down loop and can't escape. The bass
aria follows. So often (as in the St Matthew Passion) the alto
portrays the depths of pain whereas Bach gives the bass words of
comfort. Here, it's not quite so simple. Yes, the pace quickens and
the anguished feel of the earlier movements is replaced with a light,
yet steely determination: “Ich
folge Christo
nach”- I
will follow after Christ. But even in this little movement, barely a
third of the length of the alto aria, we get moments of shocking
darkness. “I kiss Christ's
Schmach” sings
the bass: Schmach
is
a wonderful and terrible word meaning shame, desolation, pain.
Everything that we though we had left behind on Good Friday is there
for us to embrace and kiss still. Easter hasn't erased that pain.
We're
running out of cantata, and the words relentlessly drag us down to
the realm of pain and struggle. Almost the last chance comes in the
tenor aria that follows us. The words might seem to be more of the
same: sei getreu
- “Be
faithful!” in the face of the pain that will come. Why bother? Can
this cantata only offer pie in the sky when you're already racked
with agony? Well. Bach is brave enough to look that possibility in
the face. The tenor's melody writhes on the words “alle
Pein”- all
pain- in exquisite harmonic torture.
But
Bach also knows that redemption comes from above. And over the
tenor's anguish, a solo oboe (or trumpet, depending on the recording)
sings out a chorale melody familiar to Bach's listeners: Jesu
meine Freude, Jesu
my joy. Is it a wordless, emotional response to the person of Jesus
that Bach is advocating? And as the oboe melody rises, the voice also
rises and takes on a quality of martyred ecstasy. After the rain, all
storms will pass away: only be faithful! But the last words are still
the urgent call sei
getreu, sei getreu. We're
left with the struggle.
There's
no real easy message from this cantata. But there must be some value
in this plunge into the dark side of Easter. In any public cycle of
grief and happiness, whether being told to be sad at a funeral or to
be happy at a football match, there is a risk of dis-integration of
the inner feelings and the outer face. It's that dreadful moment when
you want to just call out the enforced happiness for its fakery. It's
when you are told “Happy days are here again!”- but all you can
do is shudder at the distance between your real feelings and the
Disneyfied grin society demands.
Here, Bach is exploring the tensions that are inevitable at this time
of the liturgical year. We've been through Passion and Resurrection;
and what's happened to us? Well, you might feel reborn and
revitalised in a new Easter life. Great! But like any infatuation,
this wonderful endorphin rush will subside. You'll be left with the
emptiness of trudging on.. and on... with only the memories of how
good it once felt. This is a cantata for that moment. Even in the
heart of Easter joy, Bach sees the pain of living; just as in the
darkest moments of his Passion settings, there is at last redemption.
And
in the very final movement we hear the congregation singing an almost
desperate hymn of consolation:”Was
Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan, Dabei will ich verbleiben.”- “what
God does is well done, I will cling to this.” Over the chorale,
another high wordless instrumental descant sings out. Heaven still
sings out its joy in response to pain on earth. The gap is immense,
and the two are still separated... for the moment.
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