Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven

by Gardiner, John Eliot

  On assuming office in 1723 Bach was evidently determined to set out his compositional stall as quickly as possible. At the back of his mind may have been the consistorial jibe he received in Arnstadt at the very outset of his career about his failure to provide figural music, the frustrations he experienced in finding adequate musicians there and in Mühlhausen, and then the years he had to wait in Weimar before the chance came to string together a monthly cycle of cantatas. Now, as Leipzig’s newly appointed Thomascantor, with the chance to provide figural music for every Sunday and festival in the church year, he set off as though stung into action. Such zeal went far beyond any contractual obligation to compose and perform music to adorn the liturgy of the Lutheran church. No one, least of all the sceptical mayoral committee that had appointed him (see illustrations of burgomasters in second inset), would probably have expected him to produce a new composition for every single one of the sixty annual feasts of the church; that he would need to have occasional recourse to the works of past or contemporary colleagues would have been understood. Certainly no previous Thomascantor had done so, nor had any of his peers ever attempted such an ambitious, pressured undertaking – at least not on an equivalent scale or level of musical complexity. But then, as he was later to insist to a bemused city council, ‘most of my own compositions are incomparably harder and more intricate [than those of other composers].’5e Their success was wholly dependent on highly skilled musicians capable of persuasive performances under his direction. For, as he is reported to have said, ‘in music, anyway, everything depends on performance.’6 A lot more was at stake for Bach: an endeavour that was to prove among the sternest challenges in his life as a creative and performing artist.

  Cantatas were called for on saints’ days and feast-days, in addition to the regular Sundays, and were distributed unevenly across the year in the Leipzig liturgy: rare periods of passivity (the so-called ‘closed’ seasons of Advent and Lent, when no figural music was allowed in the city churches) were followed by sudden bursts of frenetic activity around the main festivals of Easter, Whitsun and Christmas. (See diagram of the Lutheran Liturgical Year, Plate 14.) To follow the chronological elaboration of his cantata cycles in linear sequence, just as his Leipzig audience experienced them week to week, is to be dazzled by the fecundity of his invention, his extraordinary consistency, and the rich diversity of texture, mood and form he managed to achieve. Furthermore, exploring Bach’s cantatas sequentially can help us to understand how these intense agglomerations of work could have precipitated the crises – of both creation and reception – in his first two years, particularly (as we shall see) in the build-up to Good Friday, when a Passion performance was due, with the result that his plans for a given cantata cycle were disrupted. Donald Francis Tovey’s view that ‘the main lesson of the analysis of great music is a lesson of organic unity’ is exemplified by Bach’s approach to cyclical cantata composition, showing him to be flexible and capable of widely differing responses from one year to the next.

  Following his cantatas in their seasonal context also allows us to notice how Bach often brings to the surface pre-Christian rituals and forgotten connections that reflect the turning of the agricultural year – the certainty of the land, its rhythms and rituals, the unerring pace of its calendar. Saxony in the eighteenth century was still a predominantly agrarian society in which these seasonal events and happenings were closely linked to the concerns of religion – reminding us how, in today’s predominantly urban society, many of us tend to lose contact with the rhythms and patterns of the farming calendar and even with perceptions of the basic cyclical round of life and death which feature prominently in so many of Bach’s cantatas. There we find rural imagery permeating contemplative religious texts and the poetic elaborations of the lectionary for each successive feast-day.f For Bach to remind his urban audience of Leipzig burghers of the patterns of seed-time and harvest existing just beyond their city walls was nothing unusual, and the rhythms and rituals of the agrarian year frequently seep through into his music, giving it topicality and currency as well as a layer of simple rusticity. So when Bach expands on Jesus’ Gospel words from the Sermon on the Mount – ‘By their fruits ye shall know them’ (Matthew 7:15–23) – in a cantata from his first cycle, BWV 136, Erforsche mich, Gott, und erfahre mein Herz, he could count on his congregation knowing that Christ’s words referred to the terrifying Old Testament warning ‘Cursed is the ground on your account … thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to you’ (Genesis 3:17–18). This is just one of the perennial worries of the arable farmer at this time of year, along with corn-flattening summer storms (BWV 93/v), bird damage (BWV 187/ii) or the threat of it (BWV 182/i), and crop-failure (BWV 186/vii) – all this despite good seed-bed preparation and timely sowing (BWV 185/iii). At these moments he seems to be drawing on his own childhood memories of country customs, of life close to the Thüringerwald, as we saw in Chapter 2, inspired by the view from his study in the Thomasschule across the River Pleisse to the pleasure gardens that Goethe later compared to the Elysian Fields, and beyond them the rural chequer-board of villages, spinneys and fields being worked by farmers.

  A year-to-year comparison of Bach’s cantata cycles reveals, too, how strongly they are linked to the rhythms of the geophysical year. This is most apparent at those seminal points when church festivals such as the Annunciation and Palm Sunday coincide with the spring equinox (BWV 1 and 182), or at Easter (BWV 4, 31 and 249), or at the beginning (BWV 75, 20 and 39) and closing (BWV 60, 26, 90, 116, 70 and 140) of the Trinity season, or, the clearest of all, at the winter solstice with its proximity to the ending of the calendar year itself (BWV 190, 41, 16 and 171). These turning-points form an essential backdrop in Bach’s measuring of the ups and downs of the liturgical calendar; his braiding of the two conveys the simple idea of an inevitable progression from beginning to end and thence to a new beginning. The difference between the Greek concepts of kairos and chronos has a direct bearing on Bach’s concept of time and how it plays out in his cantatas.g In the Koine Greek of the New Testament, chronos signifies time in general – both stretches of time passing and waiting time (such as Advent).h But, whereas chronos marks a continuous line indicating duration, kairos is a moment marked somewhere along that line. The phrase en kairo means ‘at the right moment’ (such as Pooh Bear’s ‘time for a little something’). The New Testament hoi chronoi kai hoi kairoi (‘the times and the seasons’) is a key to understanding what might have been Bach’s concept of time – his way of locating and encapsulating music in precise moments and in the appointed season. By localising the event and occasion to which his music was attached, one might think that he risked reducing its impact and future accessibility, but the reverse seems to be true – its universality lies in the very specificity of its origins.

  One of the features that registered most strongly with me and with many of the musicians who were exposed to Bach’s cantatas in their seasonal succession in 2000 was the periodic emphasis he gives to the idea of cyclic return, of a journey from a beginning to an ending – or, in the theological language of his day, from Alpha to Omega. In replicating the rhythms of Bach’s own practice and experiencing the cantata cycles at their appointed times, we gained a sense of kairos through this seasonal unfolding. We became aware of indissoluble connections between the music and its place in the season and often between the music of one week and that of the next, like arcs of a circle being drawn and re-drawn. It felt as though we were reconnecting to the seasonal progression and rhetorical ambit implied in Bach’s music – a continuously unfolding rhythmic pattern, but one that normally goes unnoticed. As a result it allowed us to be drawn into the (re-)creative process and active edification implied in Bach’s music. This was markedly different from the conventional practices of music-making we were accustomed to in concert halls, which, however persuasive, cannot help but carry resonances foreign to the intrinsic purpose of the music.

  More than half of all Bach’s sacred cantatas t
o have survived were composed in his first three to four years as Thomascantor. This is how the Leipzig cantatas break down:

  • In Year 1 (1723/4) he composed forty new cantatas. This first cycle also included fourteen adaptations or expansions of Weimar cantatas and five ‘parodies’ of secular Cöthen cantatas for the period after Easter 1724 that may not have been part of his original plan (see below).

  • In Year 2 (1724/5) he composed fifty-two new cantatas; three of these (BWV 6, 42 and 85) are structurally identical to cantatas composed in the February of the previous year and could therefore be considered casualties of a crisis associated with the first performance of his John Passion on 7 April 1724. (See diagram of Bach’s First Leipzig Cycle, Plate 15.)

  • An equivalent disruption to his plans for Good Friday the following year could be linked to the abandonment of the chorale-based cantata cycle after Palm Sunday 1725, and may account for the inclusion of a revival (BWV 4) and a parody (BWV 249) on Easter Sunday; it may also have contributed to the realisation of a new sequence for the ‘Great Fifty Days’ between Easter and Pentecost. This last now comprised twelve cantatas: three (BWV 6, 42 and 185) whose texts may have been taken from a collection originally reserved for the first cycle, and nine cantatas with texts by Christiane Mariane von Ziegler (BWV 103, 108, 87, 128, 183, 74, 68, 175 and 176). It seems, then, that Bach planned this new sequence as a way of completing his first cycle in a more satisfactory way than had been possible in the spring of 1724, this time mirroring the liturgical character of the ‘Great Fifty Days’ unified by the preponderance of texts drawn from St John’s Gospel.

  • The rate of production of cantatas slows down by almost 50 per cent in 1725/6 to twenty-seven new works, and slower still to just five in the following year, a sign of the mounting problems Bach was facing in finding good-enough musicians from his available Thomaner performing ensemble. This meant that this third cycle ended up being stretched over two years (1725/7).

  • This, in turn, is followed by the so-called ‘Picander Cycle’ of 1728/9 that may have been intended by Bach to be apportioned among himself (eight new works), his two elder sons and selected pupil–composers.

  • There are around a dozen ‘late’ cantatas to have survived from the 1730s and 1740s.

  Evidence that from the outset Bach planned on a broader scale than individual works and feast-to-feast is clear from his opening salvos for the first four Sundays after Trinity in both of his first two annual Leipzig cycles. Compared to Advent, the real beginning of the liturgical year, the first Sunday after Trinity might not seem a particularly significant day to begin a new cycle, but in fact it marked both the beginning of the academic year of the Thomasschule and the midpoint of the Lutheran liturgical year: the crossover from ‘the time of Christ’ (the temporale) to ‘the era of the church’ (the long Trinity season) dominated by the concerns of Christian believers living in the here and now under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Bach therefore had good reason to emphasise this important seasonal change – which was coincidentally when he and his family arrived in Leipzig – and to establish it as the launching pad of two successive cantata cycles, the first beginning on 30 May 1723 with BWV 75, Die Elenden sollen essen, and the second a year later with BWV 20, O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort, which set the tone for a completely new stylistic orientation and a more radical approach (see below, this page). Add to these the third of his surviving cantatas for this feast, BWV 39, Brich dem Hungrigen dein Brot, composed in 1726 (see Chapter 12), and we have three contrasted large-scale bipartite works all for the same liturgical occasion that afford us a basis for comparison.

  Bach announced himself to the congregations gathered in Leipzig’s Nikolaikirche and Thomaskirche in 1723 in an opening sequence couched in wide-ranging musical styles and full of exegetical allusions. His two debut cantatas, BWV 75 and 76, composed for consecutive Sundays (Tr + 1 and Tr + 2), are formed like identical twins in the way they present a musical interpretation of Scripture spread across fourteen movements (with the same unfolding pattern of movements of arias and recitatives) – seven to be performed before and seven after the sermon and during the distribution of the Communion. Evidently much thought had gone into both works – discussions with an unknown librettist and possibly with representatives of the Leipzig clergy at the time of his audition in February – before the style, tone and narrative shaping were set. The thematic link between the two works was prompted by the two set Epistles –the injunction to love God (1 John 4:16–21) and one’s brother (1 John 3:13–18) – with the implicit insistence that brotherly love is the principal means by which the believer can honour God (BWV 76, Part 2). Such a comprehensive double exposition of the two New Testament commandments – to love God and one’s neighbour – was in perfect accord with the definitions Bach gave at various times of his musical goals: glory to God and service to his neighbour (see this page). Here was the perfect opportunity for Bach to make plain his future intentions to his congregation, and using his own identifying numberi – fourteen – in the number of movements of these consecutive works may have been Bach’s symbolic way of conveying a personal message to his congregation.7 As his first official Leipzig cantata on assuming office, BWV 75, Die Elenden sollen essen, was performed eight days after he and his family arrived in Leipzig, and two days prior to his formal installation.j Judging from the neat appearance of the autograph score and the non-Leipzig paper on which it was written, it seems that Bach had given himself a head start by finishing it while he was still in Cöthen. (By contrast, the autograph of its sequel, BWV 76, Die Himmel erzählen, is a working score with multiple corrections, showing clear signs of haste.) The contrast between poverty (Armut) and spiritual riches (Reichtum) is used as a metaphor not just for the impermanence of earthly wealth but also for the spiritual privation of the Christian up to the moment that he is enriched by faith. Reduced to its essentials, BWV 75 presents the following message:

  Part I

  1. Appearances are deceptive, but those who suffer in this life will one day, like Lazarus, be recompensed (opening chorus as prelude and fugue); for

  2. riches and worldly pleasures are transitory (accompanied recitative for bass),

  3. whereas unreserved devotion to Jesus (aria as polonaise for tenor with oboe and strings)

  4. can lead to joy in the next life (tenor recitative).

  5. So endure patiently like Lazarus (aria as minuet for soprano with continuo)

  6. and you can live with a clear conscience (soprano recitative);

  7. for whatever God does, is for the best (chorale).

  Part II

  8. Sinfonia (for trumpet and strings)

  9. Poverty of spirit (accompanied recitative for alto)

  10. is made rich by Jesus (alto aria as passepied with violins and continuo);

  11. so practise self-denial (bass recitative)

  12. and you will be warmed by Jesus’ flame (dramatic aria for bass with trumpet and strings);

  13. so take care not to forfeit it (tenor recitative),

  14. for whatever God does, is for the best (chorale).

  The Gospel’s ‘theme of the week’ – the idea that the lowly shall participate in the kingdom of God as conveyed through the Parable of Dives and Lazarus (Luke 16:19–31) – is summed up in the stirring hymn ‘Was Gott tut, das is wohlgetan’ that concludes both parts of Bach’s opening cantata, not in a conventional four-part arrangement, but with the voice lines loosened in polyphony and placed in an independent orchestral fabric:

  Whatever God does, is well done:

  To this I shall be constant

  Though I be cast on to a rough road

  By affliction, death and misery.

  There is something both poignant and prophetic in Bach’s assent to the principle these words describe – his constancy in embarking on a divinely inspired assignment and the rough road he had taken towards fulfilling it. Bach was later to complain to a friend that, in fulfilling his duties in Leipzig, he had bee
n scarcely helped by the authorities, whom he had thought ‘odd and little interested in music’. But for the moment all is optimism while he focuses on his work with a white-knuckled energy.

  BWV 76 is clearly more than just a sequel to the previous Sunday’s cantata: together they form a diptych reflecting the dualism of the two segments of the church’s year, while also ensuring a thematic continuity extended over two weeks, their texts replete with cross-references between the two set Gospels and Epistles. Thus the injunction to give charitably to the hungry (BWV 75/i) is balanced a week later by the parable of the great banquet to which all are invited ‘from all the highways’ (BWV 76/vi). Bach chose to open the latter with the same psalm (19:1, 3) that Heinrich Schütz had set so memorably seventy-five years before when he included it in his Geistliche Chormusik, dedicated to the same choir of the Thomaskirche in Leipzig:

  The heavens declare the glory of God;

  and the firmament sheweth his handywork.

  There is no speech nor language,

  where their voice is not heard.

  The idea of the entire cosmos celebrating God’s rich creation was a gift to a composer of Bach’s conceptual ability. It allowed him to contemplate and expound the meaning of infinity, a concept that was largely sidestepped throughout the Middle Ages, of the cosmos being aware of itself, of how ‘nature and grace speak to all of mankind’, showing us how as humans we can marvel about our own ability to do so. Bach’s vision is reflected in his choice of instruments: regal trumpets in Part I to symbolize God’s glory; a viola da gamba, that ancient instrument he uses at moments of the most intense feeling, to underline the human potential for faith and love in Part II. Treating the poverty/riches antithesis would have been enough for most other composers. Instead Bach and his unknown librettist (could it have been Gottfried Lange, the poet–burgomaster, who was acting almost as his patron in these early years of his cantorate?) looked for ways to enrich the connective tissue. In his First Epistle, John focuses on the meaning of love for humanity – conveyed by Bach in a majestic aria for bass and trumpet (BWV 75/xii) – and then, the following week, on brotherly love (die brüderliche Treue) as the basis of worldly life, the means by which mankind gives honour to God (BWV 76/xi).