Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven

by Gardiner, John Eliot

  One way Bach found to get around the rules and constraints of word-setting was to select an overall idea from the text that sparked the idea of a dominating instrumental sonority in his imagination. He came to know, for example, exactly how best to use the resources of the ceremonial trumpet-led orchestra and choir of his day to convey unbridled joy and majesty without knowing scientifically that the trumpet’s upper partials have a stimulating effect on the nervous system of the listener. Clearly he was spurred on by the presence in Leipzig of the municipal Stadtpfeifer, a virtuoso group of trumpeters under their Capo, Gottfried Reiche, who were available to him to augment his Thomaner on high days and holidays, and from whom he could have learnt what melodic possibilities these instruments held, both singly and contrapuntally, beyond their basic rhythmic role within a martial band. One has only to think of the high trumpet writing in any of the choruses of the B minor Mass to realize what a potent and enthralling power this put at Bach’s disposal. From the Sanctus we can tell that Bach conceived of a cosmos charged with an invisible presence made of pure spirit, beyond the reach of our normal faculties. As incorporeal beings, angels had their rightful place in the hierarchy of existence: in Psalm 8, humanity is ranked ‘a little lower than the angels’. The concept of a heavenly choir of trumpet-blowing angels was implanted in Bach when he was a schoolboy in Eisenach. Even the hymn books and psalters of the day gave graphic emblematic portrayal of this idea. The role of angels, Bach was instructed, was to praise God in song and dance, to act as messengers to human beings, to come to their aid and to fight on God’s side in the cosmic battle against evil. The dazzling cluster of cantatas Bach composed to honour the archangel Michael is immense in its sustained bravura.l

  Michaelmas must have come as a welcome relief during the Trinity season, with its prevalence of gloomy, sin-related themes. Take the opening of BWV 130, Herr Gott, dich loben alle wir – a song of praise and gratitude to God for creating the angelic host. Bach presents us with a tableau of the angels on parade: these are celestial military manoeuvres, some of them even danced, in preparation for combat. In the cantata’s centrepiece – a C major bass aria scored exceptionally for three trumpets, drums and continuo – the battle is portrayed not as a past event but as an ever-present danger from ‘the ancient dragon [who] burns with envy and keeps contriving new pain’ intended to break up Christ’s ‘poor little flock’. Though there is brilliance aplenty in the steely glint of Michael’s sword (including fifty-eight consecutive semiquavers for the principal trumpet to negotiate – twice), this is not an episode in a Blitzkrieg. Bach is more concerned to evoke two superpowers squaring up to one another: the one vigilant and poised to protect the armes Häuflein (the ‘poor little flock’) against assault (cue for a tremulant throbbing of all three trumpets in linked quavers); the other wily and deceitful (perhaps the kettledrums and continuo are intended to be on the dragon’s side and not part of Michael’s army, as in BWV 19 (see this page)). Probably no composer before or since has written such a profusion of celestial music for mortals to sing and play – and no one could show off a trio of trumpets to such dazzling effect as Bach.

  The prospect of joining the angelic choir or concert after death was considered to be a privileged entry-point for German musicians of the time (see this page). It is a mirror of Bach’s own deep faith as well as his strategies, conscious or not, for bridging in music the gulf between this world and the next, and thereby enriching the listener’s experience. Such strategies hinge on his use of certain specific sonorities such as the use of high trumpets or drums in the instances just alluded to, but equally on the evocation of certain states of mind – fragility at the point of death, or how to deal with bereavement. It is in this context that Keats’s famous formulation of negative capability has special pertinence – ‘when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason’. Keats’s rationalisation of the subjective allows joy and uncertainties to coexist, and provides an unintended denotation of the effect on the listener of Bach’s consoling music. To penetrate to the great riches it offers requires both relaxation and effort, an absence of wilful straining but the most lucid attentiveness. It needs the listener both to let go and to be supremely vigilant. Ted Hughes once said that writing was about facing up to what we were too scared to face – about saying what we would prefer not to say, but desperately needed to share. That is also the cathartic function of Bach’s cantatas that deal with the art of dying: their effect is that we are enabled to face the unfaceable.

  It so happens that all four of Bach’s cantatas for Trinity + 16 (BWV 161, 27, 8 and 95) give voice to the Lutheran yearning for death and the release of the body from worldly cares, struggles and bitterness. All but one feature the tolling of funerary bells known as Leichenglocken, which in Bach’s day stood for the passing of the soul and evoked its hourly commemoration. Together they make a deeply impressive quartet of concerted music that is both healing and uplifting. Despite their unity of theme, they are nonetheless full of creative tension, and feature divergent treatments of the convergence of music and words, and of texture, structure and mood. For the earliest of them, BWV 161, Komm, du süße Todesstunde, Bach uses a restricted palette of unusually soft-toned instrumentation led by two treble recorders (just as in the Actus tragicus) braced mostly in thirds or sixths. They are the leading colouristic element in the extraordinary scena that forms the cantata’s central movement, in which the believer (in an accompanied recitative for alto), having arrived at the end of his spiritual pilgrimage, stands poised on the verge of death. Each textual image is replicated in the music: the ‘gentle sleep’ of the soul sinking to rest in Jesus’ arms is represented by a descending scale motion by the voice, the continuo and the two recorders, in that order; simple detached chords suggest the ‘cool grave’ covered with roses; sudden animated semiquaver activity describes the raising from the dead and the closing in of ‘the happy day’, when the desire for death turns to joy; and the tolling of miniature death-bells marks the ‘final hour’, punctuated by the sounding of all four of the violin’s open strings.

  Two of its movements are in triple time, setting a pattern for several of Bach’s later cantatas that also deal with the call of death – a device to lull and soothe the grieving heart, as in the magical opening chorus of BWV 27, Wer weiß, wie nahe mir mein Ende, an elegiac lament into which Bach has woven the modal tune linked to Neumark’s hymn ‘Wer nur den lieben Gott lässt walten’. The passage of time is suggested by the slow pendulum strokes in the bass of the orchestra. Against this the downward falling figure in the upper strings and a poignant broken theme in the oboes provide the backcloth for the haunting chorale melody, interlaced with contemplative recitative. Even the harpsichord obbligato and continuo line of the alto aria seem to be imbued with the notion of measured time emphasised by the percussive articulation of the harpsichord keys, a recurrent feature in these death-knell cantatas.

  An equally evocative tableau in sound, almost of a passing funeral cortège, is created by purely instrumental means at the start of BWV 8, Liebster Gott, wenn werd ich sterben, consisting of an almost continuous semiquaver movement in E major for two oboes d’amore, a muted staccato quaver accompaniment by the upper strings, and a pizzicato bass line punctuating the slow pulse. Soaring above this is the high tintinnabulation of the traversa flute, playing out of its normal range – and so different from the simulated clang of multisized bells he summons to mark the passing of Queen Christiane in the Trauer-Ode) BWV 198 (see this page). An elegiac and iridescent tenderness is established in this movement before even a note has been sung, which gives the impression of someone approaching life’s end, witnessing the procession of his own family of mourners. If at times the oboe writing brings to mind the music of Brahms, some of the harmonic progressions anticipate Berlioz’s L’Enfance du Christ; and Bach gives an almost fairground swing to the entry of the hymn tune sung by the sopranos. The funeral bells return (at l
east by inference) in the detached quavers of the tenor aria with the words wenn meine letzte Stunde schlä-ä-ä-ä-ä-ä-gt, and in the pizzicato continuo.

  Bach’s imaginative capacity to convey through music and words the final stretch of the Christian pilgrimage reaches a peak in the second part of the opening chorus of BWV 95, Christus, der ist mein Leben. Here he depicts the struggle between the forces of life and death before the soul reaches its longed-for destination. It is similar to the climax of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, when Christian ‘passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side’. Bach uses four successive funeral hymns as the supporting pillars of his structure, giving encouragement to the (tenor) believer as he contemplates his death. The rather muscular syncopated opening exchanges between paired oboes and violins pulsate with vitality and pave the way for the first triple-rhythm chorale. This dissolves at the word sterben (‘to die’), a voice-by-voice entry building up a diminished seventh chord, coming to a rest and then re-exploding with ist mein Gewinn (‘is my reward’). This culminates with the line mit Freud fahr ich dahin as the connecting link to the next chorale, Luther’s paraphrase of the Nunc dimittis.

  Binding the two chorale statements is an arioso, ‘Mit Freuden, ja, mit Herzenslust will ich von hinnen scheiden’ (‘With gladness, yea, with joyful heart I shall depart from hence’). Bach is highly experimental in the way he breaks up these segments of free rhythm, holding them in check by interjecting fragments of the opening syncopated motif. You gain the impression of a succession of unsanctioned 4 bars (recitatives of the time were always barred in common time). At its climax the tenor sings unaccompanied ‘My dying words are on my lips’ – silence – ‘Ah, could I but this day sing them!’ With no break whatsoever the dialogue between corno and oboes announces the second chorale, Luther’s ebullient ‘Mit Fried und Freud’.m At its conclusion the soprano soloist bursts in with the exclamation ‘Now, false world! Now I have nothing further to do with you.’ This leads, also without a break, into a captivating arched melody, ‘Valet will ich dir geben, Du arge, falsche Welt’ (‘I would bid you farewell, you evil, false world’). The only true aria in this cantata is one for a high-flying tenor – the mesmerising ‘Ach, schlage doch bald, selge Stunde’ (‘Ah, strike then soon, blessed hour’) – in which two oboes d’amore proceed in almost naked fourths, pausing every now and again to alight on a dissonance (the effect is similar to the way the echo of cracked bells hangs in the air) always accompanied by a persistent pizzicato of the Leichenglocken.

  But what exactly do they represent? Are they simply symbols introduced to resonate in his listeners’ minds, non-verbal means to trigger rhythmic patterns and sonorities in the aural imaginations of the bereaved? Following performances we gave of all four of these cantatas in Santiago de Compostela in 2000, there was a big discussion in the hotel bar among the performers as to the meaning and imagery suggested by these Leichenglocken. Some felt that the repeated quavers of the flute in BWV 161/iv and in BWV 8/i just stand for the high-pitched funeral bells associated with infant death – that and no more. Others were convinced that the music in that aria from BWV 95/v represents the workings of a clock, the tenor waiting for the chiming of his final hour: the strings imitate the clock’s mechanical ticking, while the oboes imitate the wheel mechanism, which on the stroke of twelve grinds to a halt – just as time seems to do when you are impatient. The second oboe’s echo nudges the clock around by pulling on the counter-weight, thus setting the clock in motion once more.n Such an ingenious (and to me plausible) explanation leads one to reflect on what might have been Bach’s preoccupations when composing these pieces. Was it possibly an inner preparation for the likely death of a frail child that inspired in him this succession of cantatas based on faith and trust, so childlike in their simplicity? His eighth child (and his first with Anna Magdalena), Christiana Sophia (b. 1723), was indeed weakly and was to die on 29 June 1726, just a few months before he sat down to compose BWV 27, a cantata imbued with the spirit of simplicity and innocence, and opening with the words ‘Who knows how near is my end? Time goes by, death approaches.’o

  In his manual advising a young German Cavalier on etiquette (1728), Julio Bernhard von Rohr devotes thirty-one pages to the subject of death, burial and mourning. As a thoroughly enlightened tutor, von Rohr counsels ‘reasonable’ conduct as regards preparing for death, setting one’s estate in order, proportionate clothing, ceremony and funerary eulogies. He has sharp words for those whom he describes as Heuchel-Schein und Maul-Christen (‘hypocrites and lip-service Christians’), pastors who allow their burial sermons to develop into Lügen-Predigt (‘lying sermons’), and he is all for the banning of private nocturnal funerals (Beisetzung).17 Bach might have agreed: the persistent habit of conducting burials at night-time without any music reduced his opportunities for supplementary income in funeral fees. For the same reason, the good health of Leipzig citizens was also of particular concern to Bach; as he complained to his friend Georg Erdmann, ‘When a healthy wind blows … as last year … I lost fees … of more than 100 thalers.’18 On the other hand, the death of a celebrity such as August the Strong, or his old employer Leopold of Cöthen, offered a rare chance for profitable composition and performance – yet it was also followed by a period of mourning and therefore of unprofitable silence. The bald facts of Bach’s experiences of death were probably above the norm in eighteenth-century Saxony. (As a reminder, a sister, two brothers and an uncle died during his infancy. Then came the death of both parents before he was ten, the loss of his first wife, Maria Barbara, in 1720, and of their third son, Johann Gottfried Bernhard, in his early twenties, plus four daughters and three sons by his second wife, Anna Magdalena.)

  How this cumulative grief was expressed in his private life remains unknown. Instead we have the composer’s public expressions of grief and his poignant responses to funerary texts, both in his cantatas and motets. Arnold Toynbee said that in the relationship between the living and the dying, ‘There are two parties to the suffering that death inflicts; and, in the apportionment of this suffering, the survivor takes the brunt.’19 Bach, in good Lutheran fashion, addresses both parties: the deceased falling into a blessed slumber and the bereaved searching for spiritual comfort in the endless harvest of death. His strategies are far more sympathetic than for example Rembrandt’s manner of painting the raw truth about death ‘in a gust of black mirth’20 following the attritions of the plague of 1668, which took his only son, Titus, at the age of twenty-seven. Bach avoids that morbid delight in suffering characteristic of some strands of Pietism which bring to mind ‘the mysterious eroticism of wounds’21 and those ugly narratives of violence and revenge that reflect our psychopathology whenever death is portrayed at the centre of religion.

  While his library contained copious examples of theologians relishing the opportunities to portray the approach of death and bodily defilement in harrowing terms, Bach’s cantatas that deal with the subject offer deep reservoirs of solace to those who mourn. One of the most moving examples of this is the soprano aria ‘Letzte Stunde, brich herein, mir die Augen zuzudrücken!’ (‘Come, O final hour, break forth and close mine eyes’) from his Weimar cantata BWV 31, Der Himmel lacht, in which he strikes a note of elevated grief but within the rocking motion of a lullaby. The introductory oboe melody with paired quavers and alternations of strong and weak bars, and the way the upper strings wordlessly intone the death-bed chorale ‘Wenn mein Stündlein vorhanden ist’ (‘When my last hour is at hand’), create an unforgettable evocation of the passage from this life to the next and even of ‘celestial beings floating above the bed of the departing believer’.22 Bach’s melodies are described in the Nekrolog as ‘strange, but always varied, rich in invention, and resembling those of no other composer’, but this example from 1715 shows him already shedding some of that ‘strangeness’. Originality is still present, however, in the length and angularity of certain vocal phrases that could never have been written by a Stölzel, a
Graupner or even a Telemann.p

  There is no better example of this transformation to melodic ease than the fourth movement of one of his better-known cantatas, BWV 82, Ich habe genug – the aria ‘Schlummert ein, ihr matten Augen’ (‘Close in sleep, you weary eyes’), perhaps the paradigm of collusion between music and text in all Bach’s vocal works. Composed for the Feast of Purification in 1727, not only does it come as a welcome counterweight to the succession of grief-laden arias that characterise the Epiphany season (such as BWV 123/v and BWV 13/v discussed above and in Chapter 9), but with the gentle lilt of a lullaby it epitomises Luther’s description ‘Death has become my sleep’, an effect reinforced by the dulcet sonority of the oboe da caccia he added for his sixth and last revision of 1748. That is the last line of his hymn ‘Mit Fried und Freud’, his free rendering of the Nunc dimittis. Bach used it for the same feast-day two years earlier as the basis of BWV 125, his cantata of that title, Mit Fried und Freud ich fahr dahin – a more public version of the consoling prospect of death than in Ich habe genug, yet, in its way, just as intimate and evocative, as the music of the first chorus slides into a quiet sepulchral register at the words sanft und stille (‘calm and quiet’) and again with amazing pathos at the words der Tod ist mein Schlaf worden (‘death has become my sleep’), which, like BWV 77, seems to catapult the listener 150 years forwards to the world of Brahms.q At this point Bach’s librettist inserts lines of his own, words stressing physical collapse, so contradicting the serenity and joy expressed in all the other movements: ‘Even with weakened eyes, I shall look to thee, my faithful Saviour, though my body’s frame falls apart’ – a poignant anticipation of Bach’s own lot. Bach sets it for alto with flute and oboe d’amore and a basso continuo marked ligato per tutto è senza accompagn. Interpreted as cello and organ tasto solo (i.e., in unison with no harmonies), it lends a sepulchral tone (indeed an ‘empty’ one, almost as though the organist himself had just upped and died) to this plaintive and intensely grief-stricken aria, with its persistent heavily dotted French sarabande rhythms woven into a three-voice (sometimes four-voice) texture with richly ornamented, sighing appoggiaturas. For all the nobility and state-liness of gesture with which the frailty of the expiring body and the ‘broken’ aspect of the eyes’ dimming are conveyed, there seems to be a private grieving going on here, detectable in the very fragility of the upper three voices which Bach superimposes over the hollow sounds of the unembellished continuo and its inexorable repeated pairs of quavers. The core of this aria’s affecting expression of private grief is sustained even when the text describes solace (‘even though my body breaks, my heart and hope shall not fail’).