A brief look at the Thomaskantor’s reconciliation of text, music, and meaning
by Reece Connors
Composers of songs and other vocal genres have long had a special relationship with the text: when setting words to music they have to make choices about which lyrics are most important and which deserve special musical emphasis and illustration. Baroque composer Johann Sebastian Bach created more than two-hundred cantatas, three passions, and many motets whose words were based on or adapted from biblical texts. Bach’s relationship with his texts tended to be more complex, as he often chose when and when not to depend on words. Examples include the Chorus “Wenn er soll es doch geschehen,” the closing number of the Ascension Oratorio, BWV 11, depicting Christ’s arrival in Heaven, and enthronement at the right hand of God the Father. By examining the final chorus within the oratorio, we can better appreciate how Bach was able to amplify and transform the meaning of the event by presenting its text in a special, nuanced way—something now known as musical rhetoric.
Music historians associate the beginnings of musical rhetoric with the early Renaissance. Composers such as Palestrina, de Victoria, and de Wert adopted various techniques in hinting at verbal meaning, often famous for continuously blurring the thin boundaries between description and demonstration. These techniques were adopted and further developed in the early Baroque Period by German composers who studied this repertory. In his book Musica Poetica: Musical Rhetorical Figures in German Baroque Dietrich Bartel explains how composers during Bach’s time and region refined the techniques with which they expressed the meaning of text, specifically by drawing on compositional elements of the music written to accompany it (Bartel 19).
Much of the purpose behind musical rhetoric is to generate an emotional essence along with the text. As musicologist Bettina Varwig notes in her book One More Time: J. S. Bach and Seventeenth-century Traditions of Rhetoric, a composer may use rhythmic emphasis or dynamic modulation in order to outline the context with which the word is to be perceived (Varwig 7). For example, if a word was understood as describing something dark and foreboding, one might set the lyric to be held out over several beats and a decrescendo. Likewise, suppose a phrase was describing a joyous event. In that case, it may be appropriate for each word of the phrase to be placed individually upon an eighth note run to equally distribute emphasis and exhibit lightheartedness towards the textual subject. These techniques were recognized as rhetorical figures in music, similar to figures of speech.
Several prominent examples where Bach applies rhetorical emphasis come from his Saint Matthew Passion, specifically within the parts of the “Evangelist,” the role of narrator. One instance comes at the part of the last supper, immediately prior to Judas betraying Jesus. As the character of Jesus speaks in recitative form, the words “Menschen Sohn (son of man)” suddenly descend within a major arpeggio, meant to signify the sudden and tragic downfall of Christ to human betrayal (Paun 59). Another example might come from the recitative describing Christ’s actions in praying before the distribution of bread, with a notably extended high G on the first syllable of the word “dan—ke-te”(meaning “thanks”), articulating the last two syllables in an arpeggiated descent. This serves as an acknowledgement of the common Christian belief that a prayer objectively rises to Heaven and is subsequently heard and acted on by God the Father looking favorably down on us (Paun 59). In gaining perspective on Bach’s rhetorical methodology within The St. Matthew Passion, we learn that the composer not only relies on emphasis to display human pathos but also organizes directional movements to sonically illustrate physical motion.
This approach is further taken and established within BWV 11 (original manuscript shown below tagline).
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When shall it happen,
When will the dear time come,
That I shall see Him
In His glory?
O day, when will you be,
When we will greet the Savior,
When we will kiss the Savior?
Come, present yourself now!
–English Text to Closing Chorus of BWV 11 (Dellal)
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Consisting of an opening chorus, two arias, and several lines of narrative dialogue by an “Evangelist,” the Ascension Oratorio is a longer cantata composed as a fitting tribute to the event marking the end of Christ’s life on Earth. Even more so, the closing chorus does exceptionally well in providing a final resolution. Originally, the chorale “Wenn soll es doch geschehen?” (“When will it finally happen)” served as the seventh verse to the hymn “Gott fähret auf gen Himmel”(Dellal). It was not uncommon for Bach’s librettist to insert excerpts of traditional anthems into cantatas and oratorios, as church goers were often familiar with them and could sing along. It did, therefore, become all the more critical for the composer to lend his craftsmanship in enriching the bland melodies and simple texts of a congregational hymn. As a testament to this, Bach chose to construct a rather unusual variation in D major for the B minor Chorale. In juxtaposing a minor melody with its major relative, Bach adopted an approach described by Bartel as the musical loci topici (Bartel 79)—a method whereby a composer institutes an alternative theme to an already existing piece of music, so as to change the piece’s general pathos. In this case, the primary motive of the method would be the rhetorical device of emphasis and enrichment, forming the product into something much grander and more complex. Additionally, when Bach countered a piece in solemn B minor with a variation in festive D major, he worked to successfully imitate the mixed emotions felt by the disciples as they said goodbye to their master and teacher, knowing that he was ascending to his rightful place of glory.
But there is more. The violin motif accompanied by the trumpets and timpani boasts an ascending progression with growing dynamics. These elements hint at a phenomenon classified by Bartel as an anabasis, the musical phrasing used to imply an upward oriented movement through chromatic climbing, but also written to leave a memorable impact on the listener in the face of drab text. Bartel noted this in Musica Poetica, describing the “Et Resurrexit” from Bach’s famous and monumental Mass in B minor (setting the Latin mass text), specifying how the listener is both aided in the visualization of the resurrection and emotionally moved by the explanation of the theological text through the accompaniment. (Bartel 179).
Musicologists speculate that Bach’s variations within the chorales may have been written with a much more “objective” standpoint rather than the expression of subjective (i.e. the composer’s) feelings, focused ideally on technical mastery, as explained by Peter Williams (Williams 10). Consequently, Bach’s use of musical rhetoric remains among musicology’s more contested subjects. As for myself, the final chorus of BWV 11 serves not only as a ‘grand finale’ to Bach’s long and complicated oratory of Christ’s life, but goes further in providing profound imagery as to how that biblical occurrence felt, appeared, and sounded. In doing so, Bach gives us hope that humanity can find a meaning in music that transgresses words and blurs the boundary between past and present.