Faith and the arts are natural partners. Both aspire to the fusion of order with a creative leap of the imagination, connecting the ideal with what we experience and perceive. In this regard, music has a special role to play, speaking directly to our emotions through melody and harmony, while connecting with our physical being via rhythm and tempo. What might not seem so obvious is its ability to evoke pictures in sound.
Word-setting provides the perfect opportunity for this, and Bach’s sacred cantatas are a case in point. These works combine soaring faith with a personal immediacy; wherever he could, Bach composed in a pictorial way to bring before our eyes the scenes, events and characters that populate these dramas-cum-musical sermons. The weekly cantata performances that he had to supply were akin to small-scale operas, with the day’s Gospel reading the basis for the libretto. As a church was no place for a stage set, the music needed to help the congregation picture inwardly the story of the text.
Most of the cantatas are quite short, and therefore Bach had to use every available resource to make the desired impact. Music as visual metaphor was obviously not a new idea. It was just that, as with other aspects of his work, he did it incomparably well. Tradition always fascinated him and he regarded the past as a rich source of possibilities to be re-envisioned in the present. This aspect of his genius perhaps goes some way to explaining why Catholics can be equally inspired by the special qualities of his Lutheran sacred music.
The idea of water – flowing, swirling, storming – is of course a gift to the pictorially minded composer, as in a typical example from Cantata 8. The biblical reference is the storm on the sea of Galilee: as the music begins, you can sense the boat rocking in the swell. In a subsequent aria for tenor the violins rush up and down to mimic the furious waves, until finally the figure of Christ appears and calms both the water (watch it subside) and the troubled soul.
Similarly, an extraordinarily beautiful aria in Cantata 5 for tenor and solo violin illustrates with an endless effusion of notes the theological notion of the cleansing stream of divine blood. Sometimes the water is a flood of human tears, as in the tenor aria from Cantata 21. This particular work, incidentally (“I had much grief in my heart”), was designated by Bach as appropriate for any occasion; it is a deeply moving portrayal of a psychological journey from despondency to hope.
There are many suggestions of nature, as for instance when four violas and bassoon evoke the gentle fall of rain in the lovely instrumental prelude to Cantata 18. Then Cantata 181, linked to the parable of the sower, begins with a bass aria about the fickle lightweights who ignore the divine Word; jerky little movements in the accompaniment suggest a kind of bird-brained pecking.
A writhing violin part in the bass aria from Cantata 40 brings us face to face with the devilish serpent that Christ has come to wrestle down. There are, too, militaristic moments when a brass instrument depicts heroic toughness; in Cantata 20 a trumpet sounds the reveille for the complacent slumberers while the singer calls out: “Wake up, wake up,” as if to say, “On parade, at the double!”.
What Bach offers is an ongoing pageant of varied moods and pictures. While there is fear and claustrophobia in the dark, close-set harmonies of Cantata 6, asking Christ (on the journey to Emmaus) to “stay with us as the night is falling”, there are also peals of laughter in the opening chorus of Cantata 31 celebrating the Resurrection.
One of Bach’s familiar musical devices is an upward or downward rush to suggest upheaval (as in Cantata 90 referring to the Day of Judgment) or a sudden collapse. He uses this to great effect in the middle section of a part-comic, part-sinister bass aria in Cantata 26, pointing the finger at the inevitable crash awaiting those who set store by material possessions.
Much of the active sermonising is carried by the recitatives that link the choruses and arias. They are declamatory rather than inherently tuneful, yet Bach does his utmost to make the music highlight the words. No detail seems to escape him as he enlivens the message with references to the sights that are part of our life.
A vast musical intellect, yes, but also a deep humanity in the integration of our physical being with faith and aesthetic expression. What more can we ask?
Thelma Lovell is the author of A Mirror to the Human Condition: Music, Language and Meaning in the Sacred Cantatas of JS Bach
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