Dear Musicians and Music Lovers:
On Monday, J.S. Bach will be 326 years young! You are invited to join the Trinity Chamber Players and our Community Musicians as we celebrate with an evening of Bach’s music including the Double Violin Concerto in D Minor BWV 1043, the Air from the Orchestral Suite No. 3 in D Major BWV 1068, and more.
There is so much that has been written about Bach that it is difficult to know where to start (but that never stopped me before). Bach’s stature in musical realms is like that of Shakespeare’s in the realm of English literature. The brilliance of both artists’ work outshines all that came before them, and overshadows all that has come since. (Pardon the sunshine metaphor, but it seems like spring has arrived today and I can’t help myself.)
What do we know of Shakespeare? Aside from the fact that a fellow of that name lived and the fact that academics fight among themselves about whether authorship of his works rightly belongs to him or Christopher Marlowe, or the Earl of Oxford, or Francis Bacon, etc., we don’t know much. Yet his works have illuminated the human condition for generations over the span of half a millennium, and show no sign of dimming.
Similarly, if we took every word ever written about Bach and threw it into the ocean it really wouldn’t change his music, or appreciably change our appreciation thereof. Bach is best understood as a working composer, striving to satisfy diverse constituencies of listeners at the same time. Last week we saw that Haydn mastered this ability in the 1790’s, enabling the former quintessential court musician, who had a paying audience of one, to fare quite well as a popular musical entrepreneur while enhancing his legacy as a composer of merit. Bach developed this skill quite early in his career as he wrote simultaneously for the unschooled, the merely educated, the highly educated, learned colleagues and, of course, his Maker.
Bach’s Chorale Preludes are the most obvious examples of this skill. Hymn tunes that are familiar to all but the tone deaf in the congregation are interwoven with pleasing textures, interesting harmonies, exquisite counterpoint, and much that I cannot fathom, I’m sure.
On second thought, I recommend dredging up some of the soggy material we just consigned to the depths and reading some analyses of Bach’s cantatas, such as Cantata No. 4, Christ Lag in Todesbanden. Here’s a young Bach utilizing only one very familiar hymn tune as the basis of every movement, yet creating a musically, intellectually and spiritually uplifting work that has more in it than meets the ear.
The very structure of the movements is something of a palindrome (voices SATB, SA, T, SATB, B, ST, SATB) balanced with the middle movement as the fulcrum, depicting a cross. The struggle between life and death is depicted within this fulcrum movement. The ancient hymn melody is altered with one sharp, raising the second note of the melody while altering it from Dorian mode to E Minor, and each of the movements has a key signature of one sharp – some say the prominence of the single sharp is another depiction of the cross. Some musicologists claim Bach’s name is buried within the piece by dint of his numerological machinations, a sign that Bach was also composing puzzles for the delight of his friends and colleagues. Some musicologists also no doubt believe in UFO’s, but much of the foregoing is, or could plausibly be, true.
Musicological concerns aside, the music is lively, fun and uplifting, and we get to cavort with one of the great minds of the ages when we play Bach's works. Monday’s works, composed in the 1730s in Leipzig, may contain a coded map leading to the Ark of the Covenant, but the music also leads us to a sense that we have been somewhere and accomplished something of merit when we reach the final bar.
So bring your instrument, bring your ears, and join us as we celebrate with Bach on the occasion of his 326th birthday!
Let’s play!
Jim (the violist)
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