Why Bach Moves Us by George B

6/2/2014 Why Bach Moves Us by George B.
Stauffer | The New York Review of Books

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/feb/20/why-bach-moves-us/?pagination=false&printpage=true 1/8
William H. Scheide, Princeton, New Jersey
Johann Sebastian Bach; painting by Elias
Gottlob Haussmann, 1748
February 20, 2014 Issue
Why Bach Moves Us
George B. Stauffer
Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven
by John Eliot Gardiner
Knopf, 629 pp., $35.00
One of my most moving encounters with the
music of Johann Sebastian Bach took place in the
spring of 1997 in New York Citys Central
Synagogue. I was there to pay last respects to
Gabe Wiener, a talented young recording engineer
who died of a brain aneurysm at age twenty-six. I
had approached Gabe earlier in the year to see if
his recording company, PGM Classics, would
consider collaborating with the American Bach
Society, which I led at the time, to produce a
compact disc of previously unrecorded organ
music from Bachs circle. Gabe enthusiastically
agreed to the proposal, and together we embarked
on a project we called The Uncommon Bach.
We had just settled on the repertory and the organ
when I received word of his death.
There was great lamenting at the memorial service
that this talented young man had been snatched away in the midst of important work, with
so much promise unfulfilled. The service began with Gabes recording of Salamone
Rossis Hebrew setting of the Songs of Solomon, a gorgeous yet relatively unknown
Venetian masterpiece. It continued with readings from the Torah, eulogies, and the
Kaddish. But at the center of the service, at what proved to be the emotional high point, a
countertenor sang the Agnus Dei from Bachs Mass in B Minor.
The Agnus Dei is one of Bachs last creations, derived from music he had used twice
before, in 1725 and 1735, with different texts. He was clearly pleased with the highly
effective aria, and in 1749 he refined it a final time for insertion into the concluding
portion of the B-Minor Mass. Time was running out. The cataracts that had plagued his
eyesight for some time were rapidly advancing, and the Agnus Dei was one of the last
pieces he completed before submitting to the eye operations that led to his death. Bach
normally expanded music when he revised it for further use, but in this unusual case he
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6/2/2014 Why Bach Moves Us by George B. Stauffer | The New York Review of Books
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shortened the original, distilling its emotional and musical essence and creating a new,
intensified version of the piece. He had less than a year to live.
As the singer intoned the ancient Latin textAgnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi,
miserere nobis (Lamb of God, who taketh away the sins of the world, have mercy upon us)
enhanced by a poignant unison violin line and anguished pauses, I could not help but
marvel at the miracle of hearing this music from the Roman Catholic Latin Mass
Ordinary, written by a Lutheran composer in Leipzig, in a Reform Jewish temple in New
York City. Afterward I asked Peter Rubinstein, the senior rabbi of Central Synagogue, why
he picked this particular work rather than something from the Jewish repertory. We
chose Bachs Agnus Dei, he replied, because it was the right piece, indeed the only
piece capable of expressing the inexpressiblethe anguish we feel over the inexplicable
loss of young Gabe Wiener.
Just how Bach managed to express the inexpressible, especially with regard to death, and
what life experiences stood behind his compositional decisions are at the center of a
lively new book by the distinguished British conductor John Eliot Gardiner. Stepping in as
president of the Leipzig Bach Archive at the beginning of this year, Gardiner has devoted
his life to the performance of Bachs vocal works (he has conducted them all), and the
biographical gaps he seeks to close in his lengthy study have perplexed Bach scholars for
more than two hundred years.
nlike Mozart, Beethoven, and other classical composers for whom personal letters
abound, Bach left behind little correspondence. He never wrote an autobiographical
sketch, even though he was invited to do so several times, and in only three instancesa
job inquiry to an old school chum, a concerned exchange with town officials over the
misdemeanors of his son Johann Gottfried Bernhard, and underlinings and marginalia in
his Calov Bibledoes he offer a glimpse of his inner self. All the rest must be pieced
together from council records, pay receipts, anecdotes, brief printed notices, a carefully
worded obituary, and other scraps of information. Bachs character has remained largely
hidden from view.
As a result, biographers have been forced to fend for themselves, frequently reimagining
Bach through the prism of their own life and times. Johann Nicolaus Forkel, a passionate
keyboard player and German nationalist, first portrayed Bach in 1802 as a virtuoso
organist and harpsichordist and model citizen for Germanys rising middle class. Later in
the century, Philipp Spitta, born into a family of theologians and leader of the Lutheran
church-music revival, portrayed Bach as the Fifth Evangelist, vigorously spreading the
gospel through his Lutheran cantatas, motets, and Passions. And more recently, Christoph
Wolff, former dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and University Professor
at Harvard, presented Bach as a learned musician, an intellect worthy of Sir Isaac
Newton and a town music director well acquainted with the faculty of the university in
Leipzig.
It is no surprise, then, that Gardiner proposes yet another image of Bach. Moving beyond
*
the hagiographies of the past, he presents a fallible Bach, a musical genius who on the one
hand is deeply committed to illuminating and expanding Luthers teachings through his
sacred vocal works (and therefore comes close to Spittas Fifth Evangelist), but on the
other hand is a rebellious and resentful musician, harboring a lifelong grudge against
authoritya personality disorder stemming from a youth spent among ruffians and
abusive teachers. Hiding behind Bach, creator of the Matthew Passion and B-Minor Mass,
Gardiner suggests, is Bach the reformed teenage thug. In the preface we read:
Emphatically, Bach the man was not a bore. Neither is Gardiner.
Gardiner draws on the most recent findings of the Bach Archive research team, especially
Michael Mauls important study of the St. Thomas Choir. This material was not available
to previous biographers. But he believes the key to unlocking Bachs concealed character
lies in the music itself, the anchor to which we can return again and again, and the
principal means of validating or refuting any conclusion about its author. In this sense his
approach resembles that used for Shakespeare in Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt,
who called on passages from the Bards works to flesh out an otherwise skeletal
biography. The chief difference is that Greenblatt considered all the plays and sonnets,
whereas Gardiner limits himself to Bachs vocal worksa restriction that raises
problems.
While its difficult to imagine a controversial Bach biography, given the overall lack of
documentary material, Gardiners reappraisal comes close to it. For instance, in evaluating
Bachs initial years in Eisenach, where he was born in 1685, past biographers have
attributed his school absences to domestic problems: illnesses and the deaths of Bachs
parents, leaving him an orphan at age ten. Gardiner suggests instead that the absences may
have resulted from a negative atmosphere in a school and town filled with rowdy,
subversive, thuggish boys. Earlier writers have viewed Bachs subsequent stay with his
older brother Johann Christoph in Ohrdruf as a period of academic accomplishment, with
Bach achieving good grades and high class standing under the progressive educational
reforms of Jan Amos Comenius. Here Gardiner sees a sinister element in the dismissal of
cantor Johann Heinrich Arnold, reportedly for bullying, sadism and sodomy. Might Bach
have been a victim of Arnolds? Gardiner asks.
At age fifteen, Bach moved north to Lneburg, where he sang in the St. Michaels Matins
Choir, studied organ with Georg Bhm, and made trips to Hamburg to observe the great
North German organist Johann Adam Reincken. In this instance Gardiner points to the turf
wars of the Lneburg prefects over serenading rights, creating gang clashes fought by
embryonic Jets and Sharks.
Gardiner concludes that Bach was bred en bawn in a brier-patch like Brer Rabbit, and
that this thorny upbringing set the stage for a troubled professional life. Thus Bachs stay
in Arnstadt, where he really showed the first fruits of his application to the art of organ
playing and composition, according to his formal obituary, becomes a battleground with a
rowdy, intractable student choir and a local cultural milieu that was not sympathetic to
him. Bachs next post, Mhlhausen, where he wrote cantatas of remarkable beauty and
A
invention, was plagued by conditions that prevented [him] from doing anything worth
while. And Weimar, where the pleasure his Grace took in his playing fired him with the
desire to try every possible artistry in his treatment of the organ, according to the
obituary once again, is also viewed as a period of unending conflict with his employers.
ll this builds to Bachs arrival in Leipzig in 1723, where Gardiner sees the well-
known squabbles with members of the Town Council as the ultimate consequence of
emotional wounds from a troubled youth:
The strong impression one gets is of a man almost constantly at odds with someone
or something. It should not surprise us, then, if we find that these lifelong problems
with anger and authority were incubated in the unsavoury atmosphere and
environment of his early schooling and in childhood traumas.
This approach reaches a climax when Gardiner reads a hidden agenda into the Leipzig
cantatas. He questions whether Cantata 178, with its dire, sibyl-like mood of warning
against hypocrites and prophets, was Bachs way of channeling his frustration and
vituperative energy into his music and then watching as it rained down from the choir loft
on to his chosen targets below. More than that, he characterizes the aria Weicht, all ihr
beltter (Begone, all you evildoers!) from Cantata 135 as angry music executed with a
palpable fury, with Bach fuming at delinquent malefactors. This begins to sound like
Susan McClarys infamous portrayal of Beethovens Ninth Symphony as the throttling,
murderous rage of a rapist incapable of attaining release.
All this makes for lively reading. But what are we to make of it?
It seems to me that for Bachs formative years and professional positions leading up to his
appointment in Leipzig, the music is indeed our best indication of his personality. By
excluding Bachs keyboard and instrumental pieces from discussion, however, Gardiner
disregards telling evidence that he himself deems critical for understanding Bachs
character. For example, he mentions the astonishing organ tablatures, discovered only in
2005, of works by Reincken and Dieterich Buxtehude that Bach wrote out when he was
between thirteen and fifteen years old. But Gardiner doesnt acknowledge what they tell
us. The neat, meticulous, almost flawless notation points to a disciplined, methodical,
well-trained teenager deeply committed to learning his craft. And the music suggests a
prodigy eager to take on the most technically challenging organ music of the time. This
does not seem to square with the image of a wild, unruly boy running around Ohrdruf and
Lneburg with hoodlums.
And in Cthen, characterized by Gardiner as a provincial backwater, Bach nevertheless
managed to produce the Brandenburg Concertos, the solo violin and cello pieces, and
other instrumental and keyboard works that reveal his complete embrace of dance music,
perhaps the most important influence on his mature style other than his adoption of
Vivaldis music in Weimar. A quick comparison of Well-Tempered Clavier, volume 1,
with Well-Tempered Clavier, volume 2, or the Weimar cantatas with the Leipzig cantatas
Sothebys
T
shows how critical the formal use of dance at the Cthen court was to Bachs eventual
formulation of a powerfully engaging universal style. Cthen may have been a petty court,
compared to those in Berlin or Dresden, but for Bach the stay there was a life-altering
experience.
The Thomasschule and Thomaskirche in Leipzig, where Bach was the choir director from 1723 until his death in
1750; painting by Felix Mendelssohn, 1838
The truth about Bachs personality probably rests somewhere in the middle. The picture of
Bach as humble Lutheran servant of God, model child, and fully mature adult is
undoubtedly too saccharine. The arguments with town councils show a strong will and
prickly temperament, and his private biblical exegesis suggests inner resentment. Gardiner
is to be applauded for yanking us back to reality, for underscoring that the youthful pranks
mentioned by C.P.E. Bach may refer to a less responsible side of his father. But the
letters of family amanuensis Johann Elias Bach, describing a cantors home filled with
visitors, carnations, and canaries, suggest a warm domestic haven rather than the lair of an
angry young man.
he obsessive search for Bachs dark side subsides in the second half of the book,
when Gardiner arrives at the music he knows and loves best, the Leipzig vocal works.
Here the tone brightens.
Bachs decision, upon becoming cantor of St. Thomas, to provide a new cantata for each
Sunday and festival day of the church year was the most momentous compositional
decision of his life. It was common at the time for cantors to produce annual cantata
cycles of approximately sixty works each. Georg Philipp Telemann, writer of 1,700
cantatas, and Christoph Graupner, with 1,400 to his credit, could shake church pieces out
of their sleeves, and it is no surprise that they were offered the St. Thomas position before
Bach. But Bachs writing was much more substantive and intense, and the commitment to
weekly cantata composition during his initial Leipzig years was a daunting personal
challenge. He had only a modest supply of earlier works. He had no professional copyists
at his disposal. He had no more than a motley band of singers and instrumentalists.
The weekly routine of cantata production must have been arduous: composing a thirty-
minute work, overseeing the preparation of performance parts, rehearsing the score, and
finally performing the music one, two, or even three times, depending on the Sunday or
feast day in question. Even more remarkable was the multiyear commitment: the steady
production, week in and week out, with Passions, oratorios, and Latin-texted works added
at the high points of Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. The obituary stated that Bach
composed five annual cycles, making a total of approximately three hundred cantatas.
Only two hundred or so survive.
Gardiners direction of the Bach Pilgrimage, the performance of the complete cantatas
in liturgical order during the course of 2000, gives him a unique insiders feel for Bachs
vocal music and the rhythm of an annual cycle. His walkthrough of the annual cycles of
17231724 and 17241725 (the others are more fragmentary) provides a marvelous
sense of the liturgical seasons and Bachs musical reaction to them.
There are great advantages to approaching the cantatas this way. We can experience, for
instance, the tremendous burden of Bachs first Christmas, when he had to compose,
prepare, and perform nine works over a span of sixteen days. We can see just how
methodically he approached composition when he began the second annual cycle, based
on chorale tunes, by assigning the melody first to the soprano voice, then to the alto, then
to the tenor, and finally to the bass, respectively, in the opening choruses of the first four
works. Or we can note how toward the end of the same cycle Bach became enamored of
the oboe da caccia, an exotic instrument with the body of an oboe and the bell of a horn,
using it in six of the last twelve works.
These and other day-to-day matters come to life in Gardiners tour through the cantatas, as
his writing picks up the lyrical flow of the music:
Here we see a great composer at the height of his powers meeting the challenges of
a self-imposed regimen week by week and adjusting his choice of form, his
approach and his tone of voice to each underlying theme, each symbol and each
metaphor arising from the texts laid out in front of him. There can be no doubt as to
the magnitude of the task or the rapidity with which his skill developed.
C
Gardiner believes it was Bachs identification with Martin Luther that made all the
difference. Luthers earthy German translation of the Bible, a prose of the people,
provided Bach with bold images to paint in music. It was the perfect counterpart to
Luthers hymns and hymn texts, to which Bach returned time and time again. Luthers
advocacy of music and his conviction that it could make scripture come alive legitimized
Bachs compositional ambitions. Picking up Spittas mantle, Gardiner makes the case that
the cantatas, rather than the keyboard or instrumental works, are Bachs greatest
achievement. And within the cantatas it is the sacred pieces, backed by Bachs fervent
faith, that shine above the secular works, which in Gardiners view do not display the same
intense conviction.
rowning the cantata cycles are the Passions. Of the two that survive, Gardiner finds
the St. John the most dramatic, perhaps because the text offered optimal opportunity
for contrasts. On a small scale, this played out in arias such as Betrachte, meine Seel
(Consider, my soul), in which the torn and blood-streaked back of the flogged Christ is
likened to a rainbow symbolizing divine grace. Bach painted this image with exotic violas
damore accompanied by a lute (or lute harpsichord, in a subsequent performance). On a
large scale, it played out in the turbulent choruses of the hysterical and vengeful mob that
contrast with the serene recitatives and arias portraying Christ. The chorales, perhaps
actively sung by the congregation (this remains open to debate), stood as markers for the
listeners, signposts of familiar texts and melodies that engaged them more deeply in the
drama. Gardiner is right to point out the St. John Passions close ties with opera and its
musical devices. As was true of opera, audience members could purchase the printed text
at the event, even though they were already familiar with the characters and plot.
Gardiner concludes his survey of the vocal music with an extended exploration of the
Mass in B-Minor, Bachs most universal church work. Consisting mainly of recycled
movements from cantatas written over a thirty-five-year period, it allowed Bach to survey
his vocal pieces one last time and pick select movements for further revision and
refinement. By shifting the text from German to Latin, he was able to move the music
from the Lutheran Proper service to the Catholic Ordinary. The work is permeated with
secular dance music, which accounts for its remarkable exuberance, grace, and appeal. But
it also contains deeply expressive music from Bachs Weimar and Leipzig church cantatas
that gives it extraordinary emotional depth and drama. As Gardiner well describes it, the
Mass celebrates the fundamental sanctity of life, an awareness of the divine and a
transcendent dimension as a fact of human existence. Assembled in 1748 and 1749, it
was Bachs musical last will and testament.
Gardiner, like earlier biographers, ponders whether the work is Lutheran or Catholic. The
Missa (Kyrie and Gloria) and Sanctus were compatible with the Lutheran worship service,
as previous writers have acknowledged. But recent evidence shows that the Symbolum
Nicenum and Agnus Dei portions could have been performed within the Leipzig Lutheran
liturgy as well. In the case of the Symbolum, Gardiner suggests that Bachs late insertion
of the Et incarnatus puts the Crucifixus at the very center of the music, thus reinforcing
*
Luthers belief that the crucifixion was the central event of Christianity, an act that
allowed man to perceive God through Christs suffering and death.
This is true, but the interpolation also highlights the incarnation, which was de rigueur for
Catholic Mass settings of the time. There are reasons to believe Bach performed the
Symbolum in its initial, shorter version in Leipzig as a Lutheran anthem, and inserted the
Et incarnatus only when he incorporated the music into his evolving Catholic Missa tota.
The extant manuscript of the B-Minor Mass is filled with scratch-outs, corrections,
revisions, and insertions. It suggests a work in progress.
If Bach had lived longer, it is likely that he would have created a definitive fair copy of the
Mass, similar to those of the St. John and St. Matthew Passions. There he might have
confirmed the Catholic nature of the whole by replacing the Lutheran term Symbolum
Nicenum with the Roman standard, Credo. He also might have given the work a name
(the present title comes from the nineteenth century; the Bach family seems to have
called the compilation The Great Catholic Mass).
Which brings us back to the Agnus Dei aria of this monumental piece. Its text does not
draw on Luthers German or the poetry of a Leipzig librettist, but rather on the ancient
language of the Mass Ordinary. Is it Bachs use of this timeless Latin plea that still moves
us so strongly today, or is it the seemingly inexorable progression of his melodic lines
and harmonic sequences? Does the perfectly proportioned structure of the piece stir
primal feelings that transcend time, place, and creed, to express the inexpressible?
Although Music in the Castle of Heaven does not fully answer these questions, it forces
us to rethink Bachs life and how adversity and faith affected his vocal compositions. And
it takes us inside his world, allowing us to see the works from the standpoint of composer,
performer, and listener. As Otto Bettmann once remarked, Bachs music sets in order
what life cannot.
Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician (Norton, 2000); reviewed in these pages by Robert L. Marshall, June 15,
2000.
1963-2014 NYREV, Inc. All rights reserved.

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6/2/2014 Why Bach Moves Us by George B.

Stauffer | The New York Review of Books

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