Bachs Greatest Moment: An Audio-Visual Essay

by Daniel Brown

Trying to rank great moments in Bach is like trying to rank miracles in order of impossibility.
Yet Ive caught myself feeling that a moment in the second Kyrie of his B-Minor Mass is the
greatest of all

This Kyrie is a fugal chorus in the stile antico, or "old style:" the Baroque's reconceiving of the
smooth vocal polyphony of the Renaissance. Its graceful subject is distinguished (as no
Renaissance subject would dream of being) by the otherworldly interval of a diminished third .
Bach's exposition of this subject unfolds in steady, textbook fashion . Beneath these
proceedings, however, something momentous is quietly coming to birth. The process begins, in
fact, with a kind of conception. Have another look at the subject; note that it ends with a
descending scale fragment . The first time this fragment occurs, the cellos support it with a
syncopated figure . The second time the fragment occurs, the cellos support it with a
downward run . The moment of conception takes place beneath the fragment's third
occurrence, as Bach combines syncopation and run in a hybrid figure . In assigning this figure
to the choral basses as well as the cellos, and beginning it in the prominent upper portion of the
basses' range, he invites us to notice it.

When we next encounter this figure, some ten measures later, Bach has developed it into
something more motivic. He presents it here in the upper portion of the tenors' range, where we
couldn't fail to notice it if we tried . Only after nine additional measures does the figure assume
its final form, as a compact, shapely motive pure and simple , from which Bach constructs
what might be called (to risk a contradiction in terms) a rising cascade . The mounting glory of
these measures is enhanced by their being cast, as none of the Kyrie has been until now, in a
major key, or rather in a "chain" of major keys, each progressing to the next . This passage
leads, by way of contrast, into the piece's most pensive stretch, a duet between the altos and
tenors that presents the subject in an uncommonly beautiful stretto (an overlapping of
statements) . The soprano and bass, which have sat out this duet, now re-enter with a stretto of
their own which leads into the piece's second rising cascade. (This one doesn't mount
continuously, as the first did, but in a pair of upward moves, from alto to soprano and bass to
tenor.) Like its predecessor, it generates a chain of keys .

Bach now wends his way, via a more freely contrapuntal stretch, to this: another cascade, of
course, but of a higher artistic order altogether . Its stature is suggested by the number of things
there are to say about it. The most basic is that it doesn't rise, like the previous two cascades. It
descends insteadand more beautifully, to my earslike a cascade in nature, a skein of
waterfalls, say. The cascade is also notable for what it descends from: a high A. This isn't just the
highest note in the piece, but the highest note Bach ever asks the human voice (at least the choral
human voice) to produce. The sopranos' octave leap to this A makes the note all the more
striking. That this A isn't just stratospheric but syncopateda trait that comes down to it all the
way from the germ of the cascade motive in the Kyrie's third measureincreases its impact
further still.

I haven't yet mentioned the most notable thing about this cascade, Bach's tiny yet radical
modification of the cascade motive. This modification has its origin in the Kyrie's subject,
specifically, in the subject's signature interval of a diminished third . Bach takes this interval in
one hand, the cascade motive as it's been until now in the other , and combines them. (The
notes of the diminished third are bridged by an intervening one, but the interval's presence is no
less overt for that.) In the annals of great creative conjunctionsNewtons yoking of apples
and planets, Donne's likening of separated lovers to the arms of a draughtsman's compass,
Picasso's smuggling of African masks into European artthis fusion of uncanny interval and
straightforward motive deserves an entry of honor. The energy this fusion releases, moreover,
would be the envy of a star's, resulting as it does in one of the most powerful modulations in
music.

To understand how Bach effects this modulation, we need to look at the forces at work in a
diminished third. The lower note of this interval strongly tends a half step upward , while its
upper note strongly tends a half step downward . These upward and downward "leading tones"
act like a pair of pincers, powerfully converging on the note between . Now see how Bach
harnesses this pincer power . The operative key coming into the cascade we're looking at is A
major; the high A that begins the cascade is therefore that most stable of scale steps, the tonic.
But this A is also the upper note of a diminished third, and in this highly unstable capacity it tugs
strongly downward to G-sharp (abetted by the upward thrust to G-sharp of its pincer-partner, F-
double-sharp). In a stunning move, Bach uses this tug from the note A to the note G-sharp to pull
the key down from A major to G-sharp major. The strongest modulations occur between
"remote" keys, those that have few notes in common. Keys don't come much more remote from
one another than A major and G-sharp major (they have only two notes in common ). When
Bach modulates from the former to the latter, we feel the world fall away beneath usonly to
reestablish itself a few feet down.

This modulation is remarkable not only in itself, but in the context of the Kyrie's larger tonal
structure. The piece's overall key is F-sharp minor. The cascade we've been considering begins
elsewherein A majorbut A major is as close to F-sharp minor as a key can be (the two keys
have all their notes in common ). A modulation between them can be effected as quickly and
directly as this . Now look at the harmonic progression by which Bach's cascade covers this
same, tiny tonal distance . Mark Twain once watched an ant traverse proximate points in the
dirt via a round trip to the top of a dandelion (a transit he compared to "traveling from London to
Paris by way of Strasbourg steeple"). This ant has nothing on the indirection in Bach's cascade.
The initial modulation from A major to the remote key of G-sharp major hits the Kyrie's
prevailingly calm tonality like an impossibly powerful gust; from a position just off the piece's
home port of F-sharp minor, we find ourselves instantaneously blown far out to sea. But as in the
previous two cascades, a chain of keys ensues, serving now as a series of tonal tacks that bear us
indirectly but steadily home .

You wont be surprised to hear that the cascade we've been considering is my abovementioned
nominee for Bach's greatest moment. What makes it so is the sheer number of interrelated ways
in which it so brilliantly works. There's its assumption of an optimal, "waterfalls" form, the
unparalleled height from which it descends, the enormous (and syncopated) leap by which this
height is attained, the inspired fusion of cascade motive and diminished third, the use of this
fusion to power the stunning modulation from A major to the remote key of G-sharp major, the
structural stunningness of this modulation (given A majors proximity to the Kyrie's home key
of F-sharp minor), and the use of the chaining of keys borrowed from the previous two cascades
to tack tonally home in this one (a "navigational" adaptation as creatively inspired, in its way, as
the fusion of diminished third and cascade motive). To consider so happy a confluence of so
many elements is to wonder how it could ever have been brought about. Not that, as a statistical
matter, the world won't occasionally toss up instances of order so multifarious as to seem
miraculous. But the world called Bach produced such seeming miracles on a considerably more
regular basis.

Note: This essay is adapted from a chapter in Daniel Browns ebook Why Bach?: An Audio-
Visual Appreciation.