Beeri Moalem

4/27/05

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) O Ewigkeit du Donnerwort, BWV 60

Given Bach mythical status today, it is difficult to imagine that his superiors treated him like any other employee, or that he even had “superiors.”  Bach was not the first choice for the Leipzig cantor position.  Graupner and Telleman, who were preferred over Bach, turned Leipzig down in part because of a stipulation in the contract that required the cantor to teach Latin for several hours a week as well as look after schoolchildren.  Bach eventually paid someone to fill this part of the job for him, but for the first years at Leipzig, he had to look after these worldly nuisances when he was not composing the week’s cantata. 

He had other imposed limitations.  He was pledged “not to make the church music too long, nor too operatic, to instruct the boys not only in singing but—for the avoidance of expense—in instrumental music also, not to make any journeys without permission, etc…”[1] The “what-if” implications on the effects of music history, had Bach been given full freedom over his art are mind boggling.  But although today it difficult to fathom that people sought to limit Bach—in retrospect one of the greatest who ever lived, our society clearly has not learned from history.  Aspiring composers are still thwarted from following their inspiration by the near-impossibility of making a living in the profession.  Society at large still rejects long, complex, challenging, innovative, and new compositions, preferring short, easy, pop ditties.  Although the revulsion at the fact that Bach’s art was externally limited is understandable, it should come as no surprise.

And one wonders how much Bach actually obeyed the “non-operatic” clause in his contract.  With 21^st century ears, after we have been exposed to the extremely emotional musical representation of moods and events in the operas of Wagner, Puccini, Verdi, and even Mozart, it is difficult to hear Baroque music in its context.  Frankly, at least to my ears, the operas of Handel and his contemporaries along the vocal works of Bach, sometimes don’t fit the mood of the text.  The character of the music seems to rarely leave its designated status as artistic beauty.  On the surface, the music in an aria about death and destruction is interchangeable with an aria about love and bliss.  But upon a closer inspection, many interesting details can be found.

The text of Cantata No. 60 O Ewigkeit du Donnerwort for example, features mankind’s fear of death in dialogue with hope and acceptance of death.  It begins with a pedal point (D) in the bass over which one-measure clips of repeated sixteenths are heard.  These repeated sixteenths outline a the dominant seventh, but for one full beat, there is a passing tone, creating a dissonant cluster on the notes G, A, B.  In the context of later music, so far, this is fairly casual.  Indeed, many modern recordings pass through this measure without any hubbub;  it sounds pretty, elegant, and non-offensive.  This is the kind of approach that contributes to the common bromide that Baroque music is emotionally shallow and not expressive.

One recording, Suzuki’s with the Bach Collegium Japan and Choir[2] takes a startlingly fast tempo and gives the “cluster” a discomforting emphasis.  This may seem revolting to the casual listener who seeks beautiful background music for the dinner table.  But what is this cantata about?  “O eternity, you word of thunder, O sword that pierces the soul, O beginning without end!”  The subject matter is very intense.  If one seeks to make a connection between the text and the music, “eternity” correlates with the long pedal point, and the fleeting sixteenths with thunder.  Handel uses this repeated-sixteenth figure in his operas in correlation with Zeus’ frightening bolts.  Monteverdi first used this texture, (once considered unidiomatic even for strings) in the most dangerous and intense moments of his operas.  Since then, the gesture, associated with tension and fear has evolved to tremolo.  Harmonically, the tone “cluster” creates even more discomfort.  But despite these anxiety-producing elements, however, the final atmosphere is a calm one: The key is major, the vocal lines are smooth, and the obligatto oboe lines are peaceful.  This can be explained by the fact that despite the text about mortal fear, sung by the altos, the tenor’s text has a more optimistic outlook, singing about hope: “Lord I await your salvation.”

Many of Bach’s cantatas feature death and afterlife as their subject.  This is, after all, one of religion’s primary functions: to answer the impossible question of where it all ends and where it all began.  But unlike the Romantic striving for immortality, Bach’s (or at least his superiors’ or librettist’s) attitude towards death is that of serene acceptance.  It is not the legendary image of Beethoven at his death bed, shaking a defiant fist at the thunderous firmament.  Christian faith, with a devout belief of eternity in heaven, allows a person to embrace death in peace.  Death was a fact of life for Bach, a relatively common occurrence: he was orphaned by age ten, his first wife died while he was away on business, and he lived to see 11 of his 20 children die before his own time came around.  Cantatas # 4, 57, 60, 66, 80, 82, 95, 114, 127, 143, 150 161, 182, and others all feature death as an important subject, and all come to similar conclusions.  #4: “That death no one could subdue.” # 82: “I have enough… I would now, today yet, with gladness / Make hence my departure.”  # 26: “Ah, how fleeting, / Ah, how empty / Is the life of mortals!”  # 66: “I feared in truth the grave and all its darkness / And kept my hope my rescue was now stolen. I'll find in God victorious triumph.”

Cantata # 60 relates to death through its week’s Gospel.  Written for the 24^th Sunday after Trinity (of 1723) the designated Bible portions tells of Jesus healing a faithful but sickly woman with a single touch and bringing the daughter of a faithful Lord  back to life after she has died.  So despite the natural fear and anxiety over death, there is a belief in life after death, and a content embrace of the inevitable demise of every man or woman’s time on this world.

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Another interesting element in this Cantata is the plentiful amount of musical word painting.  For example, in the first movement the word warte (wait), is lengthened and extended with melismas.  In the ensuing recitativo, the word martert (torture) is illustrated with a thorny chromatic vocal line.  The third movement is a duet that continues the theme of Fear vs. Hope with an argument between the oboe playing an unsettled dotted rhythm and violin playing slurred scales.  These are practically the only two elements used in the entire movement.  The fourth movement is a lengthy alternation of jagged recitative sung in the high voice about fear, answered by an Arioso bass line labeled, “The voice of the holy spirit,” singing about hope.  The final chorale silences affirms the hopeful conclusion of the cantata: “It is enough / Lord if you will it, release me from my yoke. / … I am journeying there securely and peacefully / my great sorrow remains below. /  It is enough.”  The antagonism of fear is finally silenced here.  This is the only concurrence of all four voices together; all of the other movements are for two voices.  Alban Berg quotes this chorale in his violin concerto, his swansong.  The Cantata as a whole has a large dramatic arc, resolving at the end.  W.G. Whittaker, in his book analyzing the complete Bach cantatas, calls O Ewigkeit du Donnerwort a “Gripping dramatization of existential angst.”  It is not quite operatic, but with it’s tonal word painting, dialogue and expressive lines, it comes close.

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Cantata No. 20, written for June 24, 1724 also features the O Ewigkeit du Donnerwort as the text for its first movement.  This setting is set to a French Overture texture—also tense but very different from No. 60.  The repeated sixteenths for Donnerwort (thunder-word) also appear in No. 20, but are less prominent.  An almost identical melody is used in the highest vocal line in both cantatas.  Cantata No. 26 was written for the same Sunday as Cantata No. 60.  It deals with a similar questions about death.  Mentioned above, its title, “Ah, how fleeting, / Ah, how empty / Is the life of mortals!” is brilliantly illustrated in the music.  Scales in the lower voices evaporate to lightweight figurations in the upper voices.  The first movement is indeed fleeting; it is unusually short, clocking in at about 2:30 minutes.  These two comparisons of contrast and similarity in Bach’s cantata output begin to reveal the underlying richness, variety, originality, and interconnectedness, that exists in this fascinating genre of Baroque music.

Pasted from: http://www.uvm.edu/~classics/faculty/bach/BWV60.html