At Easter, Bach like voice of God
As listeners enjoy holiday music, many are seeking something more
J.S. Bach was no saint: He was difficult, curmudgeonly, combative and a character more easily appreciated from a distance than close up. There would be fights. But in the eyes, and more especially the ears, of later generations he’s assumed a saintly status. And throughout the week, in the approach to Easter, there will be a lot of people who confuse, perhaps favourably, his voice with that of God.
They’ll go to a performance of the Matthew or John Passion in a concert hall as though it were an act of worship — which in truth the Passion settings were when Bach first wrote them for Good Friday services in the Leipzig churches where he worked, complete with sermon in the middle.
They’ll behave more like a congregation than an audience. And many would admit they’d come for an experience that was in some way spiritual — in search not just of music but of meaning.
Bach himself would have approved of that because, for all his argumentative tendencies, he was devout. Scholars have sometimes argued that we overstate the role religion played in his creative output, claiming his Christianity was cultural — like that of everyone in early 18th-century north German cities — and not necessarily indicative of piety beyond the norm.
But is that true? A brief look at his manuscripts reveals how every bar and phrase comes saturated in belief, with scribbled markings like “JJ? (for Jesu Jevu: Jesus help me) when he’s struggling with composition problems, and the sign-off “SDG” (for Soli Deo Gloria: only to God the glory) when he sorts them out and makes it to the end.
Drawn to a branch of numerology known as Gematria, he also embedded symbolically charged number patterns into the music itself, organizing his material into structural groups of five (for the wounds of Christ), of three (for the Trinity), 12 (for the apostles) and so on.
If he hadn’t been a Lutheran he’d almost certainly have referenced the repetitions of the rosary in his scores. And as it stands, his use of symbolism serves a near-equivalent meditative purpose.
Passion settings for Good Friday were a specified requirement of Bach’s job as Cantor at the Thomasschule, which supplied the music for the two main Leipzig churches of St. Thomas and St. Nicholas. It isn’t clear how many he completed but the first, taking its text from John’s gospel, came in 1724.
Then came a second, based on Matthew. The score for a third, on Mark, has been lost (though musicologists have made attempts at reconstruction). And there may have been a fourth, based on Luke, though that’s debatable.
The certain fact is that two survive, and follow a similar ground plan of gospel narrative intercut by reflective commentaries and devotional choruses, telescoping back and forth between past history and present-day emotion. And there’s a strong sense of involving listeners in a collective drama that’s not just about events leading to the crucifixion but about latter-day pilgrims taking up their own cross in the Christian life.
Bach’s life came with more than its fair share of crosses to be borne, including the death of 10 of his children at birth or in infancy, so he was writing from experience — not least in all the passages that speak in the first person of “my tears,” “my mourning,” or “my heart aching with pain.”
It may have been a life focused on God and working for the Church. But he can only have wondered, as he churned out the vast quantities of music his contract with the Leipzig authorities required, what would come of all this productivity. And in terms of recognition, the immediate answer was very little.
When Bach died in 1750, there was no mention of it in the Leipzig press, no funeral oration, no monument erected over his grave. His widow fell into poverty. And though his work was revered by the musical elite, it wasn’t until “rediscovery” by Mendelssohn some 80 years later that it achieved repertory status. As careers go, Bach’s was (in his own words) dogged by “hindrance and vexation.”
If there’s one thing, though, that all the audiences who pile this week into a John or Matthew Passion will discover, it is a sense of solace.
Of the hurt and pain that come as standard in an average existence — touched by something you may or may not call divine but that, either way, holds out the possibility of healing.
Little wonder that so many find it hard to differentiate between this music and the voice of God. Or that they spend Good Friday afternoons in concert halls.