by Bach
Bernard Chazelle
Whether you landed here by accident or by design, thank your lucky star. Like the first swallow in the april sky, my top-10 Bach selection has arrived! It is the rare top-10 list that boasts 28 items and still manages to sin by omission. Bach lovers will scoff at the absence of their favorite pieces and, of course, they'll be right. Blame it on the tyranny of the small number. Great museums put their artwork on rotation and so will this list. But here I am, hundreds of listens later, and still under its magic spell; so turn on the volume and, if music be the food of love, read on.
Glenn Gould called Bach the greatest architect of sound. His harmonies indeed are so dense and rich even Mighty Mozart comes off sounding like a grinder of baby tunes. If the Modern Jazz Quartet turned to the Baroque master for inspiration, it's that, alone among his peers, Bach "swings." Yet his singularity, I believe, lies elsewhere. His harmonic language, the counterpoint, entails the vertical integration of melodic lines. It is, indeed, the gift of melody that stands Bach apart from the rest. Schubert had it; Bizet had it; Monk had it; Bono not so much. How this works is a mystery. What is not is that a counterpoint is only as good as its melodic parts. That's why Bach is such a thrill and Pachelbel is not.
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J.S.B as a mirror fugue |
Bach's music is soft and gentle, often suffused with piercing tenderness. His style has been called "feminine," a dated way of saying that Bachian geometry is free of angles and that the shortest path from A to B is a spiraling curve. I'll go further. While fond of the opera, Bach shunned its adult dispositions, leaving the hormonal out of his art's emotional makeup. You won't find any trace of lust, greed, or jealousy in his music. In other words, Bach took the opera and cut the bullshit. If his work has an unmistakable child-like quality, it's because its spiritual aspirations, borne of faith, joy, grace, and wonder, call for the deepest seriousness—and no one is more serious, and spiritual, than the child. The emotive depth of Bach's music owes much to his mastery of dissonances in the inner voices (tenor/alto), his blue notes. An early bluesman, he did it the sweet-and-sour way, mix-and-matching modes to make the joyful anxious and the sad hopeful. Upon discovering, back from a trip, that his beloved wife had died unexpectedly, Bach sat down to compose in her memory… a dance. An open challenge among Bach aficionados to point to unmitigated despair in his oeuvre has remained unanswered: Bach, like Ellington, doesn't do unmitigated despair.
Music is uniquely physical among the arts. The tonal kind has a simple mathematical foundation based on the laws of acoustics. If Jay-Z's My 1st Song rocks my world, it's because a bluesy F# minor resonance physically rocks my auditory cortex. The role of intentionality is tricky because music is not a language. It can claim a semblance of syntax but no semantics to speak of. The Ode to Joy could as easily be about fly fishing. It don't mean a thing if it ain't got lyrics. Yet we all know that minor modes sadden, dissonances grate, subtonics lead, and cadences bring home, so surely meaning lurks behind. Augmented with the proper acculturation, music can indeed trigger emotions reliably, which in turn grants the composer a mesure of communicable intentionality. Bach stretched the idea further by decorating his texts with generous aural imagery. Bear with me and soon you'll be hearing chirpings birds, rolling dice, and flames dancing in the wind. Each time, the accompanying text lifts the ambiguity.
Add to Bach's legendary sound painting the daunting complexity of his music and you'll understand why the curious mind will rush to chop it into bits and stick it under the microscope. Having indulged in this pastime, I know the feeling. Yet to reduce the man's genius to the vastness of his musical brain would be a mistake. My fanhood is shamelessly unintellectual. I love Bach because his music is the most formidable elation machine ever engineered. To be sure, there is a wide spiritual canvas on which to draw our analyses, but analysis is optional. The thrill is not. So forget the cerebral razzle-dazzle. The music is corporeal, sensuous, and intoxicating. Bach, the most human of all composers, gets to your soul through your body. As ill fate would have it, his public image has been defined by difficult pieces (eg, the Art of Fugue) or lesser works of dubious attribution (eg, the Toccata in Dm). While Bach continues to be more admired than loved, his glorious cantatas, accessible and breathing with humanity, remain largely ignored. No doubt this humble web page will take care of that…
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A newly discovered Bach aria |
If, as they say, all Western philosophy is a footnote to Plato, then all Western music is a commentary on the Thomascantor. Although it took Mendelssohn's 1829 performance of the St Matthew Passion to popularize the Baroque master, it is a common misconception that Bach was ignored until then. Mozart, not a person afflicted by low self-esteem, said of him: "Now there is music from which a man can learn something." Brahms admonished his contemporaries to "study Bach; there you will find everything." For Beethoven, who looked after Bach's impoverished daughter, he was the "immortal god of harmony"; for Wagner, "the most stupendous miracle in all of music"; for Pablo Casals, "the supreme genius of music"; for Debussy, "a benevolent god to which all musicians should offer a prayer to defend themselves against mediocrity." For Schumann, "music owes as much to Bach as religion to its founder"; for Rimsky-Korsakov, "all modern music owes everything to Bach"; and, for Albert Schweitzer, "everything leads to him." OK, you get the point. Composition aside, Bach didn't entirely suck as a performer either. Not content with being Europe's foremost keyboard player and one of its finest violinists, Bach could also play all the instruments of the orchestra. The composer of the Mass in Bm loved to jam on the pop tunes of the day: the Bach family's celebrated quodlibets; the gigs at Zimmermann's Café; etc. The man was quite the artist.
Except that Bach didn't regard himself as an artist but as a scientist, a cosmologist of music. Just as Newton had worked out the laws of planetary motion, so Bach set out to discover the laws of the musical universe. More Galileo than Michelangelo, this deeply religious man searched for "God's music" rather than for his own. Therein lies the reason for his breathtaking versatility. Faith informs so much of Bach's art that to push it aside is the surest way to get the story wrong. For example, religion explains why the trumpet was his favorite instrument (think heavens-reaching pitches) or why Bach didn't seek beauty as an end in itself but as a means to an end (honoring God). His music was, in Taruskin's words, "a medium of truth, not beauty." Wedded as we are to the Romantic notion of art-for-its-own-sake, it is not easy for us to appreciate Bach's artistic mindset. With rare exceptions—the St Matthew Passion and his didactic works come to mind—Bach showed little interest in preserving his art for posterity. Pressed to make his music less "bombastic" by his Leipzig paymasters, Bach ignored their demands. This is perfectly rational. No need to believe in god to see that, if your purpose in life is to divine the secrets of music to please the Lord, why worry about your earthly legacy or the ravings of a town councilman? Bach was also a humble man, who attributed the quality of his music to hard work. Yet he couldn't understand why getting top jobs had to be so difficult. The head of the search committee that hired him in Leipzig famously remarked: "Since the best men are not available, we'll have to do with mediocre ones." Some things you can't make up.
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Thomaskirche |
Although Bach produced his greatest music in the provincial backwater of Leipzig, a commercial town, working in an idiom that had fallen out of favor, his musical culture was prodigious. He absorbed, sponge-like, the Dutch organ tradition, the Italian musical theater, and the dance & keyboard music from France. With his personal music library one of the best in Saxony, Bach was able to indulge in the common practice of the day: retooling the works of the greats. His composition quilt wove together all of the musical strands of Europe, reaching as far back as Palestrina and even the Gregorian chant (cf. Mass in Bm). Concerned that his openings lacked Vivaldi's punch, he studied the Italian master assiduously. Charles Rosen commented that Vivaldi was good with openings but had the unfortunate habit of running out of ideas almost immediately. Bach didn't suffer from that affliction. Beethoven quipped that his name should not be Bach ("brook") but Meer ("ocean"). Perhaps the biggest mystery is how one person could have maintained, week after week, such heights of creativity. The great Bach scholar, Christoph Wolff, observed that a professional composer today would probably need a three-year leave of absence to write a piece on the scale of the St Matthew Passion: Bach did it in a few weeks.
I'll close this introduction on a nicely solipsistic thought. The compositions may be Bach's but the exhilaration is ours. Does this mean the music was in our head all along and Bach merely switched it on? Not quite, but think about it this way. New gym exercises acquaint us with muscles we didn't know our bodies even possessed. Likewise, Bach's music awakens in us a multitude of sensibilities that would lie dormant without it. It reminds us of the aesthetic virtues that live, often hidden, inside each one of us.
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The audio samples are sorted more or less in order of increasing scope. From the smallest musical phrase to the palindromic vistas of the St John Passion, Bach shines at all scales. It is thus borderline criminal to excerpt 5-minute snippets from Bach's oeuvre as one would ditties from a pop album. Mona Lisa's smile may well be "everything," no one in their right mind would crop out the rest. So may this gourmet sampling make you ask for more. How did I choose the tasty morsels? While aiming for diversity, I tried to avoid the über-famous pieces: the Brandenburgs, Goldbergs, Cello suites, etc. Instead, I gave precedence to my beloved cantatas, the loyal repositories of all of Bach's genius. Conducting JSB is a lifetime commitment and only scholars of the music can do it. By Bach's own admission, his choral performances didn't sound all that great (the trouble with living in an artistic backwater), so I am unsure why we need to recreate "that" sound. As you'll notice, however, I am quite fond of HIP (historically-informed performance). I like it mainly for the instruments that come with it. I am open to all manner of interpretation but rhythm is my red line. Bach dances and conductors who can't should stick to Brahms.
The Mass in Bm and all the cantatas are conducted by John Eliot Gardiner (Helmuth Rilling/YouTube) and the Passions by Philippe Herreweghe. The Partita is performed by Glenn Gould, the Art of Fugue by Andrew Davis and Christopher Hogwood, and the Passacaglia by Karl Richter. Following Bach era's tuning conventions, the following pieces (whose harmonies are discussed below) are played a semitone lower than today's pitch: bwv 1, 21, 34, 40, 57, 96, 229, 232, 244, 245, 582. If the audio player doesn't work, click on the blue notes on the left (or update your Flash player). The discussion below was facilitated tremendously by having free access to the musical scores of Bach's works. I can't heap enough praise on the good people who made this possible.
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Cantata
Ach! ich sehe, itzt, da ich zur Hochzeit gehe
(bwv 162)
Aria
Ach!…
During several of his Leipzig years, Bach wrote one cantata a week. With Friday-Sunday devoted to copying, rehearsals, and performances, the entire composition, packing more music than a Beatles album, had to be wrapped up in four days. Bach wrote over 300 cantatas in his lifetime, two-thirds of which are still with us. Together they form the greatest body of vocal works in Western music. In this early, pre-Leipzig aria, Bach, the blues master, loves to juxtapose contradictory sentiments, Wohl und Wehe ("bliss and misery") at 0:46. The bass voice is grateful to be a guest at the wedding feast, a metaphor for the Last Judgment, but is fearful he won't be welcome: "Heaven's rays and hellfire"; "Jesus, help me to survive now." The hook is a tight canon (EAFEFFAF) over the standard progression Am-Dm-G7-C, which is repeated four times on three instruments (two violins and viola) in the first six bars alone, with the bass voice joining the action in bar 8. (The key is a semitone higher.) The wide, obstinate leaps in the continuo (the harmonic roadmap) add to the sense of confusion. In a lovely shot of Bachian sound imagery, the melismatic Höllenflammen at 1:53 ("hellfire") conjures up visions of wavering flames. |
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Cantata
Selig ist der Mann (bwv 57)
Aria
Ich ende behende…
Bach was often accused of mistaking the Thomaskirche for a dance hall, and one can only wonder what he was thinking when he set this enchanting aria to the words: Ich ende behende mein irdisches Leben ("I eagerly end my earthly life"). The soprano can't emphasize enough her "joy" to "depart" (0:57): Mit Freuden zu scheiden verlang ich itzt eben ("now I even long to depart with joy"). The time signature of 3/8 gets its syncopation from the alternation between four half-beats and a single full beat. The ending leaves you hanging on the relative major Bb of the key with the question, Hier hast du die Seele, was schenkest du mir? ("You have my soul, what will you give me?") The answer is provided in the closing chorale. |
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Cantata
Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern (bwv 1)
Aria
Unser Mund…
Bach at his bubbly exuberant best pens one of the most brilliant bridges (2:10) in the history of music. The Annunciation to Mary that the "Morgenstern" (ie, Jesus) is on the way takes the form of a virtuosic triple-time minuet in the purest French dance tradition. Unser Mund und Ton der Saiten ("Our mouths and the tone of strings […] shall be ready for thee"), a statement by which the tenor and the violins abide in a breathless duet. As often with Bach, the aria climaxes in the middle section, starting with the melismatic emphasis (2:18) on Gesang ("singing"). At 2:23, while the tenor holds that E note, the violins reprise the first bar's ritornello, a minor third higher. The wealth of melodic ideas in this passage leaves me speechless, so I'll leave it at that. |
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Cantata
Sie werden aus Saba alle kommen (bwv 65)
Aria
Gold aus Ophir…
A Christmas aria bathed in Bach's customary ambiguity: dour or festive? A near-eastern feel is created by the dominant presence of recorders, horns, and oboes. The melismas on Gaben ("offerings") at 0:36 and 0:51 express the nauseating quality of earthly treasures. Jesus, apparently, wants your heart, not your gold: Jesus will das Herze haben. What follows is a triple canon between two oboes and the continuo in an imitative dialogue among the gold, incense, and myrrh. |
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Cantata
Herr Christ, der einge Gottessohn (bwv 96)
Chorus
Herr Christ…
Piccolo flutes and violins imitate the lights of twinkling stars and the sounds of chirping birds (angels in the sky) while sweetly lilting to a 9/8 time signature (three-within-three). The cantus firmus (the basic tune) is uncharacteristically given to the altos, perhaps to keep the sopranos from interfering with our angels. The first half of the fantasia seems a preparation for the climax at 4:11 when the imitative discourse comes to an end and all join forces for a chromatic modulation to E major (from F major): Er ist der Morgensterne ("He is the morning star," ie, Jesus). This is sublime craftsmanship. |
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Cantata
Darzu ist erschienen der Sohn Gottes (bwv 40)
Chorale
Jesu, nimm dich…
A four-part chorale in Fm, the darkest of minor keys, of the sort Bach could whip out in a Leipzig minute. The ending is radiant (0:37), Freude, Freude, über Freude! Christus wehret allem Leide ("Joy, joy, beyond joy! Christ wards off all sorrow"). |
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St John Passion
Johannes-Passion (bwv 245)
Chorus
Lasset uns den…
A brilliant example of sound imagery: soldiers roll the dice to decide who will snatch Jesus's coat. You hear the rattling sounds at 0:13-1:30, ending on the victory cry of the soprano, standing in for the youngest soldier. A canon introduces the voices in ascending order (bass, tenor, alto, soprano) over one measure each, as in this run of eighth notes: las-set-uns-den-nicht-zer(teilen). |
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Cantata
O Ewiges Feuer, O Ursprung der Liebe (bwv 34)
Chorus
O Ewiges…
This wedding cantata, "O eternal fire, O source of love," features the trumpet, Bach's favorite instrument. The piece is in D, which is the trumpet's native key and the richest in acoustic resonance. The dramatic buildup of this opening chorus is a model of power, control, and compositional wizardy. At 2:59, Laß HIMM-lische FLAMM-en durch-DRING-en und WAL-len ("Let heavenly flames penetrate and surge") leads to what can only be described as early Count Basie: driving swing, call-and-response (counterpoint-style); all that's missing is Jo Jones on drums. Rhythm aside, the melodic density of this music is positively humbling. And while you're at it, you won't want to miss Stéphane Grappelli and Eddie South's delightful jamming on the double violin concerto. What's striking is how, unlike the lame attempts at rock-and-rollifying Beethoven and his ilk, Grappelli and South remain squarely within the confines of Bach's idiom and yet sound completely modern. |