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Cantata   Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis in meinem Herzen   (bwv 21)   Sinfonia   Ich hatte…       The largest of the sacred cantatas, bwv21 was written during Bach's Weimar years in memory of a friend who had passed away. The duet between the oboe and the first violins is evocative of the title "I have much sorrow in my heart." Bach preferred the word "concerto" to "cantata" and this example tells us why: the oboe is a plaintive human voice "concerting" with the strings over a steady continuo of eighth-note half-beats. At 1:58, the melody loses its flow and the harmony substitutes a striking diminished seventh chord (2:19) for the expected resolution to the root of Cm. The walking bass line resumes at 2:35 and a jazzy oboe flourish of 32nd notes (2:58) spelling a C diminished arpeggio brings us home. The call-and-response, the walking bass, the clean melodic lines, and the meticulous construction bring to mind this exquisite Clifford Brown solo.

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Cantata   Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme   (bwv 140)   Chorale   Wachet auf…       Wakey, wakey, Jerusalem, someone's marchin' in. Based on a famous hymn written by Philipp Nikolai after a devastating plague epidemic in the 16th century, this chorale fantasia opens with a French overture, almost courtly with its triple-time dotted rhythm. The music builds up to its first climax at 4:07, which delivers the most sensational Alleluja in the history of hallelujahs. The repeated melismas over the first syllable of the word never fail to give me goosebumps. It's got the sort of driving rhythm that always attracted me to jazz and whose tragic absence from classical music is, pace Kipling, the actual "white man's burden." At 4:45, when you come back to your senses, Bach doubles down with another, even more extraordinary passage, Macht euch bereit ("Make yourselves ready"). Sopranos sing the cantus firmus in long ascending lines suggestive of an angelic flyover. The great man never wrote an opera, but how many composers have matched the dramatic flair of these last two minutes?

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Cantata   Gottlob! nun geht das Jahr zu Ende   (bwv 28)   Chorale   All solch…       The final movement of this year-end cantata is a conventional harmonization of a simple melody and, being a chorale, an invitation to the congregation to sing along. I use these gorgeous tunes here as cleansing transition pieces, musical trous normands if you will.

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Cantata   Unser Mund sei voll Lachens   (bwv 110)   Aria   Wacht auf…       Another Christmas cantata and another wakeup call. You won't want to miss the word painting over Geist erfreun ("delighted spirit") with the gorgeous melisma at 1:48. With the first violins gyrating around the melody with breathless runs of sixteenth notes, the orchestration has a distinct Mozartian feel: further evidence, if any was needed, that Bach anticipates all of classical music. At 1:15, the oboes bow out in deference to the words, Und ihr, ihr andachtsvollen Saiten ("And you, you strings of deep devotion"). Now how cute is that?

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Partita No.2   Sinfonia   (bwv 826)       The first part of the opening movement, performed here by Glenn Gould, could have been written by Schumann and the second (2:42) by Art Tatum. Now try to wrap your head around this if you can: in his day, Bach was considered old-fashioned even by his own sons, who couldn't be bothered with his stile antico. A solemn opening adagio segues into a brisker andante at 0:50, with the left hand marking the rhythm in eighths. If the four repeated Gs (the dominant of the key), beginning at 2:07, do not pierce your musical heart, it may be that you have no such thing. They're a pedal tone over which the left hand plays the descending line Eb-D-C-Bb. This leads to a flatted sixth Ab (still in the home key of Cm) at 2:16 that turns the page and signals the approaching end of the Schumann part. At 2:41, with no break, Art Tatum takes it away on the dominant while the time signature switches to 3/4, a chance for the master to demonstrate his swing chops. The final cappricio also shows the Baroque King of the Righteous Riff (as I like to call JSB) in fine form. As a bonus, Glenn Gould seems to have forgotten to mutter to himself. Also, you won't want to miss Martha Argerich's masterly take on that last movement.

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Mass in Bm   Die h-Moll Messe   (bwv 232)   Chorus   Gloria: Qui tollis…       A man well versed in tragedy, having lost his parents by the age of ten, then his wife and ten children of his own, Bach never succumbed to cynicism. His darkness is deep yet gentle, sad yet sweet. A retooling of a cantata (bwv 46) he wrote 25 years earlier, the Qui Tollis of the Bm Mass could have been composed at any time in the last 300 years. (Which of Mozart's operas is not timestamped?) It is distinctive by the anxious throbbing pulses of the bass line with the viola playing two-note successions. Beginning at the 8th bar (0:25), the flutes come in to relieve the weight of perpetually falling thirds. Don't be surprised that the piece ends not on the root chord (Bm) but, in anticipation of the next aria, on its dominant (F#). The Qui tollis is part of the Gloria and must be fully appreciated in that wider context. Bach never stopped finetuning his monumental Mass, adding enough liturgical material along the way to make it unacceptable to Protestants and Catholics alike. Like the Art of Fugue, the work recapitulates all of Bach's learning. It is likely that he intended the former as a treatise on the instrumental science of music and the latter, pragmatic considerations aside, as its vocal counterpart. In particular, the Mass is the culmination of all choral music, past and present, to the extent that it features every single idea known to mankind about singing in a group. Bach never heard the Mass performed in full in his lifetime.

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St Matthew Passion   Matthäus-Passion   (bwv 244)   Aria   Erbarme dich…       Peter begs for mercy after betraying Jesus. Falling over a steady bass line of descending eighths, the plucked cello strings sound-paint teardrops: B A G F# | Em/E B7/F# Em/G... with, in that second measure, a full modulation to the fourth Em of the home key of Bm. Meanwhile the violin solo, Yehudi Menuhin's favorite, weaves its way around it with frequent rhythmic changes. There is a harmonic switch virtually at each triplet, implying four chords per measure (the time signature is 12/8, like a slow blues). Andreas Scholl, the world's greatest countertenor, shines. There's no describing the heart-rending beauty of this music; so, bowing to Wittgenstein's wisdom, "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."

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St John Passion   Johannes-Passion   (bwv 245)   Chorus   Ruht wohl…       The most gorgeous lullaby ever composed. This musical "Goodnight Moon" bids Jesus farewell with the words: Ruht wohl ("Rest well"). At this most solemn juncture of the most solemn hour of the most solemn day of the Christian calendar, what does Bach give us? A sweet, gentle dance! Only the achingly beautiful motet-like section at 2:33 departs from the basic homophony of the piece, with short canonic phrases and a measure of vocal independence. The whole chorus is structured as a pair of nested palindromes: Iaba-II-Iaba. Bach was big on those.

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