'Watch therefore, for you do not know the day nor the hour in which the Son of Man is coming.'

Free Be-a-Maestro Newsletter 26 - 21 September 2013 - Be a maestro!

by Reinier Maliepaard

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) wrote a large number of cantatas (1) in two broad categories - church cantatas and secular cantatas. The church cantata consists of several movements, including choruses, chorales (hymns), recitatives (sections consisting of melodically intoned narrative), arias and duets. Most popular is his Bach's BWV 140, based on the hymn 'Wachet auf ruft uns die Stimme' ('Awake, calls the voice to us').

The majority of the Church cantatas, particularly those for choir, soloists and orchestra, have the hymn, the chorale at their heart as in Bach's BWV 140. Hence called a chorale cantata. BWV 140 -consisting of seven movements- was written for the Sunday before Advent and first performed in Leipzig on November 25, 1731. In this newsletter, I write something about the first movement, where the sopranos sing the hymn melody in augmentation (i.e. in long notes) throughout the movement, almost as a cantus firmus, while the other parts weave contrapuntal lines around it (a design Bach used also in the opening chorus of his St. Matthew Passion).

To understand German Baroque music in general and Bach's music in particular, you have to know that there was a connection between language (better rhetoric) and music. It was a normal practice for Bach (2) to represent 'Affekte' (i.e. particular moods) in music and, in so doing, to excite the listener's emotions. So a baroque composer was communicating with his listener by using special tokens, more or less defined by conventions. Some tokens can be understood easily nowadays (e.g. 'weeping' by chromatic progressions in a minor key or 'falling' by descending wide leaps as a diminished seventh), other tokens suppose knowledge of rhetorical principles.

To understand some of the rhetorical figures in the first movement of Bach's BWV 140, we have to know what's all about.

 

Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme
Der Wächter sehr hoch auf der Zinne,
Wach auf, du Stadt Jerusalem!
Mitternacht heisst diese Stunde;
Sie rufen uns mit hellem Munde:
Wo seid ihr klugen Jungfrauen?
Wohl auf, der Bräutgam kömmt;
Steht auf, die Lampen nehmt!
Alleluja!
Macht euch bereit
Zu der Hochzeit,
Ihr müsset ihm entgegen gehn! 		  English translation (3) :

Awake, calls the voice to us
of the watchmen high up in the tower;
awake, you city of Jerusalem.
Midnight the hour is named;
they call to us with bright voices;
where are you, wise virgins?
Indeed, the Bridegroom comes;
rise up and take your lamps,
Alleluia!
Make yourselves ready
for the wedding,
you must go to meet Him.


Let us now think as a baroque composer: what are the important ideas and words? A small list:
The musical representations of Bach (4):
The dotted rhythm pattern throughout the first movement could maybe represent the lesson we have to learn: be watchful for the return of the Bridegroom (=Jesus) and be not too late to become a good person or to change the way you live your life (study the parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins in Matthew 25:1–13 on which the hymn is based). Note also that the hymn 'Wachet auf' starts with a rising, broken, major triad: an active musical figure.

We can learn something more from this movement. The dotted rhythm is always there, what means that the affect is unchanged. This reflects the believe of (German) baroque composers that the entire piece should be consistent and that musical contrasts -associated with disorder and unpredictability- should be avoided. Why? The underlying idea is theological: 'Gott ist Ordnung' as the baroque theorist Werckmeister said.

Listen on YouTube to the first movement of Bach's BWV 140: www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bGe0j52KcA

Notes
  1. The term 'cantata' at the basic level means 'sung' (derived from the Italian word 'cantare') as opposed to 'sonata' which means 'sounded', referring to an instrumental setting (derived from the Italian word 'sonare'). A cantata is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment (at least basso continuo), typically in several movements, involving a solo voice or (often in church cantatas) involving a choir. Study my mindmap on cantata: www.bestmusicteacher.com/muziekgeschiedenis/mindmaps/terms.php?txt=Cantata
  2. To understand how rhetoric and affects came to be relevant in Lutheran music, it is necessary to understand the system of Lutheran education in the 17th century Germany. Apart from music and singing skills, Latin schools for kantors also taught humanist tradition of grammar, logic, and rhetoric. Cicero and Boethius were still being read.
  3. www.emmanuelmusic.org/notes_translations/translations_cantata/t_bwv140.htm
  4. In the 18th century, the various methods for producing emotional responses in music were categorized as loci topici, say a recipe book for embodying moods and emotions in music.