BWV 42 - Am Abend aber desselbigen Sabbats

Week 42 (15 July – 20 July 2014)

Recording: Helmuth Rilling, Gächinger Kantorei Stuttgart/Bach-Collegium Stuttgart; Arleen Augér, soprano; Julia Hamari, alto; Peter Schreier, tenor; Philippe Huttenlocher, bass

“Is a puzzlement!” Oscar Hammerstein’s protagonist declares in The King and I. Some cantatas are more difficult than others, in the questions they raise and the unsolvable puzzles they pose. Puzzles for which we will never have all the pieces, not with 100 lost cantatas, extremely limited written documentation of Bach’s life and ideas, and the impossibility of viewing what does survive through a lens other than that of our own time.

Here is a chorale cantata – or at least a cantata written during Bach’s project of composing chorale cantatas – with no major choral movement derived from a chorale tune. Why? Perhaps because BWV 42 was composed for Quasimodogeniti, the “low” Sunday following Holy Week and Easter, when Bach may have found it impractical to rehearse a complex choral piece. The final 4-part movement, where he employs two well-known hymn tunes, could have been performed by the soloists, allowing the choir to have a Sunday off.

And perhaps we should review the meaning of the obscure noun Quasimodogeniti? If this word sounds familiar at all, it’s probably in the context of Victor Hugo’s novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, where the title character takes his name from the day on which he was discovered abandoned on the steps of the great cathedral. However, the term comes from the first words of the Latin introit for this Sunday, I Peter 2.2: “Quasi modo geniti infantes…” (In the manner of newborn babes [desire the true word even as milk, that you may be nourished by it].

But that’s just some incidental trivia since these words don’t play any role in the cantata, and neither does the famous scripture assigned to this day, where Thomas’ doubts at Christ’s resurrection are put forth and then vanquished. What Bach focuses on (at a pastor’s request, maybe?) is the idea of Christ’s followers banding together in the face of persecution – the texts, patched together from an unknown poet’s contributions and various hymns, repeatedly exhort the listeners to stand strong against the attacks of detractors. Just who would have persecuted the Leipzig Lutherans in Bach’s time is unclear, although undoubtedly there was ever the shadow of the Thirty Years’ War. That long conflict was only a few decades in the past when Bach was born, and in his youth he probably heard recollections of the devastation of those religious wars from veterans, with the specter of a repetition still hovering over late 17^th-century Europe.

So to reinforce the need for vigilant and proactive resistance (a theme with which he was possibly not very comfortable), Bach assembled an angular work, suggesting to many analysts that it was not through-composed but incorporated music from existing compositions – perhaps the master even acknowledged this in his repeated setting of the verb versammeln, which can be translated as “to gather together” or “to assemble”. For this Sunday, Bach may have decided it made sense to utilize music with which his instrumental ensemble was already familiar: for example, various scholars assign the opening sinfonia to another larger work, either an instrumental concerto or a secular cantata. In cheerful D major, the movement isn’t exactly consistent with the mood of what follows, but this set piece (about 6 minutes long in Rilling’s brisk version) with its gentle solo oboe in the central cantabile section, can indeed stand independently of the cantata and deserves that opportunity on occasion.

The alto aria is a puzzle piece: the music as well as the text seems cobbled together from two separate thoughts. The B section has an unusual shift into 12/8 that feels unrelated to the extraordinarily beautiful A section, where the cascading oboes and strings provide the image of the faithful gathering together (and the text matches our favorite old Harold Friedell anthem Draw Us in the Spirit’s Tether). The musically stronger A section can be used on its own; if allowed to flow at a reasonable tempo it can be a wonderfully calming 4-minute anthem at any time of the church year, as well as a tremendous study in phrasing (e.g. M. 65-66). Otherwise, the aria, with its discontinuities in text and music, and a 12-minute overall length, is better left within the cantata. This long aria, coupled with the substantial sinfonia, creates an imbalance, with most of the musical weight in the first part of the cantata (assumedly heard prior to the sermon). This also suggests that Bach was stitching together pieces to make a patchwork musical quilt – but then again he could also just have wanted to use his lovely sinfonia for a different audience.

The short soprano/tenor duet is based on a text now generally attributed to Jakob Fabricius, said to have been written for morning prayers prior to the Battle of Lützen (a decisive battle in the Thirty Years’ War). In Rilling’s recording the tempo is quite fast, in keeping with the militaristic provenance of the words, but the piece comes across as stertorous. I prefer a more relaxed and flowing approach, possibly with the contrast of starting softly, and then at M. 22 injecting more motion and aggressiveness. Both vocal parts have appropriately thorny lines (in canon) in M. 21-33 on the operative verb verstören (to destroy), and it's a useful piece for recital purposes, but maybe not quite the thing for your weekly anthem.

The bass aria dramatizing the Jesus' protection for his faithful is a fine one, and Philippe Huttenlocher is about as fine an interpreter as you could ask for – few other basses can sing with this buoyancy, precision and robustness. He convincingly energizes the crowd, who should listen attentively to the perfectly managed melismas. Thankfully we have also the RIAS sessions that preserved the (very) young Fischer-Dieskau, almost at times unrecognizable in his light and unaffected rendering (although at a slower pace). If you are puzzled by Huttenlocher's choices, compare them to DFD's.

The final movement takes its texts from two different sources: Martin Luther’s Verleih’ uns Frieden and Johann Walter’s Gib unsern Fürsten. Both stanzas are pleas for peace, acknowledging that this lies not entirely in God’s power if men choose to ignore His guidance. These texts don’t seamlessly flow out of the main ideas of the cantata, but the words appear to be sentiments that Bach particularly wanted to express. Perhaps.

Excerpt of Walter's Gib unsern Fürsten from Das christlich Kinderlied (1566)

 

BWV 42 invokes another puzzle, one even more difficult to confront or to resolve. The scriptures Bach used, as well as the unknown poet’s text, directly refer to the Jews as “the enemy” (Feinde), and the persecutors of the early Christians. These references remain in English translations of John 20:19, (even in the new KJV), and if your perspective of the Bible is that it is in large part a historical document, this kind of language can be interpreted as simply documentation of one faction warring against another. But commentators have long noted the “problem” of the John Gospel with respect to its focus on the Jewish people as enemies, and because Bach composed a much more famous work rooted in this Gospel, much has been written about his supposed anti-Semitism. An excellent and concise article (http://www.jidaily.com/127c4) addresses this speculation through the most commonly cited instance – the turba choral settings in the St. John Passion - and discusses to what extent, if any, modern performances should alter the texts of “problem” works in consideration of audience and performer sensibilities.

However, neither in the SJP or in BWV 42 did Bach have the freedom to alter the Luther Bible – this restriction was a condition of his continued employment. This may have been fine with him: all we know for certain is that we can never know Bach’s thoughts on the subject. We cannot travel back in time to gather information to evaluate him in his contemporary framework, and we cannot judge him by the standards of our own post-Holocaust world. Realistically, he was probably no more and no less biased than his peers. Like them, Bach probably did not know any Jews personally, and would have based his opinions on hearsay rather than actual experience. What we do know is that he composed page after page of music that speaks to the highest, noblest aims of mankind. These pages – whether Bach would have wanted them described this way or not – are profoundly humanist statements rather than reflections of a particular sect’s dogma.

Although there is documentation of Jewish life in Leipzig in Bach’s time, particularly in connection with trade fairs, there was no significant Jewish population until the 19^th-century. By then the Jewish community, which included a young composer who among his other accomplishments would resuscitate Bach’s music, had grown large enough to support the building of a great synagogue. The Leipzig Synagogue was located on Gotthardstrasse for more than eighty years until it was destroyed on Kristallnacht. A memorial now marks that site, while elsewhere in the revitalized city a new synagogue has risen. There the Leipziger Synagogalchor preserves the European Jewish liturgical music traditions; the chor numbers among its past directors a tenor who earlier in his career frequently sang the Evangelist in the St. John Passion. Every year (for this year, Sunday 9 November), the choir joins with other Leipzig church musicians to remember the victims of Kristallnacht at an ecumenical service…in the Thomaskirche.

 

The Old Leipzig Synagogue