On the Cantatas of J.S. Bach: Epiphany to Lent: The Bach Cantatas, #5

By Hendrik Slegtenhorst

In his more than 200 cantatas Bach interprets the human condition through musical assertion and examination of the relevance of the gospels and epistles of the Christian Bible. Every cantata is discussed in my six book series On the Cantatas of J.S. Bach.

 

The epistle, which is essentially didactic, is from the Apostolic letters retained in Scripture. The gospel, which is concerned with the life and teachings of Christ, is effectively an exposition of His adherence to principles and the application of action.

 

Guided by this context, Bach consistently propounds surpassing interpretations of the nature and spirit of life. Though the over-reaching principles are philosophical and ethical, how they apply is determined, ultimately, by the individual.

 

Book Five of this series examines the 40 surviving cantatas for the Sundays and feast days from Epiphany to Lent, and includes three sacred and two secular wedding cantatas, a cantata for the installation of a town council, and three secular congratulatory cantatas. The religious cantatas are grouped into the period for Epiphany (fourteen cantatas), Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary (four cantatas), the ten cantatas for the pre-Lenten Sundays (Septuagesima, Sexagesima, Quinquagesima), Annunciation (one cantata), and Lent (two cantatas).

 

Bach, in these, affirms and explains such fundamental aspects as mortal death and immortal re-birth, the manifestation of divinity in human form, and self-assessment and penitential preparation.

 

It is a personal exploration, both his and mine.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Enlora Press
• Release date: Jan 26, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201393328

Hendrik Slegtenhorst

Hendrik Slegtenhorst’s executive and senior management work has been for local governments, post-secondary education, and heritage institutions, and on board directorships for cultural, community, and economic development. In addition to his work as a writer, speaker, columnist, and editor, Slegtenhorst has held corporate appointments in project management, information technology, and human resources. Soon after being brought to life in Rembrandt’s university city of Leiden in the Netherlands, his parents emigrated to Canada, where, by design, Slegtenhorst has worked in its largest cities—Ottawa, Montréal, Edmonton, Calgary, Toronto, and Vancouver—and many of the country’s smaller communities. He has also worked in the United States, Europe, and Africa, and resides in Vancouver, Canada.

Book preview

Book four concluded at the Sunday after New Year. This book is concerned with the thirty-one sacred cantatas for Epiphany through Lent, and with three sacred and two secular wedding cantatas, a cantata for the installation of a town council, and three secular congratulatory cantatas. The religious cantatas are grouped into the period for Epiphany (fourteen cantatas), Purification of the Blessed Virgin Mary (four cantatas), the ten cantatas for the pre-Lenten Sundays (Septuagesima, Sexagesima, Quinquagesima), Annunciation (one cantata), and Lent (two cantatas). Book six will discuss Eastertide and Pentecost.

Epiphany celebrates the manifestation of the divinity of Christ in human form, the theophany of God. One of the prime subjects in the Pauline constitution of Christianity, with its ancillary preoccupation with mortal death and immortal re-birth. Cantatas 124 and 32 at Epiphany I, cantata 156 at Epiphany III, are especially fine.

The Purification of Mary, also termed the feast of the Presentation of Christ in the temple, once the mother, according to the Mosaic strictures, has been purified. There are two exceptional cantatas: 125 and 82.

The pre-Lenten period, largely concerned with Christian self-assessment before the sacrifices during Lent, extends from the ninth Sunday before Easter to the seventh. The finest cantatas are cantata 84 for Septuagesima, cantata 18 for Sexagesima, and cantata 159 for Quinquagesima.

Lent is the penitential preparation for Easter. Except for Annunciation, no concerted music was performed in Leipzig, but we do have the earlier cantatas for Oculi and Palm Sunday, including the magnificent cantata 182 for the latter, wherein Bach celebrates Christ as the hope of the world, all the while knowing the Passion that is soon to come.

The closer one approaches Easter and the Resurrection, the more Bach’s integrated and overarching vision that his work offers becomes even more elaborate. For example, in the case of Quinquagesima, Bach also considers its relation to the tempus clausum for the balance of Lent, and also to Good Friday, and hence to the Passions and the figural work to be presented during Easter.

Bach’s sheer artistry, theological knowledge, and profound awareness of the human condition constantly shine through, simply because the music, the structure, the relevance are so well integrated, and felt, by the composer.

The feast of Epiphany celebrates the revelation of God in human form in the person of Jesus Christ. In addition to the manifestation of God, the feast also sometimes commemorates the visit of the Magi to the infant Christ, which, as the Magi were not Jewish, is thus Christ’s revelation to the Gentiles. In some Western traditions the eve before Epiphany is celebrated as Twelfth Night, for which Shakespeare wrote his celebrated play.

What country, friends, is this? – Viola, I.ii.i

The Eastern tradition commemorates the baptism of Christ in the River Jordan, which is regarded as Christ’s manifestation as the Son of God.

The use of theophany, the appearance of a deity to a human being, was already old when Homer employed it in The Iliad. It is a manifestation mankind likes to believe in, for it provides divine wisdom to the mortal world, without the need for rational consideration or behavioural responsibility. When large portions of the population accept this, on nothing more than faith, the theophany becomes momentous not only in the fantasy of actualization but also in the organizational leverage it empowers in those who are seen as leaders or rulers of any given society.

Without dismissing the incarnation of Jesus, Bach is aware of the superficiality of power that is able to exploit belief and attain communal command not necessarily subject to the nature and purpose of the incarnation. Whether the actual action of the theophany is better brought about by the cradle to whom all are guided by the heavenly star, or by the purification by water that baptism brings, is immaterial, as both are aligned with the idea that physical birth begets spiritual birth. Protestants simplified this further in the concept of being born again, which is a selective choice rather than an actual action.

It is this strain of conceptualization that Bach implies in cantata 65, with its denigration of the gold, and hence false worth, of worldly goods, even while recounting the return of the spiritually exiled, both actually and metaphorically, to a Jerusalem once destroyed but now is in the incandescence of the newly born Christ child.

Cantata 123 is an exegesis of this spiritual exile. Love incorporates its own and inescapable loneliness. This is not the loneliness of love unrequited or lost, but the religious sublimation of loneliness into an induced love of an unknowable salvation, the innate evil of men permitted the possibility of redemption; hence, the inculcation of mortal loneliness of a love unachievable in life but promised in an indefinable and indemonstrable afterlife, the said characteristics of which are conveyed in the controlling mechanisms of the mortal church or theocracy.

Bach acknowledges the grandeur of Epiphany, yet understands the inescapable loneliness of the individual, the solitariness of the self.

This cantata is part of the first cantata cycle of 1724.

The epistle is Isaiah 60:1-6, the gathering of the exiled who were dispersed from Jerusalem and now are to return to that city, which still lies in ruins but is now to be rebuilt. The opening chorus of the cantata concentrates on this text.

¹ Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.

² For, behold, the darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people: but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and his glory shall be seen upon thee.

³ And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.

⁴ Lift up thine eyes round about, and see: all they gather themselves together, they come to thee: thy sons shall come from far, and thy daughters shall be nursed at thy side.

⁵ Then thou shalt see, and flow together, and thine heart shall fear, and be enlarged; because the abundance of the sea shall be converted unto thee, the forces of the Gentiles shall come unto thee.

⁶ The multitude of camels shall cover thee, the dromedaries of Midian and Ephah; all they from Sheba shall come: they shall bring gold and incense; and they shall shew forth the praises of the Lord.

The gospel is Matthew 2:1-12, which recounts the journey of the Magi and the actions of Herod.

The first chorale, which is the second movement, of the cantata includes the three wise men among those who travel to Bethlehem from Sheba, and from this point on the cantata has this encounter of the Magi with the Christ child as its locus, shifting already during the first recitative, which is the third movement of the cantata, to the metaphor that gold and gifts offered do not in the least equal the gift of God of His Son to humankind. This point is elaborated in the aria for bass, the fourth movement of the cantata. The fifth movement, a recitative, then sublimates the offering of expensive gifts into the concepts that faith of all who revere Christ is comprised of the greatest gifts: the gold of faith, the incense of prayer, the myrrh of patience. The sixth movement, an aria for tenor, offers the human heart as a present to divinity, and this proffered, the closing chorale places human life and death in the hands of the infant Saviour, Who in turn will enable the exaltation of the