Johann Sebastian Bach (55 page)

The definitive character of Bach's 1736 revision of the
St. Matthew Passion
and concomitant performance decisions is expressed by the calligraphic autograph fair copy that he set out to prepare that year and that he later completed with great scrupulousness. There is no comparable manuscript score from Bach's hand that is so carefully laid out and written in two colors of ink, red and dark brown. Red is applied to the biblical text of the evangelist and
soliloquentes
, the chorale melody “O Lamm Gottes unschuldig” in the first movement, and a few rubrics (Gothic lettering is used throughout, except for Old Testament quotations in the Gospel, which are displayed in Latin script). It could not be more evident that in 1736 Bach considered this score as his most significant work. In fact, he treasured the manuscript so much that even when the opening pages were damaged by some mishap in later years, he carefully restored them by pasting on strips of paper and replacing lost staves.
¹⁰⁰
But while Bach could hardly imagine that the “great Passion,” more than any of his other works, would make history in the truest sense of the word, he knew full well from the earliest planning stages that this composition would be special—indeed, that nothing like it had ever been attempted before.

In many ways, the time, space, focus, and meaning of the musical Vespers service on Good Friday gave Bach a unique chance to set his imagination free, and he grasped the opportunity from the very beginning by composing the
Passion According to St. John
. Yet one discerns everywhere in the
St. Matthew Passion
his intention, already clear from the work's internal and external dimensions, of surpassing everything that had been written previously, by himself and by other composers. The score, containing sixty-eight movements, some of extraordinary length, required an eight-voice double choir and a well-equipped double orchestra.
¹⁰¹
And he was able to call on the rich experience he had gained through his involvement with the church cantata over a period of four years. However, Bach's ambitions went far beyond the monumental format that he deliberately chose. We can best understand his approach as an artist to the musical shaping of the Passion story by seeing how he planned it so as to bring out a wealth of interconnections, and how he employed musical forms and compositional techniques in an imaginative and totally unschematic manner in order to serve the most sacred biblical text of the Lutheran faith on the highest feast day of the Reformation church.

The primary structural backbone of the
St. John Passion
and, therefore, its compositional focus rest on the Gospel narrative. In the
St. Matthew Passion
, by contrast, it is Picander's madrigal poems, lyrical contemplations of individual scenes in the Passion story, that shape the work. None of the original text booklets from Bach's performances have survived, but the first reprint of the text in volume II of Picander's collected works,
Ernst-Schertzhaffte und Satyrische Gedichte, published
in 1729, shows how the biblical Passion narrative is framed and punctuated by seventeen poems, most of them bipartite (nos. 1, 5–6, 8, 12–13, etc., in Table 8.17). Hence the biblical material is divided, in accordance with the poet's conception and its realization by the composer, into fifteen scenes and two introductions, to which both the lyrical meditations and the pointed interspersing of hymn stanzas relate. All of the lyrics are introduced by biblical references—for example nos. 5–6, “When the woman anointed Jesus”—so that the reflective and interpretive function of every single poem and musical setting becomes immediately clear.

T
ABLE
8.17. Libretto Design of the
St. Matthew Passion,
BWV 244 (first version, 1727)

It is another distinguishing mark of the
St. Matthew Passion
that Bach chose to draw deliberately on the complete repertoire of forms cultivated in the sacred and secular music of his day. Even Baroque opera, the most representative genre of the age, could not compare in its range of compositional types and forms, for opera finds no place for movements based on a cantus firmus, which belong exclusively to the domain of sacred music, or for settings in the style of a polyphonic motet (of which there are several examples among the turba choruses of the Passion). In any case, such a degree of polyphonic elaboration, typical of the church style in general and Bach's artistic preferences in particular, was worlds away from operatic practice. But well beyond questions of form, genre, and compositional technique, the
St. Matthew Passion
project challenged Bach's whole concept of musical science, requiring him to analyze the literary material, the symbolic and affective imagery, and the theological content as well as to consider the appropriate representation of the Passion story. He met the challenge by making optimal use of all musical means, from the widely diverse singing voices and instrumental sonorities (exclusive of brass) to the broad spectrum of melodic inventions, rhythmic patterns, harmonic structures, and key choices. And with respect to the last two in particular, the composer of
The Well-Tempered Clavier
not only had the advantage of his cutting-edge experimental background, he also sought to extend this experience to the realm of vocal-instrumental music.

By having the
St. Matthew
Passionmeander through the keys while drawing on an extraordinary array of colors in the instrumental obbligato accompaniments of the arias, Bach was exploring the widest possible range of musical expression. The settings of the Picander poems function as pillars of stability, from the dual tonality and modality in the opening chorus through the full chromatic realm of keys up to four sharps and flats—the maximum range for a mixed group of instruments not regulated by equal temperament. But given those limitations, Bach does not shy away from breaking out of these restrictions when underscoring extreme affects or imagery. In the harmonically unique arioso no. 59 (“Ach Golgatha”), for example, he fully exploits all twelve chromatic pitches, moves through chords as remote and extreme as A-flat minor and F-flat minor (requiring double flats), and lets the alto voice end the piece with an unresolved tritone, D-flat to G. Likewise, in the death scene, no. 61a, after using the pitch of F-flat for the word “Finsternis” (darkness), he sets Jesus's last words, the Hebrew “Eli, Eli, lama asabthani,” in B-flat minor (five flats), near the bottom end of the circle of fifths, and to complete the descent to the absolute depth of despair, he sets the subsequent translation one step beyond that, in E-flat minor (six flats). In a kind of counterpoint to this extreme venture at the brink of the key system—at once compellingly expressive and symbolic—and on a greatly spaced-out scale, Bach pursues a corresponding yet reverse tonal descent in his key choices for the “Passion chorale”—the melody of “Herzlich tut mich verlangen” in nos. 15, 17, 44, 54, and 62—whose successive key signatures ( / / / / ) demarcate the path of inevitability no less forcefully. One cannot but notice how much further Bach takes his sophisticated and decisively innovative compositional planning here than he does in the
St. John Passion
.

The two principal, fundamentally different textual layers that constitute the libretto of the
St. Matthew Passion
—madrigal poetry on the one hand, holy Scripture and chorales on the other—are nowhere abruptly juxtaposed. On the contrary, Picander and Bach both set a premium on seamless integration that is already manifest in the opening chorus, in which freely conceived verse and chorale text and melody perfectly blend into each other: the cantus firmus “O Lamm Gottes, unschuldig” (O innocent lamb of God) immediately responds to the dialogue “Seht ihn! Wie? Als wie ein Lamm!” (See him! How? Just as a lamb!). The opening chorus thus provides a summation of what the entire Passion oratorio aims to achieve in theological content, literary structure, and musical expression. Picander's allegorical dialogue and lament “Kommt, ihr Töchter” is set by Bach in the manner of a French tombeau, as a funeral march for the multitude of believers who ascend to Mount Zion and the holy city of Jerusalem. “The Daughters of Zion,” in allegorical personification of Jerusalem, the site of Christ's suffering, call on “the Faithful,” representing the contemporary believer, to join them in witnessing the Passion of Christ. In the Apocalypse of St. John, the site of Christ's Passion is counterposed to the vision of the eternal Jerusalem, whose ruler is the Lamb. Here we find the reason for the connection between the aria text “Kommt, ihr Töchter, helft mir klagen” (Come, you daughters, help me lament), set by Bach in E minor, and the chorale “O Lamm Gottes, unschuldig” set in G major: “celestial” major proclaiming Christ's innocence and “terrestrial” minor accentuating Christ's suffering are contrasted, yet integrated in one and the same musical setting.