Bach Cantata Notes
BWV 7
BWV
7 The festival of the birth of John the Baptist was
celebrated in 1724 between the 2nd and 3rd Sundays
after Trinity. The reading was tranfered to the second
Sunday in Advent in the new prayerbook. The cantata
written for that day is Bach's La Mer: both verbally
and musically, water imagery permeates each movement.
What is remarkable is that rather than becoming merely
an attractive tone poem, the music goes deeper and
deeper into this complex story.
The cantata is based
on the melody "Christ unser Herr zum Jordan
kam." The shape of Luther's tune is significant.
The Stollen (first section) is typical, two contrasting
phrases repeated. It is the Abgesang (second section)
that not only is longer than most, but is unusually
shaped. Five phrases build to a climax in the third
phrase. The fourth phrase not only cadences but lets
down the tension. The fifth phrase is not only unexpected
but a full octave higher in range than the previous
cadence. This unexpected and intense coda colors
the whole mood of the chorale.
Bach sets the first
verse as an intense and imaginative seascape. In
this work the tenors sing the chorale tune and are
submerged beneath the sopranos and altos and most
of the string texture. The principal theme is in
two parts: a stern, dotted note figure depicting
the wild man in lion skins and stormy water music.
Two other subjects appear in tandem with the second
subject. The combination of all of this material
gives an unusual richness to the texture. The relative
rigidity of the phrasing of the first subject with
the flexibility of phrase length of the second gives
a kind of plasticity to the continuity that is useful
for such an irregular chorale tune. Bach is, as usual,
canny in his solution to potential balance problems
with the low-lying chorale tune by thinning out the
texture for the most part to the solo concertant
violins and continuo when the chorus is singing.
The shape of the Abgesang is marvelously achieved.
The natural climax of the third phrase is set up
with an unusually long orchestral interlude using
only the second subject and its related themes. The
fourth phrase is allowed to wind down and what sounds
like a recapitulation of the opening material is
played. In the midst, the last phrase is declaimed,
first time that the chorus is accompanied by the
full orchestra.
The
text of the bass aria exhorts us to action, but the
music is of a more intimate nature. The bass line
burbles along amiably and the whole character is
of greatest contrast to the stormy grandeur of the
chorus. Notice how the rhythmic figure which permeates
the A section is softened by the more conversational
tone of the B section.
The tenor recitative and aria
enter into areas of rather complex dogma. We should
remember that this festival day is only about four
weeks past Whitsunday. The imagery of both the founding
of the church and speaking in tongues is implied
here. The storminess of the opening resumes, but
with even more intensity and vigor. The tenor declaims
the text, at the top of his range, and with an heroic
athleticism against the bounding solo violins. The
leapfrogging upward arpeggios of the violins become
sweet floating descending figures at the mention
of the dove.
This reference to the recent past in
the tenor aria is no accident. The similarity of
the following alto aria and the tenor aria of BWV
2 (written two days earlier!) is so striking both
in mood and the very quality of their melodies, that
one must presume that Bach wants us to hear these
pieces not only individually but as a yearly cycle.
The structural ramifications of this concept are
staggering. When we consider that the yearly cycle
contains 58 works at, let's say an average of twenty
minutes each, we are dealing with Ring of the Niebelungen
scale. The striking way that this aria begins with
no orchestral introduction, interrupting a recitative
of a different voice, affirms that Bach knew that
this was a bold and dramatic gesture. It could not
have escaped Bach's notice that this trial by water was somehow related to the previous week's trial
by fire. The four-voice harmonization of the chorale
that ends the cantata is so characteristic and yet
so powerful that we cannot fail to marvel at the
endless inventiveness of these harmonizations.
©Craig Smith