Bach Cantata Notes
BWV 20
BWV 20 Jahrgang II - 1st Sunday after Trinity (6/11/1724)
When Bach became cantor at Leipzig in 1723 it seems to have been the
fulfillment of a long-held dream. For all of his genius as a court composer
of chamber and orchestral music in Cöthen, the life of a religious composer
was what he desired.
Bach entered into a well-established and rigorously organized program
when he came to Leipzig. The city fathers were heavily involved in the
most minute aspects of the music program at the Thomaskirche. The liturgical
expectations were set and the biblical basis for the cantatas that Bach
was to write had been in place for many years. The lectionary, the list
of designated Bible readings for each Sunday and feast day, was unchanging
year in and year out. Bach was expected to come up with cantata texts
based upon these readings.
The so-called liturgical year, the cycle of readings for a whole year,
was divided into two parts. From Advent (four Sundays in December that
describe the prediction of Christ’s coming), until Trinity Sunday (the
Sunday celebrating not only the completion of the founding of the church
after Christ’s ascension but also the completion of the doctrine of
the Trinity), the lectionary uses events from Christ’s life to teach
the values of the church. This takes approximately six months. The rest
of the year is taken up with Sundays after Trinity, in which the readings
use the parables and teaching of Christ to lead the Christian to a better
life. Each Sunday has an assigned Epistle reading from the letters of
Paul and a Gospel from the actual life of Christ. The relationships
between the two readings are often obvious but sometimes quite subtle
in their message.
Although the liturgical year begins on the First Sunday in Advent, all
of Bach’s cantata cycles begin with the other half of the year, the
First Sunday after Trinity. The two parables and their paired Epistle
readings thus were chosen by the church fathers to represent presumably
the most important lessons to be learned from the stories used in Christ’s
teaching. For the First Sunday after Trinity the Epistle reading is
from the first Epistle of John, 4:16-21.
The Gospel reading for the First Sunday after Trinity is from Luke 16:19-31.
The toughness of these two readings, Paul calling the man that professes
love for God but not his brother a liar, and the unbridgeable gap between
the world of heaven and hell, makes for a difficult and thorny lesson.
Of the three cantatas for this Sunday, two evade the issue by emphasizing
the need to feed the hungry. The cantata BWV 20 virtually ignores the
issue of feeding the hungry and takes as its central issue the fate
of the sinner in eternal suffering for ignoring the prophets.
The second Leipzig cantata cycle is dominated by the use of chorales.
Each cantata begins with a fantasia on an appropriate chorale. In BWV
20, the first cantata in this cycle, the melody O Ewigkeit, du Donnerwort appears in the opening chorus as well as in the four-part chorale harmonizations
that end both sections of the cantata. In addition, interior verses
are rewritten to provide the texts for the recitatives, arias and duet
that complete the cantata. While the words of the chorale are the source
for all of the texts, the music for these movements is not based upon
the chorale tune.
The opening chorus is one of the most striking things in all of Bach’s
music. He chooses the form of French Overture to portray the endless
march of time. The French Overture was traditionally the entrance music
of the king, particularly Louis XIV, into the opera. Here the king is
replaced by the sword of eternity. The musical structure– slow, pompous
dotted rhythms followed by fast imitative music and ending with a repetition
of the opening music – is skillfully fitted to the structure of the
chorale text. The soprano voices sing the tune in long notes over the
elaboration of the other voices as well as the orchestra. The orchestration
is particularly pointed with the choir of three oboes providing a snarling
backdrop to the string texture. Most French Overtures, even the ones
by Bach, limit their harmonic palate. They make their point through
rhythmic energy and the counterpoint is inevitable in the middle section.
While this movement has wonderful rhythmic energy, it also makes its
point with moments of harrowing chromaticism appropriate to the hard-bitten
text. There are marvelous details here. At the return of the opening
music, the texture fragments almost to a breaking point in illustration
of the quaking heart. The harmony itself becomes gluey and stuck at
the mention of the tongue sticking to the roof of the mouth.
This stupendous chorus is just the beginning of a harrowing journey.
The tenor recitative continues the ideas of the opening chorus. There
is a little staccato continuo figure under the word ewig that is a new
idea, which will become important by the end of the cantata. The tenor
aria is as personal and subjective as the opening chorus is stonily
objective. Here sustained string chords are underpinned by snake-like
winding lines in the continuo. These lines, illustrating eternity at
the beginning, turn into the flames of Hell in the middle section. The
bass recitative and aria constitute a shocking change of tone. The dread
and horror of the opening movements are erased by an ironic, almost
joking, quality. The very authority of God is questioned by the three
bouncy oboes and the bass’s rather matter-of-fact description of endless
damnation as the punishment for brief transgressions of the world. The
alto aria with strings is crabbed and difficult; the text is presented
as an unsolvable dilemma. The aria is dominated by the opening and closing
orchestral passages, each with the most subtle and sophisticated changes
of material. The chorale setting that ends the first half of this cantata
is almost banal in its plainness. It is as if Bach feels the need to
present the most unadulterated version of the chorale.
The second half of the cantata begins with a rousing militaristic bass
aria with trumpet. Here the call to arms seems like a desperate attempt
to save the brothers of the rich man in the reading from Luke. What
follows, however, is one of the most hair-raising things in all of Bach’s
music. The call to arms has clearly failed, and the alto recitative
begins to describe the last moments on earth. Bach then writes a duet
for alto and tenor. Bach’s duets for this combination of voices always
portray a Janus figure. There is a sense that the two singers are looking
back on their wasted lives and forward to eternal damnation. The short
staccato figures in the spare continuo accompaniment, derived from the
first recitative, not only portray eternity but are also an uncanny
evocation of drops of water, water that the rich man was begging for
in the reading from Luke. There is a remarkable word-for word text setting
here. Each word is characterized with almost surgical precision. The
howling and chattering teeth become harrowing musical gestures, unique
in all of Bach.
After such terrifying music, the brutality of the same plain harmonization
of the chorale is almost more than the listener can bear. Almost all
of Bach’s cantatas have redemption as their denouement. Here the unrelenting
starkness of the vision has no relief. It is impossible to know what
the parishioners of Leipzig thought of this astonishing vision.
©Craig Smith