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| Saturday, 25 September 2004 |
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Understanding the music of Johann Sebastian Bach by Satyajith Wijeratne Andradi
It was an early autumn evening in 2002. The place - the Wartburg near Eisenach in central Germany. This was the seat of the legendary St. Elizabeth, renowned for her charitable deeds. It was here that the famed song contests of the Minstrels were held. And above all, it was in this castle that Martin Luther, disguised as Junker Joerg, hid from his persecutors and translated the New Testament of the Bible from Greek into German. In the twilight of the day the city of Eisenach was still clearly visible from the towers of this imposing medieval edifice, situated in the summit of a thickly wooded mountain. The setting was breathtakingly beautiful and romantic. "What impression could have all this possibly made more than three hundred years ago on a precocious nine-year-old boy - a lad who was born and brought up in Eisenach and who attended the same grammer school (Lateinschule) which Luther attended about two hundred years before him?" I asked myself. I was madly in search of a key to the understanding of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Great music is all about uplifting spiritual and emotional experiences. Music like love, suffering and pain has to be experienced and felt. However, man has often strived to understand musical experience. One reason for such endeavour could be the belief that understanding in turn enhances the experience itself. Of the music of the three supreme masters, Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, it is Bach's music that I found most difficult to comprehend. On the other hand, the music of Beethoven was the easiest to understand. One sees a close relationship between his sublime art on the one hand and the great French Revolution and his own stormy life and towering personality on the other. What could be said of Bach? The purpose of this article is to briefly summarise the key factors that could have significantly influenced his immortal music. The Protestant reformation The Protestant reformation in Germany was a great upheaval in modern history comparable with the Italian Renaissance, the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution. It had far reaching political, religious, cultural and intellectual consequences of world historic significance. Martin Luther (1483-1546) was the leader of this movement, which sought to reform Christianity. Johann Sebastian Bach was born in Eisenach on March 21, 1685. He belonged to the fifth generation of a renowned musical dynasty founded by his great-greatgrandfather Veit Bach. He and his people (the Bachs) lived and worked for generations in Thuringia, which was the cradle of the Protestant Reformation in Germany. Their main occupation was music. They belonged to the reformed church founded by Martin Luther. Bach, who was a devout Christian, admired the writings of Luther. The chorales, which are German hymns of the Lutheran church, had a profound influence on him. Bach adored them and composed numerous musical setting of the chorales. His magnificent organ preludes, cantatas, passions and motets stand testimony to this fact. It is worthwhile mentioning that some of the chorales set to music by Bach such as "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott" and "Vom Himmel hoch, da komm ich her" were written by Luther himself. The huge impact of the Lutheran reformation on Johann Sebastian Bach's religious music cannot be underscored. Bach scholars such as Prof. Sanford Terry have extensively researched this aspect. Mastery of counterpoint Bach was certainly a supreme master of counterpoint. Monumental masterworks of his such as Das Wohltemperierte Klavier (The Well tempered Clavichord) and Die Kunst der Fuge (The Art of Fuge) prove this beyond doubt. His music is contrapuntal in texture as well as form to such a great extent that it is central to the understanding of his music. He was in fact recognised as an outstanding contrapuntist during his own time. Peasant war As a result of the Protestant reformation, the German peasants become consciousness of Christian principles as laid down in the Bible. The translation of the Bible into German would have contributed in no small way to this development. The peasants began to identify their struggle for emancipation from their feudal lords with the principals of Christianity propounded by the reformation movement. This led to the Peasant War in Germany. The leader of this peasant uprising was Thomas Muenzer (1489-1525), a radical religious reformer and revolutionary from Thuringia. Although, the German princes ruthlessly crushed the peasants' revolt, its spirit lived on among the German people mainly in the form of Pietism. It has been argued by the British composer and writer Rutland Boughton that Batch was in sympathy with the spiritual ideals of the peasant movement. In his book "John Sebastian Bach", Boughton maintains that Bach's sympathy with the principles of communal Christianity that inspired the peasants had a decisive influence on Bach's music. Boughton's perspective is radically different from the conservative viewpoints held by other scholars such as Hubert Parry, Spitta, Terry, Schweitzer and Geck on the spiritual aspects of Bach's church music. In fact they are silent on the impact of the suppressed Christianity of the common people on Bach's music. Boughton's viewpoint on the other hand takes into consideration the underlying socio-economic and political dimensions of the reformation and relate them to Bach's religious music. Thereby he provides useful insights to the understanding of Bach's music. Bach's personality Bach fought with the powers that be (notable examples are the Duke of Weimar, the civic Council and the Lutheran Consistory of Leipzig) whenever he thought the interests of his noble art or his rights as an artist were at stake. In such instances, he demonstrated a high degree of obstinacy and irritability. However, in normal life he was a kind and generous man. He was sincere, modest and understanding in his dealings with his fellow men. From his childhood to the time of his death he was thoroughly devoted to his music and continued to study the work of other composers with utmost diligence and humility. Further, he kept on improving his compositions and composition methods throughout his life. Bach was a tireless learner and an innovator par excellence. Determination, focus and hard work were the hallmarks of his musical career. Bach had to face numerous tragedies and defeats during his lifetime. For instance, by the time he was ten years old he had lost both his parents and was entrusted to the care of one of his elder brothers. Further, he faced harassment and humiliation in the hands of some of his employers and superiors. In the words of Schweitzer, he was a man who had tasted the bitterness of life. However, these blows failed to break his resolve. He was truly a man of great character. On the whole, Bach was a serious-minded person. Of love and death, the two prime motivators of art, it was death that fascinated him most. His great masterpieces such as the St. Matthew Passion and the St. John Passion stand testimony to this fact. Having said that, Bach was a man fully capable of enjoying the small mercies of earthly life with a hearty laugh. One has only to listen to his secular cantatas such as the coffee cantata or the peasant cantata to find our master in this cheerful moods. It is essential to understand Bach's personality in order to understand his music. This is the central theme of Sir Hubert Parry's great work, "Johann Sebastian Bach - the story of the development of a great personality." |
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