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In the second part of the discussion of Compositional Choices and Meaning in the Vocal Music of J. S. Bach,1 this section deals with "Analytical Perspectives," the foundation of musicology which explores the source-critical music itself. That is the starting point or the springboard for the third section of five essays by mostly well-known Bach scholars, "Bach's Self-Modeling: Parody as Compositional Impetus." The topic of parody as new-text underlay to previously existing music is sometimes considered exaggerated in determining musical meaning while all five studies explore various facets of musical meaning. These involve "en-block," wholesale parody from one work to its new version, the conservation and intensification of music in various parody works, the impetus for works which would become parodies, the transformation of parodied music in the Christmas Oratorio introductory aria, and the influence of compositional devices in the creation of new music.
Analytical Perspectives
In Part 2 of the collection of essays on "Analytical Perspectives" are three slim studies dealing with major vocal music by three lesser-known scholars: Reginald L. Sanders' "Formal and Motivic Design in the Opening Chorus of J. S. Bach's Magnificat"; Kayoung Lee's "The Tonally Open Ritornello in J. S. Bach's Church Cantatas," and the late Wye J. Allanbrook's "The Christian Believer and the Sleep of Jesus: "Mache dich, mein Herze, rein" from J. S. Bach's Matthew Passion." Following the rigorous format and style of established musicology, each probes deeply into the music itself to support their concise arguments, providing new perspectives on Bach's vocal music based on established studies, to enlighten other scholars and students and to encourage Bach listeners to explore new understandings.
Sander's finds the opening chorus of Bach's Magnificat, his first major vocal work [see "Discussions in the Week of July 2, 2017 (4th round)," http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Vocal/BWV243-Gen8.htm], has a beautiful affect that displays "imaginative invention of themes and motives, and their skillful placement and manipulation in larger structures," (Ibid: 122). Sanders probes the music's rhetorical devices related to Bach's pre-conceived plan for disposition, elaboration, and invention, presented "within a clear, rational and balanced form." He begins with Bach's treatment of the Latin liturgy, based on Luke 1:46, Mary's canticle of praise, "setting the stage, with great ceremony, for the entire canticle." A review of the facets of this five-voiced (SSATB) movement follows with the emphasis on the basic musical motives in the three-part repetitive structure (AA'A), built on balance and proportion using 15-measure segments in 3/4 time. The results are "clear and satisfying," he says (Ibid.: 130) as the "voices enrich the texture and the text makes the meaning explicit" to set the stage for "a musical and spiritual journey."
Much has been explored over the years regarding Bach's development and use of the Italian ritornello form (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritornello), that is return passages which give concerted music greater substance and meaning. Most recently are studies of the temporal and philosophical realms of structured music, particularly the tonally closed ritornello form which resolves to the tonic home key. Virtually all of Bach's vocal movements resolve harmonically while the St. Matthew Passion and eight church cantatas have arias that use ritornellos in open or unresolved return passages in the dominant, a situation pointed out first by scholar and conductor John Butt in his 2010 study of Bach's Passions.2 Two cantata arias, BWV 20.6, and 47/2, are products of Bach's experimental composing "with the ritornello in deep and complex ways, allowing him to open up new compositional possibilities," says Lee (Ibid.: 147), concluding that this "is more likely a musical (or even technical) choice than a textual or theological one."
Allanbrook's detailed study of Bach's beautiful, culminating aria, "Mache dich, mein Herze rein" (Make yourself pure, my heart, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SguNpDynB2k), in the St. Matthew Passion begins with the baroque general concept that vocal music should also edify its audiences by using musical figures to complement the word or phrase, in effect that "compositional choices and musical meanings were expected to emerge from the text," she says (Ibid.: 153f). She offers various examples in this monumental Passion of Bach's use of tone painting of certain aria words and harmonic devices such as chains of suspensions and the descending chromatic line as an emblem of lament, as well as lesser-known narrative recitative text-painting to prepare for the ensuing interpretive, expansive aria — a set-up descriptive-interpretive paring device first found in Baroque opera. "Mache dich" has no apparent "ruling musical reference that guided the composer's hand," she says, "to try to identify and articulate the meaning Bach sought to convey through his compositional choices for this moment in the narrative" following Christ's death. By examining Picander's text she shows the theological meaning of the previous accompagnato establishes the peace of the burial evening in the analogy to the peace following Adam's Fall and the dove's covenant symbol after the Flood. The ensuing aria, "Mache dich," is a cradle song or lullaby in pulsating 12/8 meter which makes the analogy of the believer's pure heart burying Jesus while the bass voice is a double identity to Joseph of Arimathea, who put Jesus' body in his empty grave, and as the voice of Jesus. "For this aria is an injunction to the believer to accept the final agony of Jesus in full serenity," she concludes, as Bach moves the believer "to a deeper Christian Faith."3
Self-Modeling: Parody as Compositional Impetus
"Bach's Self-Modeling: Parody as Compositional Impetus" is the third section of the Compositional Choices and Meaning essays and is the heart of the collection, with studies of important facets of Bach's new-text overlay in borrowing techniques which some musicologists still consider overrated.4 This dualistic thinking of "either-or" can be a trap that envelopes judgmental musicological dialectics in a never-ending spiral. The authors' subjects speak for themselves with innate wisdom: "Parody and Text Quality in the Vocal Works of J. S. Bach," by Hans-Joachim Schulze; "J. S. Bach's Parodies of Vocal Music: Conservation or Intensification?" by Robin A. Leaver; "J. S. Bach's Dresden Trip and His Earliest Serenatas for Köthen" by Gregory Butler; "Bach's Second Thoughts on the Christmas Oratorio: The Compositional Revisions to 'Bereite dich, Zion,' BWV 248/4" by Steven Saunders; and "The Passions as a Source of Inspiration? A Hypothesis on the Origin and Musical Aim of Well-Tempered Clavier II," by Yo Tomita.
The noted Bach scholar Hans-Joachim Schulze, perhaps the leading authority, has been in the forefront of borrowing studies in the broadest and deepest senses. His essay on "Parody and Text Quality in the Vocal Works," Eng. trans. Reginald Sanders, begins (Ibid.: 167)5 with the Romantic notions of Bernhard Max (1828) and Albert Schweitzer (1908). While the "extensive application of the parody procedure is characteristic" of Bach, this extensive application is "a problem because the relationship between text and music is often significantly damaged." "This problem is exacerbated by the unparalleled inferiority of the texts, which is widely observed, and by the degree of incompetence of Bach's librettists." Put simply, Bach's 18th century librettists, particularly Picander, his leading parodist, are still an embarrassment to some 21st century sensibilities. Consequently, "Future generations should not be burdened with these 'heinous German sacred text's (in the words of Carl Friedrich Zelte[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Friedrich_Zelter]), and certainly not with such texts that resulted from the parody procedure" which in self-borrowing can be considered merely a lazy man's self-plagiarism.6
Previously, Schulze points out, he had shown that these sacred texts "usually involve a well-balanced interplay of theological content, linguistic quality, and suitability for musical setting," often showing "extensive knowledge of the Bible and hymnal," two characteristics extensively studied in recent years by Martin Petzoldt in his Bach Kommentar volumes on the vocal music. Bach selectively chose settings of pioneering librettists, Erdmann Neumeister, Georg Christian Lehms, Johann Friedrich Helbig, and Christian Friedrich Hunold (Menantes), Weimar colleague Salomo Franck in his first cantata cycle, unidentified learned theologians in his chorale cantata cycle, and in his third cycle the anonymous Rudostadt texts. Bach also actively collaborated in Leipzig, besides Picander, with Mariane von Ziegler and Christoph Birkmann in his third cycle and set three texts of noted poet Johann Christoph Gottshed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Christoph_Gottsched, https://www.bach-cantatas.com/Lib/Gottsched.htm).7 Bach's parody is explored in the "en-block" wholesale re-texting from Köthen profane serenades to Leipzig first cycle feast-day cantatas (BWV 66, 134, 174, 185, 194), while preserving much of the original text, possibly by Bach himself, thus causing him to abandon "the carelessly entered terrain of the en-block parodies," says Schulze (Ibid.: 175). "With other approaches, higher-quality standards could be recognized," Schulze acknowledges.
Parody as Conservation, Intensification
The other basic type of parody from a reservoir of various cantata movements altered for use in a major work or collection, called "poetic parodies" by Werner Neumann (Footnote 5: 70), is described in Robin A. Leaver's article, "J. S. Bach's parodies of Vocal Music: Conservation or Intensification" (Chapter 10: 177ff), in which Bach's cantatas are conserved through contrafaction in new text underlay from German cantatas to Latin Mass movements. Through conservation, the original use in the German Lutheran Main Service Propers is transformed into music of the Latin Mass Ordinary of the four Missae: Kyrie-Gloria, BWV 233-236, and the Missa tota, Mass in B Minor. Meanwhile, the St. Mark Passion and the Christmas Oratorio, taken significantly from profane music for the Dresden court observances, Cantatas 198 and 213-215 respectively, reveal part of a "careful and systematic compositional process," says Leaver (Ibid.: 195), involving intensification through parody to create challenging "liturgical music for the worship of the Leipzig churches" from core profane music composed for Dresden Court.
Research still debated suggests that Bach between his leaving Weimar and taking the Köthen Kapellmeister post in the fall of 1717 may have made a special trip to Dresden between December 2 and 17, then on to Leipzig to examine an organ before "arriving in Köthen by December 29," says Gregory Butler in "J. S. Bach's Dresden Trip and His Earliest Serenatas for Köthen." In Dresden Bach may have composed the earliest version of the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto, BWV 1050a (https://www.bach-digital.de/receive/BachDigitalWork_work_00001234), which Butler believes may have been the opening sinfonia to Bach's lost New Year's Cantata, "Ihr wallenden Wolken" (Ye billowing cloud banks), BWV 1150=Anh. 197," which Peter Wollny dates as Bach's first Köthen composition for 1 January 1718, cited by Butler.8
Although Bach's basic new-text underlay often seems perfunctory and utilitarian, on occasion where the autograph original and the new versions are extant, Bach's transformation of the musical style and affect as well as the textual alterations show a considerable effort on his part. The original profane aria, "Ich will dich nicht hören, ich will dich nicht wissen" (I do not want to listen to you, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U7-Irbi9i_Q, https://www.bach-digital.de/rsc/viewer/BachDigitalSource_derivate_00002188/db_bachp0125_page013r.jpg) in the Hercules Cantata, BWV 213, No. 9, is a stern rejection of pleasures, while the new version is "diametrically opposed to that of its model," says Steven Saunders in "Bach's Second Thoughts on the Christmas Oratorio," which is a love song to the infant Jesus, "Bereite dich, Zion" (Make yourself ready, Zion, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPz_URLSAOk, https://www.bach-digital.de/rsc/viewer/BachDigitalSource_derivate_00010558/db_bachp0032_page005.jpg). Bach's "revisions illuminate a number of significant issues, including his compositional priorities, his grappling with the emerging galant style, and the construction of musical meaning. Overall, this introductory aria to the musical setting of the Nativity and the incarnation of the Son of God involves an allegorical portrayal of "the church (Zion) preparing for the arrival of Jesus (the Bridegroom) and this unio mystica of the inhabitatio. This requires compositional changes that demonstrate through "the doubling of the original violin accompaniment by oboe d'amore, with its connotations of love, mildness, and tenderness," says Saunders (Ibid.: 217). Bach reshapes the B section and the repeat of the A section in this da capo aria for alto in 3/8 time in A minor in menuett style with symmetrical phrase structures of galant quality while preserving "a deeper latent [sense of] acceptance," he says (Ibid.: 221). Added ornamentation and articulation are "elements essential to Bach's concept of the aria," helping to create a more complex affect.
Compositional Elements Replicated
Yo Tomita in his parody studies article, "The Passions as a Source of Inspiration? A Hypothesis on the Origin and Musical Aim of Well-Tempered Clavier [WTC] II," finds the replication of compositional elements in connections between six WTC II preludes and fugues and a passage from the "Great 18" organ chorale prelude as well as five passages from the narratives of the St. John and St. Matthew Passions (source, "Late Keyboard Works, Yo Tomita Insights, Spirituality," http://bach-cantatas.com/NVD/Keyboard-Music-Late-Tomita.htm). The subject of the WTC II "A Major Fugue," BWV 888/2 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RjebdVKIAM: 1:23) "is based on the opening phrase of the chorale melody [of the German Gloria] 'Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr'," which also has the same key and Affekt" as the "Great 18" Prelude, BWV 664 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq--dCq1c0A). That Bach "was making a fair copy of this collection" when also making a fair copy of this WTC 2 fugue "lends some weight to this suggested relationship," says Tomita (Ibid. 230f). The opening chorus of the St. John Passion, "Herr, unser Herrscher" (Lord, our ruler, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMf9XDQBAaI), has the same key, motif and harmonic and textural devices as the WTC II Prelude No. 16 in G minor, BWV 885/1 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJjUFmOOu8o). The topic also is the same, the crucifixion. The motif in both is called the "cross motif" or chiasums (from the Greek letter chi (χ),9 discussed at length by Philipp Spand Friedrich Smend, which is a variant of the B-A-C-H motif, observes Tomita (Ibid.: Footnote 25: 239). The fundamental compositional tools Bach uses in the WTC involve the choice of key and the use of the cross motif as well as "various harmonic, rhythmic, textural devices and proportional parallelism [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtjHD9zB6bg] [that] may be some of them," says Tomita (Ibid.: 232).
Further in the St. John Passion, the turba chorus, No. 21d, "Kreuzige, Kreuzige" (Crucify, crucify, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3RwZ9WpN10) shares two musical passages with the WTC II Fugue No. 16 in G minor," BWV 885/2. In 1739, Bach began to make a fair copy of the score of the St. John Passion but creased when he apparently was required to submit the text for approval of the Leipzig Town Council and refused because he had submitted the text several times previously. A similar turba chorus, "Laß ihn kreuzigen" (Let him be crucified, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plWZXWTbej0), No. 45b, in the St Matthew Passion is a choral fughetta in A minor, similar to the WTC II Fugue No. 20 in A minor, BWV 889/2 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcMHwNrrRyM), both having cross motifs and tritones emphasizing the crucifixion. The later St. Matthew Passion cry, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachtani," involved Psalm 22. The definitive version of the St. Matthew Passion was completed in Bach's calligraphic autograph in 1736 when he also began working on individual preludes and fugues in the WTC II collection.
FOOTNOTES
1 Compositional Choices and Meaning in the Vocal Music of J. S. Bach, edds. Mark A.Peters & Reginald Sanders; Festschrift for Don O. Franklin, the eighth Contextual Bach Studies, series edited by Robin A.Leaver (Lanham MD: Lexington Books, 2018); contents https://searchworks.stanford.edu/view/12379112.
2 John Butt, Chapter 2, "Bach's Passions and the Textures of Time," in Bach's Dialogue with Modernity: Perspectives on the Passions (Cambridge University Press, 2010: 269-280), response to Karol Berger, Part I, Bach's Cycle, in Bach's Cycle, Mozart's Arrow: An Essay on the Origins of Musical Modernity (Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 2007, from a historical perspective; other Bach analytical studies include Eric Chafe's Tonal Allegory in the Vocal Music of J. S. Bach (Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 1991), and David Yearsley, Bach and the Meanings of Counterpoint, New Perspectives in music history and criticism (Cambridge University Press, 2002).
3 In a closing "Editors' note" to Allanbrook's essay, the collection's editors, Peters, and Sanders, revised and expanded Allanbrook's writing, noting that she submitted her work in 2010 when the collection "was just initially being conceived," with plans to revise and expand it for publication (Ibid.: 162f), and they added three important new footnote references "to more recent scholarship on Bach's Matthew Passion." Allanbrook apparently was unaware that the arias "Mache dich" in the Matthew Passion and "Bleibet nun in eurer Run," parody in the Köthen Funeral Music, BWV 244a, may have been "written in close secession," suggests Schulze (Ibid.: 168).
4 See American Bach Society Biennial Meeting, “Bach Re-Worked: Parody, Transcription," <<Daniel R Melamed set the tone for the conference with his [keynote] provocative talk “Parody is Overrated.” The trend in Bach studies toward pursuing parody as a way of determining musical meaning in Bach’s works, Melamed argued, is a trap. In most cases, it is impossible to know if eighteenth-century listeners would have known source models of parodied works; thus this methodology gives us insight into Bach’s working methods but not the historical listening experience. Melamed suggested instead that scholars ought to focus on musical substance and the final product rather than “origin stories.” Unsurprisingly, his presentation fueled a spirited round of discussion and questions, including the tongue-in-cheek, “is musicology then overrated?” (the consensus was no.)>>; from Bach Notes No. 29 (Fall 2018), https://www.americanbachsociety.org/Newsletters/BachNotes29.pdf: 7); Melamed also has an earlier, informative and concise essay on "parody" in Oxford Composer Companions: J. S. Bach, ed. Malcolm Boyd (Oxford University Press, 1999: 356f). For an extended discussion of "Parody": "Obsession or Transformation." see http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Topics/Parodies-6.htm.
5 See Hans-Joachim Schulze, "The Parody Problems in Bach's Music: An Old Problem Reconsidered," Eng. trans. Daniel R. Melamed, in BACH, XX/1 (Spring 1989: 7-20), and "Bach's Secular Cantatas — A New Look at the Sources," in BACH, XXII/1 (Spring 1991: 26-41), as well as Schulze, Bach-Facetten: Essays, Studien, Miszellen (Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2017, https://www.neue-bachgesellschaft.de/hans-joachim-schulze-releases-new-book-bach-facetten/?lang=en, review Markus Rathey, BACH 50/1 (2019: 118-122).
6 Parody significant sources include: Werner Neumann, "Über Äusmaß und Wesen des Bachschen Parodieverfahrens" (About the Extent and Nature of Bach's Parody Method), Bach Jahrbuch Vol. 51 (1965: 63-85) with a listing of parody works and sources, vocal and instrumental; Norman Carrell's Bach the Borrower (London: Allen & Unwin, 1967); and Alfred Mann, "Bach's parody technique and its frontiers," in Bach Studies (1), ed. Don O Franklin (Cambridge University Press, 1989: 115-124).
7 In at least two cases, Bach allowed skilled copyists to make musical adjustments in textual parodies: Cantata 216a c.1728-31, "reworking of BWV 216 by Christian Gottlob Meißner" (https://www.bach-digital.de/servlets/solr/select?q=%2BobjectType%3A%22work%22+%2Bcategory%3A%22BachDigital_class_00000006%5C%3A0001%22+%2Bcategory%3A%22BachDigital_class_00000005%5C%3A0001.03%22+%2Bmusicrepo_work01%3A%22BWV+216a%22&fl=id%2CreturnId%2CobjectType&sort=musicrepo_worksort01+asc&version=4.5&mask=search_form_work.xed&start=0&fl=id&rows=1&XSL.Style=browse&origrows=25), and BWV 208a in 1742, by Johann Elias Bach (https://www.bach-digital.de/receive/BachDigitalSource_source_00000866, http://www.uvm.edu/~classics/faculty/bach/BWV208a.html). It also is possible that Bach used the skills of Meißner and son Emanuel in the shaping of the St. Mark Passion in 1731 (see Narrative Parody In Bach's St. Mark Passion: 45).
8 See Peter Wollny, unpublished article, "Überlegungen zu einigen Kantaten aus J. S. Bachs Köthener Zeit" (Reflections on some cantatas from Bach's Köthen Time), presented at the Bach Archiv-Leipzig colloquium honoring the 80th birthday of Hans-Joachim Schulze 3 December 2014. Two other articles presented then are published on-line in English at the Bach Network: "‘Having to perform and direct the music in the Capellmeister’s stead for two whole years’: Observations on How Bach Understood His Post during the 1740s," by Michael Maul (https://www.bachnetwork.org/ub12/ub12-maul.pdf), and "A CantatText Cycle of 1728 from Nuremberg: a Preliminary Report on a Discovery relating to J. S. Bach’s so-called ‘Third Annual Cantata Cycle’," by Christine Blanken (https://bachnetwork.co.uk/ub10/ub10-blanken.pdf). Another significant Festschrift, honoring Alfred Dürr on his 80th birthday, essays on the chronology of Bach's work, is "Die Zeit, die Tag und Jahre macht": zur Chronologie des Schaffens von Johann Sebastian Bach: Bericht über das Internationale wissenschaftliche Colloquium aus Anlass des 80. Geburstages von Alfred Dürr, Göttingen, 13.-15. März 1998 ["The time that makes days and years": the chronology of the work of Johann Sebastian Bach: Report on the International Scientific Colloquium on occasion of the 80th birthday of Alfred Dürr, Göttingen, 13-15 March 1998, ed. Martin Staehelin (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2001); essay contents: https://trove.nla.gov.au/work/28628344?q&versionId=34821775), on-line book review, http://www.music.qub.ac.uk/tomita/bachbib/review/bb-review_Staehelin-Zeit.html).
9 Chiastic passages and palindrome form are discussed in the Bach Cantata Website, "Chiasm in Bach's Vocal Works," http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Topics/Chiasm.htm, as well as Friedrich Smend's studies in the Cambridge Companion to J. S. Bach (https://books.google.com/books?id=YiJKHGxrYzsC&pg=PA101&lpg=PA101&dq=Friedrich+Smend+chiastic+Bach&source=bl&ots=CDokVIxt2B&sig=ACfU3U06iCsw7rk-t9vUVi10-0O_6JMdEQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwit-orqhYjjAhUTVs0KHRhKAl0Q6AEwBXoECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=Friedrich%20Smend%20chiastic%20Bach&f=false.
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To Come: Part IV, "The Reception of Bach's Vocal Works." |
