Bach Cantata 191; Dazzle in Late Bach

The last decade of Bach’s life had the feel of a musician’s retirement; he worked and taught as much as ever, but nonetheless found ways to shift his creativity away from regular duties as Cantor in Leipzig to projects of a more personally satisfying nature. These projects including The Art of Fugue and the compilation of the B Minor Mass. So it was natural that when regular duty asked for a Christmas Cantata in 1743, he responded with Cantata No. 191, an adaptation of the Gloria used in the B Minor Mass, originally written as early as 1733.

The Gloria of the B minor Mass had eight movements, which Bach condensed to three in Cantata No. 191 by keeping only the first, the last, and one of the middle movements. This maintained the overall feel of the original but broke the continuity of the text, which was restored by changing the text in the second and third movements to a Doxology. This linked the second and third movements together as a unit, separated them from the first, and closed off the work as a whole. But it challenged Bach to rework a new text into music originally built around different words.

This lively live performance of the opening movement is propelled by standing strings and Baroque winds:



The opening movement differs only in microscopic details from the B Minor Mass. It divides in sections that contrast to savor each line of the standard Gloria text. The first, (Gloria in excelsis Deo), is set as a celebration in strongly punctuated counterpoint that dances in pure joy.

The second line [1:50] (et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis) steps off the edge. The tempo and time signature change. Dancing is balanced by quietly shifting elegance. The voices cadence [2:31]. An instrumental interlude cuts further along an edge to prepare a new fugue [2:58] about the pleasures of being ornate.

Twenty-one measures at the end of the duet for soprano and tenor in the pastoral second movement was eliminated from the corresponding place in the B-Minor Mass in order to better anticipate the burst of energy which opens the third movement. Strongly contrasting textures of quickly articulated syllables balanced against coloratura close a work that is a classic example of compositional process in late Bach.

Bach, even in false retirement and somewhat disgruntled, could still dazzle.

Art of Fugue in a Novel: An Equal Music by Vikram Seth

Vikram Seth's novel "An Equal Music" is a fabulous account of a violinist haunted by his past.

The Art of Fugue develops as a symbol in the book as his quartet undertakes a recording of the complete work. The idea materializes after the quartet plays Contrapunctus I as an encore. Michael, the second violinist of the quartet in "An Equal Music" described how it happened:



"I have made a small adjustment to the Tononi backstage. I now check it almost silently, and tell it not to let me down.

Normally Piers would announce the encore. Instead, he and the others look at me and nod almost imperceptibly. I begin to play. I take my first two notes on open strings, almost as if they were a transition from tuning into music.

As I play the first few slow notes I hear from different points of the dark hall the indrawn breath of startled recognition. After my four lonely bars, Piers joins me [0:16], then Billy [0:24] and then Helen [0:31].

We play almost without vibrato, keeping the bow on the string, taking open strings where they fall naturally, even if that means our phrases do not exactly replicate one another's. [...]

As I move to the tiny quaver, the minuscule quibble of a note that was the source of all my anxiety, [1:16] Helen, who has a rest here, turns her head slightly and looks at me. I can tell she is smiling. It is the F below middle C. I have had to tune my lowest string down a whole tone in order to be able to play it."

Michael refers to the second 8th of the third measure in the second violin part.

Milan Kundera on Bach's Art of Fugue

Milan Kundera drew the theme of the "Art of Fugue" in his own hand to support his meditation on the work in his "Improvisation in Homage to Stravinsky," from his "essay in nine parts" written in 1995 called "Testaments Betrayed." Not only the notes but the staff itself was drawn; with quick fast motions. Kundera has a musical hand.

Kundera imagined the history of music dividing into segments at the age when polyphony gave way to the classical style. He heard the Art of Fugue as a "symbolic apogee" that closed the first segment.

"I like very much," wrote Kundera, "Hermann Scherchen's orchestration and recorded interpretation; for example Contrapunctus IV, the fourth single fugue:"



"Immediately, at that slow tempo," wrote Kundera, "the whole of its unsuspected melodic beauty is revealed...what I hear is...elusive, unmemorizable, irreducible to a brief phrase, a melody (an entwining of melodies) that bewitches me by its ineffable serenity."

He views the emotion created as being meditative: in Bach we "contemplate a beauty of being that is outside our moods, our passions and pains, ourselves." He contrasts the romantic melodic ideal which makes us "plunge into ourselves, feel the self with a terrible intensity, and forget everything outside."

The speculative serenity that caused this work to seem "outside ourselves" led Wilhelm Rust, during the preparation for volume XXV of the Bach Gesellschaft, to conclude that it was a purely theoretical work. Even as late as 1896, Jadassohn suggested that the voices be conceived as imaginary; that the work was not meant for practical performance. Consistent with Kundera's inspiration, at the height of the romantic age it was not possible to imagine that this work could even sound.

Sarabande Incantation

The sarabande from Bach's third lute suite is as much incantation as dance.

It was a work born of contradictions: Either the third lute suite or the fifth cello suite is an adaptation of the other...which was first? (There is no conclusive evidence). The sarabande fits easily on three systems of staves, but it takes three minutes to perform. Bach's handwriting is hurried but the music is meditative.

This performance on lute is by Jakob Lindberg:



Bach slurs groupings of four tones in each measure before the bass is struck. The four tones stretch into an augmented sonority that bends into a triad. In the third measure an extra upbeat is added to mark the phrase closing.

The next four measures are mirror-like with the bass ringing first in a contour inversion of the four-tone collections. Notice how the notation of the last quarter beat of the 7th measure needs to be continued on the next staff; this situation could easily have been fixed with even the smallest amount of thinking ahead. Bach was fixed like a laser on the idea, ever in the moment.

Measures are filled with 8ths and motion increases into the cadence in the relative major. The repeat [0:36] takes us back to the opening and Lindberg's only ornament is to double the tones in the added upbeat.

The second half of the binary form begins at [1:07] and is parallel to the opening section in gesture but developmental in harmony. An extra four-bar phrase is added [1:37] in brilliant synthesis.

"When you finish the sarabande," said Rostropovich, "you're left with the impression that time is going on at the same pace, and that your breathing continues in the same rhythm." This is a movement that stamps us with an impression of celestial mechanics.

A Musical Argument; Wispelwey and the third suite Courante

"The Cello Suites are definitely not primarily melodic music," said cellist Pieter Wispelwey in an interview with Tim Janof, "their style is rhetorical, speaking rather than singing." Wispelwey did not deny the "wonderful lyricism within certain notes, slurs, or motives," but drew a distinction between the style of writing in the cello suites and the "aria-like singing" that appears in other instrumental works by Bach.

Giving attention to the rhetorical side of these suites pulls us away from the atomic thinking that is a source of endless fascination in learning Bach. Wispelwey's concept was dramatized in a short film called "The Kitchen Suite," filmed by Paul Cohen in 1994.

Wispelwey performs the third cello suite while Liat Steiner performs a mixture of domestic gestures and dance. It is fascinating to see how much dance she can imbue into ordinary domestic gestures, and transitions from one world to the other are wonderful. The choreography, and basic idea for the project, came from Aletta Schreuders.

I am particularly interested in the Courante, but will start just as the Allemande cadences to set the context [7:15-10:36].

Steiner's character seems to think of a creative compromise to engage her intense and focused partner. She brings him a cookbook to entice him into domesticity. She even brings it to him on a music stand as a way of creating a bridge into his world.

Wispelwey's character windshield-wipes the book from his stand. Never a good strategy. Wispelwey is great in this scene...and he gives the rest of us hope for a film career.

He begins to play the Courante as a rhetorical expression of musical argument. I have never heard this movement played this way and find it strangely convincing. Wispelwey points the descending arpeggios and descending scale segments so that they land at the bottom of each gesture--often these passages are played with the middleground melodic connections in mind. He also gives each bowing a crunchy weight to create energy.

Steiner's character registers the impact of anger in slow motion, bursting into flamenco inspired gestures during the pedal tones on V/V [8:08]. The musical repeat of the opening section [8:20] employs a repetition of the movement: slow motion, this time with a tracking shot until the pedal tones gestures take place.

The second half of the dance [9:00] opposes the first half with circular body motion and strongly vertical arm gestures, followed by more reflective gestures after the cadence in A minor [9:15] that is announced as the cookbook is thrown to the floor. The dominant pedal inspires rapid room-crossing movement then gets "two points" for the music-stand takedown.

The repeat of the second half begins as a parallelism [9:46], but begins to seek resolution after the A minor cadence [10:03]. The argument is unresolved.

Bach wrote dance music that was not intended to be danced. It was a dance of embodied movement. Wispelwey continues to make the case for hearing the music in rhetorical terms, and this film was a creative way to explore the relationship between rhetoric, movement and sound.

The White-Hot Intensity of Solitude; Rostropovich and a Musical Prayer

Anthony Storr (1920-2001) was a gifted psychologist who wrote with great clarity about music. I use his book "Music and the Mind" as the cornerstone of a course I created at the University of Bridgeport called "Music in the Liberal Arts."

Storr also wrote a book called "Solitude; A Return to the Self" in which he distinguishes between solitude and loneliness and explores the "uses of solitude." Unlike loneliness, solitude can be nourishing and restorative.

As one observes Mstislav Rostropovich walking the grounds of the Vézelay Abbey no further proof seems necessary:



During the first minute of video he talks of playing the cello as if he were singing. "Then debilitated from his long stay in the heights," says Rostropovich of Bach's lines, "you descend once more to garner a new source of energy."

He describes the sarabande of the second suite [1:05] as "the saddest of all the sarabandes in the suites." It encapsulates a "musical vulnerability like that of a person rapt in prayer."

The second suite's sarabande is a prayer, but it is a prayer of motion; of movement. In his performance [2:41-3:12] Rostropovich brings out the fierce and unpredictable skips that tear through a work which up to this point has sounded ancient and meditative.

As he turns a corner in an ancient churchyard [2:05] the camera gradually reveals a rich background; a village below and hills stretching to the sky. "For me," he says, "this Sarabande has the white hot intensity of solitude."

He observes birds flying higher into the sky before roosting [2:57]. "They're pretty noisy, by the way." Noisy enough to delay the recording process until night falls. Then Rostropovich plays the sarabande of (and with) white-hot intensity.

Yoga, Rostropovich, and Bach; Prelude from the First Cello Suite

Mstislav Rostropovich (1927-2007) was a first-rate musician with a distinctive and colorful personality. In this clip he intuits a connection between Bach and breathing that is a fundamental part of the practice of Yoga.

As the opening shot changes focus [0:12] notice the drops of rain on the window. Rostropovich mentions rain and a church just after playing half of the Sarabande from the first cello suite on piano:



In a wonderful blur [0:57] one imagines that Rostropovich meant that the music he had just played depicts soft rain, here at the center of the joyous and "youthful" first suite. But this time he is literal. The church to which he refers [1:03] is the Vézelay Abbey in the Burgundian region of France, where his recording of the complete suites was made.

Before leaving to make his recording, he analyzes the first phrase of the opening prelude. He connects the architecture of this phrase directly to breathing [2:21]. Rostropovich found yoga in Bach.

We often associate yoga with movement. It is not movement alone. It is creating a connection to breathing.

"Its constructive process is like the process of generating energy," he says [2:27], likening the first two-and-a-half measures to an inhalation. Exhalation is the point at which "the creative impulse that initiated the phrase is reversed."

As Rostropovich plays the complete phrase [2:51-3:02] one can inhale and exhale in a deep meditative breath that follows the music itself.

One needs to be in a generous mood to allow his calculation for golden mean [3:37-4:11], but what is important is that the timing relationship between inhalation and exhalation is not equal, but that we are building heat by taking in a deep breath.

He plays two complete breaths [4:31-4:49] from the opening of Chopin's Fantaisie-Impromptu in C-sharp minor, and he finishes his analysis by playing the first complete phrase-breathing [5:45-6:06] from the C major prelude from book one of the Well-Tempered Clavier.

The wonder of Rostropovich is the ease with which he helps associate the elemental in Bach with the cornerstone of life-force; breathing.