Classical Music Forum banner

Bach and Luther

69K views 175 replies 17 participants last post by  Victor Redseal 
G
#1 ·
[This thread will be in installments. Before we can really talk about the role of Bach and Luther in Germanic culture, we'll have to get into some background to gain historical perspective.]

Background

The nation of Germany is really a relatively recent development. As far back as 100 BCE, the Romans listed a region of central Europe they called Germania but it was little more than a territory populated by various tribes the Romans were always trying to conquer. One of those tribes was called the Cherusci among whom the Romans discovered a seemingly invincible warrior they called Arminius. The Cherusci tribe came from the region known as Germania Magna. There were two other regions sharing the name Germania-Germania Inferior and Germania Superior-which were held by the Romans while Germania Magna was was as yet unconquered and populated by the Germanic tribes as well as Gauls. Celts, Slavs and others.



Julius Caesar understood the warlike tribes in the area called themselves Germani although the meaning of the name is not clear. Tacitus detailed the war between the Romans and Germani in his accounts. The Cherusci had united other tribes in Germania Magna against the Romans. Arminius had lived in Rome when he was younger and was given a Roman education and trained in the Roman martial arts. He was the son of a chieftain name Segimir. The Romans took Arminius and his brother, Flavus, to Rome to serve as hostages. They would be shown and treated to the best Rome had to offer including Roman schooling and citizenship as well as the rank of petty noble but their presence was to ensure that the Germani behaved themselves. Any uprisings or acts of war would result in the deaths of Segimir's sons.

Arminius, however, proved to be a brave soldier and an able commander and was given control of his own Roman detachment in Germania Magna. When the Romans began pushing into lands east of the Rhine under the command of Varus, appointed governor by Augustus, Arminius secretly began uniting tribes against the Roman encroachment. In 9 CE, with a major rebellion in the Balkans that required eight of the eleven legions in Germania, Varus had only three legions left to fight off any attacking Germani. Arminius then baited a trap for Varus and his men by luring them out to Kalkriese Hill in the Teutoburg Forest where they were ambushed by superior Germanic forces and defeated. It would be a good five years before the Romans would be able to defeat Arminius but Tiberius decided to keep the border of the Roman-occupied region at the Rhine River in 17 CE which was essentially a victory for Arminus who died fours years later, murdered by some of his fellow tribesmen who feared he was becoming too powerful. Arminus is also known as Hermann but this appears to be a 19th century name change. Despite the similarity of "German" and "Hermann," Germany was not named after him. The defeat of the Romans in the Teutoburg Forest has far-reaching implications. The Romans lost their appetite for conquest of Germania Magna which would eventually give birth to the country of Germany.

By the third century CE, the Roman Empire had divided into western and eastern halves on the orders of Diocletian. The year is given as 284 CE. The empire was simply too vast to be run from only one seat of power. Diocletian would govern the Western Empire (which spoke Latin) from Milan and Maximian would govern the Eastern Empire (which spoke Greek) from Byzantium and so the Eastern Empire is more famously known to history as the Byzantine Empire (although they called themselves Romans). Migrations to and assaults on the Western Empire were carried out mainly of Goths, Huns, Bulgars, Franks and Vandals which pushed the Empire to the brink of dissolution. For example, prior to Diocletian's order to split the empire, Rome was already fracturing. The army had taken on so many Goths and Germani and what not that much of the army was mercenary and these mercenaries were only loyal to their commanders rather than to Rome (which few of them had ever visited). Meanwhile, the Eastern Empire got along nicely and, in 324, the emperor, Constantine, renamed Byzantium after himself-Constantinople-and the city was consecrated in 330. Constantine declared it the new capital of the entire empire and moved there.

The numerous invasions of the Western Empire were taking a toll on its finances. The wars were expensive and this resulted in very high taxation rates among the citizenry which was hard pressed trying to keep up with the payments. Plus the mercenary army had to be paid in gold or they would mutiny. Generals became warlords and proclaimed themselves emperor. There were literally dozens of these warlords with sizable mercenary armies all insisting that they were emperor of Rome. Corruption within the government was rife and the military was angry about it which affected morale. In 410, the Visigoths under Alaric sacked Rome. Then the Vandals took the city in 455 leaving the bureaucracy teetering. In 476, Odoacer, a Germanic king, deposed Romulus Augustus, who had been proclaimed emperor less than a year before and took his place as emperor and sending Romulus into exile and no Roman ruler would ever return to reclaim the throne. The Empire collapsed and Western Europe, for the first time in centuries, had no emperor (although the Byzantine Empire would continue strong for another thousand years). The period after the collapse is often referred to as the Dark Ages.

Although we have been conditioned to regard the Dark Ages as this period when Europe fell into anti-intellectualism and superstition, there is not much evidence to support this. In fact, many historians refuse to use this term to describe that period preferring instead to call it the Early Middle Ages. There was serfdom but slavery was abolished during this period while the Romans had been over-reliant on slavery (it was one of the many things that destroyed the Western Empire). Public health organizations and charities started during this time. Reading and writing actually flourished comparatively speaking and there was much leisure time for everything from card-playing to archery competitions to pitching horseshoes. Wars were small and usually over very quickly because armies were necessarily small, there not being much money to raise large ones.

In the wake of the collapse of Western Empire, a tribe from the Middle and Lower Rhine flourished in that region. They were called the Franks. Being a very large tribe, some Frankish groups were Roman allies while other antagonized them. Still others were mercenaries in the Roman army. The Romans recognized the Frankish Kingdom (Regnum Francorum) in 357. After the collapse, the Franks found themselves under constant assault by Vikings and were united under the Merovingian rulers a.k.a the Meerwings. The Meerwings were Salian Franks. They believed their lineage began after a fish-man or lizard-man raped a human maiden and impregnated her and she gave birth to the Merovingian line. The first Meerwing ruler was Clovis I, who was crowned King in 496. The Meerwing Dynasty ruled for the next three centuries but, as time wore on, the Merovingian kings exercised less and less power. The real power behind the throne were the Carolingians who consolidated their power under Charles Martel, the Mayor of the Palace (Maior Domus) and Duke of the Franks in 718. Martel called all the shots until his death in 741.

Martel was mainly concerned about encroachment from the Muslims whom he defeated at the Battle of Tours in 732. Martel had two sons, Pepin III and Carloman. Upon his death, Pepin became Mayor of the Palace and he and Carloman ran things behind the scenes until 752 when Childeric III, a mere figurehead and last of the Meerwings, was deposed by Pope Zachary at the behest of Pepin and Carloman (who installed him in the first place). By that time, the Frankish Empire encompassed nearly all of Western Europe. Two years later, Pope Stephen II named Pepin the king and he ruled under the moniker of Pepin the Short until his death in 768.

Upon the death of Pepin the Short, his sons, Charles and Carloman were co-rulers. Carloman died mysteriously in 771 and King Charles I became the sole King of the Franks. In 774, Charles, a devout Catholic, defeated then declared himself king of the Lombards of Northern Italy to prevent them from opposing the pope. On Christmas Day in 800, Charles was declared the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire by Pope Leo III while Charles was visiting Rome. Apparently, he did not want this title but was tricked into accepting it by Leo. Charles expanded the Empire and converted pagan areas to Christianity. He never learned to read nor write (although he constantly practiced his letters) but championed education and had schools built throughout the empire.

Charles became known to history as Karolus Magnus, Charlemagne or Charles the Great. The Germans call him Karl der Grosse. His biographer, Eginhard (some sources say Einhard), gave a good profile of the man. While the later medieval period depicted him with long, unruly, white hair and a long beard and mustache and adorned in long flowing robes, Eginhard described Charlemagne as wearing short close-cropped, black hair that he sometimes grew to his shoulders but no longer. He was usually clean-shaven but often sported a pencil-thin mustache. He spurned elegant clothing and preferred rugged hunting attire.


Charlemagne's monogram. He practiced his letters although he remained illiterate throughout his life. KRLS stands for "Karolus." This was his official mark.

He was married four times and had at least three children although only one, Louis, survived him. Culture flourished well under Charlemagne who ruled from his court in Aachen (Aix-la-Chapelle) in what is now in North Rhine-Westphalia. There are lots of stories about him which may or may not be true. One such story is that Charlemagne championed education and so once dropped in on a children's school unannounced and observed a boy misbehaving and so grabbed the child and spanked him soundly. In another case, he bade his courtiers go hunting with him dressed as they were-in their fine, expensive clothing. When they returned, their clothes were filthy and tattered. Charlemagne then admonished them for spending inordinate amounts of money on clothing that had no practical value.

Charlemagne died in 814 and became recognized as first true emperor in Western Europe since the collapse of the Roman Empire. Supposedly, Charlemagne loved music and had an open door policy at the palace where people could go in and play songs they knew or had written themselves. If Charlemagne liked the song, he would have a scribe skilled in musical notation write it down and it would then be preserved in the court's library. Many of these songs were quite ribald but Charlemagne was apparently quite fond of such songs. By the time of his death, there were reportedly thousands of these songs in the library. His son, Louis the Pious, as his name suggests disliked the profane pieces and, upon becoming emperor, had this sheet music burned. If true, the world was deprived of an invaluable source of music from the Dark Ages.




Charlemagne as remembered for posterity. He is shown wearing the "hoop crown" of the Holy Roman Empire but this crown did not exist until the 11th century. What crown Leo III allegedly placed on Charlemagne's head on Christmas Day in 800 is not known.


Charlemagne on a Frankish coin depicting him as a Roman emperor but the likeness is probably closer to his true appearance.


The Frankish Empire

Louis's reign was an unsteady one. He had to put down rebellions a fair amount and jailed King Bernard of Italy in 817 for leading a rebellion against him (Bernard died in prison a year later). Louis probably only maintained the empire simply because he was the son of the greatest ruler of Western Europe. In those days, the Franks did not yet practice primogeniture where the only eldest son inherits his father's throne so, to maintain control of the empire, Louis made his three sons co-rulers by splitting the empire into three slices. His eldest son, Lothair was King of Italy and co-emperor, Pepin was King of Aquitaine and Louis the German was King of Bavaria.

In 823, Louis attempted to bring his fourth son, Charles the Bald, into the co-rulership but his other sons objected. They didn't like splitting the kingdom anymore than it already had been. Six years later, Lothair was stripped of his titles and exiled to Italy apparently by his father. His sons then attacked and dethroned Louis in 830. The following year, Louis attacked his sons and again stripped Lothair of his titles and gave Italy to Charles the Bald. Lothair, Pepin and Louis the German then revolted in 832 and dethroned and imprisoned by Louis and Charles. In 835, family peace broke out and Louis was returned to the throne. When Pepin died in 838, Louis declared Charles the Bald as King of Aquitaine even though others wanted Pepin's son, Pepin II, to succeed his father.

Louis the Pious died in 840 and Lothair declared himself the emperor of the entire Frankish Empire. Needless to say, this didn't sit well with his brothers who joined forces and attacked Lothair's army at Fontenoy-en-Puisaye in 841. Lothair's army was defeated and so he retreated to Aachen. When Louis and Charles caught up to Lothair, he was trying to raise an army against them but he was no match for the combined forces of his two brothers. Louis and Charles declared Lothair unfit to hold the titles of emperor of the Franks and Holy Roman Emperor. On February 12, 842, Louis, Charles and their respective armies met in Strasbourg. The Oaths of Strasbourg were drawn up with Louis representing the kingdom of East Francia and Charles of West Francia. The Oaths were written in Caroline miniscule in Medieval Latin, Old Gallo-Romance and Old High German. Charles's kingdom spoke Gallo-Romance, Louis's kingdom spoke Old High German and Latin was the lingua franca of that time.

Each ruler addressed the assembly and gave the same speech pledging allegiance to his brother and condemning Lothair. Each brother spoke in the language of his brother's kingdom. But then the oaths also extended to the soldiers themselves. Each had to swear that if his ruler broke the oath and tried to move against his brother, they would be honor-bound not to assist him in any way.

Rather than find himself locked out of rulership, Lothair gave in and in August of 843, the Treaty of Verdun was drawn up between Lothair, Louis and Charles. Lothair was named king of Middle Francia including Aachen and Rome, Louis was given East Francia, Charles received West Francia and he granted Aquitaine to Pepin II. At this point, historians agree, France and Germany were formed although the borders would shift significantly over the years.

Not until 962 would the Holy Roman Empire be established in a succession that would last centuries. That year, Otto I was crowned as the emperor by Pope John XII. The Holy Roman Empire was, for all intents and purposes, Germany. Different parts of the Empire were under the control of different families as the Hohenstaufens of Swabia, the Hohenzollerns of Brandenburg-Prussia and the Hapsburgs of Austria and Spain (the Hapsburgs actually had their own empire which was both within and without the Holy Roman Empire).
 
See less See more
1 5
G
#129 ·
The 125 date is not graven in stone. Others have dated the fragment to 150-175 and some to the 3rd century. Nor would I be the slightest bit surprised if there are some who think it is 4th century. I am always suspicious of earlier dates. Especially from the Egyptian antiquities market. The oldest copies of Philo are from the 3rd century and I would be surprised if John did not come from that same time period. Now, maybe there was an Ur-John gospel that came earlier but it wouldn't have had any of Philo's conceptions in them because they weren't widely known and there is no way the earliest Christians could have known about them because he was only just writing them. Then we're stuck wondering how the author of John (remember than in 125, John's gospel would have been anonymous since Irenaeus didn't name them until 185 CE) could have known that Jesus was the Logos the Made Flesh. Did he witness Chapter 1 verses 1-15?

So I would like to know how Bach felt about this.
 
#130 · (Edited)
The 125 date is not graven in stone. Others have dated the fragment to 150-175 and some to the 3rd century. Nor would I be the slightest bit surprised if there are some who think it is 4th century. I am always suspicious of earlier dates. Especially from the Egyptian antiquities market. The oldest copies of Philo are from the 3rd century and I would be surprised if John did not come from that same time period. Now, maybe there was an Ur-John gospel that came earlier but it wouldn't have had any of Philo's conceptions in them because they weren't widely known and there is no way the earliest Christians could have known about them because he was only just writing them. Then we're stuck wondering how the author of John (remember than in 125, John's gospel would have been anonymous since Irenaeus didn't name them until 185 CE) could have known that Jesus was the Logos the Made Flesh. Did he witness Chapter 1 verses 1-15?

So I would like to know how Bach felt about this.
Just that the best estimate is 125AD. We are not talking about copies of Philo we are talking abut copies of the New testament which is an entirely different matter. The New testament happens to be the textually best attested ancient document. These wild theories about Ur-John are simply that - wild theories. If you actually bother to read John's gospel you will see that the authors are anonymous it is obviously written down by John's amanuensis in the same way as Paul's Romans was written down by a scribe named Tertius. Only in John he is anonymous. He gives his own commentary that 'this is the disciple who is testifying concerning these things...we know his testimony is true.' Irenaeus is the earliest attestation that the Gospel of John was written by John the Apostle, but we accept the authorship of ancient documents whose attestation comes sometimes centuries after. I would have thought Iraeneus is a pretty early as far as ancient manuscripts are concerned and just confirms the view held by the church fathers that the apostle was the author which is quite obvious from the text. How John could have known that Jesus was the word made flesh? Quite obvious from the resurrection. But also from his miraculous life. Looking back he says, 'and we beheld his glory, glory as of an only begotten of a father, full of grace and truth.' He had observed what it was to have God the Son tabernacling among us.
 
G
#131 ·
https://vridar.org/2013/03/08/new-date-for-that-st-johns-fragment-rylands-library-papyrus-p52/

I just found this article a second ago. None of my ideas are derived from it but it states in precise terms why we must doubt early dates to gospel fragments. But our points are the same: it is folly to trust bible scholars when attributing dates especially when the opinions of much more qualified people are mysteriously not sought out for corroboration. And a good point is brought up that the fragment in discussion, P52, is from a codex and not a scroll which would be exceedingly rare to find from a early 2nd century work. In comparison, the Nag Hammadi Library is made up of 12 leather-bound codices and bible scholars very eagerly date them to the 4th century on that very basis. We know the ideas expressed in them go back to the 2nd century simply because Irenaeus condemned the Gnostic writings circa 185 CE. So, we know they were around at least by the late 2nd century.

People have to understand how incredibly rare it would be to find a true early 2nd century NT manuscript--even a fragment. The oldest complete NT manuscript--Codex Sinaiticus--is 4th century. Other very early NT manuscripts as Codex Vaticanus, Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus and Codex Alexandrinus are 4th or 5th century. None even make it back to the 3rd century. Of the modern Greek NT that you read today, more than 85% of the various books were actually complied from manuscripts dating after the 11th century! Hopefully, that puts some perspective on the idea that an early second century NT writing still exists even in fragments.

With that said, and we are getting rather off-track here, I want to study what Bach thought about John's Jesus. Did he just accept that there could somehow be an eyewitness to the Logos being made flesh and being born on earth? How did John know this happened? Why was the Johannine community pushing this view? What kind of a man was John's Jesus? We don't have a lot to go on. But we have the Calov commentary and other material so perhaps we can deduce some answers.
 
#132 · (Edited)
Yes but you are just quoting one opinion and we know that such opinions vary. In the opinion of the scholars at the Rylands museum, 'The importance of this fragment is quite out of proportion to its size, since it may with some confidence be dated in the first half of the second century A.D., and thus ranks as the earliest known fragment of the New Testament in any language.It provides us with invaluable evidence of the spread of Christianity in areas distant from the land of its origin; it is particularly interesting to know that among the books read by the early Christians in Upper Egypt was St. John's Gospel, commonly regarded as one of the latest of the books of the New Testament.'
Of course it's rare - that's why the fragment is so valuable as it shows that the gospel had in fact spread to Egypt at that time. You are of course completely off track when you start saying that 'more than 85% of the various books were actually complied from manuscripts dating after the 11th century' as those very documents were made up of early manuscripts and the New Testament has the best and the most plentiful manuscripts of any ancient historical document. That is just a fact. In fact we can say that with textual criticism (done by people with more knowledge that thee or me) we can be pretty confident that around 99% of the text is pure. If we were to apply your cynicism to all ancient documents then most ancient history would go out of the window.
The point is that John knew Jesus which of course we didn't. I would rather go by his picture of Jesus than try and have the picture reconstructed by some guy sitting at a desk 2000 years later who thinks he knew better than the apostle who Jesus loved.
 
G
#134 ·
The Passion starts at the point where Jesus is arrested and taken to the Jewish authorities. From Bach's apparent point-of-view, Christ is God. The libretto (written anonymously) we must assume supports Bach's beliefs and conceptions fairly accurately. It states:

"Whom do you seek?"
They answered:
"Jesus of Nazareth."
Jesus said to them: "I am he."


Jesus's response in the German text reads: "Ich bin's." I am. The original Greek text renders it as: "ego eimi." I am or I exist. It reminds us irrepressibly from Exodus 3 when God spoke to Moses from the burning bush. From the bush a voice said, "Moses, Moses, here I am." He also says, "I am the God of thy father." God tells Moses what his name is: "I AM THAT I AM. Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you." (Ex. 3:14) and this appellation is expressed as the Tetragrammaton or holy, ineffable name of God: YHWH. It is frequently expressed by the Hebrew letters: Yod-He-Waw-He. The Hebrew name for Jesus is Joshua or Yehoshua which is spelled Yod-He-Waw-Shin-Waw-Ayin (YHWShWAy) meaning "Salvation from the Lord." Yehoshua became Yeshua which became Jesus or "Savior." I've always thought it strange that a guy the Christians call their savior is actually named Savior (especially when Matthew 1:23 explicitly states his name is Emmanuel). Regardless, we can see that the name of Jesus contains YHWH with the addition of shin which symbolized transformation and ayin which represents the ability to see the hidden things. In other words, God is transformed into a man with the second sight, i.e. seeing into the future, telepathy, etc.

What Bach does musically when Jesus says, "Ich bin's" is to introduce a V-I cadence. Not a plagal cadence which is IV-I. This is a V-I cadence in the scale of G major. One might call it Bach's I AM cadence in G.

In this Passion, Jesus never doubts what he is doing. He has the second sight. He is following the plan of his Father in heaven. He knows everything that is going to happen and why it must happen. When Peter cuts off the ear of a servant among the arresting party, Jesus tells him to return his sword to its sheath for "Am I not to drink the cup my Father has given me?" That is, this is the hand he has been dealt and he must play it. John presents us with a more utilitarian Christ by providing a narrative where things only happen to fulfill the divine plan. They happen, Jesus makes his pronouncement of fulfilling the plan and then we move on with no room for rumination or insight. In Luke's gospel, for example, after the servant's ear is severed, Jesus touches the wound and instantaneously heals it. The other synoptics missed this miracle. When Jesus is bound over, Peter vows to follow him but. upon being asked if he is a disciple, loses his nerve and says he is not or in the German-"Ich bin's nicht" or I am not. Notice this is the negative version of Jesus's "Ich bin's." It is even done is the V-I cadence of Christ's earlier "Ich bin's" but of a less forceful and more equivocating nature. Peter or Petro means rock or stone. Rock represents solidness and opaqueness which is indicative of matter. Peter is of the material world unlike Jesus who is divine. Hence, Peter is fickle, unsure, untrustworthy-the mirror image of Christ. Jesus is fully a man and also fully God, as per Lutheran thought, but Peter is merely a man. This means that good works alone cannot save man but rather faith which depends upon God alone.
 
#135 ·
The Passion starts at the point where Jesus is arrested and taken to the Jewish authorities. From Bach's apparent point-of-view, Christ is God. The libretto (written anonymously) we must assume supports Bach's beliefs and conceptions fairly accurately. It states:

"Whom do you seek?"
They answered:
"Jesus of Nazareth."
Jesus said to them: "I am he."


Jesus's response in the German text reads: "Ich bin's." I am. The original Greek text renders it as: "ego eimi." I am or I exist. It reminds us irrepressibly from Exodus 3 when God spoke to Moses from the burning bush. From the bush a voice said, "Moses, Moses, here I am." He also says, "I am the God of thy father." God tells Moses what his name is: "I AM THAT I AM. Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you." (Ex. 3:14) and this appellation is expressed as the Tetragrammaton or holy, ineffable name of God: YHWH. It is frequently expressed by the Hebrew letters: Yod-He-Waw-He. The Hebrew name for Jesus is Joshua or Yehoshua which is spelled Yod-He-Waw-Shin-Waw-Ayin (YHWShWAy) meaning "Salvation from the Lord." Yehoshua became Yeshua which became Jesus or "Savior." I've always thought it strange that a guy the Christians call their savior is actually named Savior (especially when Matthew 1:23 explicitly states his name is Emmanuel). Regardless, we can see that the name of Jesus contains YHWH with the addition of shin which symbolized transformation and ayin which represents the ability to see the hidden things. In other words, God is transformed into a man with the second sight, i.e. seeing into the future, telepathy, etc.

What Bach does musically when Jesus says, "Ich bin's" is to introduce a V-I cadence. Not a plagal cadence which is IV-I. This is a V-I cadence in the scale of G major. One might call it Bach's I AM cadence in G.

In this Passion, Jesus never doubts what he is doing. He has the second sight. He is following the plan of his Father in heaven. He knows everything that is going to happen and why it must happen. When Peter cuts off the ear of a servant among the arresting party, Jesus tells him to return his sword to its sheath for "Am I not to drink the cup my Father has given me?" That is, this is the hand he has been dealt and he must play it. John presents us with a more utilitarian Christ by providing a narrative where things only happen to fulfill the divine plan. They happen, Jesus makes his pronouncement of fulfilling the plan and then we move on with no room for rumination or insight. In Luke's gospel, for example, after the servant's ear is severed, Jesus touches the wound and instantaneously heals it. The other synoptics missed this miracle. When Jesus is bound over, Peter vows to follow him but. upon being asked if he is a disciple, loses his nerve and says he is not or in the German-"Ich bin's nicht" or I am not. Notice this is the negative version of Jesus's "Ich bin's." It is even done is the V-I cadence of Christ's earlier "Ich bin's" but of a less forceful and more equivocating nature. Peter or Petro means rock or stone. Rock represents solidness and opaqueness which is indicative of matter. Peter is of the material world unlike Jesus who is divine. Hence, Peter is fickle, unsure, untrustworthy-the mirror image of Christ. Jesus is fully a man and also fully God, as per Lutheran thought, but Peter is merely a man. This means that good works alone cannot save man but rather faith which depends upon God alone.
While agreeing with much of this there are a few points to raise here:
First I can't see why you are puzzled why Christians call Jesus 'Saviour' when that is what he does and that is what is enshrined in his name. After all, the gospels say "he will save his people from their sins" and actually call him, "The Saviour of the world." So nothing odd about that. "Our Lord and Saviour Jesus the Messiah"
Matthew 1:23 doesn't explicitly say his name is 'Emmanuel' but is actually citing the prophecy of Isaiah as to who Jesus was ie 'God with us' After all, Matthew has just told us 'you are to give Him the name Jesus, because He will save His people from their sins' so it would be odd if Matthew had a contradictor name. In quoting Isaiah Matthew is making the same point as John that 'the word became flesh' or in the Messiah 'God is with us'.
I must confess the word 'utilitarian' is never one I have heard affixed to the Christ in John's gospel with it's so-called 'high' Christology. As for the action moving on with 'no rumination or insight', many of the 'signs' in John are followed by explanation like feeding the 5000 is followed by the 'bread of life' discourse.
'Peter' (petros) means stone as contrasted with 'Petra' which means 'Rock'. Peter was a 'stone' but it was on the 'Rock' of the fact that Jesus was the Messiah (as Peter confessed) that the church would be built.
 
G
#136 ·
Constantly, throughout the Passion, Bach's music wonderfully gives life to the libretto. Reading the libretto without the music is often somewhat boring. The music gives the words dynamics. The music seems to be playing a message sometimes even opposite the words. After Peter denies Jesus, there is an aria (#13):

Ah, my soul,
Where do you wish to go,
Where shall I find succour? Should I stay here,
Or do I want to bear
A mountainous burden?
The world gives but poor counsel, And my heart
Suffers the pangs
Of my misdeeds
Since the servant denied his Lord.




This was taken from Christian Weise's poem "Der Weinen Petrus" or "The Sobbing Peter." What is strange, however, is that Peter doesn't sing the aria. Rather the character of the Evangelist sings the aria in Peter's stead perhaps as the representative of the everyman. These are not Peter's personal failings but are all of our failings. Peter is a disciple but it is not an easy thing. No one chooses to be a disciple. Peter denies Jesus because he is a disciple but not because he chose to be but because Jesus as Divine Ruler chose him to be. Peter's heart isn't in it but that doesn't matter. He is a disciple because Jesus chose him as one. This is, once again, a demonstration of faith versus works. In the Lutheran faith we find the principle of sola fide, faith alone provides salvation, works (or one might say good deeds) are not enough. After all, a non-believer can do good works but how can he be saved without faith in Christ? Moreover, are good works done through a pure heart or through self-interest? Does any human have a pure heart? Only by faith does Christ save. Peter's attitude may seem to be a contradiction of sola fide and this probably occurred to Bach as well. Peter certainly wasn't showing much faith in Christ when he denied him thrice but Bach was depicting a weak human Peter being swept along by the divine power of Christ. Peter must grow into his role as a disciple but it is a trial by ordeal. But Bach has the aria done in the fashion of a sarabande rhythm-wise. This was a favorite dance among the upper crust of Leipzig as though Bach is bestowing favorability, an underlying grace, upon Peter's agonized words. Peter is saying no but the Divine King who props him up in his self-doubt is saying yes.

So, we see levels of discipleship evolving from Peter's naïve aria #9 about what an ardent disciple he is to a faltering aria #13 when he doubts his former resolve and denies Christ and finally to an exuberant aria #24 where the doubt expressed in #13 is answered:

Hurry, ye oppressed souls,
Leave your dens of travail
And hurry -where? - to Golgotha!
Take the wings of faith
And fly - where? - to the Hill of the Cross
Where salvation everywhere awaits you!




Whereas aria #13 asked where should one go to find succour, the question is answered in aria #24-to Golgotha, to the Hill of the Cross. For there hangs the crucified one saving all of humankind, the very reason He came into the world. Over and over again, Bach has Peter repeatedly exhort to the oppressed to hurry! Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! He is there now and there you will find your salvation, the end of your travails and oppression. Peter says to fly to Golgotha "on wings of faith." So, again, we are presented with the sola fide doctrine that it is through faith only that the salvation will come. Here, the full flowering of what it truly means to be a disciple is shouted by Peter in ecstasy. Your faith will take you to Golgotha-not to the temporal locale found in the gospel-but to your inner Golgotha, your own salvation, your own understanding but life is pitifully short so hurry, hurry! This cannot be found through works but only through faith. This is because humanity cannot earn any merit before God via his fickle, selfish nature. We need Christ to make this sacrifice for us. Hence, the cross is our only theology.
 
#137 · (Edited)
Constantly, throughout the Passion, Bach's music wonderfully gives life to the libretto. Reading the libretto without the music is often somewhat boring. The music gives the words dynamics. The music seems to be playing a message sometimes even opposite the words. After Peter denies Jesus, there is an aria (#13):

Ah, my soul,
Where do you wish to go,
Where shall I find succour? Should I stay here,
Or do I want to bear
A mountainous burden?
The world gives but poor counsel, And my heart
Suffers the pangs
Of my misdeeds
Since the servant denied his Lord.




This was taken from Christian Weise's poem "Der Weinen Petrus" or "The Sobbing Peter." What is strange, however, is that Peter doesn't sing the aria. Rather the character of the Evangelist sings the aria in Peter's stead perhaps as the representative of the everyman. These are not Peter's personal failings but are all of our failings. Peter is a disciple but it is not an easy thing. No one chooses to be a disciple. Peter denies Jesus because he is a disciple but not because he chose to be but because Jesus as Divine Ruler chose him to be. Peter's heart isn't in it but that doesn't matter. He is a disciple because Jesus chose him as one. This is, once again, a demonstration of faith versus works. In the Lutheran faith we find the principle of sola fide, faith alone provides salvation, works (or one might say good deeds) are not enough. After all, a non-believer can do good works but how can he be saved without faith in Christ? Moreover, are good works done through a pure heart or through self-interest? Does any human have a pure heart? Only by faith does Christ save. Peter's attitude may seem to be a contradiction of sola fide and this probably occurred to Bach as well. Peter certainly wasn't showing much faith in Christ when he denied him thrice but Bach was depicting a weak human Peter being swept along by the divine power of Christ. Peter must grow into his role as a disciple but it is a trial by ordeal. But Bach has the aria done in the fashion of a sarabande rhythm-wise. This was a favorite dance among the upper crust of Leipzig as though Bach is bestowing favorability, an underlying grace, upon Peter's agonized words. Peter is saying no but the Divine King who props him up in his self-doubt is saying yes.

So, we see levels of discipleship evolving from Peter's naïve aria #9 about what an ardent disciple he is to a faltering aria #13 when he doubts his former resolve and denies Christ and finally to an exuberant aria #24 where the doubt expressed in #13 is answered:

Hurry, ye oppressed souls,
Leave your dens of travail
And hurry -where? - to Golgotha!
Take the wings of faith
And fly - where? - to the Hill of the Cross
Where salvation everywhere awaits you!




Whereas aria #13 asked where should one go to find succour, the question is answered in aria #24-to Golgotha, to the Hill of the Cross. For there hangs the crucified one saving all of humankind, the very reason He came into the world. Over and over again, Bach has Peter repeatedly exhort to the oppressed to hurry! Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! He is there now and there you will find your salvation, the end of your travails and oppression. Peter says to fly to Golgotha "on wings of faith." So, again, we are presented with the sola fide doctrine that it is through faith only that the salvation will come. Here, the full flowering of what it truly means to be a disciple is shouted by Peter in ecstasy. Your faith will take you to Golgotha-not to the temporal locale found in the gospel-but to your inner Golgotha, your own salvation, your own understanding but life is pitifully short so hurry, hurry! This cannot be found through works but only through faith. This is because humanity cannot earn any merit before God via his fickle, selfish nature. We need Christ to make this sacrifice for us. Hence, the cross is our only theology.
While agreeing that salvation is found only in Christ and the power of the cross but of course when you say the cross is the 'only theology', the cross in the New Testament is always empty - ie it is followed by the resurrection. Peter was chosen by Christ as a weak human being and denied him but was convinced by the power of the resurrection and the subsequent descent of the holy spirit to preach with such conviction on the day of Pentecost at 3000 people believed him. So Peter didn't so much grow into his role as a disciple but rather was convinced by saying the risen Christ who appeared to him. Bach's Lutheran faith would follow Good Friday with a cantata for Easter Sunday on the resurrection.
 
G
#141 ·
In Lutheranism, the crucifix and the empty cross are equivalent. My statements concerning what Lutherans believe is based solely on the statements made by qualified Lutheran pastors and other authorities. I do not inject my own meanings as this would make analyzing Bach's music from the Lutheran perspective completely useless. I may not always quote the clergyperson whose thoughts I put down because they are supposed to be universal in Lutheranism but I'll make an exception here. Reverend Charles Keeler of Resurrection Lutheran Church in Winter Haven, Florida states: "Some reformed pastors teach that the empty cross symbolizes Jesus' resurrection. This is not correct. The empty tomb proves the resurrection. The cross is a symbol of suffering." Reverend Keeler goes on to state: "…the crucifix or the empty cross remind us that Jesus loved us to death."

The Peter in Bach's Passion is not the gospelic Peter but rather he represents all Christians in their stages of discipleship. First, they proclaim themselves ardent followers who will never go astray…until they do. By taking up the cross, they find it to be a terrible burden, an ordeal of its own. So many of them deny Christ. Perhaps not as blatantly as to renounce their religion but by copping out, making excuses. In so doing, they prove they were not the ones called to discipleship.

Disciples don't choose Jesus, Jesus chooses them. What one can choose to do, however, is to see through the eyes of faith. This is no easy task however. It involves what Marissen calls "glorification through abasement." What this involves is what Luther called seeing the hidden things in opposites. Hence, the cross, which symbolizes suffering, is where the Christian finds God. Too many Christians only look for God in the good things in life but God is also in those things that are degraded and abased. Only through the cross does the Christian know who God is and how God saves. Without the cross there is no salvation. Luther termed it an "alien" work or something that stands in opposition to experience in that God strikes the Christian down in order to raise him up in redemption rather than bury in blessings and good fortune so through suffering the Christian sees that God has not abandoned her but is actually with her.

Probably for the reason of alien work, Christ's final words-"Est ist vollbracht" or It is finished-are not sung in triumph even though it is a triumphant proclamation that God's will has been done. Instead, Bach has Jesus sing this as a most mournful dirge. The triumph is found in the loss. The viola da gamba picks up the melody and an aria (#30) commences. It continues dirge-like until the line:

The hero of Judea triumphs in his might
And ends the struggle.


This line is sung faster with celebratory exuberance but then the aria shifts back to the dirge as the line "Est is vollbracht" is sung again just as Christ had sung it. The viola da gamba plays on a bit more and the line is sung again over the last cadence of the aria played by the viola da gamba. The effect is haunting. As if to remind us that Christ's death was a great triumph for humanity but was still a sad, torturous death.

 
#143 · (Edited)
I have not made a study of modern Lutheran theology, only Luther himself. When we are dealing with the cross most Christians would see it as empty with Christ is risen. Of course the empty tomb proves that Christ is risen but the empty cross is the symbol of Paul's words, "put to death for our sins and raised for our justification." Theologically we are in complete agreement apart from the meaning of the symbols.
 
G
#142 ·
Sorry about the blank posts. For some reason, I couldn't copy and paste from my Word document so I had to try several tests and then delete them as they weren't relevant. Apparently, something is wrong with the formatting in the document I was using and I had to re-type it from scratch to a new document. Mods feel free to delete the blank posts if you are so inclined.
 
G
#145 ·
I was saving this for a later date but I think I'll do it now. I need a break from all this religious…stuff…for a while. Too rich for my blood. Basically, what did Bach look like?


Based on available information, the middle-aged Bach sans wig looked something like the above. A stout, austere, somewhat ruddy man of definite Germanic stock. He displays what appears to be a fine brain capacity. All those notes had to come from somewhere. There is a certain intenseness in the eyes. A man whose gaze can inspire you or wilt your constitution in one flash. His gaze would be accentuated by the knit brow and high cheekbones, the former working downwards and the latter working upwards to squeeze all that intensity from the eyes. The foundation of the face is a large jaw and chin that adds a certain resoluteness and determination to the look. A man that knows and demands perfection from himself and others. If he doesn't know where a composition is going, he knows that he will figure it out soon enough. In spite of being a composer, there is nothing "soft" about him. His could be the face of a veteran outdoor laborer or soldier-even a Viking chieftain. The face of a man from whom the truth, it would well advised, is best not hidden.


Some have pronounced this restored portrait by J.E. Rentsch, the Elder in the Angermuseum in Erfurt to be of young Bach while he was court organist in Weimar sometime between 1708 and 1717 but this is in dispute. It would be an exceedingly rare glimpse of the composer as a young man. Often when recordings of younger Bach's compositions are released, this is the portrait of choice used on the album covers. I found it unconvincing. The older portraits showed Bach to a rougher looking man and the subject of this portrait looks a bit ambiguous, let us say. Before the 1907 restoration, however, the portrait looked like this:


The unrestored Erfurt portrait. Here one sees a bit of the rough edges of the face that have been removed in the restoration. The nose, for example, appears to be a bit less refined. The eyes have a more intense gaze and we might even see the beginnings of the creases where the brow knits. Where the restoration puts a pinkish glow in his cheeks, the unrestored image seems to show a ruddiness seen in the older portraits rather than an effeminate pink. One could, in fact, even say the restored portrait could be that of a gay man. Of course, gay men can look very rough but there is nothing effeminate about Bach from what I see in him. He appears to be a man's man. He had an eye for the ladies and the Geyersbach incident would tell us that Bach was ready to rock if that's what the situation called for. While I might have written off the restored image as not being Bach because of the softer features and its somewhat doe-eyed gaze, this unrestored image gives me pause. This looks a little more like what I would have expected younger Bach to look like judging from his latter portraits especially that harder, almost accusatory, gaze. The face of a man who can peer straight into the heart of a composition and see everything there is to see in it and not easily pleased by what he sees.


The Weydenhammer fragment circa 1733. Not much is known about it. It was cut out of a much larger canvas. It has been examined and found to be consistent with paintings from the early 1730s. It is largely unretouched. Remarkably, it bears a striking resemblance to the Rentsch unrestored portrait. This is likely Bach at 40-45 years of age.


The so-called Meiningen Pastel painted by Gottlob Friedrich Bach (1714-1785) of the Meiningen branch of the Bach clan with whom Sebastian was close. Gottlob's great-grandson, Karl Bernhard Paul Bach (1878-1968) owned the portrait for many years. What we are looking at here is a likeness of Bach as seen by his relatives. It is hard to hold it up next to the Rentsch portrait or the Weydenhammer Fragment with the idea that they are depicting the same person however. Here, Bach's right eye seems to wander a bit. One can also see a very slight wandering in the Weydenhammer portrait. A lovely portrait, though. One has to love the use of the blue. Typical of Gottlob, the picture is unsigned and undated but is believed to have been done around 1741 or so when Bach was 55 or 56. Was it painted from life? It certainly could have been and it is certainly not unreasonable to suppose Gottlob could have gotten Bach to sit if anyone could have.
 
G
#146 · (Edited)

The 1746 portrait by Elias Gottlob Haussmann. This has been restored in 1913 due to damage to the face. There is no need to wonder about the authenticity of this one. Bach definitely sat for this portrait. Below restored:


There is some doubt as to how authentically to restoration actually is since Bach's jawline and jowl are obliterated in the original. The one thing to again notice is how Bach's right eye is wandering a bit. In fact, Bach seems to be squinting as though the light bothers him.



Haussmann redid the portrait again in 1748 which has been remarkably preserved and is housed in Princeton, New Jersey. Once again, note the slightly wandering right eye but the eyes appear in better shape than two years earlier. This painting was in the possession of Emmanuel Bach no later than 1772 and was listed in his estate held by his widow and daughter in 1790. There is no doubt as to its provenance. What is in dispute is whether this was a portrait from life or simply a copy of the 1746 painting. There is good reason to believe it is the former-a portrait from life. What is fantastic is that there has been no retouching whatsoever. It is as it was the day it left Haussmann's studio. We are going to get way more in depth about this painting.


Bach as painted by Johann Emanuel Göbel, year unknown. It was discovered in 1985 and determined to have been painted during Bach's lifetime. The sheet music in his hand shows the following notes: B-flat, A, C and B natural (H in German)--BACH. It hangs in the Bach House Museum in Eisenach.


This is known as the Volbach Portrait and was painted in 1750 and very close to Bach's death. Bach's health declined rapidly in 1749. He had lost weight and probably suffered at least one stroke. We note something peculiar here: in late March of 1750, Bach was operated on by an English surgeon, Chevalier John Taylor. What kind of surgery? Eye surgery. Taylor was a pioneer of modern eye surgery. So it is possible that Bach's wandering right eye was caused by a condition that got progressively worse as he aged. In his early portraits, we barely if at all notice anything amiss with his eyes but by the 1740s, it is obvious that something is wrong with them. In the 1746 Haussmann portrait, Bach's eyes don't look well at all and the right one appears to acutely wander. But in the 1748 portrait, his eyes appear healthy. Perhaps he was taking some type of medications or perhaps had an earlier operation that partly corrected the problem. But after falling ill, his eyes gave out. Taylor's surgeries had no effect on Bach eyes. Perhaps even made them worse. He had lost his sight or nearly so shortly before his death and had to employ a scribe to sign his name for him. If one looks at Bach's eyes in the portrait one can see what looks like some kind of whitish fluid collecting on the bottom lids. Perhaps pus or medication. So Bach is blind in the portrait. There is little doubt that this is Bach and the painting is from life. His dour expression would certainly indicate how he must have felt. He appears to have aged considerably compared to the 1748 Haussmann portrait.
 
G
#147 ·


The first question we should have is what is the purpose of this portrait? Wolff offers the idea that it is a business card, so to speak. Bach was known at this time as a master organist-one of the best in the world. But in spite of all the music he had composed in his life-incredible considering the volume of it-he was not particularly well known as a composer. In this pose, Bach offers a sheet of music-a print. This is not how cantors and kapellmeisters were depicted at the time. Usually, they held a conductor's scroll of music or posed seated at a keyboard. Bach, though, wants to be seen as a composer not a performer. In the hindsight of three centuries, we can see why but it was an unusual move for Bach in his own time.

Elias Gottlob Hauβmann painted the portrait in 1748-two years before Bach's death. He had painted an earlier nearly identical portrait in 1746:



Why would Bach want the same portrait redone only two years later? As pointed out in the previous post, Bach doesn't look well here. He is clearly ill. His face looks pallid and puffy, his expression seems to be one of pain, his eyes are cloudy or red, he seems to squint against the light and he is unkempt-one can see the stubble on his face. Bach was a man for whom grooming was important. For him to neglect it would indicate that he was quite ill. Evidently, he may have thought he was dying (and may actually have been) and wanted to get a portrait done before his time came and this was the result.

In the 1748 portrait, however, Bach looks quite healthy. Whatever was ailing him two years prior was gone or at least had subsided. Obviously, Bach would want to redo the picture now that he was looking and feeling better. Dressed identically, he duplicated the pose and Hauβmann painted it as before. His new business card.

So what piece of music is Bach offering? The title on the music is "Canon triplex à 6 Voc." or "Triple Canon for Six Voices" (BWV 1076).



The sheet music Bach proffers in the portrait is a print that actually existed for Bach had had it engraved on duodecimal-sized paper (3.2" x 4") in 1747. It was not done for the portrait but for the Corresponding Society of Musical Sciences which he had joined that same year. The triple canon was actually written in 1741 as part of Fourteen Canons (BWV 1087) written on the ground bass of the aria of Clavier-Übung, part IV found in the Goldberg Variations. The triplex is the 13th canon. A beautiful, remarkable work:



The Corresponding Society of Musical Sciences communicated, as their name implies, by corresponding, i.e. they regularly sent things to one another through the mails via circulating parcels. This was necessary because the members lived far apart. They exchanged various papers including compositions that were then assembled by the secretary, Lorenz Christoph Mizler (a close friend of Bach's), who kept a list of members who all had the same list. Twice a year, he assembled a parcel and sent it out to the first name on the list and this person went through it and then sent it to the next person on the list and so on. Eventually, the parcel made its way back to Mizler. Bach's canon print was part of the fifth parcel.

What's engaging about the print is that it is only three lines long. In the portrait, Bach offers it in a somewhat amused fashion. He is portraying himself as a man skilled in what is called the learned polyphony. He challenges the viewer to resolve the three-line score into six voices that go on theoretically for eternity. The clip I posted above shows how to resolve the canon.
 
G
#148 · (Edited)
A clue for its resolution is found in the painting itself. Bach holds out the print in such a way that were he to hold it up to his face, it would be upside down. The viewer sees it right-side up, Bach sees it upside down. The six voices come by inverting the three lines providing what is known as double counterpoint, i.e. placing the lower voice with the higher. With six voices total, all of them harmonically correct, the piece also provides triple and quadruple counterpoint simultaneously.

The same eight notes that Bach uses in the triplex canon were used by Handel in composing his Chaconne in G Major (HWV 442). But Handel's was only two-part and since Handel in London would have been a recipient of the fifth parcel which contained Bach's print then he would have understood that Bach was giving him a friendly dig. Another recipient was Telemann in Hamburg who also composed many canons and he too would have understood immediately what Bach was showing them. So would the other recipients as well as Secretary Mizler. Bach was upholding the society's goal of "the renewal of the majesty of ancient music" but was also having a little fun. This is not to say Bach did this as a joke. Bach obviously wanted to make clear his own contributions to counterpoint which one can rightly say he revolutionized. He was emphasizing that his legacy to music was primarily as a composer skilled in the arts of the learned polyphony and counterpoint and not simply a performer.

Bach's business card was for showing his intimate understanding of vollstimmigkeit. This German term has no direct English equivalent but Wolff renders a translation as "all-embracing polyphony." This was a very complex type of polyphony beyond the four-part style. Bach had a propensity for utilizing five-, six-, seven-part contrapuntal polyphonic textures and even more than that. But vollstimmigkeit also utilizes one-, two- and three-part contrapuntal textures and make them sound fuller and more complete. Vollstimmigkeit helped Bach unearth "the hidden secrets of harmony" and bring them to an amazingly artful expression so that even exercises were beautiful classical works in their own right.

To truly understand Bach's music, we must understand something of these hidden secrets to be found in the learned polyphony.

 
G
#149 · (Edited)
The Heavenly Music Corporation

In the 17th and 18th centuries, counterpoint and learned polyphony were believed to be earthly manifestations of a heavenly order. Going back to the days of Ptolemy and earlier to Pythagoras, there was a belief in the West of a divine or cosmic music. Pythagoras noted that the movements of the celestial bodies in mathematical relation to one another produced various pure intervals. By Ptolemy's time, the belief was that the planetary bodies slid along the rims of infinitely fine crystalline spheres creating a vibration that produced the purest of tones somewhat similar to a glass harmonica except these crystalline spheres were nestled inside one another something like a Chinese puzzlebox. The idea of a heavenly music evolved by perhaps a couple of centuries prior to Bach's birth into an angelic choir that sang in the sweetest of voices in the sweetest of melodies and the sweetest of harmonies which earthly musicians and composers tried to approximate. Hence the importance of producing the highest artistic musical expression possible and, by that time, counterpoint and learned polyphony were considered the highest of the musical expressions that employed the hidden secrets of harmony. Even the more scientifically inclined astronomers as Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) believed fervently in a celestial musical order.

Most people today are unaware just what an influence the idea of a heavenly music had on the baroque composers including Bach and which informs classical music to the present day. One of the most important works in this regard is Antonio Vivaldi's L'Estro Armonico from 1711. Christopher Hogwood states that the title defies translation. I have seen it translated as The Harmonic Fancy, The Musical Flush and The Harmonic Inspiration. Perhaps the lattermost translation is the best. But what is the inspiration? The orchestra is being inspired by what? Why, the heavenly music of the angels, of course. Vivaldi, a Venetian priest, worked with orphaned girls in the Conservatorio dell'Ospedale della Pietà. A great many of his pieces were first performed in public by his girls. Charles de Brosses wrote, upon seeing a performance: "They are brought up at the expense of the State, and they are trained only to excel in music. They sing like angels and play the violin, the flute, the organ, the oboe, the cello, the bassoon…" His praise that the girls sing like angels refers to the heavenly music. Today, we take it as simple praise perhaps a bit overblown but, in those days, such praise had a specific meaning. Paintings of angels playing instruments became a very popular theme during the Renaissance. Our modern idea of haloed angels playing harps descends from those paintings.







CD cover Pieter Dirksen's version of the Goldberg Variations on the Etcetera label shows the heavenly choir and orchestra playing the Secrets of Harmony inherent in this masterpiece of counterpoint.

L'Estro Armonico especially Opus 3 was a huge inspiration on baroque music and defined the structure of the concerto. Bach was greatly influenced by it and structured his Brandenburg Concertos on this great work of Vivaldi's. We know of six keyboard transcriptions Bach had made from Opus 3. We discussed Bach's predilection for the number 6 and how many of his pieces contained six concertos or suites; Vivaldi had a predilection for the number 12. Opus 3 consists of 12 concertos as does Opus 7, Opus 8 and Opus 9. Opus 1 consists of 12 trio sonatas.

Vivaldi's predilection for the number 12 may be because there are 12 months in a year, 12 numbers on a clockface, 12 major and 12 minor scales. The number 12 also appears in the bible a great many times-12 tribes of Israel, 12 disciples of Jesus, Jesus found preaching in a temple at age 12, 12 gates to the celestial city, etc. It is also a number of unity since the numeral 12 is composed 1 and 2 where 1 symbolizes singularity and 2 symbolizes plurality. Pythagoreanism and Neoplatonism were also popular among the educated classes of Europe and so Vivaldi was almost certainly familiar with the concept that if one bisects a square with an area of 1 square unit diagonally, a square with an area of 2 square units is formed from that diagonal and each side is the square root of two (√2) units in length. So √2 was the intermediary between the heaven (1) and earth (2) or God and man in one-the Logos-and this was Christ-the Logos Made Flesh, according to John. Since √2 was irrational and went on forever, it demonstrates the infinity and eternity of heaven and the divine nature of Christ. It was the link between harmony and proportion. Vivaldi being a priest probably knew this and so perhaps chose 12 to symbolize this. This kind of knowledge would be found among the esoteric principles of counterpoint and polyphony. Exactly why Vivaldi relied so much on 12 may never be fully known but we must conclude it held a mystical and/or spiritual significance to him.

One of Bach's fellow members of the Society of Musical Sciences, Georg Venzky, put it thus: "God is a harmonic being. All harmony originates from his wise order and organization. […] Where there is no conformity, there is also no order, no beauty, and no perfection. For beauty and perfection consists in the conformity of diversity." Exactly how much stock Bach put in all this is certainly open to question. He was a model Lutheran but also musically a pragmatist. His top priority was that the music had to sound good and if the secrets of harmony helped him to achieve that then great. If not, then Bach wasn't going to waste a second trying to incorporate them.



The frontispiece from Athanasius Kircher's Musurgia Universalis (1650), a book known to every musical theoretician of the 17th and 18th centuries, showing the heavens resounding to counterpoint in the form of a cantus firmus. Bach was definitely familiar with it. Double counterpoint and canon were seen as a manifestation of the "order of God"-an actual manifestation and not simply as metaphor. Perpetual canon was seen as a symbol of God's creation of the universe and the eternal harmonies of heaven. Heinrich Bokemeyer, a contemporary of Bach, wrote of the contrapuntist: "There he finds the beginning and end bound together and has discovered the perpetual canon in order to remind himself of the eternal unending origins, as well as the harmony, of all eternity as a rule of nature of the most perfect example of his work." These beliefs of the secrets of harmony spoken by Bokemeyer were passed to him from his teacher, Georg Osterreich, who learned from his teacher, Johann Thiele, who learned it from his teacher, Dietrich Buxtehude. Every composer made use of it: Heinrich Schutz, Johann Pachelbel (who gave Bach his first keyboard lessons), Johann Froberger, Handel, Praetorius, Telemann, etc. This esoteric belief system permeated the musical intelligentsia of that day.

Exactly where Bach learned the Secrets is not precisely known but he was close to Johann Gottfried Walther (they were second cousins, after all) who corresponded at length with Bokemeyer over the Secrets of Harmony. Bach also studied briefly under Buxtehude when he went to Lübeck to see the organist play and then stayed for three months instead returning to his job in Arnstadt as he had promised his supervisors (In fact, Handel and Bach were offered studies with Buxtehude at St. Mary's in Lübeck except each was told he would have to marry Buxtehude's daughter as part of the deal which both declined and promptly fled the city). So, Bach had ample opportunity to learn the Secrets and apply them.

This does not mean that all the composers and theoreticians were in agreement. Lutheran composers differed greatly over the destination of the soul. None argued the existence of the soul (that I know of, at least) but they argued over its nature and what happened to the soul after death. This was due to the intermingling of the thoughts of various theologians upon the nature of the soul and of heaven. Due to this intrusion of the theological, the arguments often became ridiculous as we will see.

Luther held that the soul departed the body upon death but did not enter heaven, did not experience rapture. Rather, the soul remained in a state of suspended animation until the Last Day. Only then was its destination determined. By the 17th century, the prevalent belief was that the soul left the body upon death and went immediately to its destination. Lutheran theologians, however, believed that the grave was a place of rest, of sleep. While the soul departed the body and the latter then rotted into a skeleton, on the Last Day, the body and soul would be reunited and the body transformed into an eternally youthful, healthy one. Luther referred to Paul's writings about the spiritual transformation after death writing: "It [life] is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body." Luther's exegesis was promising a new life transcending sin and infirmity after death.

The ontological and epistemological ramifications of the heavenly music doctrine was highly important to composers and theorists as Bach. The reason is that music provided the clearest example of what heaven was like. A 17th century theorist named J. A. Herbst wrote that the heavenly music "will be performed in the angelic, heavenly choir, with the highest perfection…in all eternity to the praise and glory of God." This was a topic among which the clergy and the theologians wrote and sermonized on often. Bach's contemporary, theorist Johann Mattheson (1681-1764) of Hamburg, agreed with Herbst and asserted that he represented the mainstream that the music of heaven was composed of "the most perfect harmony." Heinrich Müller, whose books are found in Bach's personal library, wrote that the heavenly music gives us not only a glimpse into heaven and its workings but it also allows us to embrace death rather than fear it. Moreover, Müller said, the music of heaven and the learned polyphony and counterpoint provide a parallel to earth and heaven. Müller and Mattheson both felt that music provided the clue to eternal life and there was a "heavenly concert" which we would someday join in.

In matters as these, the absurdities begin to surface sooner or later. If there is a concert going on in heaven, some asked, then do the "musicians" have to tune the instruments, would intervals have to be tempered? The answer was no. These were earthly concerns and of no consequence in heaven. How would a non-physical body play an instrument? Mattheson said a transfigured body would play a transfigured instrument. Therefore, someone who played an instrument in their earthly life would have no problem playing an instrument in heaven. Moreover, if a young boy had a musical gift but had died young, he would go to heaven (provided he was saved, of course) and play to his heart's content. In heaven, his talent would not be squandered. This was important for aging Mattheson because he had been a musician and composer forced to give up playing music earlier in life because of his progressive deafness. In heaven, his hearing would not only be restored, it would be utterly perfect.

This belief of the transfiguration of the body after death was called ars moriendi. Bach apparently believed in something similar. In the Calov commentary found in his library Bach had underscored a passage that read: "Afflict to the limit these old bodies of ours so long as may obtain others not sinful, as these not given to iniquity and disobedience; bodies that can never know illness, persecution or death; bodies delivered from all physical and spiritual distress and made like unto Thine own glorified body, dear Lord Jesus Christ."

The prevailing belief that in heaven, everything was better than on earth had glitch in it which the skeptics took advantage of. If there is a heavenly choir and orchestra, they said, would not there have to be air in heaven? Without air, music cannot be heard. While the miracle of the brain turning air vibrations into sound was (and still largely is) mysterious, the way the brain picked up the vibrations was not. It was purely mechanical. The tiny bones or ossicles moved to the air pressure. Without that air pressure, the brain could not perform its miraculous operation. Hence, if heaven was different from earth, why would it have air? Singing was especially problematic for the believers of ars moriendi. It would require the singer to have lungs, a larynx, vocal cords, diaphragm, etc. The singer would have to draw air into lungs and so she is essentially breathing. The same with a heavenly trumpet-player. He would have to draw air into the lungs to blow through the trumpet's tubing. If there is air in heaven, it would make more sense to say it is there both to transmit sound and also to breathe rather than just one or the other. If one must breathe in heaven then it is perfectly reasonable to assume one must eat in heaven and one must sleep in heaven and one must bathe in heaven, etc. So how would heaven be any different than earth?

Of course, the believers had all manner of replies to these questions. The prevailing belief was that heaven had an orchestra and choir who sang and played in etherically beautiful harmonies in learned counterpoint. People believed that earthly counterpoint and polyphony was an approximation of the music of heaven that provided a glimpse of heaven and eternity. People believed the body of matter was transfigured into a spiritual body possessing eternal youth and health. People believed that one joined the heavenly choir or orchestra upon entering heaven and became as angels. In addition to this, numerology, astrology and alchemy were also relied on quite heavily among composers and musicians. Where was Bach's place in all this?
 
G
#150 · (Edited)
Canon emerged from the medieval period having acquired all sorts of magical and occult associations ranging from alchemy to the magic of the 13th century Spanish philosopher and mystic Ramon Lull, the 14th century work of the alchemist Nicholas Flamel, 15th century kabbalists as Mirandola and Reuchlin and especially the 16th century magician, Henricus Cornelius Agrippa. Hermetic works as the Emerald Tablet and the Corpus Hermeticum were also appealed to as well as Agrippa's Occult Philosophy. By the 17th and 18th centuries, people as Mattheson were longing to rid Europe's music of canon and counterpoint in favor of more "popular" forms of music.

Mattheson felt, perhaps with some justification, that music theory needed to be demystified. In this, he found an opponent in Heinrich Bokemeyer. They waged a public debate each arguing the merits of his position. Bokemeyer stated that canon was the highest form of music. That compositional skills were at their peak when composing canon. Mastering canon was the highest of musical disciplines. Mattheson, on the other hand, felt that while canon should be continued to be practiced, it should not be over-emphasized because free-flowing melody is more important now than stuffy, old canon which is obsolete and a hindrance to musical progress. In the end, Mattheson won the day. Bokemeyer threw in the towel and admitted Mattheson presented a superior argument to his own and that he no longer believed in the centrality of canon in music. The real problem for Bokemeyer was that Mattheson rallied many a respected composer to advocate for him including Telemann one of the most respected composers in all of baroque music. Bokemeyer was having trouble in that area. Many composers simply saw no reason to enshrine a musical form so encrusted with medieval magical and hermetic detritus. It seemed to serve no purpose and they were ready to move to more lucrative ventures with free-flowing melody. Mattheson's attack was too relentless and overwhelming for Bokemeyer to withstand.

However, the fact Mattheson had to repeatedly resort to this attack on occult canonism in the first place indicated just how prevalent and entrenched it was in European society. This was, of course, a different age. These Europeans, barely out of the medieval era, still harbored a belief in magic, demonology and alchemy. While they may have outwardly proclaimed their praise of the Enlightenment, they still had a private, inner fear that the devil was real and that demons, spells and curses could be cast upon them by witches and magicians practicing the Black Arts. Of these ancient disciplines, alchemy was the most respectable and the one containing the most truth. We tend today to look upon alchemy as a silly pseudoscience pushed by hucksters claiming they could turn lead into gold and there is truth in this characterization. Many alchemists were scammers taking advantage of one sovereign or other in exchange for patronage. This sovereign would believe these alchemists could make gold because they enough tricks with chemistry to produce reactions that seemed to make gold appear but this only proves that alchemists did know a good deal about chemistry.

Background on Alchemy

Alchemy in the West appears to have started about the 2nd century really began to catch on in about the 14th century with the works of Nicholas Flamel but alchemy is known in many forms the world over. Alchemy entered and flourished in Europe contemporary with the Kabalah. The term "alchemy" is obscure. A possible derivation comes from kam or kême or "black earth," a reference to Egypt (the Egyptians called themselves "kamites"). Indeed, the oldest known alchemical drawings are on Egyptian papyrus. From this, came the Arabic al-kimiya which, in turn, gave rise to the Greek alchemia. There is also a possible derivation from the Greek chyma or "smelting" as some of the earliest forms of alchemy were really metallurgy. Indeed, alchemy in the West would be known for its attempts to transmute "base metals" into gold, an endeavor long sought as the story of King Midas and the golden touch would demonstrate.

The intertwining of Greek, Arabic and Egyptian traditions in alchemy are not due only to the name. The Corpus Hermeticum became the virtual scripture of alchemy. Its Platonic mode of thought and language strongly suggests its Greek origins. And since it claims to be the body of work of Hermes Trismegistus, scholars and occultists alike believe that the aforementioned Emerald Tablet was originally a part of Corpus Hermeticum even though the oldest existing translations are Arabic and Latin.

While alchemy was primarily concerned with transformations, the art itself represented a transformation from magic to science. Alchemy did indeed give birth to modern chemistry which partly derives its name from the earlier tradition and, like the earlier tradition, is primarily concerned with transformation. Yet much of the language of alchemy read like spells taken from a magician's black book. Alchemy represents one of the earliest and more successful attempts to use magic on a practical and analytical level. Its many failures only served as guideposts to the practitioner of how operations must be performed in order to achieve results. Once results were achieved, others became involved who had no interest in the magical aspects but were intrigued by the various chemical reactions and sought to understand and explain them and this led directly to founding of Western chemistry.

Alchemy was based on the ancient principle of unchanging, divine unity underlying all changing phenomena. The alchemists applied this principle to matter. Adopting the theory of the four elements, they posited a "primal matter" that was devoid of all characteristics and attributes which they called the prima materia. Adopting the Gnostic concept of a demiurge or lesser god, the alchemists believed that this god either found or made the prima materia and "animated" to form the four elements of earth, wind, fire, and water. Each of the four elements combines two characteristics of the other so that fire would be hot and dry, air would be hot and moist, water would be cold and moist, and earth would be cold and dry. By varying these characteristics, all matter is composed of these four basic elements. They further believed that any form of matter could have all its attributes stripped off to reveal the materia prima underlying it and that different attributes could be added in order to transmute it into another form of matter. So earth could have its cold characteristic removed and replaced with hot to form the element of fire as smoke. Water could have its wet characteristic replaced with dry to form the element of air as vapor. And so on. This belief formed the very foundation of alchemy.



In the above diagram, the prima materia has a dual nature bound through a mysterious union of opposites. The Greeks held that prima materia was composed of hyle and chaos, matter and energy. These opposites divided into Celestial Salt and Celestial Niter. When alchemy talks of salts or mercury or niter, these should not be taken literally as today's chemical elements or compounds but rather as properties possessed by various elements and compounds. Celestial Salt was so named because salts were seen as passive, magnetic, stable, fixed. It is called celestial because it is of a higher more refined quality than any salt found on earth. Likewise, niter was seen as active, electrical, unstable, volatile. The fixed quality produced to earthly elements of earth and water while the volatile quality produced the earthly elements of air and fire. The two former elements are more solid while the latter two are gaseous and ephemeral. Earth represents all solids, water represents are liquids, air represents all gases and fire represents the temperature required for transformation. From these four elements, three principles are derived. Earth and water form the principle of salt, air and fire from the principle of sulphur and the combination of water and air produces the principle of mercury. Again, these are the actual chemical elements of sulfur and mercury but rather describes an essence. The mercuric principle is easy to deduce because it partakes of two opposites-one fixed and one volatile, i.e. one female and one male, respectively. Through this chart, all chemical reactions are described.

To the alchemist, all matter was composed of spirit and body. A piece of wood could be burned, for example, to produce smoke and ash. The rising smoke was the spirit while the inert ash was the body. Likewise, was man's spirit released from the body upon death. While spirit means "breath" and the breath certainly leaves the body upon death, the alchemist did not intend for such a materialist interpretation. For them, the spirit was akin to the breath, that is, they bore some of the same characteristics. To the alchemist, the spirit was the Gnostic/Manichean/Zoroastrian conception of a "light seed" or "luminous self" or "pneuma" that inhabited living matter put there either unconsciously by the demiurge or deliberately hidden there by the powers of darkness.

The pneuma was believed to move through the cosmos as per the Stoic conception of wave motion. The spirit traveled as a wave travels over water. The water in this case was matter and the spirit animated it by using it as the medium in which it waves but otherwise has no body. The waves have varying frequencies which determine the characteristics of each type of living creature.

Alchemy called this spirit mercury and applied it to all matter not just living creatures. Mercury was the spirit of matter whether it be a metaphysical principle, breath, vapor, or smoke. Mercury is a metal that is silvery in appearance. Silver to the alchemist represents the rational intellect which reflects the divine intellect the way the silvery moon reflects the light of the sun. Since mercury is also liquid as life-giving matter is-rainwater, semen, blood, the ocean, amniotic fluid, and so on-it was seen as a "living" silver or quicksilver. Spirit was called the "philosopher's mercury" and the element of mercury merely approximated it in nature because it shared some of its characteristics.

Because the element of mercury is a metal that does not wet a surface upon which it sits despite its liquid nature, mercury was seen as a unity the opposites and was termed the Spirit of God because all things are unified in God. Alchemists represented mercury as the conjoining of man and woman. Mercury partook of Hermes' male nature and Aphrodite's female nature and so was called the Hermaphrodite. The astrological sign of the planet Mercury depicts the circle surmounting the cross, Venus's symbol, topped with a pair of horns which are phallic in nature. The alchemists depicted Mercury as half-man half-woman called the Androgyne (Greek for "man-woman").

Alchemy did not spring into the world complete but, like any other discipline, grew over the centuries from the early work of Arabs such as Geber and Rhazes to Europeans as Lull and Flamel some centuries later. Alchemy continued to develop in the 16th century under Paracelsus (1493-1541). Paracelsus developed the principle of matter containing a trinity. He wrote: "The world is as God created it. In the beginning He made it into a body, which consists of four elements. He founded this primordial body on the trinity of mercury, sulphur and salt, and these are the substances of which the complete body consists. For they form everything that lies in the four elements, they bear in them all the forces and faculties of perishable things. In them are day and night, warmth and coldness, stone and fruit, and everything else still unformed." Hidden in the statement is the Pythagorean tetraktys. The 4 elements occupied by 3 principles that unite 2 opposite natures into the divine 1. 4321 is also a sacred number in the Hindu system which expresses it as 4320 since 0 and 1 are the same in this case. Hindu cycles of time are measure in yugas of 4000, 3000, 2000 and 1000 years respectively. The last is known as the Kali Yuga and we supposedly are living in it now. Hinduism also has cycles of time that are 432,000 years long and part of a 4,320,000-year cycle.

Whether we are talking the tetraktys or alchemy or Hindu time cycles, we are ultimately dealing with purification, a calming of passions and a recovery of the light seed from within, that is, a sprouting of God within man. God was symbolized by the element of gold. Gold shone yellow like the sun and so represented the Divine Intellect. As a metal, gold also did not rust representing the incorruptible spirit. Alchemists believed that the Platonic gold permeated all matter and could be found in even the most raw, corrupted substances. The corrupt characteristics could be stripped away to the prima materia and replaced with the characteristics of gold. Man could likewise be purified into a God. To prove it, alchemists sought way to turn a base substance into gold. The golden nature underlying all matter was called the Philosopher's Stone-Stone here meaning the One. The discovery of the Stone would later become the famous search for the Holy Grail or Saint Graal.

Alchemy united several disciplines in one. Gnosticism/Manicheanism, astrology, Hermetica, Pythagoreanism, and shamanism to name a few. It was also combined with tarot and Kabbalah. We remember that shamans of a very early time climbed the ladder from earth to sky and beyond. The ladder appears in the Hebrew Bible as what was envisioned by Jacob while in what might be called a shamanic trance. The ladder appears in alchemy via Hermetica as the one formed by the orbits of the seven celestial bodies of the geocentric universe of Ptolemy. The alchemists viewed each body as a different temporal mode of the Divine Intellect cycling through its twelve zodiacal archetypes as it descends to earth to animate all matter. The alchemist sought to scale the planetary rungs of the ladder to reach the communion with the One. This they called "The Ascent of the Soul throught the spheres."

All metals were born from the earth under the influence of the various planets. Each celestial body then was assigned the metal it influenced: Luna with silver, Mercury with quicksilver, Venus with copper, Sol with gold, Mars with iron, Jupiter with tin, and Saturn with lead.

The planetary signs although accepted utterly by astrology are really alchemical and consist of three symbols of cross, circle and crescent. The circle represents gold and purity but also completion-a full orbit. The cross represents the four elements, the equinoctial cross and corruption. The crescent represents silver but also incompletion-a half-orbit. Venus, for example, is a cross surmounted by a circle. Her metal is copper. Copper has the same outward appearance as gold but internally it is not the same and can rust. So her sign tells us that the circle on top means outwardly gold but the cross beneath signifies internal corruption. We explained in the opening chapter that Saturn's metal is lead and is shown as a crescent surmounted by a cross, that is, silver at the lowest level of the elemental balance. Jupiter's metal is tin and is depicted as a cross with a crescent attached the left arm. This represents silver in the middle of the elemental balance or halfway between lead and silver. There is no sign of a cross surmounted by a crescent, for that is the same as a crescent by itself which is the moon-silver. So lead and silver are opposites and in the geocentric scheme this is true as well: the moon is closest to earth while Saturn is farthest away.

While there is much more to alchemy than this, needless to say, I don't wish to dwell on the subject for too long. I simply wish the give the reader some familiarity with the principles and tenets of occultism. Suffice it to say that alchemy was far more than some pseudo-scientific bumpkins trying to make an elixir to turn lead into gold. While they did seek out such a process, it was to verify the divine nature of homo sapiens.

Robert Boyle may have been the first true chemist. He began to do away with a lot of the occultic ideas of alchemy (while still retaining some) about 20-25 years before Bach's birth. Early scientists they were. Let us give them their due. Laboratory techniques as emulsion and distillation were invented by alchemists as are good deal of the laboratory equipment still in use. Albertus Magnus (1193-1280) was the first to describe the chemical composition of cinnabar, ceruse and minium as well as making the first known caustic potash. The aforementioned Ramon Lull (Raymond Lully) (1235-1315) prepared the first known bicarbonate of potassium. Paracelsus was the first to discover and describe the element of zinc and introduced the idea that diseases could be controlled or cured by the introduction of chemical compounds into the body. Johann Rudolf Glauber (1604-1668) discovered the salts that now bear his name-Glauber salts or sodium sulfate (which he erroneously thought to be the Philosopher's Stone). Phosphorus, sulfuric acid, tin oxide, porcelain, calamine, turpentine, quicklime, sodium hydroxide, hydrochloric acid, ammonium chloride, potassium nitrate and benzoic acid to name a very few were all discovered by alchemists. The Chinese were also superb alchemists (probably invented alchemy) and let us not forget one of their greatest discoveries that changed the world: gun powder. Alchemy also planted the seeds for medical science, metallurgy, porcelain, dye-making and glass-working. For a pseudoscience, alchemy spawned a lot of science.

So what has any of this to do with Bach?
 
G
#151 · (Edited)
Bach's conduit into the Secret of Harmony using canon and double counterpoint came though his second cousin, Johann Gottfried Walther, a man he would work closely with for more than 30 years. As a musician and theoretician, Walther had few peers. He was appointed court organist at Weimar at the Stadtkirche which he held until his death 40 years later. His transcriptions of other composers' works were the model by which Bach did his transcriptions of Vivaldi, Telemann and others. He wrote his work, Praecepta der musicalischen Composition in 1748 for his student, Prince Johann Ernst von Sachsen-Weimar. The last couple of chapters in the book are dedicated to canon and double counterpoint and contained many imaginative and very complex examples. Walther was the author of Musicalisches Lexicon, a huge compendium of over 3000 musical terms as well as biographical details of composers up to the early half of the 18th century (its main contributor being Mattheson). This was the first German language book of musical terms. Walther also composed 132 organ preludes based on Lutheran hymns. The man was no slouch. He knew his music. Anyone who influenced Bach had to know his music.


Johann Gottfried Walther (1684-1748).

While Bach began submitting musical puzzles to periodicals as well as to the Society of Musical Sciences in the last decade of his life, Walther had been doing it for years. Walther amassed an impressive library over the years and Bach availed himself to it and this is almost certainly where Bach encountered learned counterpoint esoterica. Bach and Walther were the first organists to treat a cantus firmus in chorale preludes. During this time, Bach wrote what appears to be his earliest speculative canon, Canon a 4 Voc. Perpetuus (BWV 1073). Bach's first musical puzzle appeared in a 1728 Hamburg bi-weekly music periodical called Der getreue Music-Meister edited by none other than Georg Philipp Telemann.


Many theorists and music students began trying to solve the so-called Houdemann Canon (BWV 1074). Johann Mattheson showed it to his students and urged them to work on it. So many Germans were fascinated by the canon that it was, without a doubt, Bach's most famous piece at that time. Two of Mattheson's students came up with the same solution which he published 12 years later:


There are, of course, other solutions to the canon. Bokemeyer also submitted one he received from one "Doctor Syrbio" in Jena. Bokemeyer had been sent the canon by Walther who also had Bach's own solution. Bach never published it. He would only allow close colleagues to see it. It was, otherwise, a guarded secret of the composer's inner thoughts.

The reverence for canon which, in Bach's time, was an ancient music (last century) was still regarded, despite Mattheson's efforts, considered the pinnacle of music and a beautiful art. Thus begin the comparisons with alchemy. Bokemeyer had quite an interest in alchemy and the Hermetic arts and wrote to Walther about them. Walther confessed to not knowing much about them although he had read quite a bit on the subject and considered it valid. He wrote:

"…just as you [went] though the ciphers 1 through 7 of occult philosophy, so have I come to understand, through the contemplation of the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8, the instruction on canon so extensively discussed by Zarlino, of which the aforementioned author proclaims that (with respect to judgment) canon is the highest level of composition."

So alchemy and canon were each seen as being preeminent in their respective arts. The correspondence between Bokemeyer and Walther indicates that the former was, in fact, an adept of alchemy, had an extensive library of alchemical and hermetic works and performed a great many experiments. The defeat of Bokemeyer at the hands of Mattheson, however, concerning the exaltation of canon and counterpoint in music started a slow but steady decline in the use of such outside church music. Composers began to publicly express either ridicule for "the excessive cult of counterpoint" or to make guarded statements of the use of such wanting to be seen as being aware of Bokemeyer's defeat. Some of the more vociferous as Mattheson and Johann David Heinichen likened the mystique of counterpoint and canon as undeserved, superstitious and, ironically, witchcraft. However, they were not, as some composers, urging musicians and composers to avoid canon and counterpoint altogether but rather its exalted status should be revoked and the occultism surrounding it done away with. They still encouraged composers to learn canon and counterpoint and work with it.

Where Bach fell into this debate is difficult to say. He had to know about the debate between Mattheson and Bokemeyer. One has to conclude, however, that Bach was more sympathetic to Bokemeyer than to Mattheson simply by dint of his dedication to canon and counterpoint not to mention his obvious penchant for creating canon and counterpoint puzzles for others to resolve either publicly or privately. His most famous piece in that time was just one such puzzle-the aforementioned Houdemann's Canon.

Bach does indeed appear to stand opposed to Mattheson's attempts at demystifying canon and counterpoint. For instance, Fa Mi, et Mi Fa est tota Musica (BWV 1074) refers to the argument not that the semitone (Mi-Fa) is the foundation of music as is often assumed but rather that the semitone should be referred to by these medieval solmization syllables. Bach was making clear that he thought of solmization syllables as tota musica (all music). Bach wasn't letting anyone declare Mi-Fa dead.



Then there is Bach's canon, Concordia discors (BWV 1086), which is the reverse of Mattheson's motto Discordia Concors. Bach's title means "discordant harmony" while Mattheson's motto means "In harmony with discord." By reversing Mattheson's motto, Bach was showing how to make counterpoint in retrograde. Yet, there were other instances where Bach seemed to be more practical and rational and without much use for magic and occultism but we have no hard examples to draw firm conclusions.



As far as alchemy, a great many still believed in it in Bach's day. Even scholars as Leibniz and Newton believed in the efficacy of alchemy. Everyone wanted the secret of the Philosopher's Stone so they could have that endless supply of gold or silver. Many others had given up on the idea having spent years in a futile search.

Bach had an interest in precious metals in the form of coins and medallions. Quite a number are listed in his estate. In his Calov bible, Bach wrote in the margin of a page of Exodus concerning weights and measures of metals used to build the Tabernacle: "The sum of the freewill offering amounts to almost eight tons of gold." Bach made this calculation using another book from his library, De monetis et mensuris sacrae scripturae by Heinrich Bünting, a book written for and used by alchemists.
Bokemeyer added a title page to a treatise written by Johann Thiele, a student of Buxtehude and a great proponent of the Secrets of Music, called Gründlicher Unterricht von den gedoppelten Contrapuncten (Thorough Instruction of the Double Counterpoint), in which he wrote:

"This treatise on counterpoint is to be treasured as worth more than a great deal of gold. Therefore one must not throw such things before swine so that the secrets of music become common and therefore a thing of disdain."

This statement gets to the heart of the alchemic art. Here, Bokemeyer states that counterpoint is worth more than gold. As we know, alchemists were always trying to make gold via the Philosopher's Stone which none were able to find. The reason is that the Philosopher's Stone was not a material thing. Its ability to transmute lead into gold referred to the purification of the human spirit, enlightenment, if you will. The 1582 alchemical treatise Splendor Solis attributed to Salomon Trismosin even states: "Hence it is clearly to be understood that the Gold of the Philosophers is something other than the common gold."


One of 22 illustrations from Splendor Solis.

While making actual material gold for kings is just service to greed, the divine gold of counterpoint was not done for money. Counterpoint was not a popular form of music and therefore not lucrative. This was one of the criticisms that Mattheson leveled against it but to Bokemeyer was one of counterpoint's strengths. The alchemist's goal should not be to attain wealth but to advance the knowledge and consciousness of the human race. Of course, not a lot of composers were willing to take things that far. After all, they needed to make a comfortable living. Probably none of them were real alchemists as Bokemeyer was. Enough of them sided with Mattheson that it eventually forced Bokemeyer's capitulation.

What was clear was that both Bokemeyer and Walther considered learned counterpoint to be the Philosopher's Stone. They spoke of learned counterpoint in alchemical terms in order to convey this belief. Just as the Philosopher's Stone was not a material that could be purchased and used to affect outcomes, learned counterpoint was not to be freely spread about because the secrets of counterpoint required, as in alchemy, a certain moral rectitude and expertise. As with the philosophical gold, learned counterpoint was powerful and had to be handled with care and was not for the wicked nor the stupid nor the greedy. The artifex (composer of learned counterpoint) must possess the technical knowledge required to toil long and hard on the "secret art" (learned counterpoint) must discover in his geheimes Kunst-Zimmer or secret laboratory all the inversions possible for each canon in order to not only produce profound harmonic results but to also advance spiritually. Bokemeyer and Walther were openly framing learned counterpoint as a form of alchemy-the art of transmutation. The word "artifex" is a title for an alchemist whose work must be done alone in his secret laboratory.


Drawing by Heinrich Khunrath showing the alchemist or artifex at work in his secret laboratory. Note the musical instruments on the table. He not only seeks the Philosopher's Stone via chemical transmutation but also through musical composition.
 
G
#152 · (Edited)
Bokemeyer felt that canon was the basis of all music. The addition of learned counterpoint allows all the modern music that Mattheson advocated for. Canon was the "true essence" of all the various musical forms that ultimately derives from it. In this view, Bokemeyer borrowed from his advocate, the organist Johann Heinrich Buttstett (1666-1727), a pupil of Pachelbel and a teacher of Walther.

In the Emerald Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus, the second verse reads: "Also, as all things were made from One, by the help of One: So all things are made from One thing by Conjunction." This "One" from which all things are made is the prima materia or primal matter from which the four elements of earth, water, air and fire are derived. From these four primal elements come all the various substances via one element lending certain of its properties to combine certain properties of another element. With the Philosopher's Stone, any properties could be combined at will to transmute base metals into gold. Likewise, canon was musical prima materia from which all other music was derived. Even Mattheson's free-flowing melodies. However, Bokemeyer introduced a new type of canon called canon naturalis which was derived from melody and from this natural canon was derived the canon artificialis. In this way, Bokemeyer hoped to bridge the most complex canon with the most natural melody. The best natural melodies, he said, yield good artificial canon. Alchemically, melodies can be transmuted into canons. The artifex, with great skill and knowledge of his secret art (learned counterpoint), further transmutes the canon naturalis into the canon artificialis-the most highest and most perfect musical expression. Hence, the artifex produces great refinement from raw nature.

So, nature must be guided to perfection by the alchemist. According J. A. Birnbaum, Bach believed this also in that "[m]any things are delivered to us by nature in the most misshapen states, which however, acquire the most beautiful appearance when they have been formed by art. Thus art lends nature a beauty it lacks, and increases the beauty it possesses. Now, the greater the art is-that is, the more industriously and painstakingly it works at the improvement of nature-the more brilliantly shines the beauty thus brought into being."

A similar idea is expressed in Freemasonry via the emblem of the rough and perfect ashlar.


The rough and perfect ashlar show how nature gives us the basic material when then is shaped to perfection by the stonemason in the same way natural canon is shaped by the composer/artifex into artificial canon.

According Bach's son, Emmanuel, Bach performed a similar operation when tuning the harpsichord. Bach was an expert tuner and used mathematics to tune each string. However, this was a crude adjustment to get the string to the desired pitch but Bach then fine-tuned using his ear. The mathematical tuning was by nature and the fine tuning was by the human tuner perfecting upon what is given by nature. One must, however, follow nature. As the rough ashlar gives us a shape roughly cubical, the stonemason simply refines the cube to perfection. Likewise, artificial canon must follow along the lines of the natural melody not rewrite it. The artist must follow nature.


This plate from Michael Maier's Atalanta Fugiens (1618) depicts the artifex/contrapuntist following nature. Of this image, Bokemeyer wrote: "Nature be your guide; whom you must follow from afar / Willingly, otherwise you err, where she does not lead you / Reason be your staff."

Both alchemist and contrapuntist must follow the laws of nature. The role of both being equal and analogous to the other. While Mattheson stood opposed to all this occultism pervading canon and counterpoint, it would appear that Bach did not. We shall investigate a bit deeper and see what we can find.
 
G
#153 · (Edited)
Bokemeyer's public defeat in his debates with Mattheson on the merits of occult canonism in 1725 was not the end of Bokemeyer's occult endeavors. He continued to invest himself in alchemy. His defeat, as far as he was concerned, was not that the occultism in canon should be dropped on a personal level but only that canon should not occupy a central position in European music nor should the occultism be taught to student adepts but should be stripped of its occult trappings and taught to all students freely. On a personal level, Bokemeyer continued to study canon as a form of occultism. He wrote to Walther and told him he wanted a copy of a set of musical manuscripts in Walther's library written by Johann Thiele under the collective title of Musicalisches Kunstbuch after Walther had mentioned them to Bokemeyer in a 1731 letter. Walther painstakingly copied the manuscripts over a three-year period (1735-8) and sending them to Bokemeyer in installments.



Thiele had been a friend of Buxtehude and was the first kapellmeister of the Hamburg Opera. Walther had been something of an apostle of Thiele and so inherited many of his written works. Bokemeyer and his teacher, Georg Österreich, who had also taught Thiele, studied his treatises. Thiele was known as "the father of contrapuntists" and was known from Königsberg to Vienna where Emperor Leopold I studied his works on learned counterpoint. Thiele was a big advocate of the learned secrets of canon and counterpoint and the Kunstbuch was his magnum opus in that regard. Composed of 15 pieces ranging from canon to dance suites to vocal polyphony from the 1670s and 80s, the Kunstbuch is titled as an alchemical work since many works on hermeticism and, in particular, magic were called kunstbücher. Thiele's title page states it outright: "Musicalisches Kunstbuch, in which 15 Kunst pieces and secrets, which spring from double counterpoint, are to be met." These pieces were to be treated as powerful secrets from a mystical, magical, musical universe.

Each piece in the Kunstbuch was accompanied by a couplet spelling out a secret to the initiated who knew how to read it. Each had an emblem to go with it as well. This is exactly how alchemical treatises were written. Some of these emblems I've posted here already. In the second piece is written: "All of these can be transformed once more, / but one must also proceed very cleverly with them." This puzzle has never been solved. In the fourth piece, for example, Thiele leaves off the bass part with the motto: "The bass has hidden himself somewhere within, / But a clever person will soon enough discover it." Walther's copy left the bass line blank. In the ninth piece, the couplet reads: "Although there is but one of me here, I appear two times. / Who can find what is hidden in me?" This riddle certainly seems to be referring to the use of learned counterpoint application. There is just one musical line, but through inversion or retrograde of that line and juxtaposed against the original line, we get two harmonious lines. To solve this, the artifex must apply the secret art and the Philosopher's Stone will reward him beyond his wildest dreams. Even the simplest melodies could thereby produce endless possibilities of the highest artistic expression-spiritual gold.

This contrapuntal/alchemical transformation is demonstrated by Bach in his Canon a 2 perpetuus (BWV 1075):



Here a simple eight-bar melody, through a knowledgeable application of the secret art, is transformed as if by magic into canon. The last four measures are simply an inversion of the first four bars. The last bar then circles back to the first in a seamless fashion which requires a good degree of skill to pull off. The last measure doesn't simply hook up to the first but resolves to it even though the last is an inversion of the first. Yet, Bach does it without seeming effort and sounds like a two-bar canon. The operation is simple but the operation means nothing without the melody to start with. Bach not only has written a fine melody but whether played rectus or invertus, it retains that fineness. Whether in the original form, rectus form or invertus form, there is no dissonance to be found so when imposed over the original theme, the blend is always sweet. So, Bach composed sweet melody with sweet harmony and that's where genius lies. Knowing the learned counterpoint is all fine and dandy but if the melody isn't constructed correctly the result isn't going to be much good. Bach shows amazing adeptness at both melody composition and learned counterpoint and that will put him a cut above anyone without that kind of command.

If Bach had read Musicalisches Kunstbuch, and he probably did while in Weimar since he would have had access to Walther's library, he would have understood the title to be something related to occultism specifically hermeticism and magic. Knowing that the author was none other than the Father of the Contrapuntists, Johann Thiele, and this was his magnum opus of contrapuntal works, we can hypothesize Bach's reaction encountering such esoteric concepts as the Harmony Tree (Harmonisches Baum) on the opening page:



Due to the efforts of men as Mattheson and Heinichen, those students that came a generation after Bach learned counterpoint only as exercises in mechanics. All occult attachments had long been stripped away and in so doing went the understanding of how counterpoint and canon were perceived in Bach's day and what they really meant.
 
G
#154 · (Edited)
The War of Beauty

Earlier, I mentioned a Bach advocate named J. A. Birnbaum. What did I mean that he was a Bach advocate? What did Bach need an advocate for? To answer that, we must return to Johann Mattheson and his attempts to update and demystify music. Mattheson wanted to take music away from the musicians and composers and give it to the listener, primarily those who attend opera, but any listener of note. Bach's friend, Johann Heinichen, took Mattheson's side. He felt the composer "consists once and for all in the art of making his music, as a matter of course, popular and pleasing to the reasonable world." Mattheson was even more forthcoming: "Really we should not follow our own inclinations, but those of the listener. I have often composed something that seemed to me trifling, but unexpectedly attained great favor. I made a mental note of this, and wrote more the same, although it had little merit when judged according to its artistry." What Mattheson appeared to be getting at is that the time for music as theoretical exercise and meditation was over and now the time had come for music purely as entertainment. To put it more succinctly, the Mattheson camp was advocating for popular music. They wanted to discard esoterica in favor of pop.

Here, in a nutshell, is the dilemma in which Bach had inadvertently landed-that of the idea that the composer should no longer be judged by his peers but by his audience, by how popular he was. In 1738, up rose a former student of Bach, Johann Adolph Scheibe, who took it upon himself to criticize his former-teacher as ignorant of philosophical knowledge and critical skills. Scheibe wrote that Bach "has not studied the science/humanities which actually are required of a learned composer." Bach's works were flawed because, Scheibe wrote, "How can a man who has not studied philosophy and is incapable of investigating and recognizing the forces of nature and reason be without fault in his musical work?" Scheibe was not merely criticizing Bach, he was attacking his character and talent and making no secret of it. Bach, Scheibe went on to say, was a dull man of questionable taste due to his lazy nature in failing to observe and to investigate (presumably the new music). As a result, Bach's works had neither movement nor expression. Scheibe, at the apparent urging of Mattheson, also attacked canon and counterpoint which he alleged to be the result of "disheartened diligence, of worthless toil, and of a pedantic spirit."

So, up from Leipzig University jumped a teacher and amateur musician named Johann Abraham Birnbaum to Bach's defense. Bach was hesitant to engage Scheibe publicly. This kind of sparring was not something in which he was skilled at much less inclined to engage in. Private correspondence perhaps but not in an arena where the public had front row seats. Scheibe also did not hesitate to take advantage of Bach's unwillingness to confront him and very rudely mocked the man by referring to him as a musikant-essentially, a musical nincompoop- not educated enough to write books nor engage in philosophical investigations and who scarcely deserved the title of Leipzig's Musical Director and Saxon Court Composer.

Clearly, Scheibe was doing everything he could to provoke a response from Bach even, apparently, risking his own reputation to do so. Birnbaum, however, was not defending an indifferent or diffident Bach. The evidence indicates that Bach was quite engaged with Birnbaum and furnishing him with the necessary material to fire back at Scheibe. In Birnbaum's responses to the jabs of Scheibe, he makes references to obscure works that Bach was known to be studying but which Birnbaum himself would have known nothing. There is little doubt that Bach was employing Birnbaum as a surrogate. Bach, if anything, showed remarkable restraint in not engaging Birnbaum directly when one considers that Bach was known to have a bit of temper.

The public war between Scheibe and Birnbaum was closely followed by virtually all professional musicians and composers as well as the general public. Scheibe was not without his detractors and a great many of them. It is difficult to say what was motivating Scheibe in his attacks on Bach. The inflammatory articles were published in Scheibe's periodical, Critischer Musikus and some wondered if Scheibe was simply attacking Bach in order to increase readership. But to go after his old instructor was seen by a great many as bad form. Whatever, the cause of the drama instituted by Scheibe, Bach had a great many defenders. Scheibe's nastiness was alienating even those who essentially agreed with his views about the new music. They felt he was coming on far too strong and damaging their position rather than helping it. Still others supported Scheibe in everything he wrote because Bach represented everything they hated about musical academia and we must conclude that Scheibe himself had come around to that view. Through it all, Bach never actually waded into the debate himself-never wrote a letter, never publicly complained of his ill treatment, never signed his name to any document concerning this squabble.

Bach personally answered his opponent as only a man as Bach would-through composition and the piece Bach answered with was Clavierübung III (BWV 552) published in 1739. A huge organ work that runs a gamut of styles:



Bach's former-student and friend, Lorenz Christoph Mizler, wrote: "This work is a powerful refutation to those who have dared to criticize the composition of the Honorable Court Composer." However, the piece is far more than a simple refutation of a little man with a big mouth.

The Clavierübung series is a Lutheran work in four volumes. The fourth being the Goldberg Variations. Part III covers manual pieces, pedal pieces, free works, chorale preludes and two-part inventions. The publication of this piece in 1739 marked a bicentennial to commemorate Luther speaking his sermons in Thomaskirche in May of 1539 where Bach was now cantor. It was also the bicentennial of the Leipzig's acceptance of the Augsburg Confession. So this piece was a direct link back to Luther and the Reformation. The Kyries of the piece are done as Latin chant. The succession of chorales are followed by four duettos and all this is sandwiched in between a between large prelude at the fore and a large fugue at the end.

Clavierübung III is divided into three parts: 1) Vocal, 2) Instrumental, and 3) Dance. Nowhere else in Bach's organ works does he do anything so stylistically diverse as that. Parts of the work are written in 16th century renaissance motet style which is how the Roman Catholic Church performed its music back then so Bach is paying a bit of homage to the Catholic Church as the roots from which sprang the Lutheran Church. Bach also includes Luther's hymn, Out of the Depths I Cry to Thee. Bach's usage of Luther's hymns in the piece allowed him to introduce modal counterpoint in addition to the learned counterpoint he so excelled at. Also heard in the work is a style of the 18th century Italian instrumental trio. So, an old and new style are juxtaposed. During the Lord's Prayer, one of the five pillars of the Lutheran catechism (and all five pillars are covered in this piece), Bach treats us to a double canon with two distinct rhythms imposed on one another-triplet (ONE-trip-let-TWO-trip-let) and lumbardic (BUH-duh-BUH-duh)-that wash over the counterpoint of the double canon. In typical Bach fashion, these two rhythms both consort and contend with one another perhaps to demonstrate the various expressions of faith found in the entire Christian Church which are both in conflict in practice and in unison as a call to God. Likewise, at the end, Bach interweaves motet, instrumental and dance fugues together into one quite ingeniously and effortlessly. In other words, Bach was probably demonstrating to Schiebe and Mattheson that his music can be both for entertainment and for meditation, for the audience and for the composer/musician, for the theorist and the dancer, for the religious and the secular.

The final fugue is divided into three parts-a triptych-to represent the trinity, an essential doctrine of the Lutheran system. The key is in E-flat which has three flats so the trinity is encoded there. The time signatures progress from duple to triple compound meters that are all divisible by 3. The first panel of the triptych describes the majesty of God the Father and is 36 bars long. 3+6=9 and 9=3x3 and so the trinity is encoded there. The 12 entries of the subject therein represent the 12 disciples or apostles representing the Church itself. The second panel describes Christ's humanity and has 21 entries of the subject and 21 is the number of chorales in the work and is 7x3. The 7 may signify completion as in 6 days of creation and one day of rest. The first fugue subject is imposed on it 6 times and 6=2x3. We also know that 6 is the number of perfection and Bach uses it quite a lot. This second fugue is 45 bars long and 4+5=9 and 9=3x3. The third panel describes the motivity of the holy spirit in a sacred dance. It is 45 bars long and has 21 entries of the subject. The first subject of the first fugue enters 9 times. Thus, the main theme appears a total of 27 times the same number of pieces in the entirety of Clavierübung III and 27=3x3x3. So, Bach also demonstrates his knowledge and mastery of working numerology into his music. Remarkable that he could work the music into that framework without the music suffering for it.

Most of Bach's pieces never saw publication in his lifetime and this piece was one of the few that did. Bach had to know this piece would be critically reviewed in light of Scheibe controversy. Which leads us to ask about the duettos. Were it not for the duettos, Bach would have had nothing but a stack of chorale preludes albeit a remarkable stack indeed. These duettos are of great interest to us. First of all, why are they even there? They certainly have a different character than the rest of Clavierübung III. In fact, nowhere else in Bach's output does he title anything a duet or duetto. But duets were becoming all the rage at the time and perhaps Bach sought to juxtapose the old chorale with the new duet. We can be reasonably certain Bach likely had a variety of reasons for why he included them but part of the reason had to be in answer to Scheibe and Mattheson who both believed in employing duet to mix the natural with art in the most melodic amounts.



There are two parts to this Duetto, A and B. In the A section, every note is perfectly placed. There is nary a point of dissonance to be heard. It is the very definition of how Mattheson claimed duet should be and it refutes Scheibe's claim that Bach is too dissonant. The melody is intelligible and naturally charming, something Mattheson stresses, and the melody has freedom and is not restricted by the counterpoint. The very definition of cantabile. So perfect that neither Mattheson nor Scheibe could possibly find fault with it.

When the B section starts, however, the dissonance jumps to the fore and the cantabile withers away in an instant. The section is ungainly and the counterpoint appears badly matched because the melodic line is unnatural and counterpoint is compressed to within a quarter-note (crotchet) of the melody crunching everything together giving no freedom-or does it have too much freedom? It sounds tortured. Augmented seconds and fifths as well as tritones abound. It borders on becoming unintelligible. It is everything Mattheson and Scheibe hate. But it does one thing they can't deny: it makes the listener hear the canon. Mattheson counseled against inserting canon saying the listeners will not hear it and what Scheibe called a wasted effort. But Bach presents the listener with a canon that cannot be ignored. One has to picture Bach laughing to himself as he turns all of Mattheson's and Scheibe's compositional advice on its head to make canon achieve exactly what they said it couldn't. Perhaps Bach chuckles aloud picturing them wincing in agony. After having his laugh, Bach reverts back to the melodic A section to end the piece as if to say, "Relax, guys, I was just having a little fun!"
 
G
#155 · (Edited)
Years after the Scheibe controversy started, it was still going on due entirely to Scheibe refusing to let it die. From his post in the Danish court in Copenhagen, Scheibe, in 1745, published his second edition of Critischer Musikus in Leipzig in which he not only reprinted the entire exchange between himself and Herr Birnbaum seven years earlier but he also added a good 150 notes to Birnbaum's remarks in which he again criticized Bach in a very sardonic fashion for being too committed to outdated styles, of inserting too much art into the melody, of not seeking a pleasing balance between nature and artifice and so on. By too much art, Scheibe meant specifically learned counterpoint.

When we listen to Bach's counterpoint, we may wonder why Scheibe complained that it was too dissonant. Sounds fine to me, right? The accusation wasn't leveled simply at Bach but at counterpoint in general. There are two types of consonances in counterpoint: perfect and imperfect. Perfect consonances such as a perfect fifth or an octave blend so well together that they actually don't sound that good-as strange as that may seem-because they are a bit empty. By contrast, the imperfect consonance causes a bit of clashing between the two notes which makes it sound fuller. In fact, in virtually all counterpoint, the majority of the consonances are imperfect in order to give the piece some character. While not really dissonant, counterpoint relies on contrasting lines playing off one another. On the other hand, true dissonance is also possible in the counterpoint of second species or higher on upbeats provided they are approached and exited in stepwise fashion and this is actually quite common. With invertible counterpoint (which are double or triple or more), dissonances remain dissonances after being inverted and fifths, which are consonant, are inverted into fourths and become dissonant so fifths in the original line should be treated as neighbor notes or passing notes to avoid problems when inverted. Hence, the Mattheson camp called counterpoint unfit to be considered as beautiful music because the art of composing the counterpoint interferes with the natural beauty of the melody by which I suppose they meant the cantus firmus. Canon and counterpoint were pronounced antiquated and any composer treating them as important forms of music was to be targeted for criticism and so it fell on Bach.

By 1747, Bach joined Correspondirende Societät der Musicalischen Wissenschaften or the aforementioned Society of the Musical Sciences as its fourteenth member where he had showcased his three-lined canon for six voices discussed earlier. But this was not the first canon puzzle that he had submitted to the learned society. The first was a group of five canonic variations on Luther's Von Himmel Hoch Christmas hymn.

Quite a bit of time elapsed for the engraving of Canonic Variations on Von Himmel hoch da komm ich her (BWV 769)-maybe 14 or so months-before the piece could be included in one of the Society's rotating parcels. The engraving was finally completed by the middle of 1747. Again, Canonic Variations would have been received by Scheibe and the public at large in reference to the controversy surrounding learned counterpoint. The written music is done in the old style of strict counterpoint but the music itself has plenty to offer the non-musician music lover (a.k.a. the galant) as per the demands of Scheibe, Heinichen and Mattheson. In fact, as strict counterpoint as this work is, Bach had seemed to compose something that is primarily galant. There is, for example, nothing abstract or structural in the trills and slurs Bach throws in. They are simply decorative and there to entertain the listener. The piece is written only for two manuals and pedal (2 Clav. e Ped). The melodic content of the first and second canons are an example of pleasing, natural modern music that Scheibe and Mattheson so advocated for. The canon of the first variation is inverted at eighths (all' Ottava) while the second variation is inverted at fifths (alla Quinta). Harmonically, the canon contains no dissonance and no extremes. Bach demonstrates a concern for the superficial details and not just the intellectual details.

Bach did not appear to have any problem with the goals of Mattheson to make music accessible to the galant. After all, he wrote his Clavier Übung exercises for, in his own words, "lovers of music, for their spiritual enjoyment and for the refreshment of the mind." Where Bach seems to have a difference was with Mattheson's idea that canon could not uphold galant ideals. Bach was out to show him and his cohorts that it could.

The third variation is the most modern of the five. The canon is formed at the sevenths or alla Settima between manual II and the pedal. Manual I plays the cantus firmus as well as a cantabile above the canon. A "pervasive cantabile" is precisely what Mattheson and his cohorts insisted is what makes for preeminent good musical taste. The ornamentation in this variation is exactly what Schiebe believed made melodies sound full and beautiful. Here, even occasional dissonances are welcome to break up the monotony of too many consecutive consonances in order to introduce some life into the music. Bach achieves this through the ornamentation since without it the basic melody is all consonant notes. In fact, Bach's "lavish ornamentation" of this variation won him praise from Scheibe in 1739 which he saw as Bach spending less time on artifice and more time on nature to produce immediately pleasing results of free-flowing melody nearly producing a galanterie. This was Bach showing his utter mastery of the modern, galant style.

But we should know that Bach was not going to simply make all the Canonic Variations simply to please the galant. By the fourth variation, in which the canon is inverted at eighths (all' Ottava) by manual II and pedal in augmentationem (manual playing twice the speed of the pedals), Bach's piece becomes complex with its counterpoint. He even violates the basic rules of double counterpoint by having a soprano voice laden with trills, slurs and appoggiaturas that are not in the tenor voice with which the soprano voice is paired off. Bach appeared to be digging in deep into the intellectual side of counterpoint by using the effects most pleasing to the galant.

In the fifth variation, Bach takes the cantus firmus of Luther's hymn and puts inverted lines to it as it repeats four times. The first time, the inversion occurs at the sixth (alla Sesta), then at the third (alla Terza), then the second (alla Seconda) and, finally, at the ninth (alla Nona). The piece starts with the pedals playing the independent melody as the two manuals play the canon in alla Sesta and alla Terza. By the time the canon is played alla Seconda, however, manual I is replaced by the pedals while manuals I and II play the independent melody and this situation remains for the alla Nona inversion. Again, there is little that is dissonant here. Each inversion is splendid as is the independent melody. It is clearly counterpoint but Bach proves his detractors wrong that canon cannot sound free-flowing. The variation ends with a thundering bass note droning at C1 like a huge blackhole drawing the notes from the manuals down into it and then swallowing itself.

The Canonic Variations are a masterful demonstration of using counterpoint to push the galant style to new heights and also using the galant style to illuminate the dark corners of counterpoint. While, the fifth variation might have been a bit too complex for the amateur music-lover to process, its strength is that it thrills rather than confounds the listener. The other four variations are pure entertainment. Not too highbrow and certainly not too vulgar but something both amateurs and professionals could indulge in with equal pleasure. But the main point that Bach was likely wishing to make here was not that artifice and nature can coexist-although they certainly can-but that refinement to galant tastes can, in fact, be achieved by counterpoint.


Manuscript page of BWV 769.



 
G
#156 ·
Just today, these came in the mails--I've been looking for facsimile manuscripts of Bach and I came across the Well-Tempered Clavier--both books--put out in 2009 by E.R.P Musikverlag Eckart Rahn of Berlin. The missing pieces are supplied in regular sheet music set up by Johannes Gebauer. I ordered them either off ebay or Amazon--I scoured and ordered stuff from both sites and I don't rightly recall which one I got these from. I got more stuff coming. I got these almost for pocket change. Well worth the price:

I would have preferred larger images but these autographs were very affordable. I saw facsimile manuscripts that were hundreds and even a couple of three thousand dollars.









 
G
#157 ·
I also received this marvelous CD in the mail today--"Johann Thiele--Arias and Canzonettas". The CD is put out on the CPO label in Germany in 2005. Thiele is, as you may recall if you've read my last few posts on this thread, the Father of Contrapuntists, who wrote the collection of pieces he called Musicalisches Kunstbuch and formulated the pieces together as an alchemical treatise which presents learned counterpoint as the Philosopher's Stone. This collection was in the possession of Bach's cousin, Johann Walther, who highly prized it and almost certainly would have shown it to Bach when he lived in Weimar. I find it very difficult to believe that Bach wrote such magnificent counterpoint without having studied the magnum opus of the Father of Contrapuntists. I also find it very difficult to believe that Walther would have neglected to show his cousin the Kunstbuch considering how close Walther and Bach were for some 30 years avidly sharing music with one another.

 
G
#158 ·
https://imslp.org/wiki/Musikalisches_Kunstbuch_(Theile,_Johann)

If you'd like to have your own e-copy of Musicalisches Kunstbuch by Thiele, go to the above link. You'll see two down-pointing arrows with "Complete Score (Copy 1)" and "Complete Score (Copy 2)". You'll need to do both of those because it's done in two parts. Click on one of the arrows and you'll see a statement telling you that your download will begin in 15 seconds or something like that and I think it counts down. Once it counts down, it is replaced by a statement telling you to click on it to start the download. Don't neglect to do that or nothing with happen. Once it fully downloads, you still have to do a "save as" to store it on your computer somewhere. If you don't do a "save as" then you won't find it on your computer anywhere not even in the download folder. Then repeat the process for the other copy and you'll have the complete thing. It's very readable. It's all in German, of course, but nothing's too dark or too faded or pixelated or anything like that. It's perfectly visible with great resolution. A highly important document of Western music, counterpoint and baroque in general. Many thanks to IMSLP for having the sense to make this awesome work available to the general public. It's amazing that anyone even thought to do this so don't let their hard work go for naught--download today!
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top