J.S. Bach, Cantata 4, at Easter

The idea is God’s. The leading role is Christ’s. The supporting cast is all of humanity. The text is Martin Luther’s. The music is Bach’s.

The epistle is 1 Corinthians 5:7-8

⁷ Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us:

⁸ Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

and the gospel is Mark 16:1-8          

¹ And when the sabbath was past, Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James, and Salome, had bought sweet spices, that they might come and anoint him.

² And very early in the morning the first day of the week, they came unto the sepulchre at the rising of the sun.

³ And they said among themselves, Who shall roll us away the stone from the door of the sepulchre?

⁴ And when they looked, they saw that the stone was rolled away: for it was very great.

⁵ And entering into the sepulchre, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, clothed in a long white garment; and they were affrighted.

⁶ And he saith unto them, Be not affrighted: Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth, which was crucified: he is risen; he is not here: behold the place where they laid him.

⁷ But go your way, tell his disciples and Peter that he goeth before you into Galilee: there shall ye see him, as he said unto you.

⁸ And they went out quickly, and fled from the sepulchre; for they trembled and were amazed: neither said they any thing to any man; for they were afraid.

Bach’s cantata dates from 1707, for Mühlhausen. It is a masterpiece. It is symmetrical in structure: seven movements with voices and an introductory sinfonia without. Each movement is a variation of the hymn tune. The sequence is chorale, duet, solo; central chorus; and then the reverse: solo, duet, chorale.

The opening sinfonia depicts Christ, dead, in the tomb, after His crucifixion. This is Luther’s point of departure as he almost immediately moves to resurrection, which is the subject throughout. Luther’s hymn, through all its seven verses, becomes a brilliant survey of Christian doctrine, which is apposite, as it is the main Lutheran hymn for Easter. Its ancestry is ancient, as Luther’s treatment derives from the Victimae paschali laudes (laud the Paschal victim), one of the medieval sequences for the celebration of the Eucharist in the Catholic mass. It is still in liturgical use today.

Verse 2 asserts that, before the coming of Christ, humanity after death and because of original sin, remained within the kingdom of death. Verse 3 recounts that Christ, though His death, has removed the taint of original sin, so that mortal death becomes impermanent, that the dead body is only the earthly shell of the redeemed. Verse 4 tells of the victory of the afterlife in its battle with death. This is the central pivot of Bach’s symmetry. Verse 5 specifies that the victory is won through the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross. Verse 6 confirms that divine grace has (if one is a believer) forever vanquished, through its solar illumination, the night that sin had held humanity within. Verse 7 relates that the word of Christ is the universality of redemptive faith that He has brought.

The problem with this is that death is still death. The tomb, and the loss, are permanent. Resurrection is an impossibility. The concept of divinity is an invention of the human mind, and is one of its original needs. The psychic striving for an afterlife in the empyrean is no more than an evasion of the truth of being. The Biblical narrative is metaphor rather than actuality. Its purpose is adherence. The grace that is true is what is found and remains in the hearts of those still living but left behind, until their own death enables eternal reunification. Which, I suggest, represents a metaphor that is realistic, and if bittersweet, more comforting.

The end of life is the return to the great nothingness in which it began; which, just as Christ knew his fate on Palm Sunday, we cannot escape knowing and accepting once our awareness is awoken. We are manifestations of a beautiful transience.

This is what religion endeavoured to explain, until it lost its way in the absolutism of doctrine and power; and having become doctrinaire, admitted no further or different interpretation, the understanding of the mystery jettisoned in favour of control and obedience.

Obedience is a behaviour that is observable. Heaven as a place is not. It is figuratively imagined as an anthropomorphism, even when intellectually considered as transcendental. It could as easily be considered as restoration. The latter is a decomposition into what originally was, the former a rebirth. After death, we do not become immaterial, but we eventually are disembodied. We never leave the essence of the earth. Extraterrestrial transcendence or restoration may both be valid, but neither demands or requires a resurrection to open the gateway, nor can either be denied—or approved—by anyone or anything.

But the fundamental problem is that doctrine obscures the intent, the wisdom, of Jesus. It moulds the reaches of His teachings into the confines of the church, often to the detriment of the teachings. Instances of prophesy, for example, are written into the Biblical record through the desires of fabulists to imagine Christ different than He was. The consequence is distortion of the grandeur of the attempt.

But, further, did Christ really know that death through crucifixion awaited Him in Jerusalem; or did He weigh the matter and conclude His influence amongst the poor and the powerless would support and enable His purpose? Or did He simply overestimate His capacity? Luther thought not. Bach, however, given the weight of contemplation that pervades his music, may. The resurrection is not explanation; it is a failure of continuance, flawed and unfulfilling, fashioned by the powerful. The agony of the opening sinfonia is not only a depiction of the death of a Messiah of the poor and the downtrodden and powerless, but also of the death of His work.

Did Christ die on the cross? It is conceivable He did not; that He was taken down in a severely weakened state, and, within forty days, vanished, by design and need, into the revolutionary wilderness, leaving us, once more, to think for ourselves.

***

The foregoing is an excerpt from On the Cantatas of J.S. Bach: Easter to Pentecost.