For Bach it had to be a daunting task to compose cantatas for the Sundays between Easter and Pentecost; how in the world do you follow the two Passions - the St. Matthew and the St. John - and the Easter Oratorio and Christ lag in Todesbanden, all considered some of the greatest of his work? Well, Papa Johann managed to follow up with more than sufficient glory. He wrote two cantatas for the first Sunday after Easter, both fine, each with a different focus. BWV 67 celebrates the triumph of the resurrection. This one focuses on the fears of the disciples, who on that Sunday had basically barricaded themselves in the upper room out of fear of the repercussions from the crucifixion, when lo and behold Jesus appeared to them. With BWV 42, Am Abend aber desselbigen Sabbats (On the evening of that same Sabbath, Leipzig 1725), Bach approaches this situation. Here's a brilliant essay by the late Craig Smith of Emmanuel Music on this cantata:
The Cantata BWV 42 is one of the gigantic
masterpieces of the genre. It is a piece sui generis unlike
not only any other cantata but also any other sacred
work in the repertoire. The “low Sunday” works,
such as this one, present a very distinctive task for
the composer of liturgical music. There a sense of
having to make a new beginning, dramatically, after
holidays such as Easter and Christmas. These days inevitably
have an ambiguity and emotionally more charged feel
to them than the unabashedly joyful feast days. It
is interesting that the two cantatas for “Quasimodogeniti,” the
Sunday after Easter, are infinitely greater than any
of the Easter cantatas. There are two tasks to the
composer. The meaning and sense of Easter must permeate
the work; at the same time the very real fear and sense
of “what happens next?” must dominate.
In his two cantatas Bach comes to two radically different
solutions. In his other Quasimodogeniti work, the Cantata
BWV 67, Bach creates two columns on each end of the
piece; an opening chorus exhorts the Christian to hold
on to the memory of the resurrected Christ; the final
bass aria presents the climactic entrance of Christ
in the upper room.
Our cantata here has a very different
shape. The events of Easter are represented by a large
da capo sinfonia. Common wisdom has it that this is
a first movement of a concerto grosso, now lost. While,
of course, this may be true, the work is so perfectly
suited to its task here, and has such an unusually
warm and gentle demeanor, that it is hard to imagine
that it wasn’t written for this spot. There is
also a strong sense as one progresses through the movement
that the obbligato oboes and bassoon represent the
two Marys and Jesus on Easter morning. The movement
opens with a soft-edged and lovely tutti. The opening
quarter note by the violins has a wonderful ‘lighter
than air’ lift to it that sets the tone for the
whole movement. The two oboes and bassoon play rich
obbligati, relating to each other in a vocal, human
way. Sometimes the oboes are in opposition to the bassoon;
sometimes one oboe will be alone while the other allies
with the bassoon. The B section is even more rhapsodic.
Against leggiero tutti strings the three winds each
plays a cantabile melody, finally joining in a rapturous
trio.
After such heavenly music it is almost
painful to leave it, but Bach plunges us into the continuation
of the story with a pulsing and ominous bass line that
underpins the tenor’s narration of the fear and
paranoia that plagued the disciples after Jesus’ death.
The last line describes how, in this suspicious atmosphere
and behind locked doors, Jesus was, all of a sudden,
in their midst. In one of the supreme dramatic moments
in all of Bach, the dark hollow texture of the pulsing
bass reverts to the glowing strings of the opening
sinfonia. The two oboes play at first a gorgeous cantabile
imitative melody followed by a darting, almost playful,
pattern that is an uncanny portrayal of the state of
grace that Jesus provided for the disciples. The voice
part is conversational, almost casual sounding. It
is a kind of combination of the rhetorical and the
lyrical that would dominate 19th century German operatic
writing. Notice how the jagged and broken lines describing
the “where two or three are gathered ” then
meld into the ravishing cantabile on the words” in
Jesus precious name.” The A section of this da
capo aria is on a large scale, imbued with an expansive
generosity of spirit. The B section is surprisingly
tough and arid sounding. The warm, full orchestra is
replaced by a vaulting and aggressive solo bass line.
In the midst of this section there is an eccentric
little bass figure that appears out of the blue. Its
purpose is completely mysterious until we hear that
it refers to the opening bass line of the following
duet for soprano and tenor.
With the advent of the soprano-tenor
duet #4 it becomes clear that Bach is using the maximum
contrast to propel his story. The warm sinfonia was
followed by the hollow recitative. The same warm opening
texture was revived for the A section of the alto aria
with the barren sound reintroduced in the B section.
After the recapitulation of the A, the duet #4 reintroduces
the continuo-dominated sonority. Here the spiky and
bare-bones line of the cello and bassoon is intensified
by a thumping and insistent independent bass line.
It is clear that Bach had both a harpsichord, figured
in the cello part, and an organ, figured in the bass
part. Over this elaborate bass, the voices, pitched
high and sounding somewhat hysterical, sing their jagged
and paranoid line. All of the richness of the “Easter” harmony
is replaced here by a lurid, twilight chromaticism.
The lines are astoundingly jagged and awkward.
The transition from the glow of Easter
to the fearful “what happens next” quality
of the days after Easter, is here complete. The secco
bass recitative speaks of fear of reprisals, and has
one of the most distasteful examples of a kind of knee-jerk
anti-Semitism in all of Bach. The aria for bass has
brilliant obbligati for two solo violins. Here we have
Jesus as the great military leader. The violins play
striking and aggressive arpeggio figures against a
marching bass line. All of the subtle rhetoric of the
alto aria and the angularity of the duet are here replaced
by straight-ahead virtuoso operatic writing for the
bass. If this aria is more conventional in character
than all that has come before, it is one of the great
brilliant pieces of vocal writing in all of Bach.
Bach ends this gigantic and great
cantata with one of the profoundest of all his chorale
harmonizations. The large double chorale by Luther,”Verleih
uns Frieden-Gib unsern Fürsten” was
used several months earlier to close the cantata BWV
126. In that context it was a plea for peace after
one of the most savage of all of the cantatas. Here
it relates to the end of the cantata and reminds us
how far we have come from the gentle grace of the opening
sinfonia. The harmonization is of unparalleled richness.
There are subtle changes in character between the two
chorales. The bass line of the opening is almost always
in a downward motion that is replaced in “Gib
unsern Fürsten” by upward lines. The
harmony of the 2nd chorale gains a kind of radiance
both by use of pedal points, and in the grand sweeping
lines of the “Amen.”
In Cantata BWV 42 we have from Bach
a whole new kind of inward drama, a drama of the soul,
that he virtually invented. The contrast of an inward
state of grace with outward fear and danger is central
to early Christianity; it has never been more profoundly
characterized than in this cantata.
© Craig Smith
Today's performance is from a 1990 Harmonia Mundi France recording by La Chapelle Royale and Vocale Collegium Gent under the direction of Philippe Herreweghe. Enjoy!
Photo © 2018 by A. Roy Hilbinger
