Bach has a way of infusing my spiritual life with joy, which I seldom experience from other composers. On this Cantata Sunday–my first with the Marsh Chapel Choir–I find myself still reveling in the beauty of his Cantata #71, which was sung in worship today. Last fall, I wrote a paper for my Core Humanities class on the music of Bach and Monteverdi. Mind you, I’m an amateur in this field, but I’d like to share an excerpt from that paper, depicting a very special memory of which I am reminded today. It takes place almost exactly a decade ago, and yet the memory is particularly clear on this chilly, rainy Sunday in Boston, having completed the first of our Cantata Sundays, and listening to Cantata #140, which will be sung on December 2nd at the 11am service.
“While serving in Leipzig, every Sunday for three years Bach composed a new cantata. This output speaks to his prolific musical genius: the ability to compose a full, perfect work every seven days without ever repeating anything. His creativity was, it seems, infinite, reliable and methodical.
Much of Bach’s liturgical music, including many of the cantatas make use of the organ, an instrument of which Bach was arguably the greatest master. I should like to try to convey the impact of Bach’s organ works with a story of my own experience.
When I was eleven, my family moved abroad. En route to Africa, we spent a week in Paris. We were welcomed by a chilly November downpour unlike any I could remember, and, lacking funds for long-term storage at the airport, we slogged through the city dragging with us all of our worldly possessions for the next three years. Unable to check into our hotel yet, we stopped into the famed cathedral on the Ile de la Cité, Notre Dame; as travelers historically would enter churches seeking sanctuary, our family was seeking rest, warmth and comfort. I remember dragging our waterlogged suitcases against the back wall of the nave, and sinking onto the floor. From the cathedral’s organ emanated perhaps the most beautiful music I had ever heard—a Bach prelude. A free Bach organ concert had just begun, and we decided to stay. For the next hour or so I felt truly transported to a new level of being, so drawn into the complexities and intricacies of the music that I forgot I was cold and wet and between the life I’d known and the life I was headed to. All I knew was the music, which in some way occupied a space between my human world and the divine, just as academics have suggested Bach had sought to reach.
Remarkably, two and a half centuries after his death, in a place Bach had never visited, to people of whom he had no conception and with whom he did not share language or cultural traditions, his music still has the power to communicate the scope of eternity, and utterly transform time and space. Bach’s music, still very commonly used in church life, is more than just magical; his music illuminates the transcendence and immanence of God, enabling listeners to grasp divine perfection in its balance, harmony, and eloquent power.”
It doesn’t take more than a couple years of music theory lessons to begin to see just how intricate Bach’s music is, but a rendition like the one sung at Marsh today will provide a true experience of its emotional and musical complexity. I invite you, if you missed it or would like to hear it again, to listen to this morning’s service online at http://www.bu.edu/chapel/worship/sunday/podcast/.
Thanks again to Dr. Jarrett and the entire choir for welcoming into this musical experience! I look forward to all the year ahead has in store.