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Redemption and Human Freedom in the Bach Passions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
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Gareth Moore loved music, and he loved, in particular, the music of J. S. Bach. He owned an extensive collection of Bach recordings and could quote from the choral works, especially the chorales, from memory. One year, as I recall, he devoted himself to learning to play the Goldberg Variations on the piano. Gareth and I became acquainted through the Oxford Bach Choir, where our singing together grew into a long friendship whose conversational mainstays were music, theology and philosophy. One of the special joys of our friendship over the years was a series of conversations about the theology and tonal allegory of Bach’s great renderings of Christ’s Passion—the St. John Passion and the St. Matthew Passion.
Bach’s Passions were the subject of several lecture series Gareth had given in his later years, and though at least one of the series of lectures (delivered in French!) was tape-recorded, it is our loss that Gareth did not collect more systematically his many insights into Bach’s musical theology. I was fortunate, however, to participate with Gareth in several colloquia on both Passions, occasions which allowed us both to explore in an intelligent though not strictly academic setting the meditative dynamic of Bach’s work. I am indebted to Gareth for much of what I know about Bach, as for so many other things human and divine. And however deficient my own appreciation of Bach may be, it is the product of a love which Gareth shared so generously in his gentle and penetrating conversation.
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- Copyright © 2003 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 The several colloquia were graciously sponsored by the Liberty Fund of Indianapolis, Indiana, to which I express gratitude for the opportunity to have formulated many of the reflections communicated here. I also gratefully acknowledge the use of Thomas Levergood’s unpublished translation of the libretto of the St. Matthew Passion. Most quotations from the text of the St. John Passion are taken from Marrisen, infra.
2 Eric, Chafe, Tonal Allegory in the Vocal Music of J. S. Bach (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991) pp. 275-6Google Scholar admirably summarizes, with bibliography, these differences of approach to and explanation of the Passions. It is possible that Bach’s revisions to the St. John Passion were intended to render it more consistent with the theology of the St. Matthew Passion (see Chafe, pp. 301–304). Chafe, in his a brilliant study of Bach to which I am greatly indebted, does look directly at Bach’s “direct interaction with the Gospel [of John] itself” (p. 276). He also wishes to differentiate the two Passions as occupying different stages in the “meditative dynamic” (p. 278) Luther lays out in his A Meditation on Christ’s Passion. In this view, the differences (in part) correspond to the perspective of the resurrection (St. John Passion) which follows, in Luther’s account, from (in Chafe’s words) “the process—successive in nature—by which the opposition [between man and God] is bridged” (p. 278).
3 Jaroslav, Pelikan, Bach Among the Theologians (Philadelphia: Fortress Pres, 1986) pp. 89–115Google Scholar.
4 Hans, Urs von Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale: The Mystery of Easter, Aidan, Nichols, O.P. trans. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990), pp. 12–14Google Scholar.
5 Anselm, “A Meditation on Human Redemption” in Anselm of Canterbury, vol. 1, J. Hopkins and H. Richardson eds. and trans., (Toronto: Edwin Mellon Press, 1975) pp. 137–144; quotation from p. 142.
6 Martin, Luther, “A Meditation on Christ’s Passion” in Luther’s Works, vol. 42, Dietrich, M. ed., (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969) pp. 7–14Google Scholar.
7 Eberhard, Jüngel, “The Sacrifice of Jesus Christ as Sacrament and Example” in Theological Essays II, Webster, J. B. ed., (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995) pp. 163–190Google Scholar (see esp. pp. 168, 176). develops the distinction between sacrament and example in the context of current theology, emphasizing the theological priority of the former.
8 For an extended analysis, see Jaroslav Pelikan, ‘“Blut ist ein ganz besondrer Saft: Am färbigen Abglanz haben wir das Leben’. The Aria ‘Erwäge, wie sein blutgefärbter Rücken’ in J.S. Bach’s Saint John Passion” in A.A. Clement, ed., Das Blut Jesu und die Lehre von der Versöhnung im Werk Johann Sebastian Bachs, North-Holland, Amsterdam: Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen Verhandelingen, 1995) pp. 205–213.
9 Pelikan, Bach Among the Theologians, p. 80.
10 Pelikan, Bach Among the Theologians, pp. 84–88; quotation from p. 87.
11 Pelikan, Bach Among the Theologians, p. 85.
12 See Chafe, Tonal Allegory, pp. 286–301; quotation from p. 297.
13 The insistence of John’s Gospel—particularly as interpreted by Luther-on malicious Jewish complicity in Christ’s execution has long provoked the charge of anti-Judaism, a charge applied derivatively to the John Passion. Suffice it to say that in the Passion, at least, the crowd persecuting Christ in demanding his execution is understood theologically to be all sinners and not one race in particular, a point underscored liturgically by the fact that the accusations are sung by the chorus: the congregation, that is, us. For the most comprehensive and sensitive modern discussion, with a splendid translation of the libretto, see Michael Marrisen, Lutheranism, Anti-Judaism, and Bach ’s St. John Passion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
14 See Chafe, Tonal Allegory, p. 284.
15 Luther, “A Meditation on Christ’s Passion” p. 13.
16 Luther, “A Meditation on Christ’s Passion” pp. 13, 11.
17 Anselm, “A Meditation on Human Redemption” p. 144, Luther, “A Meditation on Christ’s Passion”.