BWV 2 — Andy

Ach Gott, vom Himmel sieh darein

Herr Clarke is off gallivanting across the country and I’m not sure if he’ll get to post this week, so it’s up to me to hold down the fort for BWV 2 — Ach Gott, von Himmel sieh darein.

I deliberately listened to a very different type of recording for BWV 2. For BWV 1 I listened to a ‘period’ ensemble, namely the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Choir under the inimitable Ton Koopman. You can check out Ton’s fine harpsichord playing here (incidentally, I chose this video because it basically shows who I’m likely to be in my old age — a crazy old man in a castle playing harpsichord by candlelight). Koopman and his ensemble play on period instruments and sing in what they would claim is a historically-informed style. I hedged my bets on this last sentence because the idea of historically-informed performance is by no means free of controversy and if you ask some people (Richard Taruskin), this performance style has more to do with modernist aesthetics than historical authenticity. For BWV 2, I listened to a modern ensemble on modern instruments playing in a style that would also seem appropriate for, say, a Brahms symphony.

Typically I prefer to listen to Bach played by period ensembles and I wanted to take a few minutes to defend this choice against the perhaps imagined specters of dissent out there. My preference for the historical style has nothing to do with that I think is the correct or incorrect way to perform Bach, but rather is a result of a few simple aesthetic preferences which seem to be better exemplified by that style.

I think I've often said to those of you out there whom I know in person that clarity is perhaps the musical virtue I prize above all else and Bach’s music is especially of a sort that can be easily diminished by too much thickness and density. Too many moving lines, a lot of that Baroque “spin” — it can easily become a gray blob in the hands of someone who isn't taking care to avoid that particular pitfall. Full disclosure, I studied historical performance by taking organ and harpsichord lessons in college and one of the first things you learn is the concept of space — that there should be more of it, and different lengths of it depending on the strength of the beat to come. This idea isn't something that the folks behind the historical performance movement just made up — it’s pretty well-documented in the treatises of the clavecinistes (e.g. Couperin’s L’Art de toucher le clavecin, which I was made to read at great length by my teacher). These early pedagogues state that there should never be a true slur in music, but rather always a minuscule space between each note, called the silence d’articulation. Complete absence of slurs might be going a bit far, but in general I enjoy the sense of clarity and transparency that’s created when an ensemble uses this technique. Moreover, when musicians properly separate beats with the right length of space, it can be a great boon to phrasing. In general, period ensembles also use less vibrato which I like, but I’ll readily admit that this is mostly just an aesthetic preference.

This cantata is much more dour in subject matter than BWV 1, which emphasized God’s love and the beauty and luminescence of Truth (capital T!). Instead BWV 2 is pretty squarely focused on mankind’s suffering—humans are wretches, faith is dead, and mankind’s children are ‘mere stench.’

Surprise, surprise, this one’s dominated by minor keys (though don’t worry, we still get that picardy third at the end most of the time). In contrast to BWV 1 with its Mediterranean figurations and characteristic baroque “spin,” the opening chorus of BWV 2 is much more what I might call with some trepidation Germanic. The counterpoint is much stricter and the walking bass is much more prominent.

Here in the first chorus Bach uses a variety of melodic and harmonic tricks to really drive home the emphasis on suffering from the text, although as always it’s difficult to separate Bach’s work from the work of the original hymn composer. Notice that the first interval of the melody is a minor 2nd, an especially pathetic (in the classical sense) interval. There’s a far bit of mode mixture in the subsequent bars as Bach borrows f-sharps from the relative major which gives us this nice chromatic bass line. Perhaps to modern ears the chromaticism is not so darkly expressive but I think to baroque ears it’s safe to say intense chromaticism was associated with suffering and pain.

The third bit, an aria for soprano with violin obbligato, approaches the same question from a much more sweet angle, meekly imploring God to subvert heretics. The sweeter tone is underlined by the major tonality and the sparkling triplets in the violin obbligato, but the aria is not without darker moments. It turns briefly to minor on the word ketzerei which notably means heresy (German scholars, chime in if I’m wrong). Note that the dense chromaticism of the opening chorus is absent, however.

Throughout the cantata, Bach uses the melody of the original hymn, sometimes fairly subtly. Here’s the original melody:

Obviously it appears at the beginning of the opening chorus so I won’t bother to print that one, but here it is in the first recitative:

And finally notice a suspiciously similarly shaped line in the final aria:

Oh Bach, you clever kraut!