This coming Wednesday, July 28, marks the 260 th anniversary of the death of Johann Sebastian Bach. Today at St. Dunstan’s, we are remembering J. S. Bach and his immeasurable contributions to church music. Our instrumental music, anthem, and hymns for today—all are in some way connected to Bach.

It is a challenge to find something unique to say about this giant of the Baroque period in the eighteenth century: all the superlatives about J. S. Bach have been used. Bach gathers together the various strands of German and Italian and French music in the early eighteenth century, and he weaves them into the most astonishing creations, crowning the Baroque era of European music. But, Bach was not particularly well-regarded as a composer in his own day: he lived long enough to see the musical fashion changing, and he comes to be seen by his own time as a stylistic dinosaur, referred to when compared with his sons, who were more modern composers, as “the old Bach.” Yet, the music of J. S. Bach has survived to become the gold standard for technical skill, expressive power, and mystical, indeed unfathomable depth of meaning. From the time of his death in 1750, other composers and performers have continued to study Bach’s music. His music continues to be frequently performed, often in large concert halls, though almost all of it was composed for a small court setting, or for use in church.

Bach is a north German, and he is the crowning glory not only of German Baroque music, but of the music produced in the first two centuries of the German Reformation. Today’s various Lutheran groups are the modern heirs of the Reformation musical tradition, and they continue to hold Bach in highest esteem. The Evangelical Lutheran Church in the United States has a category of liturgical observances called “commemorations,” and the sub-category of “artists and scientists” lists July 28 as the date for commemorating Johann Sebastian Bach.

But Bach is important for all of us. One has only to look in our Hymnal 1982 and in the modern hymnals of other denominations to find that Bach is a central figure.

Bach wrote music for orchestra, for organ and many other solo instruments, and for voices. At the heart of Bach’s vocal compositions is a kind of work called cantata. These are pieces in several large sections or movements, using solo voices, a choir, a variety of orchestral instruments, and organ. Bach chooses texts from three sources: scripture, poetic works by various poets who were Lutheran contemporaries of Bach, and hymns that would have been commonly known and sung by Bach’s congregations. These hymns were, and still are, known as “chorales.” Bach did not write these tunes; they were simply congregational songs available to him for his use. We are singing four of them in today’s service.

As part of his responsibilities as a church musician, Bach composed a cantata for every Sunday and all important liturgical occasions throughout the year, about 60 or so cantatas making up a complete yearly cycle. From this amazing creative output, only about 200 cantatas have survived. There are cantatas for Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter season, Pentecost, and the season following Pentecost. Whatever the liturgical occasion, the cantata usually offered textual and musical reflections on the Gospel reading. At a typical Sunday morning service of Holy Eucharist, half the cantata would be performed before the sermon, and the other half afterward. The whole cantata could be about 30 minutes long, and the sermons were quite long as well. The whole service could last for several hours. I’m not recommending that we adopt this Sunday morning practice.

At the Offertory today, we will hear a movement from Bach’s Cantata number 147. Bach wrote this rather early in his career. One contemporary Bach scholar notes that this movement has attained “astonishing popularity” especially in English-speaking countries. It has a certain warmth and sweetness that, for Bach, seemed appropriate—we might say “fitting”—for a musical and textual commentary about a close, intimate relationship between the believer and Jesus: We sing the words, “Jesus, joy of our desiring…,” or as we will then sing as a congregation, “Come with us, O blessed Jesus.” Yet, for Bach, this music does not appear to have been anything special, which should make us all wonder what other little cantata movement gems we might find if we looked.

Our opening hymn today is a Lutheran chorale tune, and the prelude music is an instrumental version of this same tune, used by Bach in his Cantata number 140. The liturgical occasion for the cantata was near the end of the Pentecost season, right before Advent, a time when the lectionary still today contains the Gospel reading about the wise and foolish virgins. Bach combines texts that call upon us to wake up and be ready, like the wise virgins, for the arrival of Jesus, the bridegroom. The melody that we heard in the violin is usually thought of as the processional music for the wedding that will take place when Jesus comes. Bach takes these stories and images from the gospels very seriously, and he offers them lavish musical treatment.

At the end of the service today, we will sing “A Might Fortress is our God,” sometimes thought of as Martin Luther’s “fight song” for the Reformation. Bach uses the text and tune in his Cantata number 80, intended for performance on Reformation Sunday. Bach uses the first stanza “A mighty fortress is our God” in the cantata’s opening movement. The choir sings melodies that embellish the tune. When the chorale tune begins, it is in the highest instrument in the orchestra in very long, drawn-out notes, and the lowest instrument in the orchestra plays the same thing. But that’s not all. The lowest instrument starts a little bit after the top instrument, in a strict musical procedure known as “canon” – it’s the same word as “canon” used to describe a law. Bach is using visual and auditory means, plus a powerful bit of symbolic word-play , to state his belief that God’s law rules the universe from top to bottom.

After the service, Mark and I will play a movement from one of Bach’s cantatas composed for a secular occasion (there are fewer secular cantatas). Bach worked for a while for the Duke of Weimar, and for the Duke’s 53 rd birthday celebration, he wrote a cantata about the joys of hunting. It is a semi-dramatic work, with various gods and goddesses from Greek mythology making appearances. Here are the words for the movement that we will play today:

Sheep may safely graze

where a good shepherd watches.

Where rulers govern well, one can feel rest and peace

and what makes countries happy.”

This is high praise for the Duke: he’s the good shepherd who makes it possible for the sheep to graze in peace in his domain. When the violin plays, just imagine a bucolic scene with couple of shepherds out in the pasture playing their pipes. But there is an underlying theological message here as well: the Lutheran prince is doing God’s will by governing well.

This hunting cantata was very well-received, so well, in fact, that Bach decided to re-use some of its music on another occasion. This was not a terribly unusual thing for a Baroque composer to do—to borrow from one’s self. Bach even used some of this music later on in a sacred cantata. Well, we might ask, is that OK? Should Bach bring secular music into church? Here are a couple of observations on that subject:

1. Bach did this on a number of occasions—re-writing a secular work with new words, and presto, it is now a sacred work. But as far as we know, Bach never took a work that was originally intended as a sacred work, and re-used it in a secular setting. We might say that once a work is baptized, it is no longer a part of the secular world. But at the same time, we can also observe that, for Bach, there is no difference in musical style between works created for a secular occasion, and those created for use in church.

And then there is this:

2. Bach often wrote the initials “J. J.” at the beginning of a work. “J. J.” is “Jesu, jura” – that is, “Jesus, help.” At the end of many works, Bach wrote the initials “S.D.G.” – “Soli Deo Gloria” – that is, “Glory to God alone.” Bach used these initials, J.J. and S.D.G., not only with sacred works, but with secular works as well.

We can conclude that for Bach, where music was concerned, there was no distinction between the secular and the sacred in music.

With these few musical examples, we are just beginning to scratch the surface of Bach’s music. Bach uses music to suggest pictorial images; he also suggests feelings—what the 18 th century writers called “affects.” He uses symbolism of all kinds. He chooses texts carefully and combines them with precision and insight. He creates technical constructions that are messages themselves. Though he composed much secular music, his connection with his art is essentially a sacred connection. To paraphrase today’s reading from Colossians, Bach lived his life in Christ Jesus the Lord, rooted and built up in Christ and established in the faith. He has been often referred to as “the fifth evangelist,” and Jaroslav Pelikan, an eminent church historian, wrote a book called Bach among the Theologians.

I have spent some years now trying to understand how music works, how it “says” what it has to say, and how we respond to it, especially in our religious lives. I think it is appropriate for us to ask why we feel that some music communicates something special to us, maybe even something special about God’s presence in the world. (This is not too far removed from asking why, when people describe a wonderful concert, they sometimes say that it was like a religious experience.)

When we study Bach’s music, we, first of all, can make use of various analytical methods and tools. When we do, we come to a profound appreciation for these musical works as material creations, endlessly varied in their design, surprising in their originality, sometimes unfathomable in their depth of complexity. In these compositions, we see examples of physical reality that has been shaped into a new sense of order and rightness. I’m speaking now of purely physical reality, creations in sound. This physical matter has all kinds of potential limitations and inherent imperfections, but it is transformed by the composer. And in Bach’s hands, these physical creations seem to be endowed with such a sense of rightness and richness, that the moments when we encounter them seem transformed. Bach just seems to get it right. This music exhibits what it is like to transcend our human capacity for messing things up. Bach shows us how things ought to be. If we are of a certain mind, we see a little bit of redeemed creation.

At the same time that we are reveling in the beauty of a bit of redeemed, transformed creation, we may also, if we are so disposed, begin to understand that there is more here than we can grasp. Ultimately, we cannot distill the essence of this musical greatness, and define it. This music seems to be finally elusive, and to point beyond itself to something that is mysterious and ineffable.

Understanding great music in this way is something like the Eastern Orthodox tradition of contemplating an icon. According to historian Peter Brown, icons, though created by a human artist, can be understood as “little pools of order in this world which would bring to earth a touch of the true, inviolable glory of heaven.” Icons are also sometimes described as mirrors of heavenly realities, and as windows into heaven.

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Readings

Hosea 1:2-10

Colossians 2:6-15

As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the universe, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have come to fullness in him, who is the head of every ruler and authority. In him also you were circumcised with a spiritual circumcision, by putting off the body of the flesh in the circumcision of Christ; when you were buried with him in baptism, you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it.

Luke 11:1-13

Jesus was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” He said to them, “When you pray, say: ‘Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial.’” And he said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.’ And he answers from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.’ I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs. So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”

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