Johann Sebastian Bach
        The Six Motets

* Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied
* Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf
* Komm, Jesu, komm
* Jesu, meine Freude
* Fuerchte dich nicht, ich bin bei dir
* Lobet dem Herren, alle Heiden

Bachchor Stockholm
Concentus musicus Wien/Nikolaus Harnoncourt
Teldec 242881-2 Total time: 62:37

Summary for the Busy Executive: Glorious.

We owe most of Bach's motets to commissions.  As one of his cantorial
duties, he had to provide music for funerals.  Most of the time, he could
rely on a standard collection of funeral motets.  However, an important or
even wealthy family could ask for (and pay for) something new.  At least
five families did and received masterpieces.  Scholars, however, have cast
doubt on the authenticity of Lobet dem Herren.  The earliest known edition
dates from 1821, well after the composer's death, and the autograph (if
there ever was one) is lost.  Compared to the other five, it's a bit
lightweight.  On the other hand, I know of no composer at the time who rose
to even this level of choral writing other than Bach, except his son C.  P.
E.  Now Handel is, of course, a great choral writer, but his style differs
from Bach, particularly the consistency of the counterpoint.  If it turns
out that somebody not Bach wrote it, this unknown very likely had some
contact with Bach.

I've sung four of the motets - all but Jesu, meine Freude and Fuerchte
dich nicht.  They represent by far the hardest choral pieces I've ever
performed, and I've sung Schoenberg, Ives, Webern, Ligeti, Hindemith,
and Beethoven's Missa Solemnis.  At the time I sung them, almost forty
years ago, generally performers did them a cappella.  This increases the
difficulty by a lot.  Now, however, scholars believe that Bach doubled
the voices with instruments.  On the one hand, it leads to more secure
performances.  On the other, nothing else approaches the excitement
of these works a cappella.  Their main difficulty (still there with
instruments, by the way) lies in their contrapuntal complexity - bringing
out the main line and keeping the rest of the texture present but clear.
The texture can become quite complex, particularly in the motets for
double choir: Singet dem Herrn, Der Geist hilft unser Schwachheit auf,
Komm, Jesu, komm, and Fuerchte dich nicht.  Textural clarity requires
rhythmic precision, knowing the important line at any point in the score,
dead-on intonation, and the ability to sing lightly and incisively at
the same time.  Very few choirs operate at such a level.  My (very good)
college choir worked on Singet dem Herrn for an entire school year, six
days a week, two to three hours a day.  Most performances we still didn't
nail it, but when we did, we soared.

Jesu, meine Freude ("Jesus, my joy") is by the far the longest of the
motets.  Scholars also believe it the earliest.  The structure resembles
the early cantatas, like No. 4 (Christ lag in Todesbanden): movements
symmetrical around a point and nearly all variations on a chorale tune - in
this case (no surprise), "Jesu meine Freude." The motet dates from roughly
1723.  Bach puts into it a tremendous variety of mood, texture, and choral
"orchestration," as a list of the movements amply demonstrates.

* Chorale setting
* 5-part dramatic chorus, florid variations on the chorale,
    in the manner of an instrumental ripieno
* Chorale, with flourishes
* Setting in the manner of a trio sonata
     (soprano, soprano, alto)
* 5-part dramatic chorus, florid variations on the chorale,
    in the manner of an instrumental ripieno
* 5-part double fugue
* Chorale, with florid variations
* Setting in the manner of a trio sonata
     (alto, tenor, bass)
* Chorale prelude (soprano, soprano, alto, tenor
     - melody in alto)
* 5-part dramatic chorus (repeats #2 with different text)
* Chorale setting (repeats #1 with different text)

As in most of Bach's choral music, the words drive not only the music's
rhythm, but also its mood..  Bach highlights dramatically individual words
as well - notably, the repetitions of the word "nichts" (nothing) in the
second movement.  These are heavy, broad blows of single chords, to remind
you how final "nothing" really is.

Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied ("Sing to the Lord a new song") I find the
most elaborate of the series.  It sets two choirs against one another.
In the first movement, one choir lightly sets the beat in quarters, with
an exhortation to sing ("singet").  Against this, the other choir begins,
a voice at a time, a florid line, ecstatically doing just that.  The music
moves with a stride as grand as Bach's own cantata No. 50 Nun ist das Heil
und die Kraft ("Now is the glory and the power"), with the same radiant
dancing figures about the beat, until at one point the beat disappears and
the dancing figures take off, as if flung into space, while both choirs
join in the command to praise God with dance, timbrel, and harp.  The
second movement, most directly connected with a funeral, pits the second
choir, singing a chorale on the fragility of human life, against a florid
commentary on God's mercy.  The two choirs proceed in antiphonal fashion,
a kind of call and response, but the really interesting thing is the music
is completely independent.  You could sing all one choir or all the other
with nary a bump.  The finale returns to the antiphonal praise of God,
moving very much like the Magnificat's "Sicut locutus est." Unlike that
chorus, however, it's not a fugue, but a lead into one, on the words "Alles
was Odem hat, lobet dem Herrn" ("let everything that has breath praise the
Lord") - another example of Bach's (in this case, literally) breathtaking
word-painting.  At the announcement of fugal subject, the choirs join.
Bach writes the subject in one huge, melismatic (many notes per syllable)
arc, and you're not supposed to break the line by gulping in air.  By the
way, this is a problem with one-to-a-part Bach.  Not many singers have
the wind to make it all the way to the end.  The fugue moves in dancing
triple-time to an ending that caps off everything that's gone on before.

Komm, Jesu, komm ("Come, Jesus, come") strikes me as the most influential
of the set, since one can hear very clearly what Brahms stole for his
choral motets.  The text talks about the weariness of life and the soul's
rest in Jesus.  The music begins somber and stately, as the two choirs toss
the music back and forth.  "Grieving" semitonal dissonances and a highly
chromatic harmonic environment convey the instability of life.  The first
section breaks up into highly contrasting mini-sections.  Bach also works
a radiant pastoral vein Brahms also revisited, particularly in his Ach
Heiland, reiss die Himmel auf ("O Savior, rip open the heavens").  The
motet ends with the two choirs united in a floridly elaborated chorale.

Der Geist hilf unser Schwachheit auf ("The Holy Spirit helps our
weakness"), again for double choir, begins antiphonally, again like
an instrumental ripieno, moves to two fugal movements - the first for
double choir (wow!), the second for the choirs combined - and ends with
a straight chorale.  The textures become very thick indeed, and yet the
music, inspired by the text, implies lightness almost throughout.  It's
awfully hard not to tromp through this one.

For me, Fuerchte dich nicht, ich bin bei dir ("Fear not, I am with you")
shows the greatest formal freedom of the set, and that's saying something.
Again, it breaks into mini-sections, with dramatic exclamations which upset
the overall flow of the music, and allow Bach to turn to new thoughts.
But the transitions and the exclamations are always appropriate to the
spiritual drama laid out by the text.  Eventually, we get to a fugue
decorating a chorale tune - the same general sort of thing as one finds
in Art of the Fugue with the "kingly theme." The subject is almost all
semitones, this time expressing yearning and anticipation, rather than
sorrow.  The tension generated by this kind of corkscrew subject finally
dissipates in a final declamatory affirmation from God that the soul is
his.

Now, it takes a choir that doesn't suck just to get through these pieces.
It takes a great choir to do them badly.  It takes an even better, even
luckier choir than that to convey the wonder and drama of the music.  I'll
say right now that my favorite performance was from the Aeolian Singers, I
assume a pick-up group of the top British ensemble singers of the Sixties.
Naturally, British Decca has never transferred it to CD. It's a cappella
and an heroic achievement.  Everything moves, everything's clear, the
dances dance, the laments grieve.  Furthermore, they do it with what sounds
to me like a fairly full vocal tone.  The style is more Romantic than what
one usually hears these days, but the drama comes through like gangbusters.
As far as I know, there is no a cappella recording currently available.

That said, I would consider the following at least acceptable: Harry
Christophers and The Sixteen on Hyperion; John Eliot Gardiner on Erato,
Herreweghe on Harmonia Mundi, and Harnoncourt.  I don't care for Rilling's
Bach at all.  He manages to kill most of the music's life.  Kurt Thomas is
simply too heavy.  Eric Ericson, a choral legend, has a recording I haven't
heard, so I can't comment on.  Nobody current slam-dunks all six motets.
In all these recordings, different motets come off better than others.  The
Sixteen sing with a fuller tone, though still not noticeably robust, than
the others.  They keep the clarity.  But, unusual for this group, they
often don't seem to know what they're singing about (Jesu, meine Freude is
a notable exception).  Gardiner's and Harnoncourt's groups do much better,
but even they catch fire only in fits and starts.  Harnoncourt does fine in
very complex, rapid movements.  His precision serves him well and the choir
sounds as if they're having fun, as they should, even though they're
probably working like dogs.  I prefer Gardiner's sound to Harnoncourt's,
which for some reason goes dead in the more straightforward movements.
It's as if someone's yanked the plug on life support.  Still, there are
tremendous performances here - Singet dem Herrn and Lobet den Herren
especially - and a Harnoncourt fan might very likely find what struck me as
dead spots as elegance.  Similarly, one might think of Rilling as honest
and sturdy, even though I find him incredibly monochromatic and wooden.
One's Bach is like one's religion.  It's extremely personal and, past a
certain point, should not be argued over.

Steve