February 1, 1980

NEW SOLIDARITY

Page 7

Music: Vivian Freyre Zoakos

The 'Politics' of a Bach Motet

Some who attended the Jan. 27 fundraiser in Concord, N.H. for Lyndon LaRouche's Democratic presidential campaign, may have wondered at the performance of J.S. Bach's religious motet Jesu, Meine Freude at such a forthrightly political event. Many recalled being profoundly moved by the piece in their youth. But wasn't Bach, although a great composer, a churchman foremost, a staunch Lutheran who frowned on earthly free will and politics? Amen. Bach was a churchman, but one who used the church for its proper purpose, as St. Paul founded ita political bastion against the Roman oligarchy and its designs to bring about a dark age. Soprano Kathy Burdman and John Sigerson, the director of the Musicians for LaRouche choir that performed the motet in Concord, have shown that Bach's composition ironically brings out precisely the concept of free will that the great Neoplatonic Apostle Paul insisted upon, but that Luther denied. Bach used two texts for the five-part piece, written on the scale of a grand mass, in the dominant tonality of E minor. The first is a lovely little 1653 Lutheran chorale (hymn) with text by Johann Franck and theme by Johann Crger based, as was often the case, on a secular melody. This chorale was requested by the Leipzig postmistress for whose memorial service the piece was written. It had also previously served as the basis for a fine motet (polyphonic religious piece) by Buxtehude, Bach's teacher. But Bach, by alternating Franck's six verses with five selections from chapter 8 of St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, makes it clear that there is one

level (at least) of consciousness beyond that of the Lutheran. The chorale verses put forth the concept of the speaker as the "bride'' of Christ, protected against the dangers of sin and the outside world. This is coherent with Luther's conception of man "who must completely despair of himself in order to become fit to obtain the grace of Christ." In contrast, St. Paul used his epistle to the church in Rome the very center of the evil alliance of landowners and financiers against whom the Christian "conspiracy" as well as the Jewish humanist Philo of Alexandria were workingto develop the notion of two levels of law. The first, the Jewish Ten Commandments, functioned to raise man above bestiality. But the "new law" of Christianity, Paul argues, allows man to supersede the old law from the level of Reason. His argument reaches a high point in Romans chapter 8. How does Bach express this dialogue musically? He begins with the first verse of Frank's words ("Jesu, my joy, My heart's repose, Jesus my treasure. Oh, how long, how long Does my heart beat and long for thee. Lamb of God, my bridegroom. No one on earth is dearer to me") set to a straightforward four-part version of the Crger chorale melody. Verse 2 of the Lutheran hymn is similar, although Bach adds a fifth voice and introduces new motion into the tenor and bass parts. But in between, he inserts the first two verses of Romans 8, set to their own free counterpoint. The second Pauline verse establishes the central point: For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. Interestingly, Bach sets this to a subtle trio, drawing back from the dramatic effects of the many-voiced chorus. Next, as if to fulfill this new "law" of freedom, the third verse of the chorale, ("Despite the Old Dragon") is a completely free contrapuntal variation of the chorale melody. Yet even this, which Sigerson has noted is extremely close to Buxtehude's version of the same words, is not real freedom for Bach. He follows it by a return to Romans, on the words, "You are not however of the flesh, but of the spirit, so long as God's spirit dwelleth in you," and here he writes an organ-like fugue that shuns the supercharged emotion of the preceding passage. In the fugue and its coda, where St. Paul warns "But he who hath not Christ's spirit, is not of him," Bach achieves a more intense level of emotionunder the command of Reason.

After this point, there are more variations on the chorale. One of these prefigures Beethoven in being so distant from the first melody that the reintroduction of the chorale tune in the middle, alto voice comes as a shock to the listener, reminding him of how far we have come. To be truly free, we must be conscious of how our freedom developed, Bach is saying. Understanding freedom in this wayas the process of continually developing higher laws through Reasonis precisely the content of true politics. And that is why the LaRouche campaign is introducing great music, including Bach's "religious" works, into the political process in America this year.