The sacred and the profane in Bach's Cantata No. 140, 'Wachet auf'
The idea of the union of the soul with God.
Sometimes, in the middle of everydayness, I forget what that means. I forget that I have actually experienced something akin to what Johann Sebastian Bach must have felt, sitting alone at his organ in the darkening church, as the Word became flesh, as God poured the music through him, as he composed the 'Wachet auf' cantata (BWV 140). In this work, Bach interprets his rapture for the rest of us using the metaphor of earthly love, which is the closest most of us will come to God in this life.
The chorale tune that Bach uses as the framework for this piece represents, in my opinion, the conventional view that spirituality is a grave, solemn, and majestic phenomenon. In the first movement of the cantata, Bach almost hides this majesty beneath layers of breathless anticipation of delight. A band of virgins, who are the narrators of the first verse of the chorale, had been waiting so long (the Bridegroom was late) that they had fallen asleep. Suddenly they are woken by shouting—He is coming!—and they scurry around to light their lamps, with syncopated heartbeats. The contrast between majesty and urgency is achieved by assigning the melody to the soprano voice (doubled by horn), which sings it very slowly, one dotted half note to the measure, while the other three voices and the instruments (oboes and strings, plus bassoon, cello, and organ in the bass) weave a complicated thicket of counterpoint in quarter, eighth, and sixteenth notes. The three lower voices sing the same words as the soprano, but they repeat them over and over, they are so excited. The soprano, being the most prominent voice, is just able to hold its own above the hubbub. The instruments, meanwhile, rarely allude to the chorale tune. Most of the instrumental music is drawn from the ritornello that opens and closes the movement, and which is heard, in whole or in part, during pauses in the singing. There are three main themes in the ritornello: the first is a lively march which is almost a dance—like a march performed by a skipping child; next comes a breathless syncopated section; and finally the violins launch into a series of exuberant Vivaldi-like runs. Bach keeps returning to this definitely unsolemn ritornello throughout the movement to reinforce the feeling of excited anticipation among the young women, since the chorale tune itself represents perhaps the majesty of the approaching deity, while the frenetic other voices are the watchmen or other bystanders, exhorting the girls to vigilance. The ritornello returns in full at the end of the movement, and I can understand why some early listeners thought that Bach had gone too far into unsacred territory, for by the end the listener is swept away by the band of barefoot dancing windswept flower-petaled virgins, and perhaps the Savior has come and gone, and nobody even noticed.
Sometimes, in the middle of everydayness, I forget what that means. I forget that I have actually experienced something akin to what Johann Sebastian Bach must have felt, sitting alone at his organ in the darkening church, as the Word became flesh, as God poured the music through him, as he composed the 'Wachet auf' cantata (BWV 140). In this work, Bach interprets his rapture for the rest of us using the metaphor of earthly love, which is the closest most of us will come to God in this life.
The chorale tune that Bach uses as the framework for this piece represents, in my opinion, the conventional view that spirituality is a grave, solemn, and majestic phenomenon. In the first movement of the cantata, Bach almost hides this majesty beneath layers of breathless anticipation of delight. A band of virgins, who are the narrators of the first verse of the chorale, had been waiting so long (the Bridegroom was late) that they had fallen asleep. Suddenly they are woken by shouting—He is coming!—and they scurry around to light their lamps, with syncopated heartbeats. The contrast between majesty and urgency is achieved by assigning the melody to the soprano voice (doubled by horn), which sings it very slowly, one dotted half note to the measure, while the other three voices and the instruments (oboes and strings, plus bassoon, cello, and organ in the bass) weave a complicated thicket of counterpoint in quarter, eighth, and sixteenth notes. The three lower voices sing the same words as the soprano, but they repeat them over and over, they are so excited. The soprano, being the most prominent voice, is just able to hold its own above the hubbub. The instruments, meanwhile, rarely allude to the chorale tune. Most of the instrumental music is drawn from the ritornello that opens and closes the movement, and which is heard, in whole or in part, during pauses in the singing. There are three main themes in the ritornello: the first is a lively march which is almost a dance—like a march performed by a skipping child; next comes a breathless syncopated section; and finally the violins launch into a series of exuberant Vivaldi-like runs. Bach keeps returning to this definitely unsolemn ritornello throughout the movement to reinforce the feeling of excited anticipation among the young women, since the chorale tune itself represents perhaps the majesty of the approaching deity, while the frenetic other voices are the watchmen or other bystanders, exhorting the girls to vigilance. The ritornello returns in full at the end of the movement, and I can understand why some early listeners thought that Bach had gone too far into unsacred territory, for by the end the listener is swept away by the band of barefoot dancing windswept flower-petaled virgins, and perhaps the Savior has come and gone, and nobody even noticed.
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