Mus. 230
Oct. 21, 1997
Prof. Freedman
[Please use with CD: Das Kantatenwerk Vol. 20 (Haverford MCD 560 v. 20)]
According to Rowell, "Musical composition became much longer, and composer were forced to evolve new means of maintaining unity and continuity over long time spans" during the Baroque period. Therefore, the texture of music became very important. When I look at the musical texutre of the Cantata No. 78 by J. S. Bach, I realized that this piece was unified very well within a movement and as a whole piece by many techniques. Some of those techniques were found in the text, and the others were in the music.
First of all, the text is well organized in terms of its unity. The piece has seven movements. According to Fuller, "The first and last movements adopt the text of an established mid-seventeenth-century chorale by Johann Rist. The middle movements have new text by an unknown poet who occasionally quotes or paraphrases middle stanzas of the chorale." Moreover, this unknown pot himself repeates some words in the text.
Also, those repeated words are often supported by music to emphasize the unity as a whole piece. For example, the word "Ewigkeit (eternity)" is originally in the seventh movement, and it is also sung in the sixth movement. The one in the seventh movement is at the very end of the piece with a fermate on the top of half note (p. 543, m. 16). So the note can be extended as much as it needs to express the word, "eternity." The one in the sixth movement is also a long note (p. 540-541, m. 37-38, 49-51). The word is associated with a whole note, half note and 1/8 note tied into 61/2 beats to express its meaning. Those two sections of the piece with the word, "Ewigkeit," and similar music expression would make a strong connection between the two movement.
Other examples which are similar to this are the relationship between "Wenn Christen an dich glauben (If Christians believe in you)" in the sixth movement (p. 540, m. 32-36) and "Herr, ich glaube (Lord, I beleve)" in the seventh movement (p. 543, m. 1). The one in the sixth movement is paraphrased from the one in the seventh movement. The phrase in the sixth movement is a conditional phrase with the word "If." Therefore, it is repeated three time with a fast melody, and the music would not give a solid and stable feeling. On the other hand, the phrase in the seventh movement is a positive statement, so the music has defined and stable sound; four voices sing four 1/4 note on beats simultaneously. This contrasting relationship would also make a distinctive connection between the two movements.
According to Fuller, "The five middle movements alternate between aria and recitative and are freely composed (p 545)." There are two recitatives in this piece, the third and the fifth movements. Interestingly, two phrases; "Schmerz und Pein (the grief and pain)" (p. 531, m. 15-17: p. 535, m. 10-12) and "Kraft (strength)," (p. 531, m. 11-12: p. 535, m. 6-7) are sung in both movements. Those phrases do not have direct musical relationship, but their existances in two recitatives would link the music as a whole piece.
Moreover, close attention to the ending syllables of each verse will leads to a new discovery in the text structure. As I mensioned before, the texts for the first and the last movements are adoptation of pre-existed chorale. The technique of repeated the same ending syllables are already used in those two movements. For example, the first and the third verses of the first movement end in "le" sound, and the second and forth verses of the same movement end in "od/t" sound, and so on. Before Bach composed this cantata, this ending syllable pattern was already established in those two movements. However, when the unnkown poet wrote the rest of the poem, he continued to use this technique. Therefore, the ending syllables in all movement have some regularity. This ending syllable pattern are not directly associated with similar musical pattern, however, since the syllables are transposed to sound, this pattern would provids some regularity through out the piece. Those pieces of words which often are associated with music would help connecting seven movements into one whole piece o music.
As a length of piece gets longer, a composer needs to come up with more techniques to maintain unity. In case of the first movement, which is 144 measures long, Bach uses the technique of "variation over the common bass line." The common bass line is a descending cromatic phrase. At the beginning of the movement, this phrase is played by the continuo part. After it is repeated twice, the oboe takes over the phrase. Then, when the voices start singing, they begin with a short descending cromatic phrase. This descending cromatic phrase is played by different instruments at different time, and sometimes it disappears, but it always comes back in the music until the end of the movement. By composing variations over this descending cromatic phrase, Bach keeps the unity of the longest movement among the whole Cantata No. 78.
At last, the first movement and the last movement have a very strong relationship to keep unity as a whole piece. One of the two factors is that the melody from the last movement is sung in the several parts of the first movement. In the first movement, soprano always sings at the end of the phrase without any repeated word from the text. The melody of the soprano line is always the same melody as the last movement, and the soprano sing the melody in the same order as it sung in the last movement. For example,both movements are constructed by eight verses, and the melody of the first verse in the last movement is used for the verse of the first movement and so on. [Examples; verse 1, verse 2, verse 3, verse 4, verse 5, verse 6, verse 7, verse 8]
The second factor is that the harmonic developments in both the first movement and the last movement are the same. In order to see the similarlity of the harmonic developments, I need to devide the first movement into eight sections according to cadence. The eight sections are: A; m.1-m. 17, B; m. 17-m. 36, C; m. 36-m. 49, D; m. 49-m. 68, E; m. 68-m. 85, F; m. 85-m. 99, G; m. 99-m. 121, H; m. 121-m. 144. Then, it becomes clear to see that both movements start from harmonic minor, modulate to Bb major, and return to g harmonic minor again. Also, the eight major cadences in both movement has the same harmonic development:
g minor I - V - I - V V - I
Bb major V - I
Therefore, it is very possible to state that the first movement is composed with the base upon the music structure of the last movement.
The Cantata No. 78 is a very long piece of music, so the poet and the composer needed to come up with techniques to maintain its unity. For example, there are several repeated words to connect some movements together, repeated ending syllables to provide regularity in the whole piece, variation over the common bass line, and common musical development in the first and the last movement to round up as a whole piece. I believe that the fact of bringing the very basic music structure at the last movement and putting the most developed one in the first movement has very strong impact of unity. Since the music starts from much more developed and broader sense, and it has a direction towards more basic but focused and concentrated sense, it would develop the feeling of returning to home or rounding up to a whole piece.