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| from Eric Whitacre's Facebook page |
Conductor John Eliot Gardiner writes in the CD notes, “Whatever one’s own beliefs, how can one doubt that a sense of God’s grace was manifest to Bach in all the music he was composing, rehearsing and performing – always assuming that it was done in the spirit of devotion? Christoph Wolff refers to Bach’s ‘never-ending musical empiricism, which deliberately tied theoretical knowledge to practical experience’, and suggests that his compositions ‘as the exceedingly careful elaborations that they are, may epitomise nothing less than the difficult task of finding for himself an argument for the existence of God – perhaps the ultimate goal of his musical science’ (J S Bach, The Learned Musician)."
The text for BWV 24 is Luke 6:24-30, “judge not that you be not judged.” The text and music take up the themes of hypocrisy and honesty, which he are also themes of his Fourth Sunday of Advent cantatas. For instance, here in 24, Bach uses strings and a bass accompagnato to make a strong point about hypocrisy, which he follows by gentler measures for the tenor and oboe for penitential and then pastoral effect.
Hypocrisy is a brood concocted by Belial.
Those who wear that mask
dress in the devil’s livery.
What? Do Christians
covet such things too?
Alas! Honesty is difficult to achieve.
Although the text beseeches God for a clear conscious, the cantata's more pastoral atmosphere is much less sorrowfully penitential than the previous Sunday’s cantatas.
Let constancy and truth
be the base of all your thoughts,
may the words of your mouth
be the thoughts of your heart.
Being good and virtuous
makes us like God and angels.
In the CD notes, Gardiner explains in some detail how, in BWV 185, Bach took a comparatively uninspired text that paraphrases the same Gospel lesson and took it to beautiful places.
Forgive, and you shall be forgiven;
give in good measure during this life;
store up a capital which there one day
God shall repay with ample interest;
for with the same measure that ye mete withal,
it shall be measured to you again.
BWV 177, meanwhile, contains no recitatives but is a setting of a Johann Agricola hymn. Gardiner writes about the way Bach opens with concertino violin and two oboes, then full strings, then he introduces three lower voices to create a penitential effect. The arias are contrasted with moments in turn happy, poignant, and anxious.
Grant that I, from the depths of my heart,
may forgive my enemies,
forgive me also at this hour,
give me a new life;
let Thy Word always be the food
with which to nourish my soul, and defend me
when misfortune draws nigh
and threatens to sweep me away.
What is the difference between hypocrisy and inconsistency in one's faith? To me, hypocrisy denotes intentional falseness and dishonesty, while inconsistency denotes human weakness. I've known lots and lots of people who, like me, aren't consistent in their faith, but I would hate to be judgmental and call even the most obnoxious among them "hypocrites." Like me, they may have just been immature and poorly self-aware, saddled with personality traits and weaknesses not yet matured through the Spirit. We pray for constancy and truth, goodness and virtue, and a consistent faith.
I wonder if a really consistent kind of faith is something like what Christoph Wolff (above) writes: an ongoing effort to draw closer to God and to increase in the understanding of God. In our faith pilgrimage, we seek to "argue" so to speak for the existence of God, in the sense that we grow in faith in a God in whom we, through our experiences, trust----but also, we hope to prove God's existence to others, not only through our words but also the authenticity of our struggles and the honesty with which we live our faith.
As indicated in the CD notes, all English translations are by Richard Stokes.
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