Back in September, bored at work and looking for a little inspiration, I started listening to some of Bach's cantatas.  I'd had some minimal exposure to them in the past, but largely they were pretty new to me.  The first one I played was "Nun Komm der Heider Heiland" (Come, Redeemer of the Gentiles), BWV 61.  The whole cantata is immensely enjoyable, but it was a short arioso passage (the fourth movement) which captivated me, and which really got me thinking,

       Often, the pleasure (at least on a purely sensual level) Bach's music gives is similar to that of being in a Jacuzzi. He sprays forth jets of musical ideas which come so fast and are so effortlessly intertwined that we as listeners perceive them as a never-ending stream. The impact of any one statement of a motive is often numbed, but the pleasure derives from the way they mingle and dance with each other between harmonies and among registers. The music's effect can sweep you off your feet and carry you along in its wake. Even the solo string music is full of this kind of writing. But this movement is one of those types of things that you sort of forget that Bach is just as great at. He doesn't need his gifts for burbling, everywhere-at-once polyphony. He doesn't need his cathedralesque large-scale structures, or the incredible verve his rhythmic drive can muster. You can dismantle the hall of mirrors that spin out his motives and melodies into the forms they occupy, and guess what? Like an action hero who when stripped of his guns, grabs a hammer or reaches for the rusty chainsaw, limitations only enhance Bach's creativity.

        The preceding movement (Komm Jesu, komm) is full of the classic Bach tricks I just mentioned, with the floridly expressed intention of inviting Jesus down from heaven. And hey, they're good tricks for the purpose. Why wouldn't Jesus want to mosey on down to the earthly plane, when you're asking him in a skippy, carefree 9/8 rhythm? It almost sounds like Bach's asking him to come jump rope and eat peanut butter and banana sandwiches.

       So now that Jesus has been asked to come, we as audience members can lean back and wait for the the logical next step in the narrative arc of the cantata: the clouds parting and Jesus coming forth to redeem the Gentiles with a knowing grin and a high-five. Maybe we'll get some trumpets, some kettle drums, a nice aria, you know, something with some real pomp and flash. After all, we've been waiting for the guy for a long time.

So of course, Bach starts it like this:

       A quiet, dissonant plink. That's the whole idea, this one discrete particle of information, this little singularity. Then there's another. And another. Quickly, the plinks begin adding up, but they don't bear the collective weight that the individual notes of a motive or counter-subject might. Instead, they interact with the surrounding silence in a way that is difficult to explain, but easy to feel. As each one vanishes, you are left hearing the silence where it had been. The next plink disturbs the silence and catches the ear, and so on. With all this silence you can hear the echo in the hall, the physicality of the space. We have attained an intimacy the previous movements didn't have.

        Of course, the rhetorical implication of the plinks is evident once Jesus begins to sing. See, see, he tells us. I've been knocking at your door, over and over. The plinks are as close to a literal depiction of knocking as you can get; on the surface, it's Text Painting 101. But the way they're executed is a brilliantly subtle stroke of characterization. Imagine if you had to knock on someone's door till they opened it. You might start with a more assertive, loud burst of knocks (the beginnings of Beethoven's 5^th and Mahler's 2^nd symphonies know something about this). But after a while, you'd get tired and frustrated. The knocking would become an empty gesture, it would slow down. If out of sheer dogged love or stubbornness you were really determined to not leave, you might settle on something like the knock in this movement: audible but not forceful, with a determinedly consistent rhythm.

Now imagine you are the person in the house, and there is someone at the door you would really rather not deal with right now. Your attention is drawn to the space between the knocks, just like the listener's ear. Did they leave? Can you hear them out there, awkwardly shuffling around on your porch? The knocks themselves are quiet enough to ignore, but they remind you that in between the last knock and the current one, the presence of this person at the door has continued unabated. Each time you hear a knock, you're going to feel a little weirder about not answering. The way this one little idea puts you so deeply into the music's world both pictorially and psychologically makes one think of Schubert's piano accompaniments for his lieder, of all things. That's certainly not something that can be often said of Bach's music.

        The slow arch that this movement takes is also pretty remarkable, for Bach or any other composer for that matter. The overall harmonic plan is a movement from e to G, minor to relative major. There are no internal perfect authentic cadences* in this movement, so the whole movement scans as one long phrase. But what's especially cool to me is since this whole shape leads inexorably to the moment of cadence in the new key, Bach manages to use that moment as the dramatic crux of the movement. The wind-up to it takes quite a long time. First, the second two lines of the text move from e minor imperfectly to G major, whose attainment coincides with the word “auftung”, or open. This seems like a happy development in the narrative, but the phrase doesn't feel over yet. What follows is an expansion of G major, a sort of running through of a quick-hit list of all the key's most typical chords in an order that leads back to the dominant. Meanwhile, Jesus seems to be making a lot of progress in the text. First, he's going in the house, then having supper with the person who let him in. The speed of declamation and the harmonic rhythm are at their fastest at this point in the recit, which builds drama for the last moment.

        For the last few words, the speed of declamation slows down again, as if for emphasis. They are being sung over what our ears are telling us is going to finally be that perfect, finalizing cadence we have been waiting for. But this is Bach's last and best trick. At this moment when we are expecting a textbook cadence and an end to the movement, Bach pulls out the rug from under us and gives us a deceptive cadence, all of a sudden taking us back to e minor! What seemed like it was going to be a moment of triumph instead takes on an unexpectedly poignant cast. Of course, any music student knows that this surprise is one of the most basic tricks a composer can play on a listener. A beginning theory student can sit down and play keep-away using the exact same method (“my kid could've done that!” says the pedantic parent). But like so many things in life, music isn't about knowing how, it's about knowing when.

        First, consider the words. Strictly speaking, the last four words are redundant. We already know that Jesus sat down with the door-opener. So we have to wonder, what is the special meaning of reversing “I ate with him” to “he ate with me”? Bach has placed this line at such an important moment in the movement that he must attach special significance to it. The magical part is it's hard to know for sure what the significance is. You can sense it and taste it better than you can frame it with language. But since this is my blog, I'm going to try anyway.

        Until this moment, the movement seems be moving inexorably towards the cadence point. Then it stumbles. The knees of the man lifting a heavy load tremble for a moment. A quiver passes through the lips of the victor as he realizes what he has accomplished. In this way, Bach's one wayward harmony hints at a whole world of pain, struggle and uncertainty which the resolve and inevitability of the rest of the movement doesn't quite allow for, or otherwise masks. It's like Jesus's happiness at being united with the door-opener is tinged and made meaningful by his own human sufferings. He's not a detached, imperial , let-the-chips-fall-where-they-may god; in fact Bach seems to be concerned with making you feel how badly Jesus wants you. Suddenly, he becomes comprehensible, accessible through the prism of our earthly concerns. With this sudden pulse of emotion, we learn that Jesus, like Daft Punk, is only human after all.

        I realize that as an avowed atheist, it's a bit odd for me to be so strongly moved by this or really any vision of Jesus. But this is music. It speaks to the heart first and lets the mind comprehend the message as best it can. You don't have to believe in God because the lessons are universal. Sometimes in life, we're the person waiting forever at the door, and sometimes we're the person who just can't open it. Bach knows deeply what both positions are about, and he's not going to let us forget. If you're waiting, just stay strong and hold on. If you're hearing that knock, you have to swallow hard and face whatever's out there.

*For anyone less theoretically inclined out there, a perfect authentic cadence (PAC) is the most effective means we have of establishing a key in tonal music. The melody, harmony and the bassline move directly from the dominant chord (V) to the tonic chord (I). Prior to the 20^th century, composers almost always used them to delineate sections in a composition since they impart such a sense of finality. Conversely, their absence at what sounds like an ending usually tells us the phrase is going to continue or repeat.