PROGRAM NOTES UNDERWRITTEN BY THOMAS WARD

By the time Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) was reaching the peak of his ability, the Lutheran chorale tradition – like the Lutheran Reformation itself – was already two centuries old. American audiences can understand a chorale as being essentially synonymous with a hymn. Luther began a practice of translating sacred texts into German. For greater absorption of the spiritual message, he also composed or adapted melodies that were easily singable by the general public. Over time, supporting voices were added to create a richer texture. Eventually the familiar four-part (SATB) scoring became standard, though a wealth of variations on that model continued to flourish.

An important offshoot of the chorale tradition was its transfer to the organ – not to accompany voices but in place of those forces. The chorale prelude became one of the signature forms that all church organists had to master. In one sense, these pieces reinforced the melody and message of older chorales; it is plausible to suggest that organ chorale preludes emerged as elaborate introductions to moments of congregational singing. Early examples appeared under Samuel Scheidt in the 1620s, though their highest expression did not arrive until the generation of Buxtehude and Böhm after 1660. By that time and continuing in the majestic examples created by Bach, chorale preludes became grand expositions far too long for normal liturgical function except as postludes or on special occasions.

During the period he served as court organist to the deeply pious and musical Duke of Saxe-Weimar, Bach composed a massive amount of organ music. Near the very end of his life, he gathered many of these early pieces into a collection called the Great Eighteen Chorale Preludes. The final prelude in the collection offers a setting of Vor deinen Thron (Before Thy Throne, BWV 668), nicknamed the “Deathbed Chorale.” The story grew that Vor deinen Thron was the very last piece written out or perhaps dictated by Bach – who was completely blind from failed cataract surgery, having suffered a stroke, and seeking to put certain musical affairs in order.

The chorale’s structure is simple and transparent, qualities that also pertain to the chorale tune itself. The melody of French origin dates back to the 1540s. Bach would have first known it by different words: “Wenn wir in höchsten Nöten sein” (When we are in direst need). The contrapuntal layers present in Vor deinen Thron can be heard clearly in the string quartet version performed today. Overall, the first violin performs only the four phrases of the original cantus firmus melody, separated in time by intricate polyphony between second violin, viola, and cello. For instance, during the introduction (measures 1-7), Bach overlaps the chorale tune (in viola) with its inversion (second violin), joined shortly by the cello before the staid, long-note values of the first violin are heard. This pattern repeats three more times, with each string trio interlude exploring portions of the main melody in astounding contrapuntal detail. Those details are fascinating, but they would matter little if the overall work did not carry such a solemn, elegaic tone perfectly in sync with the message:

Before Thy throne I now appear,
O Lord, bow down Thy gracious ear
To me, and cast not from Thy face
Thy sinful child that sues for grace.

It is easy to see how this specific chorale absorbed the dramatic aura hovering over Bach’s final hours.

Vor deinen Thron was appended to another contrapuntal project that surrounded Bach’s last days on earth: Die Kunst der Fuge. Left incomplete at his death on July 28, 1750, The Art of Fugue survives in Bach’s own hand in a copy written out in 1745. Hence it would be incorrect to regard The Art of Fugue as Bach’s purposeful “last will.” This collection gathers diverse contrapuntal pieces unified by a single motto theme. It epitomizes Bach’s desire to comprehensively explore, sometimes in breathtaking detail, the musical possibilities inherent in a deceptively simple melody. (A similar purpose inspired the contemporaneous Musical Offering.) The end results are fourteen fugues, each called a “contrapunctus,” and four canons arranged in order of increasing complexity. Different fugues present the motto theme upright, inverted, expanded and contracted in terms of rhythm, with numerous counterthemes, and in various styles and articulations.

Contrapunctus No. 14, which ends the collection, is as interesting for what it includes as for what it does not include. Lasting ten minutes and touching on three distinct themes, it is the only piece in The Art of Fugue that does not include the motto. However, it does feature a fugue built on the significant pitch pattern B-flat/ A / C / B-natural. In the German pitch naming system, B-flat is labeled “B” and B-natural is “H,” thus spelling B / A / C / H. Bach did not complete the piece; the manuscript copy cuts off mid-phrase. Some have seen the absence of the motto as a reason to exclude this fugue from the collection. Others believe Bach may have been leading up to a grand motto-based finish that he did not have time to write before his sight failed.

Although Bach’s reputation today is almost without equal, he was not “famous” during his own lifetime. Certainly he enjoyed high stature in his central German circle of friends, family, and professional colleagues. After his death, some of Bach’s works circulated in printed copies and others were shared in manuscript or by word of mouth. Several generations later, a new group of composers – figures like Beethoven, Schumann, and Mendelssohn – helped ignite a revival that has only grown in strength to the present day, extending from America to the Far East.

Bach’s influence on Russian composers has been particularly strong. One factor, apart from the “textbook” knowledge passed down by his music, is the spiritual richness that helped sustain musicians through the Stalinist night. Like Shostakovich before her, Sofia Gubaidulina (1931-2025) fell into official disfavor with Soviet authorities. For many years she could not get her music performed or published. She managed to survive by writing music for film – a long and illustrious tradition among Soviet composers – while satisfying her personal ambition by composing “for the desk drawer,” as Shostakovich described his hidden efforts.

Gubaidulina held an openly elitist notion about art. She believed in creating challenging music. That stance was irreconcilable with Socialist Realism, which demanded above all else that music be accessible to every comrade. Bach had always been a source of inspiration and guidance for Gubaidulina. “I keep learning from him,” she wrote, regarding Bach as the ideal blend of a “masterly conception of form and a fiery temperament.”

Gubaidulina heard a deeply spiritual element in Bach’s Vor deinen Thron setting, the basis for her Meditation on a Bach Chorale (1993), commissioned by the Bach Society of Bremen: “The four developmental sections – each concluded by a line of the chorale – represent the four stages of a journey that the music must traverse before the chorale can resound in its entirety. This also symbolizes the ascent of Bach’s soul.” At the same time, Gubaidulina explores esoteric connections based in numerology that she finds at work. These center on striking relationships between the number of notes, significant structural markers, and coded references to the letters comprising Bach’s name. As a result, Gubaidulina’s Meditation maintains a tenuous connection to the familiar chorale melody while also ascending, via dissonance and modern string effects, to eerie realms far beyond conventional tonality.

Bach composed six Brandenburg Concertos in 1721 during his tenure in Cöthen, the Calvinist court where secular instrumental music took precedence over sacred music. Each concerto explores a different combination of solo instruments and varying degrees of coordination between the soloists and the full orchestra (the latter group also known as the ripieno or ritornello). Among the most popular of Bach’s Brandenburgs is the spectacular Concerto No. 5, a draft of which dates to 1719. Several aspects of this concerto deserve comment. First, Bach achieves a dovetailing of thematic heads and tails in the first movement that strongly influenced the “classical” concerto strategies of Mozart and Haydn. Second, this work probably offers Bach’s earliest use of transverse (side-blown) flute in an ensemble setting. Third, nothing grabs our attention like the unaccompanied keyboard cadenza in the first movement. Indeed, some listeners regard Brandenburg No. 5 as a keyboard concerto in all but name.

For ears accustomed to later cadenzas, Bach’s achievement will hardly sound new. But such a structural interruption was unprecedented in ensemble concertos of the early 18th century. It is not the music per se that is remarkable, but the bold assertion of one voice above the many-voiced texture of the concerto grosso. Bach makes the keyboard part far more rhythmically active than the others throughout the first movement. Thus, from the start he plants a seed for the keyboard’s eventual liberation from the other players. Imagine Bach himself directing a performance from the keyboard, simply indulging his improvisatory fancy at this point. Imagine, as well, the chagrin of flute and violin soloists during this display, awaiting a chance to somehow get back in, rolling their eyes as the “old man” goes off on another tangent.

The second movement offers a broad meditation in B minor. Many phrases begin with imitation between flute and violin, whereas the keyboard now stays modestly in the background. After cadences in a series of closely-related keys, Bach returns to the main theme in B minor for the final phrase. It is not a full-scale recapitulation, as will become de rigueur in the later 18th century. Still, the rounded return of the main theme/key gives a satisfying degree of polish.

The finale opens with counterpoint between flute and violin, joined after eight measures by the keyboard. The ripieno does not even come in until the first strong cadence in a secondary key. Even though the full ensemble plays a majority of the time thereafter, Bach’s opening paragraph for the soloists gives them a marked prominence. At one point he flirts with another keyboard cadenza, but the other players, by now, are wise to his tricks. They seize the first possible moment to jump back into the action and carry the movement through to a strident, ensemble finish.

Jason Stell, © 2026