This evening’s concert celebrates Johann Sebastian Bach’s(1685-1750) unrivaled mastery in counterpoint.  All listeners know what counterpoint is even if they do not have words ready to describe it.  At its most basic, counterpoint refers to multiple, usually contrasting ideas presented in conjunction with one another.  Counterpoint, by definition, implies the existence of a “point” or idea that is being countered.  In music the term refers to an overlapping of two or more independent melodies that harmonize when presented at the same time.  Such a structure becomes chaotic in normal everyday interactions, as when two speakers talk over each other, saying contrasting things.  But in music, when harmonized by the hand of a master, counterpoint helps elevate expressivity to something more sublime than the everyday.

The opening movement of Bach’s Cantata 192 amply demonstrates this claim.  Bach composed Nun danket alle Gott (commonly translated as “Now Thank We All Our God”) in May 1730 in Leipzig.  The central message, made clear by the title, is gratitude.  Bach decided to write just three movements: far fewer than normal for a sacred cantata.  He may have intended Trinitarian symbolism for Nun danket was composed for Trinity Sunday.  A three-movement structure also makes sense because the source text – penned by Lutheran theologian Martin Rinckart in the 1630s – also includes three stanzas.  Bach settled on an opening choral fantasia, followed by a duet for soprano and bass soloists, and closing with a vibrant gigue for all performers.

Rinckart’s first stanza and its accompanying hymn provide a critical focus for Bach’s opening movement.  The hymn tune would have been familiar to everyone in Bach’s audience.  However, he does not begin with the hymn tune.  Instead, an ebullient ritornello gets everything off to a rousing start.  Written in triple meter, the movement lilts by with an undeniable suggestion of dance.  During the ritornello Bach’s penchant for counterpoint is already evident.  Consider the two contrasting violin parts: first violins pour forth arpeggios, while second violins deliver a more static theme based on repeated eighth notes.  Two measures later, they swap parts, and the intricacy of intersecting melodies only grows from there.  At the entrance of the chorus, Bach introduces new melodic material growing contrapuntally from tenor to alto to bass.  The soprano is intentionally withheld in order to make a dramatic entrance with Rinckart’s hymn in long note values.

What makes this movement so compelling – and encapsulates what draws us powerfully to Bach – is the sense of completeness and saturation.  “Variety” seems too weak a word to reference Nun danket’s mix of contrasting rhythms (rapid figuration against long held notes), ranges (high strings and sopranos contrasted by low bass), textures (full ensemble versus reduced chamber scoring), and timbres (piercing winds, glittering strings, radiant voices), not to mention the multiple melodies that continuously bubble to the surface of our attention, sink back, and rise again.

Bach grew up surrounded by organ music of the North German tradition led Sweelinck, Buxtehude, Böhm, and Reincken.  These foundations remained relevant throughout his life. Bach’s Canonic Variations on Vom Himmel hoch (1748) come from the very end of his career.  As eyesight failed and mortality loomed large, Bach made several attempts to synthesize all that he knew about counterpoint.  Contemporaneous works include The Musical Offering and The Art of Fugue, heard later on tonight’s program.  Like Nun danket, the “Vom Himmel hoch” melody would have been easily recognized by Bach’s contemporaries.  Martin Luther penned this annunciation text, and probably the music as well, around 1534.  Over the next 200 years many composers used “Vom Himmel hoch” for vocal and instrumental settings; Bach himself employed it in his Magnificat, Christmas Oratorio, and numerous organ works.  Among the latter, these majestic Canonic Variations show the incredible complexity that counterpoint can attain.

As the title indicates, Bach has written a set of variations on a given theme (Luther’s chorale tune).  Easily heard by virtue of the long note values, the chorale usually appears in the pedal.  The performer can help the chorale melody stand out against contrasting themes, as in Variation I, by choosing the organ stops carefully.  However, a deeper level of counterpoint is also going on, bringing to bear the second term in Bach’s title: canon.  Simple canons at the unison or octave mean that both voices – call and response – begin on the same pitch.  In Variation I the two keyboard lines reveal canon at the octave, floating above and around the chorale tune in the pedal.  During the next two variations, Bach elevates his game via canons at the fifth (Var. II) and seventh (Var. III).  These are easy to spot when following the printed music, and some can be heard audibly.  In addition, the canonic voices are now based on the chorale tune itself!  Variation IV grows increasingly elaborate, combining the chorale, a new contrasting theme, and two canonic parts – the first being played twice as fast as its twin (augmentation).  Finally, Bach brings it all together for contrapuntal tour de force in Variation V: the chorale tune presented in canon at the sixth but with the answering voice flipped upside down (inversion), later canons at the second and ninth, and a brand new, active theme in the pedal.

Truth be told, a great deal of such intricacy cannot easily be detected by the ear alone.  Our listening experience thus involves both aesthetic enjoyment of the music – the sounds themselves – and an abstract delight from peering into Bach’s grand puzzle.  Bach is almost showing off here.  But his musical culture revelled in variation technique, counterpoint, and the kind of sophisticated play that reveals divine inspiration in the everyday world.

Bach’s Art of Fugue (Die Kunst der Fuge) stands at the end of his long and incredibly productive life. A mythical aura surrounds the work, and its puzzles have continued to exercise scholars for the last 250 years.  Left incomplete at Bach’s death on July 28, 1750, this is not a deathbed manuscript; almost all the material survives in his own handwritten copy made five years earlier.  This piece is unified by the presence of a single motto theme that provides the point of departure for nearly every subsequent fugue.  It epitomizes Bach’s desire to comprehensively explore, sometimes in breathtaking detail, the musical possibilities inherent in a deceptively simple melody.  The end results are fourteen fugues, each called “contrapunctus,” and four canons arranged in order of increasing complexity.

Contrapunctus No. 1 offers a straight-forward, four-voice fugue similar to those found in The Well-Tempered Clavier.  No. 4 inverts the theme as the basis of its lengthy fugal exploration. Once we get to Contrapunctus No. 7, much more is going on. Here the rhythmic speed of the theme comes into consideration, as Bach overlaps the original subject against versions with halved and doubled note values. The augmented voice is clearly heard at first in the cello. As if that weren’t enough, Contrapunctus No. 9 contains an astonishing double fugue. This is Bach’s counterpoint in all its glory: complex, invigorating, sublime.

INTERMISSION

Bach’s legacy to all genres of musical composition, excepting opera, are profound. And depending on who you ask, opinions differ about which works are his greatest gift to posterity.  One thing is certain: Bach was known during his lifetime primarily for church music, and he spent more waking hours writing cantatas than anything else.  He was charged to write cantatas weekly during his period in Leipzig, but examples also exist from as far back as his time in Arnstadt (1703-1707). In Leipzig he composed five complete cantata cycles, one for each Sunday in the liturgical year. Cantata 33, Allein zu Dir, Herr Jesu Christ, was first performed on September 3, 1724. Its text involves specific passages connected to the parable of the Good Samaritan, a topic Bach had already treated in an earlier cantata in 1723.

Among the highlights of Cantata 33 are two arias: a massive alto solo, lasting over nine minutes, and a lively duet for tenor and bass. The latter, “Gott, der du Liebe heißt,” also involves paired oboes. The woodwinds begin the musical dialogue, later imitated by the voices. Bach’s polyphonic impulse culminates in a lovely four-part fugal episode in which tenor, bass, first oboe, and second oboe successively chime in with the same theme. However, the movement is also significant for its extensive homophonic material, where the voices (or oboes) move together in rhythmic lockstep. Most commentators highlight the sweet-sounding parallel melodies as symbolic of man’s intimate connection to God.

Bach’s Goldberg Variations (1741) are among the most beloved, performed, and recorded works in the Baroque repertoire – deservedly so, in my opinion. However, very few listeners will know about a related composition that resurfaced in 1974. In that year Bach’s personal copy of the Goldberg Variations turned up in a private estate near Strasbourg, France. An exciting event in its own right, to be sure. But at the back of those pages, scholars discovered a set of fourteen canons based on the Goldberg theme.  These canons were speculated to exist based on evidence from a well-known portrait of the composer by E. G. Haussmann, in which Bach holds a canon for six voices based on the Goldberg bassline. But until 1974, no complete copy of the canons had ever been found.

Harmonically, these canons are based on the first eight bass notes from the Goldberg Variations, outlining a simple harmonic structure in G major. As noted above, Bach loved contrapuntal riddles and used them in other compositions from his later years. In isolation, the Goldberg Canons do not always make compelling music. They are aesthetically pleasing, but they stand about as close to musical “party tricks” as Bach ever came. Interest comes from considering how to realize the various canons he requests: canon between the theme and its inversion, for instance, or the theme against itself in retrograde (played back to front). Other canons swell out into four and six parts, sometimes using inversion and retrograde at the same time, at other times doubling the rhythmic values. They are novelties created by the restless mind of a genius. But for fans of the Goldberg Variations, they also provide yet one more connection to that majestic work.

The focus of Bach’s creativity varied from time to time depending on circumstances. As a young man, he dazzled as an organist and frequently wrote down works to fulfill that calling. During the years in Köthen in particular (1717-1723), Bach delved deeply into secular instrumental music for an employer who had no need for sacred music. With the move to Leipzig in 1723, sacred music once again monopolized his time and energy.  Still, we should not forget that many of Bach’s Leipzig cantatas stem from earlier times. Material in his portfolio could be pulled out and recycled to make new compositions. This was especially helpful given the time constraints Bach faced.

Such is the case with Cantata 51, Jauchzet Gott in allen Landen (Exult God in All Lands), first performed on September 17, 1730. Based on material written earlier for a secular context with different words, Jauchzet is Bach’s only cantata scored for solo soprano and trumpet. For the Leipzig version, an unknown author pulled together various scriptural readings to create a joyous mood of exultation across five movements. Each movement uses a different form, from Italianate concerto to a rigorous fugue. The opening movement’s festive tone, traditionally signaled by the inclusion of brass instruments, rings out in triadic C-major fanfares from trumpet and strings. Following the short ritornello, a dazzling coloratura soprano melody ascends to the highest register. The central episode in A minor changes mood but remains equally demanding for the soloist, moving across the full register in both skipwise motion and a series of melismas. Bach seamlessly transitions back to a repeat of the opening material to close in the brilliant style with which he began.

The following recitative, lightly accompanied by strings, could hardly be more different in tone. Slow tempo, minor-mode tonality, and pleading repeated gestures in the strings sponsor a dramatic shift from the extroverted joy of the opening movement toward the tender, introverted soprano aria to come. Situated at the center of the cantata, “Höchster, mache deine Güte” utilizes simple means and spare texture to express a deeply felt religious feeling. The aria employs soaring melismas and rising lines to mimic the text: “Highest One, renew your goodness.” The constant rhythm of the bass line has been termed a “walking bass.” It frequently appears in contexts like this to suggest the invisible presence of Christ, walking steadily by our side.

After this meditation, Bach shifts gears again to include a novel treatment of the chorale tune, “Sei Lob’ und Preis mit Ehren” (May There Be Praise and Glory and Honor). The tune appears in the soprano solo surrounded by a two-part fugue in violins plus continuo accompaniment. It leads without pause into the concluding Alleluia. As if to emphasize the importance of his featured instruments, Bach begins the Alleluia with solo soprano answered immediately by solo trumpet. All players soon join in to construct a resounding hymn of praise. Endlessly repeating the single word of text, Bach’s soprano becomes yet one more instrument in a texture derived from the latest Italian concerto style.

Jason Stell, © 2025