The Music Of Redemption… Bach’s “St. Matthew’s Passion”
By PAUL KRAUSE
Count me as one of those Christians who, during Easter, is particularly enraptured with the high aesthetic that has emerged from the Lenten traditions. The greatest, for me, is the sacred music associated with the death of Jesus Christ. None is as majestic, and powerful, as J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion.
Truth, wherever it is found, belongs to God. Beauty is also a pathway to God. Beauty brings us to the Godhead and sits alongside the Trinity. That is the wisdom of our theological tradition.
Bach was not a Catholic, but Bach’s music is as grand and reverent, soul-stirring, as anything composed by Catholic artists. Being German, Bach’s music belongs to the greatest tradition of music that the world has ever witnessed and will ever witness. The Baroque to classical musical art of the Germans stands unrivaled. Listening to Bach’s St. Matthew’s Passion should make that apparent to anyone.
What makes the Passion so stirring, so exceptional, so incredibly moving? Of course, Bach’s language is drawn from the Gospel itself — albeit in German, though this shouldn’t be a problem for those who do not know German as the magical tone and composition cause one to have an immediate and sublime encounter with beauty. Even if you do not know what the words mean, you do know what the words signify: the feeling of beauty and the transcendent though it is in a foreign language is a testament to Bach’s skills.
The most famous part of Bach’s music of redemption is the opening of the chorus Kommt, ihr Töchter helft mir klagen (Come O daughters, help me lament). The soft and serene harmony of the violins and piano eventually give way to the choir which bursts forth with the lamenting cry which spurs the movement onward. If there was ever a moment when one feels they are in the presence of the heavenly choir, this would be it.
In short, what makes Bach’s music so captivating and powerful isn’t simply the sacred composition and audial quality of it; it is the fact that it reaches down and touches our souls. Bach’s music moves with a passion of its own — one that turns us into participants in that sublime event that wrought salvation. The music pulsates with love which is the greatest of Christian virtues according to St. Paul.
We feel Christ as He hangs on the cross. We feel the women who wept at His feet. We feel the burden of sin and salvation crushing us and liberating us over the course of the music. Bach’s music is not one of distraction. It is one of intentionality. It seeks to reach into our souls and awaken us to the sacred.
Christian theology, rooted in the Psalms and developed in biblical interpretation and mysticism, maintained that the cosmos was musical in nature. We lived in a musical cosmos with a musical God who invites us to waltz to the tune of love and salvation. One can read Augustine, Aquinas, or Dante to see this aspect of the Christian theological tradition.
Bach and the sacred composers of the Baroque period were heirs to this tradition. Throughout the Psalms, when we hear declarations that we shall sing to the Lord for salvation and joy, this was carried over into the composition of sacred music. The Passion of Christ was conceived as the high watermark of the musical cosmos for everything came together at that moment on Calvary.
St. Matthew’s Passion, as ingeniously conceived by Bach, sought to embody this longstanding belief in Christianity. Christ’s death isn’t an isolated event. It is not independent and separated from the heavens, the earth, and all that inhabit the creation. All partake in this monumental and cosmically transformative event — the event that will bring salvation to the world and pave the way for the transfiguration of humanity as sons and daughters of the Most High God.
Another one of the most famous arias of the piece is “Erbarme dich, mein Gott” (Have mercy, my God). Opening with a long violin interlude that sets the tone of the piece, it is rife with emotion, passion, and turbulence — but a turbulence that is other paradoxically serene, beauty, captivating; not chaotic or disordered. This moment is right after Peter denies Christ before the crowds.
What the music signifies for us is the recognition that we are in a state of sin but that we can, and must, turn to God for forgiveness. “Have mercy on me, my God,” as Peter weeps in realizing the prophecy of Jesus has come to pass. What was true for Peter is also true for us. In our state of frailty, we turn to God for the beauty and strength that only God provides.
The two most famous parts of Bach’s Passion are not compositions of distanced intellectual contemplation far away from the action of the human heart. Rather, they are directly related to the human heart and the reality of human passion and love that define our being. For God created out of love more than anything else, Christianity proclaims. The cosmos we inhabit in all its splendid and stark beauty is sustained by love and invites us in that love to fly to the Love that “moves the suns and other stars,” as Dante reminds us.
The women witnessing the crucifixion weep in love for the Lord and form a community of love based on their mutual grieving for the crucified Christ. “Come O daughters, help me lament.” Likewise, Peter’s lament for mercy is of the heart and not the mind. “Have mercy on me, my God” is a plea of the heart moved by love and not intellectual abstraction and disassociated assent. That plea also unites man with God.
In listening to Bach, we feel the magnitude of the Passion and Crucifixion of Christ. It is an event that doesn’t just touch our minds. It is an event that touches and transforms our hearts. For it is the orientation of the heart that constitutes our directionality to God or against God. Bach’s music of redemption pierces our hearts of stone to the magnanimity of God’s love and opens our hearts to return to that melodic love that grounds our existence.
Turning toward that Love that became incarnate and died upon Golgotha is what Bach’s music set out to achieve. It is the music of conversion and redemption. And few, if any, have matched the maestro’s Gospel proclamation through the harmony and melody of the greatest piece of sacred music ever composed. A piece of sacred music that has undoubtedly brought God’s grace and redemption to millions of listeners.
