Oh Come Thou Saviour of the Gentiles

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[Note: I'm personally not a believer; even though I think I understand a little of Bach's feelings about music and religion. My remarks on the chorales of Bach are made as an outsider to the the religious beliefs involved.]

The chorale-prelude on "Nun komm', der Heiden Heiland" by Johann Sebastian Bach is a wonderful piece of music for the organ. Bach's chorale-preludes are essentially meditations on hymn-tunes suitable for playing in church between parts of the service, or as voluntaries before the service begins, as well as at suitable times during the service. This particular example is based on the advent hymn of the title, whose significance is difficult for most of us to understand. The translation could be given as "Come now, O Saviour of the Heathen," which does not seem a pretty sentiment. Especially during the time of Bach, when the Jewish people were regarded with a mixture of suspicion, envy and hostility, the true meaning of the sentence, as might have been understood by Bach, is elusive. (Though the anti-semitic sentiments of the time is not the subject of this post, it's probably best to circumscribe them before we go on. The more visible members of the Jewish comminity were, of course, bankers and merchants and goldsmiths, etc, though a great number were members of ordinary professions. Certain professions were denied to Jews, and the economic history of the times should be studied carefully to avoid misunderstanding. Then, too, the crucifixion of Jesus was blamed on the entire Jewish race, even if it were more reasonable to blame it on society generally, since there was participation by Rome as well. Finally, many Jews were intellectuals, and the ordinary folk were suspicious of intellectuals anyway.) Whatever the connotations of the word Heiden (heathen), the chorale, as Bach represented it musically, expresses the longing of mankind for the coming of the savior. In the advent season, it can be interpreted as waiting for the birth of Jesus, as well as waiting for the second coming, the Day of Judgment. The Lutheran faithful, of course, saw the Day of Judgment as their ultimate vindication, and not as a day to anticipate with fear, in contrast to the Roman Catholics, for whom the Day of Judgment was a day to be feared. One way Bach treated the problem of the chorale prelude was to take a characteristic fragment of the original chorale, and quote it in each one of the organ parts. In this one, the bass (shown in red below) keeps up a steady plodding march, patient and determined, conveying the idea of waiting. The tenor, the next higher part (shown in black), starts out with the opening phrase of the chorale: Right after the third note of this entry, the alto (the next highest voice, shown in green) enters with the same sequence of notes, played starting at D. (This is said to be a fifth higher, but most non-musicians would consider this just four notes higher. This tradition of including the first note in the count is based on a Roman tradition of counting, where Friday would be "five days from Monday." We would say four days, of course.) These two entries serve to establish that this chorale prelude is indeed based on the well-known (to audiences of Bach's time, in Bach's hometown) hymn. Now, the highest voice (the treble) enters with the opening notes of the chorale, but then proceeds with a highly ornamented version that expresses in music the longing that the words are able to express only vaguely. The long, slow climb of the melody becomes a wordless expression of frustration, a protest against the cruelty of existence, a plea for release. Remarkably, though, in Bach's inimitable way, the plea never becomes impertinent or demanding; persuasive but not insistent. From line to line, Bach is guided by the shape of the original hymn-tune, but the melody of the soprano line leaves the hymn melody far behind, soaring in agonized flights of pain, but always within the respectful limits of addressing the Creator. It is an amazing exercise in restrained eloquence. Archimedes