Bach's Major Vocal Works: Music, Drama, Liturgy by Markus Rathey (review)

Markus Rathey (Yale University) offers the nonspecialist a short yet instructive guide to the major vocal works of Johann Sebastian Bach. He devotes chapters to the Christmas Oratorio, St. John Passion, St. Matthew Passion, and B Minor Mass as well as the lesser-studied Magnificat and oratorios for Easter and Ascension. Bach composed all of these as cantor of the St. Thomas School and city music director in Leipzig, a post he took up in 1723 and held until his death in 1750. The shorter cantatas, which Bach also composed and regularly performed during these years, receive only occasional mention.

Rathey makes insightful remarks and offers fresh perspectives, even if the book never attempts to be comprehensive or groundbreaking. For that, readers can already turn to a wealth of literature, including Rathey's newest monograph, Bach's Christmas Oratorio: Music, Theology, Culture (Oxford University Press, 2016). Instead, Bach's Major Vocal Works, having started as pre-concert lectures and program notes, remains a work for general audiences. The author calls his chapters "introductions" for music lovers to read before going to a performance or listening to a recording (p. 4). He presupposes only a limited knowledge of both music and liturgy. Musical examples are relatively simple, and technical terms appear in a glossary at the end. Because each chapter stands alone, readers will inevitably encounter redundancies: chapters on the oratorios or passions each recount the same basic background information.

A few basic themes link all chapters. Rathey outlines each work's role in the eighteenth-century Lutheran liturgy. He also stresses the emotional content and contrast—what he labels as operatic drama—within each work. The most prominent of these emotions is love. Going against the stereotype of Bach as a craftsman of abstract counterpoint, Rathey shows that the composer consistently wrote numerous love duets in response to his texts. Perhaps the book's finest insights concern the music's devotional aims. Rathey compares contemporary Lutheran devotional literature with Bach's librettos and music. Seventeenth-century imagery representing dialogue between Christ and the believer corresponds with an echo-aria from the Christmas Oratorio. Likewise, a passion meditation published in 1724 encourages the believer to reflect on the biblical narrative through meditative texts and hymns. Rathey succinctly shows how Bach's passions do the same, combining or juxtaposing both communal and individual responses to the story.

At several points, readers would benefit from a wider look at the sacred repertoire Bach knew and performed, for without knowledge of eighteenth-century musical conventions in church music, readers might too easily conclude that Bach made many of his musical decisions primarily on personal and theological grounds. The Central-European mass repertoire that Bach knew suggests otherwise. It is filled, for instance, with love-like solos or duets for movements like the Christe eleison. Bach's decision to set his Christe from the B Minor Mass in a similar style suggests that he simply followed this convention. The result might still end up having the theological significance that Rathey ascribes it (p. 173), but Bach's special role as exegete of his text seems more doubtful. Overall, however, the book is free from the more speculative and esoteric readings of Bach's music. Rather than delving into hidden symbolism or proportions, for example, Rathey's points are humane, sensible, and well grounded in eighteenth-century Lutheran theology and devotional practice. As a result, his book makes an excellent starting point for learning not just how Bach's music is put together but what it might have meant to eighteenth-century audiences.