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In this post-Dan Brown world of symbolism interpretation, my job in deciphering Bach is a little easier: at least I don’t have to convince many people that it’s very possible—even very likely—that there would be a secret language hidden deep in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.

However, my job is made harder by the fact that Bach’s musical language is couched in terms of theology—a subject that is bound to get many people’s hackles up. Doctrine and dogma are apt to either sound off-putting or downright alienating, not only to people who come from a different religion than Christianity (or no religion at all), but even to people from Christian denominations different from Bach’s Lutheranism. I can’t sugar coat that discomfort, but I can try to convince you that it is only by engaging in this aspect of Bach’s music that its real meaning is unlocked.

To be fair, not all scholars agree on this aspect of Bach interpretation. Depending on one’s musicological school of thought, the musical vocabulary is just that—musical, and it shouldn’t be imbued with extramusical meaning. But if I have learned anything from some of the teachers whom I’ve mentioned in earlier posts (especially Ronald Roseman and Helmuth Rilling), it’s that performing Bach’s music is a much richer experience if one is willing to explore these ideas. It is generally agreed that there is a stock of musical images, known as Figurenlehren; what is not agreed is that they have set rhetorical meanings that can be applied in a standard way.

Martin Luther

This is where being a performer, not a scholar, is liberating. As a conductor, I feel a bit like the actor who needs to understand the background on his character, not because all of that will be apparent to the viewer, but because he will be able to inhabit more fully the character. In order to bring something more substantial to my interpretation of Bach, I feel as if I need to understand the theological background that informed all of what Bach composed for the church.

I’ll write more in a future post about Bach’s special interest in Lutheran theology. For now, I’ll just make a few points that establish why I think it is so important to think like a theologian as well as a musician when studying Bach’s sacred music:

1. Though not a formal scholar, Bach was an avid reader of Lutheran theology.
Although it is true that Bach did not have a university degree (though his sons did, suggesting that he valued such training), he had many friends on the faculty of the University of Leipzig, including theologians. Robin Leaver has written about the extensive library of sacred books that was catalogued in Bach’s will. Included in the catalogue of 81 separate volumes was two complete collections of all of Luther’s writings, and an incomplete third set, suggesting that Bach had a deep interest in Lutheran doctrine and theology.

2. Bach uses very clear musical-theological imagery in his cantatas.
Having had the opportunity to conduct 75 cantatas in a four-year period, I was able to see in a very clear way how often Bach drew from the large set of established musical figures that represent not only the obvious actions—walking, running, fleeing, laughing, praising, weeping, sighing—but also the more complex doctrinal ideas like the trinity, mortification through the cross, incarnation, resurrection, etc. These musical figures can be traced through the cantatas, where they are most clearly stated because of the German texts, and then extrapolated to works like the B Minor Mass, in which they appear more abstractly.

3. Being a church musician was Bach’s identity.
Though he happily wrote for courts and bourgeois ensembles such as the Collegium Musicum in Leipzig, Bach seems to have seen himself principally as a church musician, descended from a respected line of church musicians. He wrote of wanting to develop a “well-regulated church music”, leading him to write cycles of organ and vocal music to match the liturgical year.

4. Although the Enlightenment was underway in Bach’s lifetime, his own worldview was essentially pre-Enlightenment.
Religion was enmeshed in intellectual life much more than might be expected in our conception of Enlightenment thought. Although Voltaire was a near-contemporary of Bach, Lutheran Germany (and especially Leipzig) was more concerned with the ongoing debate between the Pietist movement and orthodox Lutheranism within the church. For Bach to sign all of his compositions—not just the sacred ones—soli Deo gloria, “to God alone be the glory”, suggests that religion and theology were well-integrated in Bach’s life.

Thomaskirche, Bach's church in Leipzig

For these reasons, as well as other instincts that I developed from performing so much of Bach’s choral music, I come to the conclusion that we should feel free to delve into the deeper theological significance behind Bach’s musical language, particularly in a work like the B Minor Mass, which I personally feel stands as Bach’s final statement of his own beliefs. It is not so much a matter of whether we come up with the “right answer”; rather, it’s a matter of engaging with the material in a more fundamental way.

My disclaimer, however, is that I am NOT a theologian—nor am I even Lutheran. But I have read fairly widely about Lutheran practices and theology in Bach’s day, and I have served as a church musician long enough to understand a little bit about church music. If you have a specific interest in Bach’s Lutheranism, you could do no better than to read a short book entitled Bach Among the Theologians by the great church historian (and Bach lover) Jaroslav Pelikan. This book was out of print for years, but has recently been re-released by Wipf and Stock Publishers. I also owe a GREAT debt to the writings of Eric Chafe, a musicologist at Brandeis. His Tonal Allegory in the Vocal Music of JS Bach, published by the University of California Press, was a revelation to me. Chafe does a masterful job of showing the intersection between the Figurenlehren and their theological meanings.

So, with that caveat, this is why I think we need to approach Bach with a theologian’s sensibility, regardless of our own religious inclinations or discomfort. In that sense, we can bring an almost literary eye to Bach’s musical text, the same way that we might analyze a poem for its metaphors and figures of speech.

I’ll start by dissecting the first four bars of the “Kyrie” and applying some of Bach’s musico-theological principles in my next post…