Early Music America Summer 2014 - (Page 64)

INconclusion The Flauto Dolce Heralds A Welcome Entrance into Heaven Bach's orchestration uses recorders to symbolize love, death, and the "sweet pastures of life" if you are a recorder player, take every opportunity that presents itself to listen to Bach's Cantata No.161 "Komm, du süße Todesstunde" (Come Sweet Hour of Death). As in Bach's Lutheran funeral cantatas (e.g., No. 106), the text, here by the poet Salomon Franck, is the reverse of mournful and depressing. It is full of a spirit of joyous resignation and happy expectancy. In his music, mainly in a major rather than a minor key, Bach uses symbolism in a variety of ways to express the poet's pietistic imagery. Two recorders, instruments noted for their breadth of symbolism, play an important role in four of the six numbers. In the opening alto Aria, which introduces the concept of a mystical love of Jesus ("so that I might kiss my Savior"), they are by themselves except for continuo bass. After a tenor Recitative (No. 2), this concept is explored further in the tenor's Aria ("My longing is to embrace my Savior), accompanied by two violins and a viola. In the remaining three numbers the strings are on the whole supportive of the two recorders, which continue to play mainly in thirds, except for the ﬁnal Chorale (No. 6), when in unison they playfully decorate the slower-moving melody in the voices and strings. The ﬁnal question, "What fear has death for me?" is expressed by a suspension played by the unison recorders on the last chord, giving the recorders the last say, as they had in Cantata 106. No. 5, Chorus, is in a swinging 3/8. In it, the recorders show the soul as a ﬂight of birds ﬂying to heaven with wings ﬂuttering in extremely rapid 32nd notes. Bach's recorder players must have E SPECIALLY Death and continued heavenly love, two main images in the alto Recitative (No. 4) of Bach's Cantata 161, are reflected in the symbolism of this Simon Renard de St-André Vanité (1663). Two recorders are symbols of continued love-Jesus's love after the soul has flown to heaven (their crossed position may indicate a marriage cut short by death). Music-books or instruments among them signify, as do the bubbles, the passage of time and the transience of wordly possessions. The stained music is the tenor part of a Ronsard song, "Bonjour, mon Amour." Reproduced with the kind permission of the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon. By Anthony Rowland-Jones 64 Summer 2014 Early Music America had very nimble ﬁngers! I nevertheless ﬁnd the preceding alto Recitative (No. 4)-just 28 bars in which the recorders play a major part-the most exciting number in the cantata. Here are the words, in two verses and a couplet: Der Schluss ist schon gemacht, Welt, gute Nacht! Und kann ich nur den Trost erwerben, In Jesu Armen bald zu sterben: Er ist mein sanfter Schlaf. Das kühle Grab wird mich mit Rosen decken, Bis Jesus mich wird auferwecken, Bis er sein Schaf Führt auf die süsse Lebensweide, Dass mich der Tod von ihm nicht scheide. So brich herein, du froher Todestag, So schlage doch, du letzter Stundenschlag! The decision is already made: World, goodnight! And I can only gain consolation by dying soon in Jesus's arms. He is my sweet sleep. The cool tomb will cover me with roses until Jesus awakens me, until he leads his sheep to the sweet pastures of life so death does not separate me from him! Therefore dawn, sweet day of death, therefore sound, stroke of the last hour! The subjects in the ﬁrst verse, death and love, are strongly associated with recorders in music, art, and literature. They are often used as incidental music for funerals in Jacobean dramas. (This is why the players in Hamlet brought their recorders in readiness for the death of the player King.) Recorders appear frequently in paintings of pastoral love scenes. More speciﬁc to this recitative, however, is the symbolism of sleep in the Continued on page 62

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Early Music America Summer 2014

Editor's Note
Reader Forum
Sound Bytes
Musings: The Force of Opinion
Recording Reviews
Baroque Opera and Historical Performance: A Reconsideration
Underestimating Turk
Our Disappearing LP Legacy
Living and Breathing Early Music, the Ukrainian Way
Ars Longa and the Festival Esteban Salas
Book Reviews
Ad Index
In Conclusion: The Flauto Dolce Heralds a Welcome Entrance into Heaven

Early Music America Summer 2014