The spirituality of Bach - Sunday before Christmas in Vancouver
Douglas Todd
J.S. Bach knew what Martin Luther was talking about when he wrote: "Music is a gift and largesse of God, not a human gift. Praise through word and music is a sermon in sound." So says Vancouver photographer Alex Waterhouse-Hayward.
Legendary Vancouver photographer Alex Waterhouse-Hayward loves Johann Sebastian Bach.
He believes Bach's mathematically exquisite baroque music is transcendent, sublime and, for lack of a better word, spiritual.
So, to mark the upcoming Sunday performance of Bach's famous Christmas Oratorio at the Chan Centre, Waterhouse-Hayward has put together his reflections on Bach's spirituality.
RELATED: On the trail of Martin Luther and Johann Sebastian Bach
Bach's Christmas Oratorio on Dec. 21, 3p.m., Chan Centre (Watch a two-minute video of the rehearsal)
Waterhouse-Hayward has written engaging pieces about Bach before on his website, including this from 2008, where he acknowledges he once thought Bach was God.
And this month he had a clever idea for a posting: He asked his musician and composer friends, "Why Bach?" The wide-ranging answers — from people like Marc Destrube, Gavin Walker (who I also used to listen to at the Classical Joint) and Jose Verstappen — are intriguing.
Meanwhile, here is Waterhouse-Hayward's guest contribution to this blog — a kind of personal memoir on Bach and a lot of other things — in advance of Sunday's Oratorio. The author's views are his own. Hang with his reflection, since he gets to Bach's spirituality near the end:
The Spirituality of Bach – A Sermon in Sound In this increasingly secular world, in which December is seen as a shopping extravaganza and we wish each other, "Happy holidays!" it may be important to delve into the spirituality of Christmas. And a master of that has to be J.S. Bach, who surely knew what Martin Luther wrote about music and liturgy: You will find that from the beginning of the world music has been instilled and implanted in all creatures, individually and collectively. For nothing is without sound or harmony… Music is a gift and largesse of God, not a human gift. Praise through word and music is a sermon in sound. * * * My granddaughter, who was then eight (and is now 17), once asked in a Guanajuato, Mexico, church: "What are those?" I explained in detail the 14 Stations of the Cross. I had attended a Catholic boarding school in Austin, Texas in the 50s. {"origin_id":"170688″,"created_on":"2014-12-16T23:41:44.000Z","url":"https://postmediavancouversun2.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/alex-photographer.jpg?w=239&quality=55&strip=all Photographer Alex Waterhouse-Hayward believes one of Bach\u2019s cantatas ends in drums and trumpets as a \u201cproclamation of how we should all be incorporated as one, and particularly in this Christmas season.\u201d","width":"199″,"height":"250″,"shortcode":"
Photographer Alex Waterhouse-Hayward believes one of Bach's cantatas ends in drums and trumpets as a "proclamation of how we should all be incorporated as one, and particularly in this Christmas season."
","type":"image","channels":["desktop","tablet","phone"]}We wasted time in our religion class back then by testing Brother Edwin Reggio, C.S.C., on exactly when stealing a sum of money (from a few cents to many dollars) from a little old lady became a mortal sin over a venial one. Brother Edwin answered by teaching the infinitesimals of Newton and Leibniz's calculus. In a religion class, besides spirituality we were introduced to the pure logic of mathematics. Brother Edwin used the logic of Artistotle's UnmovedMover to explain the existence of God, but told us that the concept of the Trinity (one God, three distinct persons) had to be based on faith. Faith was irrational.* I learned to live then with the irrational and the logical. I haven't forgotten that duality of my Christian faith. (*See editors note below re: use of "irrational.") Charlie Parker composed Confirmation in part because, as a young boy, he had been in a Catholic Church choir. My friend saxophonist Gavin Walker used to play the complex jazz tune at the Classical Joint in the 70s. It was Brother Edwin who explained that the sacrament of Confirmation bestowed on us the duty of defending our faith (not with sword) but with an explanation of our belief. For me a crucial event of the 20th century was the 1966 Time Magazine cover "Is God Dead?" I have noted since the crumbling of Christian church-based beliefs. It was also at about that time that magic was replaced by special effects. In this 21st century film special effects are boring until better ones are achieved. Mystery for the young involves magical rings, broadswords and fire dragons. The irrational has no place in our modern world. I look at my two granddaughters and I wonder what they daydream about. The older one wrote she was an atheist on Facebook. * * * The Thirty Years War ended in 1648. Over a million died in what was still to be a unified Germany. And Bach was born in 1685. For Bach, religious music was the living reality in a land coping with a memory of death, starvation, and plague. For many Bach's Goldberg Variations are seen as a climax of secular composition. But when we listen to any of his choral works we transport ourselves into a church, at Christmas, or Easter. The choral Bach, somehow, is seen as religious. And for good reason as so many of those cantatas draw the lyrics from the Protestant Bible and many of the tunes are reworked by Bach from Martin Luther's compositions. Bach's music had as its main purpose to draw churchgoers into becoming aware of the words of those gospels. The music was secondary to the message of the words What is spirituality in Bach? Brother Edwin explained to us that the symbol for St. John the Evangelist was the eagle. His gospel soared in concept and style. My favorite choral work by Bach is his St. John Passion for the same reason. Bach's Christmas Oratorio is important to me because of its last instalment, BWV 248/6m, which is about the Epiphany. January 6, the Epiphany, is an important date in Christian liturgy and Bach knew this. We have all forgotten that the New Testament became a fact by the presence of the three foreign wise men. The Israelites of Christ's time would have seen them as unclean gentiles. These unclean (to be precise, uncircumcised) men were now invited to partake at the table. That this cantata ends in drums and trumpets is an obvious proclamation of how we should all be incorporated as one, and particularly in this Christmas Season. And yet it is not only the religious Bach that soars. When I listen to Bach at almost any time I feel like a trapped pigeon on the top of a medieval cathedral nave looking down on the world below. And this especially happens when I listen to Monica Huggett play the fifth movement of J. S. Bach's Partita in D minor for solo violin (BWV1004), the Chaconne. How the logical and the irrational can live together is something that Bach understood and Brother Edwin Reggio would simply have smiled about. On December 21, Early Music Vancouver is presenting Bach's Christmas Oratorio (BWV 248/1-2 & 3) at the Chan.
Douglas Todd's note:
Waterhouse-Hayward knows Bach far better than me. But I can't resist mentioning the use of the word, "irrational," which can suggest a lack of logic and even craziness. I prefer to use the word, "non-rational," rather than "irrational," to describe the kind of thinking and feeling that is associated with religion, spirituality and music. The non-rational is a very important space, full of potential wisdom.
MORE RELATED: To understand God, understand music
La Familia gang members arrested in Edmonton - UPDATED Green trustee voted vice-chair of VSB