Bach for Easter - Easter Sunday

Last year I posted Bach's Easter Oratorio for the holiday. This year I decided to post Bach's signature Easter cantata, BWV 4, Christ lag in Todes Banden (Christ lay in death's bonds, Mühlhausen 1708/ Leipzig 1724). This is Bach's chorale cantata based on the great Easter hymn of the same name written by Martin Luther. It was first written early in Bach's career, but was extensively revised in Leipzig for Easter of 1724. It may seem a bit somber for an Easter celebration, more in tune with Good Friday or the Saturday between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, but appropriate to the season as it was celebrated in Bach's time, it gradually transforms to joy and triumph. Here's the late Craig Smith of Emmanuel Music on this cantata:

Bach Cantata BWV 4 has a complicated history. It was one of the earliest, if not the first, cantata written when Bach was still fundamentally a student. In Bach's first year in Leipzig he so thoroughly revised the work that it is not known how much of the original remains. Certainly some things such as the marvelous and rich four-voice harmonization of the chorale that ends the work are the work of the mature master.The work is a set of choral variations on the great Easter Chorale "Christ lag in Todes Banden." The cantata begins with a Sinfonia for the string orchestra. It takes certain phrases of the chorale tune and molds them into a perfect introduction to the energetic and exciting opening chorus. Certainly the heightened excitement of the brilliant Allelujas is a youthful holdover. A walking bass line accompanies the hushed soprano-alto duet that follows. Then tenors then take up the tune against a brilliant Vivaldi-like string line. The center of the cantata is occupied by a vivid four-voice setting of the chorale with the tune in the alto. Here Luther's vivid and brutal lines are marvelously and thoroughly characterized. The bass aria is the most inward part of the cantata, a meditation upon the meaning of the Passover and its relationship to Christian doctrine. The bouncy soprano-tenor duet is a tremendous release from the intensity of the bass aria. The final four-voice chorale setting is one of the greatest in the whole Bach canon and a suitable close to this brilliant and impressive work. 

© Craig Smith

Today's performance is by the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists under the direction of John Eliot Gardiner. Enjoy!

Photo © 2006 by A. Roy Hilbinger