Text and Music: The Theological Message
Traditionally Bach has been called the “fifth evangelist”: in his sacred oeuvre the music is always in the service of the theological message, as it may even be in some of his instrumental works (as illustrated by Benjamin Shute’s analysis of the Six Sonatas and Partitas for Violin, 2016). In the vocal movements with solo violin, role of the instrument ranges from conveying general feelings of joy and praise through virtuosic figurations (“Laudamus” from the B-minor Mass) to much more concrete pictorial representations, such as portraying the rolling of money or the rattling of chains with fast scales (Cantata 105/5, St. Matthew Passion/42, Cantata 74/7).
Details about the link between text and music are provided in the preface to the EDITION and in the following more comprehensive studies:
Blankenburg, Walter. Das Weihnachts-Oratorium von Johannn Sebastian Bach. Kassel: Bärenreiter 1982.
Blankenburg, Walter. Bachs h-moll-Messe. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1993/4.
Dürr, Alfred. Die Kantaten von Johann Sebastian Bach. Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1995. Trans. Oxford University Press, 2005.
Platen, Emil. Die Matthäus-Passion von Johann Sebastian Bach. Entstehung, Werkbeschreibung, Rezeption, Kassel etc.: Bärenreiter,
München: dtv, 1991.
Schweitzer, Albert. Johann Sebastian Bach. Wiesbaden: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1937/11.
Shute, Benjamin. Sei Solo: Symbolum? The Theology of J. S. Bach's Solo Violin Works. Pickwick Publications. 2016. 296 pp.
Bach • Violin Solos
from the Cantatas, Masses, Passions, and Oratorios