Director's Notes: Symbolism in J.S.

Bach's Music
by Bach Concert Series on Sunday, April 18, 2010 at 7:30am All art speaks in symbols. Just as the worlds great literature uses devices such as metaphor, allegory, simile, and others to make its points effectively, so too Bach in his music turns with great regularity to several compositional techniques to make his points more powerfully. So widely used and highly developed was this technique in Bachs cantatas that often the music itself becomes an independent commentary on the sung text. Bachs use of symbolism falls into three categories: 1. Pictorial (often called word painting) 2. Symbolic meaning (including the Doctrine of Affections) 3. Numbers (including gematria) Word painting and its compositional cousin the Doctrine of Affections are universally found in Bachs church cantatas. Simply put, word painting is music that sounds like what the words themselves mean. Action verbs lend themselves particularly well to this device (run, fall, jump, leap, etc.). Time is also depicted through word painting. For example, eternity by long lasting notes. The Doctrine of Affections portrays human affects (or what we today might more aptly describe as emotions) through sound. One of the most common examples is joy, which is typically portrayed by fast rhythmic patterns of an eighth note followed by two sixteenth notes. Bach uses intervals or chords to depict some of the most important concepts in his music, including: Octave (Perfect Eighth - the perfect interval used to depict the perfect being, God) Major triad for the Holy Trinity Minor triad for humanity Minor third within the major triad for the humanity of Jesus Perfect Fourth for the resurrection Diatonic scale of clarion trumpet prefiguration of eternal life [e.g. et expecto in B Minor Mass] Hovering chords in inversion for angels

Bachs use of numbers in his music: 1 God, the father. The perfect number also shown by use of the octave in music 3 Trinity 5 Wounds of Christ (embraced by the Catholic Church, which divided the mass into five parts) 6 The Creation (Bach seized on this number and wrote six each of: cello sonatas, flute sonatas, published organ chorale preludes, violin sonatas, organ trio sonatas, Brandenburg Concertos, motets, etc) 7 The Holy Number 8 Resurrection 10 The Law 11 Loyal Disciples 12 The Church 13 The number of suffering and death (there are 13 repetitions of the ostinato bass in the Crucifixus of the B Minor Mass) 14 BACH (Bach also symbolized himself in music by writing his name in pitches: B flat, A, C and H [B natural]) 29 JSB or SDG (soli Deo Gloria to the glory of God alone) 41 J. S. Bach 43 Credo T. Herbert Dimmock Music Director Bach Concert Series