Bach's Magnificat
EDITOR’S NOTE: Saint Philip’s Director of Music, Justin Appel, provides a comprehensive roadmap for this Sunday’s First Music.
This Sunday, February 5, Saint Philip’s adult choirs will present J. S. Bach’s glorious Magnificat during the 9:00am and 11:15am liturgies. This will coincide with lessons from the Feast of the Presentation, which will be moved to Sunday from February 2 (also known as Candlemas).
I encourage you to arrive early (8:45am and 11:05am) so you don’t miss the beginning of the Magnificat, which serves as the opening voluntary.
This celebratory work is one of a minority of Latin works by Bach, who largely wrote sacred music in German. In Alfred Dürr’s introduction to the work, we learn that the Magnificat was sung regularly in Leipzig every Saturday and Sunday at Evensong, in German, but that special Latin versions were retained for the three high feast days: Christmas, Easter, and Pentecost. Bach’s setting is in Latin and was later edited to include movements designed for a Christmas evensong.
Bach’s Magnificat is a marvelous balance of elements. It’s short, just 30 minutes of music, with the text of Mary’s Song divided into 12 compact, concentrated movements, each taking a separate bit of the text. It’s a whirlwind tour of moods (contemporary authors used the word affect to refer to music’s ability to evoke a specific emotion) and big ideas, both devotional and theological.
1. Magnificat anima mea Dominum;
My soul doth magnify the Lord.
The first movement reveals Bach’s full instrumental forces: strings and continuo (organ, cellos, bass, and occasional bassoon) with pairs of flutes and oboes (recorders and oboes d’amore in Bach’s day), plus three trumpets (played on piccolo trumpets today) and timpani. The chorus also includes an additional Soprano part, offering even more possibilities for textural complexity and fullness. The mood is celebratory and lively, though gracious.
2. Et exsultavit spiritus meus in Deo salvatore meo.
And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.
A soprano soloist sings this lovely aria, and the joyful nature of the text is reflected in a stately triple meter and ebullient string ritornelli (a ritornello is an instrumental introduction that serves as bookends and in partial form, as interpolations through a movement).
3. Quia respexit humilitatem ancillae suae: Ecce enim ex hoc beatam me dicent
For he hath regarded: the lowliness of his handmaiden: For behold, from henceforth
The ritornello here consists of a poignant and lyrical solo played by the principal oboist, with continuo being played by the organ and principal cellist: the smallest forces in the whole work. The soprano soloist sings a melody full of deprecatory gestures and pathos, leading seamlessly into the next chorus.
4. Omnes generationes.
all generations (shall call me blessed).
Although built on two words, this chorus is densest in the work from a contrapuntal perspective. The choir shares a fugal subject (although the work is not a proper fugue) built on a repeated note (“Om-nes, om-nes”) that moves through the the choir and the instruments, which double the voices, but also break out into exhilarating improvisatory riffs. The music conspires to make us imagine a multiplicity and proliferation of blessings—and even to offer in them ourselves—to the Mother of God.
5. Quia fecit mihi magna, qui potens est, et sanctum nomen eius,
For he that is mighty hath magnified me: and holy is his Name.
This lively aria features a bass soloist and the full array of bass instruments in the basso continuo section (the baroque “engine” of the orchestra). The added bassoon gives the sound a particularly German-folksy vibe. Again, the mood is joyous, albeit transcribed into the serious tones of bass range.
6. Et misericordia eius in progenies et progenies timentibus eum.
And his mercy is on them that fear him: throughout all generations.
The violins and flutes double each other for a “sweet-yet-pathetic” ritornello to accompany a particularly effective duet between alto and tenor soloists, rendering music heavy and somber.
7. Fecit potentiam in brachio suo; dispersit superbos mente cordis sui.
He hath shewed strength with his arm: he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
After all of this seriousness, Bach brings everything back to the home key and a joyous celebration. In spite of human waywardness, and the inevitability that God “scatters” the proud (heard clearly at the end of the movement), his “strength” is understood as a positive, energetic, enervating force in the music, which is so fast and note-filled as to be “nearly impossible” to sing! Musically speaking, God’s strength has a way of redeeming the world, not destroying it.
8. Deposuit potentes de sede, et exaltavit humiles.
He hath put down the mighty from their seat: and hath exalted the humble and meek.
Moving to a Baroque “rage aria” (think of Handel’s “Why do the nations imagine a vain thing?” from Messiah), the tenor soloist riffs against angry motifs in the violins. This is such an exciting, exhilarating aria, with clear emphasis on “deposuit” and “exaltavit:” one gets “put down” and the other “brought up” in eloquent musical rhetoric.
9. Esurientes implevit bonis et divites dimisit inanes.
He hath filled the hungry with good things: and the rich he hath sent empty away.
After this raging, Bach returns to a sweet and pastorale duet between the flutes while bass strings play pizzicati (plucking the strings) during this delightful alto solo, which contains beautiful flourishes on the words “bonis” and “implivit,” i.e., “good things” and “filled.”
10. Suscepit Israel puerum suum, recordatus misericordiae:
He remembering his mercy hath holpen his servant Israel:
Here, Bach returns to a sense of pathos, as in earlier mentions of “mercy,” with a lovely woven braid of three upper voices: sopranos and alto soloists in trio. The voices actively supplicate God to “remember” (“recordatus”) his mercy, even while the oboes play a slow cantus firmus (foundational melody) above the music: the tonus perigrinus. This psalm tone contains two “reciting notes” and thus “moves” (think of the word “peregrination”) and has been associated with Psalm 114 (“When Israel came out of Egypt”), a psalm we sing at the Easter Vigil as we recollect God’s saving work through history. Thus, in one multi-layered aria, Bach brings past, present, and future into a heart-felt plea for God’s mercy. Liturgical theologians struggle to describe such realities with complex words like anemnesis (memory that moves into the present with ramifications for the future) or Gottesdienst (God’s service to us and our service to him in response), but Bach, the supreme theologian, says all of this eloquently in two minutes of music.
11. Sicut locutus est ad patres nostros, Abraham et semini eius in saecula.
As he promised to our forefathers, Abraham and his seed for ever.
Bach produces the final verse with a solemn fugue in five voices, in stile antico or “olden style” giving the sense that faith in God’s promise is here received individually and expressed corporately, in the manner of a Creed. “Yes, we believe God’s promise!” seems to be the message.
12. Gloria Patri, gloria Filio et Spiritui sancto!
Sicut erat in principio et nunc et semper in saecula saeculorum. Amen.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit!
As it was in the beginning, is now and every shall be
World without end. Amen.
Bach concludes his Magnificat with the Gloria Patri, in a manner expected with Psalms and Canticles at Evensong. The chorus divides between two sections. In the first, Bach weaves a “glorious” web of vocal parts on the word “gloria” with triplet rhythms, evoking the Trinity, followed by huge sonorous chords, hammering home the subject of all this music-making: “Patri,” “Filio,” “et Spiritui sancto.” The final measures remind me of the “Amen” chorus in Handel’s Messiah: this is Bach’s contribution to the Baroque “grand style!”
The second and final section sends us “back to the top” with the exciting music from the first movement. Bach brings the work to a swirling, jubilant, genuinely happy conclusion with a blaze of trumpets and timpani.
—Justin Appel, Director of Music