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Ach Mein Gott!

A Certain Bibliophile | 01/30/2010

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This group of seven "cantatas" in concerto-aria structure is the only cycle in Buxtehude's entire vocal output apart from those in his now lost Abendmusiken. The elegantly written autographed manuscript has been conserved - it was a gift from Buxtehude to his friend Duben. The fascicule is preceded by a fine title page whose text is as follows:



"The most holy limbs of Our Lord Jesus in His Passion, sung with the most humble and wholehearted devotion, and dedicated to Gustav Duben, man of the first rank, most noble and honored friend, director of music to His Most Gracious Majesty the King of Sweden, by Dietrich Buxtehude, organist of St. Mary's Church, Lubeck, 1680."



The composer had been organist of the Marienkirche in Lubeck since 1668. At the time of writing he was forty-three years old. The original title of the collection is `Membra Jesu Nostri Patientis Sanctissima Humillima Totius Cordis Devotione Decantata.' Rather than speak of the "Limbs of our Lord Jesus," it would be preferable today to refer to the work as "The Seven Wounds of Christ on the Cross" as one says "The Seven Words of Christ on the Cross." Devotion to the wounds of the crucified Christ is an extremely ancient practice. Initially five wounds were venerated, not always the same, but subsequently the number was raised to seven in order to reach the symbolic figure par excellence.



We do not know the purpose for which the work was conceived. Buxtehude sent his score written in tablature, and it was Duben who transcribed or commissioned a transcription of the parts into traditional notation, directly usable by instrumentalists and singers. The two sources are today held in Uppsala University Library. The transcribed copies appear to show that the seven cantatas would not all have been performed for a single occasion. But their conception as an organic whole allows us to conjecture that they were intended to take their place within a liturgy or a series of liturgical celebrations, perhaps alternating with other texts.



The work is a sevenfold meditation on the wounds of the Crucified, the visible and venerated signs of the martyrdom he accepted in order to redeem humanity. For Jean-Francois Labie, the poem of Membra "evokes both the compassion that grips the Christian soul before each of the wounded limbs of his Saviour, and the impulse towards prayer that prompts that soul to request for itself the boundless grace which the sorrow of Christ brings with it." In a great ascending movement, the meditation begins on the ground, with those feet that were pierced by nails, and rises heavenwards, to the sublime face of the Man of Sorrows, lingering with particular intensity on the Redeemer's heart. Thus the seven cantatas evoke in turn Christ's feet, knees, hands, side, breast, heart, and face.



This scheme was suggested to Buxtehude by a collection of religious poems, "Salve Mundi Salutare," widely paraphrased over the years and well-known in the seventeenth century under the title of "Rhythmica Oratio," or "prayer in verse." These texts were attributed at the time to Bernard of Clairvaux. Today we know that they are in fact of later date, since part of this poem was written by a Cistercian monk, Arnulf van Leuwen (Arnulf of Louvain, c. 1200-50), who was the author of the meditations on the wounds of the feet, the knees, the hands, the breast, and the face. The poem on the wound of the side is also credited to St. Bernard, but there is no evidence to support this attribution. As to "Ad cor," the meditation on Christ's heart, its text comes from a sequence by a German Premonstratensian canon, the Blessed Hermann Joseph of Steinfeld, a contemporary of Arnulf van Leuwen. In the aftermath of the Thirty Years War, mystics both Lutheran and Catholic found themselves intimately attuned to the spiritual lyric of the thirteenth century and to certain slightly later theologians such as Meister Eckhart and Tauler. It will suffice to point out that an edition of the "Salve Mundi Salutare" was published at Hamburg in 1633; it was in all probability this volume that Buxtehude used.



This mystical dimension is one of the essential components of German Baroque poetry, and it is no coincidence that Paul Gerhardt, the great Saxon poet of the seventeenth century, also encountered these texts. He made a German adaptation of the last poem of the "Rhythmica Oratio" - Ad Faciem - in the form of a passion chorale still very well-known today, which begins with the translation of the words Salve caput cruentatum (Hail, bloodied head!), which be came "O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden" (O Head covered in blood and wounds). Along with the melody which was associated with it from 1676 onwards, this hymn very soon became famous among many other utilizations, it occurs give times to mark nodal points in Bach's St. Matthew Passion.



The intended use of these seven meditations is unknown. Did the composer expect them to be given one after the other, as a self-contained work? This is most unlikely. It would seem that Duben had them performed separately, since the parts he made up from the tablature autograph are presented in different formats and on different paper types. Moreover, none of the title pages of these parts features the title of the cycle in which they are subsumed, Membra Jesu Nostri, although the last is marked "no. 7." The sixth, "Ad cor," is called Passione nostri Jesu Christi by Duben, and a note in another hand indicates for the first of them "For Easter or for any time." Neither the number of works in the cycle nor their theme suggests that they would have been given in the Abendmusiken, but since we know that, in that environment, Buxtehude performed cyclic works as separate pieces, there is no reason to suppose that he did not do the same on other occasions. Hence these seven pieces may have been sung in alternation during a long office, perhaps on Good Friday, separated by the spoken sections of the liturgy. Joseph Haydn's orchestral work The Seven Last Words of Our Savior on the Cross (Hob. XX/1A), which like Membra comprises seven similar movements, was commissioned for such a service. One may also conjecture that they were intended for the seven days of Holy Week, starting with Palm Sunday and ending on Holy Saturday, before the music appropriate for the feast of Easter. In that case, the sixth part, "Ad Cor," with its very special atmosphere, would have been destined for Good Friday.



From this immense and rather verbose poem, the composer retained only a few excerpts, choosing three five-line stanzas for each of the meditations and thereby providing a structural identity that ensures the unity of the whole. But he wished to associate with these lines, in each cantata, a sacred text, a biblical quotation of prophetic character that evoked the relevant part of the suffering body, as if to place the meditation sub specie aeternitatis, under the gaze, at least, of the most venerable tradition of the Church, in its founding texts. Six of these quotations come from the Old Testament (one each from Zechariah, Isaiah, Nahum, Psalms, and two from the Song of Songs), and only one from the New (1 Peter).



Buxtehude had already set fragments of the "Rhythmica Oratio" elsewhere, either in the original Latin (An filius non est Dei, fons gratiae salus rei BuxWV6) or in German translation (Dein edles Herz, der liebe Thron Bux WV 14). Here, it is the Latin text that he uses, as he does for the biblical quotations he has selected.



Each of the seven pieces that go to make up Membra Jesu Nostri belongs to the genre of the concerto-aria cantata, whose design is observed with great rigor. They might even be considered as a prototype for it. An instrumental sonata opens the cantata, followed by a vocal concerto, a polyphonic piece in which voices and instruments respond to and conflict with each other; then comes an aria, whose successive strophes, assigned to one or three soloists, are separated by ritornellos, before the concerto is reprised in conclusion. The sinfonia and the concerto constitute a sort of diptych prefiguring what will later become the instrumental prelude and vocal fugue to which Bach has recourse in a certain number of his cantatas. Motivic elements sometimes link the sinfonia with the vocal concerto, as in other pieces in the same genre.



In the case of Membra, it was evidently the poem that generated the whole structure, both in the septuple nature of the cycle and in the choice of the biblical verses for the introductory concertos. Most of the latter refer to the part of the body to which the section of the poem is addressed, and which Buxtehude names in the title of each cantata. The sixth cantata, "Ad Cor," presents the most expressive music of the entire cycle and really does function as its "heart." For this piece only, Buxtehude modifies his instrumental forces, switching from the two violins and violone employed in the other cantatas to an ensemble of five violas da gamba. The biblical text is taken from the Song of Songs - "Thou hast wounded me to the heart, my sister, my bride" - and the composer reinforces its emotional impact with the expressive figure of a falling sixth on the word "vulnerasti" (thou hast wounded). When they accompany the voices in the reiteration of the concerto, the viols play repeated quavers in the manner of the tremolo, a procedure which Buxtehude reserves for particularly expressive passages. He also marks the sonata of the second cantata to be performed tremolo throughout; its written minims were probably executed in quavers on the same string.



The music of the soul that is Membra Jesu nostri calls for modest forces, as do many of the composer's works. Five voices, two sopranos, alto, tenor and bass; and, aside from the continuo organ, just three instrumental parts, two trebles and a bass. The instruments utilized are identified in the seventh cantata as two violins and a violone; one may therefore suppose that the same holds good for the other cantatas. But in "Ad cor," the sixth cantata and the expressive peak of the work, the composer exceptionally requires five violas de gamba with the continuo.



The very project of Membra might make one fear a morbid delight in contemplating the blood and wounds of the dying Christ. But if in "Ad manus," for example, the poet sings "I delight in moaning," such complaisance resides in the moaning, not in the sight of the wounds themselves; and the poem continues: "I render thanks for these many wounds." Thus the meditation takes as its point of departure the tortured body depicted by so many sculptors and painters, not least Grunewald, but in order to rise above it by bringing out the spiritual meaning of this martyrdom. Significantly, the last words of the final cantata are "in cruce salutifera" (on the redeeming Cross), thus shedding light on the whole work. This contemplative experience leads the deeply moved Christian towards serenity in an atmosphere of the utmost fervor.



The introductory concerto generally employs the full forces (with the exception of cantatas V and VI, which call for just three voices supported only by the organ.) The role of this section is to utter the sacred words of the Bible, and thus to express the collective faith of the Church as a whole and of all time. Does this mean that Buxtehude intended it to be sung by a larger vocal ensemble? No historical source either confirms or refutes this hypothesis. In any case, although it is collective in character, the composer often gives it even greater emotional intensity than the aria. The words of the text are underlined by all the artifices of counterpoint - imitations, contrasts between polyphony and homophony, and so forth - but also by numerous figuralisms. One might cite, for instance, the ascending motion for "ut in eo crescats" (that you may grow through him), the long desinences of the final "Amen" which becomes an immense lament at the foot of the Cross, or the numerous figures of sorrow, chromaticisms and dissonances. In "Ad Cor," the concerto sets a phrase from the Song of Songs, "Vulnerasti cor meum, soror mea, sponsa" (Thou hast wounded my to the heart, my sister, my bride): Buxtehude depicts this wound by a means of a falling sixth which passes insistently from one voice to another. What is more, the concerto will be reprised with a different instrumental treatment, consisting of string tremolos, in which the repeated notes on a single degree of the scale seem to pant for breath, as they already did in the sinfonia of cantata II, "Ad genua." Setting the words of the poetic stanzas of the "Rhythmica Oratio," which are "modern," by comparison with the sacred texts, the aria is the place for individual involvement. In a style copied from the Italian idiom, the exposed solo voices, supported only by the continuo, develop the more personal sentiments of mystical poetry. Instrumental ritornellos divide the strophes from one another. This block of arioso writing is framed by the concerto, since the latter is reprised da capo to conclude the piece. In the last cantata, the third strophe of the aria is assigned to the full complement of performers, and a concertante section on "Amen" replaces the repetition of the introductory piece.



The firm organization of each cantata echoes the highly concerted organization of the overall work. If it is not strictly speaking a cycle, notable in the sense that one does not observe motivic reiterations from one movement to another, Membra Jesu nostri was nonetheless conceived as an organic whole. This is indicated by numerous signs, beginning with the existence of a single title page for the seven cantatas which follow one another in the collection. Homogeneous in structure, these cantatas are linked by a simple and logical tonal scheme, in relations at the third or fifth degree: C minor, E-flat major, G minor, D minor, A minor, E minor, with a return to C minor to end with, rounding off the works in its original key. This device of closing the tonal circle, as dear to Buxtehude as it will be to Bach (and in his case, too, in carefully chosen works), is a mark of eternity. Similar importance is accorded to the figure seven, highly symbolic, the figure of Genesis, according to which the Creation occurred over six days, the seventh being the day of the grace which crowns the edifice, just as the face of the dying Christ comtemplating the world does here.



How then can one fail to hear in Membra Jesu nostri a long prayer in music, a rhythmica oratio? And first and foremost the prayer of Buxtehude himself, who headed the first cantata, in the guise of a sign on the Cross, with the letters I. N. J., for In Nomine Jesu, a formula which already announces a mystical expression of the Lutheran theology of the Cross. The cantatas will possess no other conclusion than the reprise of the concerto, the better to lead into each other, only the last will close with an "Amen," thus bringing to an end both this movement and the work as a whole. At the bottom of the manuscript of this "Amen," Buxtehude appends a last sign in conclusion, the Lutheran motto par excellance: Soli Deo Gloria - To God alone be the glory!







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