Bach Magnificat

Leipzig, in the early 18th Century, was Germany's intellectual capital, a flourishing, prosperous, cosmopolitan city with an appreciation for the arts and the means to support them. In May 1723, the Leipzig town council appointed thirty-eight-year-old J. S. Bach as Director of Music for the city of Leipzig and Kantor (Music Director) of St. Thomas school. The high-pressure position included teaching prep school music and Latin at the church school, directing musical activities at Leipzig University, and overseeing music for the city and its four principal churches-playing the organ, training the choirs and composing the music for the city's two principal Lutheran churches as well as supervising and training the musicians at two others.

The council had offered the position first to Telemann and then to Graupner, both of whom had turned it down. As the third choice for the position, Bach felt he had to prove himself and, for his first Leipzig Christmas, he pulled out all the proverbial stops and wrote his splendid Magnificat. In twelve movements, it calls for a five-part choir (instead of the usual four), five soloists, and an unusually large orchestra for its time: three trumpets, timpani, two flutes, two oboes, strings, and continuo-all in the interests of the festive and resplendent. The chorus, brilliant and triumphant, describes the mighty masses while the soloists and small ensembles portray the lyrical and reflective moments. Bach displays his mastery of tone-painting: in every movement the music depicts a salient word in the text.

The text for the Magnificat is based on the Canticle of the Blessed Virgin Mary (Luke 1:46-55), Mary's own astonished words at being told of the holy child she carried in her womb. Scholars conjecture that these words were probably sung by the Blessed Virgin, making a musical setting all the more appropriate.A Gloria Patri, the traditional hymn of praise, is appended at the end.

An ebullient orchestral introduction featuring heraldic trumpets sets the scene for the first choral entrance, Magnificat anima mea Dominum. Et exultavit, an elegant soprano aria, accompanied only by strings and continuo, describes Mary's awed rejoicing. Quia respexit, a tender duet between the oboe d'amore and soprano, contains many falling motifs that allude to Mary's humble ("lowly") state. Out of this unfurls the fervent choral Omnes generationes, depicting swarming throngs of people. Quia fecit for bass describes, with grandeur in its unhurried stride, the mighty things that He has done. Et misericordia, set for alto and tenor soloists, flutes, and muted strings, portrays mercy in a contemplative way with a lilting12/8 rhythm and parts moving in dulcet thirds. Choir and orchestra burst forth from the pastoral calm with torrents of sixteenth-note runs counterpoised with unison chordal punctuations; the text dispersit superbos describes the scattering of the proud and the musical lines scatter into dispersed fragments. It seems that the music has disintegrated into chaos, and the voices just manage to gather themselves together for the closing cadence. In Deposuit potentes, for tenor accompanied by violins and continuo, a proud dotted rhythm offsets the lengthy melismas: these often confidently turn upward at the ends of phrases, giving a purposeful righteousness to the business of casting down the mighty and lifting up the lowly. Two flutes and a pizzicato bass set an elegant backdrop for the alto aria, Esurientes implevit bonis, in which the sense pervades that all's right with the world. In the ethereal trio for the three women soloists, Suscepit Israel, Bach gives the oboes a plainsong melody in long drawn-out notes, against which the vocal lines of the three soloists are exquisitely interwoven, and suggest mercy. Sicut locutus for choir is a fugue, whose sturdiness conveys God's promise to the children of Israel. Gloria Patri opens with a unison rhythm and then unfurls like petals of a flower in fast motion as the voices pile one atop the other. For Sicut erat in principio and Amen), Bach appropriately mirrors the words by recalling the music "as it was in the beginning" and the Magnificat ends as exuberantly and dramatically as it began.
Program notes © Shulamit Hoffmann