Handel+Haydn’s “Bach and Telemann,” performed on May 15th at Old South Church and May 16 at Sanders Theatre after a sold-out show at Carnegie Hall, was beautifully structured by conductor Jonathan Cohen, illuminating the way Bach and Telemann both reverenced the past while moving on to create new harmonic languages of their own. Four excellent visiting soloists joined a small ensemble from H+H’s superb “historically informed” orchestra.

All the musical instruments were old, but some were older than others. The larger, softer viola da gambas harkened back to an earlier Baroque sound world, while the newer, lighter, livelier violas, played standing by Stephen Goist and Sarah Darling, looked forward to the Classical era and beyond.

Bach was a young man of 22 in 1707 and known primarily for his virtuoso skills as an organist when he wrote Cantatas 4 and 106. They resemble the music of his childhood, sung in Lutheran churches with his pious, musical family, steeped in the teachings of Martin Luther, who emphasized the importance of music and especially singing, to praise God, confront death with joy, and make the religious experience feel real.

Bach transformed the original melody for Cantata 4, Christ lag in Todesbanden (Christ lay in death’s bond), an 11^th-century Latin chant, into a chorale. Countertenor Reginald Mobley, who was in the audience, told me that Lutheran chorales remind him of the Spirituals he sang last year in H+H’s “Crossing the Deep:” they too speak of welcoming death as a release from the pain and sufferings of everyday life.

Luther’s text depicts a dramatic journey from dark to light, death to life, and grief to joy; Bach scored it for an ensemble, in this case including a pair of  gambas played seated by Anna Steinhoff and Matt Zucker; paired violins, played Aisslinn Nosky and Christina Day Martinson, Guy Fishman on cello, Heather Miller Lardin on double bass, and John Lenti on theorbo with Jonathan Cohen conducting from the harpsichord (like Bach) at the center, keeping time like a rhythm section. The four singers kept repeating the word Tod — Death — like a hammer.

The seven stanzas all end in Halleluja, but the Hallelujas sometimes sounded frantic, mournful, or even “cold and broken”, as in the Leonard Cohen song. Only at the end did the music find a hard-won harmony approaching peace.

“Bach puts us right in the middle of the struggle, dramatizing it with unexpected silences, breaking the fourth wall,” said Pamela Dellal, the director of the Bach Institute at Emmanuel Music. “Often the music seems to be saying something deeper and possibly something different from the text — there is a sense of yearning and clinging to life. We are not just listening to pretty music, but taking part in the struggle to be spiritual.”

Cantata 106 — Gottes Zeit is die allerbeste Zeit (God’s Time is the Best Time) — was a funeral piece and probably written as an audition for a better position in a neighboring town. Bach won the post, which enabled him to marry Maria Barbara Bach.

Two viola da gambas and two recorders gave the music an ethereal, otherworldly sound, while the legendary Ian Watson invoked the sound of an entire Gothic cathedral on a small organ. Guy Cutting’s lucid, lyrical tenor voice sang exquisitely of the peace and joy of paradise, accompanied by the fragile, angelic voices of soprano Robin Johannsen and countertenor Christopher Lowrey. Divine!

Bach often used long-held notes and silence to let the words and music sink in and reverberate. There is a mystical moment of silence at the center of this cantata.

“BWV 106 is one my favorite pieces on the planet,” said gamba player Anna Steinhoff. “The melodies are gorgeous and the ending of the second movement — where the instruments fade out one by one and the soprano is left by herself and it doesn’t really end. And then there is a rest — a Grand Pause — it’s in the score — on that final bar of nothing. It’s very profound.” Ed. Ed. Note: BMInt’s feature writer Markus Rathey concurs [HERE] about BWV 106), also known as the Actus Tragicus.

The day after my mother’s funeral, we had to move her car. When we turned on the engine, the Brandenburg concerti came blasting out of the tape deck at full volume, and we couldn’t help laughing. So for me, Brandenburg 6 fit right into the concert’s overarching theme of staying on the pilgrim path from grief to consolation and sometimes even joy.

By the time Bach wrote the Brandenburgs, possibly around 1721, he had moved from town to town and church to church, lost Maria Barbara and several children to sudden deaths, discovered Vivaldi’s concerti and the Italian style, mastered many more musical instruments, written hundreds of great works of increasingly dazzling complexity, and married his second wife Anna Magdalena, the star soprano of the court of Court of Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cothen.

The longing for paradise that in the cantatas could only be found in death is transformed in the Brandenburgs into a celebration of life. Even the music in a minor key feels like a beautiful sadness, where loss becomes a beloved memory.

In Brandenburg Concerto No.6 in B-flat major, BWV 1051, the older instruments —  the gambas and the violone — are like deep roots and massive trunks of ancient trees, supporting the violas, which flourished and flowered like branches fluttering in the wind. Guy Fishman rollicked on the cello, swaying with slow but never mournful sound. Sometimes the gambas remained silent, just watching the others play.

Bach and Telemann were friends — the P in the name of Bach’s son C.P.E Bach is for Philipp, as Telemann was his godfather. Telemann wrote more than 3,000 compositions, from sacred music to operas (BEMF’s production of his Ino just won a Grammy!) and was more famous than Bach during their lifetimes. Both were deeply religious and influenced by Buxtehude — in his teens Bach walked 250 miles on foot to hear him play the organ — but it was also the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment, and the new ideas in mathematics, philosophy, and politics. (Some see the gambas as emblems of royalty and the French court, while the violas represent the rising class of the bourgeoisie). The work of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibnitz and especially Isaac Newton, to whom Bach has often been compared, electrified the air. Both composers were finding their voices and pushing the envelope of what music could be.

“Telemann was much cooler than Bach,” said Ellen Exner, a member of the faculty of Music History at Julliard. “The two guys were young composers at the same time, but Telemann is a much more modern composer.”

Telemann’s Du aber Daniel from 1720 was also a funeral piece, with the same theme of a rocky road from grief to acceptance, and the joy of knowing that the lost loved one is now with Jesus. But it’s a new world of sound, deeply emotional, with lovely melodies and an almost Romantic mood. The oboe, played by Debra Nagy, and the recorder, by Kathryn Montoya, had starring roles; soprano and countertenor sang like sweet, mournful angels; and bass baritone Dingle Yandell was mesmerizing, singing his long arias and recitatives like an opera star.

Anyone who has lost a loved one would be moved by the final chorale.  “Schlaft wohl” (Sleep well), a tender lullaby, sounded as soft as a sigh. The string section — the whole family — joined in gently, one by one, sometimes plucking, sometimes bowed, sadly saying goodbye. I thought of the end of Hamlet: “Good night, sweet prince,/ And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest”.

So the concert ended on a meditative moment of peace — a wonderful way to welcome Lecolion Washington, Jr., the bassoonist and community arts advocate who will become Handel+Haydn’s new President and CEO in August. 

Rebecca Nemser writes about Art and Music. You can read some of her Stories about Art in www.rebeccanemser.com.