Music as Clay :: Composers Musical Essays

Music as ClayIn our weigh of Bach, we have seen how he was able to take traditional, sacred texts and write accompaniments for them that allow the meaning of those texts in a very unique way. Bach had the precedent to write music that was so expressive that it could actually make the auditor feel what the text was introduceing. This power of Bachs music is often overlooked in our society, because the modern human culture it quick to judge the beauty of music. By doing this, we fail to hear the truths Bach wrote. The following is a close count of how Bach was able to combine text and harmonies in one special(prenominal) movement of his Cantata No. 78 to express certain messages.Bachs melodic phrase aria (movement 4) in Cantata No. 78 is a good usage of how Bach uses the expressive power of text, harmonies, and instrumentation to speak to his audiences and authentically say things through his music. This way, he was able to make music not entirely more powerful, but more acc essible.One way Bach uses driveway 4 to speak to the audience is through the form and tonal grammatical construction of the piece. Movement 4 is a binary aria with the text split as into a collar- filiation A section and a three-line B section. The opening ritornello is in g minor, and the piece stays in g minor until the polish cadence of the A section. The second ritornello is in Bb major followed by the B section, which moves from Bb major through many other keys and eventually ends up impale in g minor. Then the final ritornello is also played in g minor. The form Bach has chosen seems, from the conventions mentioned by Crist, to be an occasional form for the text given. It is a very short text that could slowly be repeated in the da capo form, but Bach mustiness have chosen this form for another reason. Perhaps he was laborious to accentuate more on the meaning of the words rather than lay out its poetic sound. The actual meaning of the words do not really seem to fi t well with a da capo form. The first three lines talk of how Jesus makes the heart light and the spirit free. Thus, a freer manner makes sense. Also, the last three lines talk of how Jesus brings victory over the passe-partout of Hell, so ending the song after that last line can somehow be paralleled to the victory.