Cantata 4: Christ lag in Todesbanden

Bach’s Easter cantata “Christ lag in Todesbanden” remains one of his most well known and successful choral works despite its early date of composition (circa 1708). The work was likely revised for performance in Leipzig during Holy Week, 1724, but there can be no denying that its core was written much earlier. In fact, it may be one of the very first cantatas Bach ever wrote. One primary reason we know the work did not originate in Leipzig is its lack of operatic features like recitative, which appear without fail in the cantatas written after the reforms instituted by Erdmann Neumeister around 1711-14; Bach’s tenure from Leipzig ran from 1723 to his death. It is also mostly un-Italian in style, suggesting a date prior to the Weimar period (1708-17) when Bach was deeply engrossed by Italian string concertos.
Bach has composed a cantus firmus cantata, in which every movement utilizes a pre-existing tune as its main theme. In successive movements you will hear the chorale melody, written by Martin Luther in 1524, passed around among different parts. It is a stirring way in which the unity of religious message—meditation on the gospel or lesson for the day—receives fitting expression in music. One additional feature, as can be seen below, is the work’s symmetrical layout; Bach is notorious for such hidden structures. Excluding the opening Sinfonia for strings we have:

Verse 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Scoring Chorus Duet Solo Chorus Solo Duet Chorus


The opening Sinfonia sets the emotionally dark and powerful tone for the entire cantata. That depth of expression accords well with the occasion: Good Friday. And even though Easter Sunday may be the highest holiday in Christianity, it is arguable that no day in the liturgical year is fraught with more pathos than Good Friday. Bach taps that pathos by launching the Sinfonia with short declamatory phrases. More elaborate counterpoint is withheld until later movements. Here the action is deliberate, the dissonances clearly etched and emphasized. Only the briefest flourish for solo violin in the final bars breaks out of the prevailing texture and chordal progressions.
The following movement sets the cantata’s first verse of text as chordal polyphony. Despite frequent doublings of vocal lines in the strings, it is an extremely difficult movement to pull off successfully. Bach never shed the older traditions of modal composition, and the singers must be ever vigilant when navigating chromatic pitches that are constantly in flux. The movement is also fairly large with only two brief instrumental interludes and a fast “Hallelujah” in triple meter by way of conclusion.
The third movement, covering verse 2, is a tight imitative duet between soprano and alto. Bach dwells on falling half-step intervals (e.g., B to A-sharp), which commonly express musical sighs. They are especially audible on the opening text “Den Tod” (death). The repetitions and exchange of falling half steps give the opening phrases a kind of wailing effect. The voice parts overlap one another extensively, making the dissonances harsh and pungent, as in the chain of suspensions during the concluding Hallelujah.
Bach shows his awareness of Italian string textures in the tenor solo (movement 4, verse 3), with its rapid skipwise motion. Stripped of its vibrant figuration, of course, the movement still contains a clear harmonic structure, with a walking bass line that supports the voice’s presentation of the chorale tune. The written-out pause at “Tod’s Gestalt” is pure Bach, but it also recalls the mini-cadenza tradition, performed ad libitum, which appears just before the final ritornello in so many Italian concertos. The cosmopolitan style suggests this movement may have been substantially revised in Leipzig.
The next movement (verse 4) is set as a double fugue for chorus and continuo. The cantus firmus appears in the alto, while the remaining parts are given a great deal of running sixteenth notes. Bach does an amazing job of maintaining forward momentum all the way to the final cadence in this highly sectional structure, partly through strategic use of dissonance and evaded cadences.
Verse 5, the sixth movement, is scored as a solo for bass voice. The chorale melody may be easily perceived against the programmatic walking bass line of the accompaniment. Plodding motion suggests the journey through the stations of the Cross, and the text makes direct personal reference to Christ. As in earlier movements, Bach repeats the A section exactly except for one small but significant change: a two-measure interpolation on “Kreuzes” (cross) where Bach composes the musical analog of a cross via upper and lower neighbor notes decorating the principal note. More text painting occurs on the rhetorically charged “Tode,” which Bach sets as a plunging, dissonant and extremely large leap.
Soprano and tenor take solo roles in the verse 6 duet. The voice lines unfold as a typical fugue (staggered entrances with imitation at the interval of a fifth), but Bach brings them together periodically for coordinated triplets and cadences. The voices rely on steady rhythms, whereas the continuo uses incessantly dotted rhythmic patterns. Such contrast serves to set the solo voices apart from the texture.
A four-voice chorale (verse 7) closes the cantata. In this work, which looks so strongly back upon Johann Pachelbel and Georg Böhm and the late 17th-century tradition, the final chorale is one of the features which he retains in most of the later cantatas. Given the high drama that has unfolded in previous movements, some listeners feel a sense of anti-climax with the final chorale. We must recall, however, that Bach’s cantatas were written for performance in a specific service. Hence it is the need to include the congregation in the music making that calls forth the simpler homophonic style at the end (though many of Bach’s chorales are not the easiest tunes to read).

(c) Jason Stell