Trauerode (Funeral Ode)

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) completed the musical commemoration Laß, Fürstin, laß nur einen Strahl for the funeral of Electress Christiane Eberhardine. Commonly known as the Trauerode or Funeral Ode, it was performed in October 1727. This is not to say that all of the material was newly composed in the fall of 1727. Indeed, like many composers of his era, Bach maintained a portfolio of material waiting for a suitable occasion. Material could also be recycled from other existing compositions—even “borrowed” from the works of other composers—with no eyes batted. Bach subsequently seems to have used several of the Funeral Ode’s movements in setting the St. Mark Passion, now largely lost.
The text of the Funeral Ode was crafted by J. C. Gottsched, a poet and teacher at Leipzig University where Bach was somewhat contentiously employed. Upon the death of the Electress, university officials asked Bach to compose music to Gottsched’s text, much to the chagrin of J. G. Gorner. Gorner considered himself Bach’s superior and tried to bar him from any role in the service. The council thought otherwise, and Bach directed the performance of his own music.
The Funeral Ode is a cantata in ten sections, including chorales, recitatives, and solo arias for soprano, alto, and tenor; the bass gets a lengthy accompanied recitative, bordering on being an aria itself. As is common, choruses appear at structural moments, such as the beginning and ending of the first part and closing the entire cantata. After the opening chorus, a plaintive recitative marked by consistently throbbing bass provides both fluidity and greater tension. The soprano aria maintains this mood of dolorous B minor, reinforced by delicate string writing. The alto recitative strikes out on a new direction. Here, the winds first are heard mimicking the tolling of bells. As the recitative closes rather abruptly, the aria “Wie starb die Heldin” dances forth in a gracious D major. Where the text refers to the departed’s acceptance of her mortality, Bach’s music carries its emotions bravely. A few quite extended notes can be interpreted symbolically (longing to stay in the world), and Bach does not shy from pointed chromaticism and a turn to D minor. Part I, lasting two-thirds of the total duration, then closes with two celebrations of the departed woman’s virtues in the tenor recitative and chorus.
Part II picks up with the tenor’s postponed aria based initially on the traditional marker of mourning, the lament bass (a descending stepwise progression from tonic to dominant). The following bass recitative is more conventional and effortlessly continues into an arioso texture before returning to static recitative. It creates a mini-drama on its own as prelude to the final chorus. Where the arias and recitatives provide emotional meditation, the choruses function as moments of shared empathy. Bach strengthens that function by deviating from his standard choral polyphony to write unison textures at several key moments. Clearly he was partial to the achievements of this cantata, enough to revisit and repurpose passages for the later St. Mark Passion, if not other works equally unknown to us today.

(c) Jason Stell