Harmony that keys directly into the senses

The music of J.S. Bach’s St Matthew Passion is immersive in its drama, and participatory - the sung chorales include the congregation. The moving chorale melody of O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden occurs four times in the St Matthew Passion. The harmonisations sink chromatically causing an effect of mourning and resignation: from E major to E flat major in part 1, and from F major to a half-closure on an E major in part 2. The chorale tune's transformation and its repeated contrapuntal reharmonisations map on to the critical narrative points in the structure. It is a reminder that Bach represents an apex of the medieval/renassaisance approach to composition in which a tune provides the structure amidst a complex web of polyphony; but at the same time future directions in which continuo bass will be the determining and harmonic driving force in music are signalled - determined by progression from the bass line rather than from the centre or the treble as seen in early polyphonic music. Interestingly this principle leads Bach to be even more acute in use of dissonance, more so even than Tye and other English Tudor composers. The acceptance of the tempered system, allied to awareness of the expressive possibilities of non-tempered, seems to produce a musical language that is anchored in the expressive power of the third and the seventh, whether rising or falling. This is made more poignant in the constant reworkings and revoicings of Luther's chorale melodies. Wilfred Mellers described this as music of 'an exquisite pain and a release';[i] in other words music in which the experience of pain is actually lived - and resolved - through a harmonic sensibility which keys directly into the senses.

[i] Mellers: 1980, 31 Bach and the Dance of God