A Class By Himself

CB. Bach has been called the "fifth Evangelist" (after Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). Was Bach first and foremost a church musician? Is that the starting point for viewing him?

HR. Well, of course he was not only a church musician. Let's speak about the four famous K's: at the end of his life (that is, during his time in Leipzig) he was a kantor (cantor). But before, when he was in Cöthen, he was konzertmeister (concertmaster), the second K; and before that he was also kapellmeister-leader of an orchestra, not just of church groups (this was partly in Leipzig, partly in Cöthen, partly also in Weimar). And you could add to these, maybe the most important K, that he was a komponist (composer) all his lifetime. By this I mean, he composed so many works which were not for the church. Take all his chamber music, The Well-Tempered Clavier, take his Brandenburg Concertos, take his many secular cantatas. Take also, and I did not mention this before, what he has done as an organist and what he has composed for the organ. So he's a very broad musician.

CB. But if we do look at his church music, what is the cultural and spiritual contribution of Bach the theologian?

HR. You see, it was Bach's job, especially in Leipzig where he was cantor at the St. Thomas and St. Nicolai churches from 1723 up to the end of his life, to do with his music what the minister or the pastor had to do with his sermons. He had to explain the thoughts contained in the liturgical texts, every Sunday and every feast day of the church year; he had to explain and communicate them to the congregation. So he had to think through virtually all of the components of the Christian faith. We see these components reflected in his cantatas and in his oratorios.

CB. We live today in a predominantly secular, nuclear, and high-tech age. Why should we still care about Bach? In what way can he enrich our lives?

HR. I think culture in a very general way enriches our lives, and has done so in the past. Maybe we need it even more in our time, when things have become so rational, so high-tech, as you say. Bach's music has perhaps something which is very special for us. See, there is music, including classical music, which you can hear just with your feelings. If you sit down and listen to the piano music of Chopin, for example, you get transported by beautiful and enchanting emotions. With Bach it's different. Bach never excludes the spirit, the rational thinking, but makes it part of his music. And I think this combination of both feeling, of emotion, together with the rationality and the construction, the architecture—this is the special quality of Bach's music, and maybe that is what we need so much today.

CB. Does one need to have a Christian or Eurocentric background in order to understand Bach fully? And I'm wondering what has been your experience in performing Bach in, let's say, Japan?

HR. Certainly you do not need to have that background. Let's take his instrumental works, his Well-Tempered Clavier or his concertos—everybody who is interested and educated in this kind of music can understand it. It is, of course, a different case with the text-related music in his cantatas and oratorios. There, to know something about the context of these texts-about the Christian faith-is a great help in understanding the music. But I have had experiences which show me that this is not at all a problem in countries which have a different culture, because I think in many ways Bach's sacred works deal with very general human problems. For example, in the St. Matthew Passion, we hear about love, hate, suffering, death, and many other things. Bach teaches us to look at these very human problems from a very special viewpoint, his viewpoint, which is that you can solve these problems only by looking to a higher authority.

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