Beginning in the end. Music about life and death

Music is an art in the process of passing: we can only perceive music as music because its elements have a beginning and an end, we can only hear a sound as a sound because it unfolds over a certain period of time, because its vibration has a certain duration. We consider a concert to be complete only when it is over, a work to be complete only when we have understood a sound to be a final sound. Everything that has to do with music happens on a time axis – without the progression, the becoming and passing of time, it would not exist. Sounds are always processes. Melodies only work because we remember the previous notes – which is why no two musical repetitions are the same.

So perhaps the magic of reproducing classical music lies in trying to get in touch with the music and thus with the finite experience of earlier generations. We grow, age, and die, but we do so to the same comforting soundtrack. The greatest classics among them are probably the chorales and chorale arrangements of Johann Sebastian Bach: They are based in part on melodies and texts that are even older, and therefore span a much wider arc into the past. Last but not least, the pious composer repeatedly dealt with death – and what might come after it.

Life & Death
Sat 2.9.2023, 16:00, Festival Centre Kreuzkirche

B'Rock Orchestra

Works by Henry Purcell, Kalle Kalima and Johann Christoph, Johann Ludwig and Johann Sebastian Bach, among others

In Bach’s arias from the funeral music for the burial of Prince Leopold BWV 244a and from the cantata »Mein Herze schwimmt im Blut« BWV 199, however, the theme is different, all too human: »Keep me, God, in the half of my days«, it says in the funeral music. With the words »I confess my guilt, but be patient, be patient with me«, the alto in the cantata turns to God. He decides that this is the end for the speaking figure – but the man is not yet ready to die. When he realises his »dying nature«, the text of the funeral music continues, he trembles – but only if he clings to everything earthly during his lifetime, rather than orienting himself towards »heaven«. The consolation here is not the promise of immortality in the hereafter, but the right preparation for the inevitable. Bach’s funeral music thus shows us an age in which death was part of life – perhaps even reconciled with life. It is hard to imagine how else Bach could have come up with such comforting music.

Since transience is inherent in all music, the internal musical exploration of this theme is all the more interesting – the music is, in the end, about itself. Music about death, music about transience, is often music about music. In his Second String Sextet, for example, Johannes Brahms dealt with a farewell that had to do with his art: he separated from his then fiancée Agathe von Siebold in order to be freer artistically than in his relationship with her.

This separation was not easy for the composer, who is now regarded as an eternal bachelor. In the first movement, he introduces a theme made up of the letters of her name: AGAHE. In real life, his beloved no longer has a place – in his art, however, she can appear prominently. She is only an idea, deprived of her physical presence, and has become one with his music. He thus composes a musical farewell to her, cementing her transformation by placing his artistic work above his lived love for a person. In the sextet, the expansive head theme is juxtaposed with the Agathe theme. Brahms weaves counterpoint and love poetry, colourful harmony and broad elegy around both. Here, death is a transformation – not an end, but a new beginning – and the artist is its director.

Unlike Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Bach, Brahms and Beethoven composed their works without political pressure or repression. During his lifetime, Hartmann was a staunch socialist and anti-fascist who opposed the National Socialist regime in Germany. Although he took a stand on political events, he considered his art to be largely unaffected by them. Nevertheless, the public scorned his aesthetics and did not perform his works, leading him to withdraw from musical life. In his Fourth Symphony of 1947, the composer reworked his First String Quartet, which he had composed in 1933 and premiered three years later in Geneva. The first versions of the Fourth Symphony were written in 1938. Hartmann commented on his music from the Nazi era: »If my general mood seems depressive to anyone, I ask myself how a person of my generation can reflect on his era other than with a certain melancholy thoughtfulness.« An artist, says Hartmann, »must not live to see the day without having spoken«. In this sense, Hartmann »speaks« in his music in a subtle way: in the second movement in particular, he uses motifs from Jewish music and interweaves them with dissonant harmonies. This audible and »certain melancholy thoughtfulness« of the non-Jewish Hartmann, however, contrasted with the increasingly life-threatening situation and existential anxiety of the Jews. Thanks to Hartmann’s privileged situation, and at the same time his defensive nature, he was able to write music that tells us an astonishing amount about social power dynamics, about witnessing and experiencing massive social and political violence.

Memorial concert: Karlrobert Kreiten
Thu 7.9.2023, 19:30, Beethoven-Haus Bonn
Documentary concert

Much of the music at this year’s Beethovenfest was composed before 1933, when the crimes of the National Socialists were unknown. This fact is still an interesting phenomenon today, especially in Germany: people think about death and decay on an abstract, individual and spiritual level, allow themselves to be sprinkled with the art of past eras and remember that the world was once a better place – as if transience and death were above all something subject to the arbitrariness of a higher power. But it is also human beings themselves who damage the existence of other human beings, social structures and, not least, the balance of nature, in the worst case even bringing it to an end. In a contemporary context, »Tief gebückt und voller Reue«, in the sense of Bach’s cantata BWV 199, would be read not only as an act towards God, but also as an appeal for an attitude towards the other, the others. Optimism in the face of the transience inherent in everything and at the same time caused by human beings is therefore on shaky ground – in 2023 more than ever. On the human side, however, you can get up at the end of a concert, even with music that is sometimes centuries old. You can leave the hall. And decide to take responsibility for this life – regardless of the soundtrack.

The essay was written for the Beethovenfest 2023 programme book and was published there for the first time.