Sermon Archive
A musical offering
Sermon preached by Kenneth Boyd at Holy Communion on 22 May 2005
Genesis 6.9-22,7.24,8.14-19 ; Romans 1.16-17,3.22b-28 ; Matthew 7.21-29
Evening in the Palace of Reason by James Gaines* is a fascinating account of the origins of one of J.S. Bach’s greatest achievements, the suite of sixteen mostly very short movements, for flute, strings and harpsichord, which he entitled A Musical Offering. Gaines’ book is subtitled Bach meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment and it recounts the very different lives of these two men, the brilliant but tormented king of Prussia and the no less great, if also grumpy, choirmaster and cantor of Leipzig. They met, just once, in 1747, at Frederick’s palace in Potsdam, where Bach’s second son, Carl Philipp Emanuel, was chief harpsichordist in the royal chapel. On that evening, at one of Frederick’s celebrity entertainments, the king challenged the composer. Bach was the great master of church music and especially the 'learned counterpoint' of canon and fugue. But that was now going out of fashion, and being superseded by what was considered a more natural and harmonious style. Frederick, himself a gifted amateur musician and occasional composer, knew all this and sat down to play an impossibly intricate theme, on which he then invited Bach to improvise. Bach accepted the challenge, but not to his own satisfaction, and two weeks after returning to Leipzig he had completed the Musical Offering. Its canons, fugues and sonata, all variations on the tortuous 'royal theme', are not only technically brilliant, but also achingly beautiful. Learned counterpoint’s day might be ending, but rarely has there been a more musical sunset. Bach despatched an engraved copy of the Musical Offering to Frederick with a dedication 'consecrating' the work to the king. It is not known whether Frederick ever heard it. Bach died three years later, fashions in music moved on, and his work was largely ignored for nearly a century.
Gaines’ book, as I’ve said, is subtitled Bach meets Frederick the Great in the Age of Enlightenment. The story of the Musical Offering is not just about music. The 18th century Age of Enlightenment was one of the great turning points in history, the birth of the modern secular world we all now live in, the moment when Europe decisively turned from the teaching of popes to that of Pope: 'Know then thyself, presume not God to scan, / The proper study of mankind is man.' Thereafter it would be increasingly difficult for those who took this advice, also to take seriously, for example, stories like that we heard this morning of Noah’s flood, or the faith of St Paul in today’s Epistle, or even what Jesus says in today’s gospel about building not on sand but a rock. For although the floods did come – bloodily in wars and revolutions no less terrible than those of religion, cold-bloodedly in dogmatic anti-religious ideologies which sent millions to concentration camps and gulags – the Age of Enlightenment's faith in secular human progress staggered on. Nor, from a Christian point of view, was it wrong to do so. The Age of Faith that the Age of Enlightenment turned against was also often an age of superstition, subjection of the gospel to religious power politics, and countless ills of everyday mediaeval life that modern science, medicine and technology have now largely alleviated, at least in Europe. Moreover, many of the causes that unite believers and unbelievers alike today, such as 'Make Poverty History', reflect the teaching of the prophets and the gospels more faithfully than the Churches often did when they were more numerically successful.
Yet despite all that, something is missing from what the Age of Enlightenment has handed down to us. Frederick the Great, Gaines writes, was the epitome of that Age and of its confidence in human reason and secular progress. Bach's understanding of the world was different. His Musical 'Offering' which he 'consecrated' to Frederick, had many other cryptic meanings, both in the music and in the inscriptions in the engraved copy sent to the king. To understand them at all adequately, I can only recommend you to read Gaines' book. But what Gaines concludes, is that their hidden message was this. 'Beware the appearance of good fortune, Frederick, stand in awe of a fate more fearful than any this world has to give, seek the glory that is beyond the glory of this fallen world and know that there is a law higher than any king's which is never changing and by which you and every one of us will be judged.' Bach was not saying this, Gaines adds, because he expected it would change Frederick; nor would Bach have cared whether or not Frederick liked the Musical Offering. He was simply saying what ‘he had been saying all his life’, something ‘rooted in his character too deeply even to be considered a matter of principle’.
And that, perhaps, is what is missing from what the Age of Enlightenment has handed down to us: not so much the particular theological language of Bach’s steadfast Lutheranism, but its openness to what transcends the limits of the humanly manipulable and manageable – its openness to what lies beyond the horizons of the everyday world of normality. Frederick and many other Enlightenment thinkers doubted that there was anything beyond those horizons - partly no doubt in reaction to the over-confidence of churchmen who believed they knew precisely what was beyond them. But the Age of Enlightenment’s doubts were corrosive, and handed down, were to develop in succeeding generations a received disbelief in any light beyond that of common day - a disbelief that is as unquestioned as that of any religion, and cannot easily be dislodged by rational argument – as the tomes of philosophers and the correspondence columns of The Scotsman alike demonstrate.
Bach’s openness to transcendence, as I have just said however, does not survive in the theological arguments or sermons of his own or any other time. As a good organist and choirmaster, I imagine, he kept his own counsel about what he heard from the pulpit. But his openness to transcendence does survive, happily, in his music. One other work discussed by Gaines is Bach's marvellous early funeral cantata Actus tragicus. Its opening words immediately speak of the transcendence to which Bach was open: Gottes zeit is die allerbeste zeit, 'God’s time is the very best time'.
In the modern world, where many people share Frederick's opinions, Gaines writes, Bach is 'more of a stranger, a refugee from “God’s time”.' If God's time is something to theorise about, scientifically or philosophically, that is true. We no longer believe literally in the Pythagorean harmony of the spheres. But whether there is harmony beyond time, in God's eternal time, and whether we may hear that harmony even here and now in our lives, is something neither science nor philosophy have anything ultimately to tell us about.
There is another way to think of God's time. To live in God's time is to know that we are in God’s hands, not only when we have health and strength and sufficient resources to make our way confidently through the everyday world of normality, but also when we are exiled from normality, health, happiness and all that hitherto has made life worth living. To live in God's time is to rely not on our own limited strength alone, but on the Lord who renews our strength; it is to be not closed in on ourselves, but taken out of ourselves, so that we may truly come to ourselves. Argument and the language of ideas cannot take us out of ourselves. But music can. As Gaines writes:
The beauty of music.., what sets it apart from virtually every other human endeavour, is that it does not need the language of ideas; it requires no explanation and offers none, as much as it may say…. Bach’s music makes no argument that the world is more than a ticking clock, yet somehow manages to leave no doubt of it.
God’s time is the very best time. Amen to that, and better sung than said, for music encourages us while we work and pray to build upon the rock. But perhaps I’ve said as much as can be said about music by someone who does not actually play or sing it!
Let me end rather with a recollection of someone seen in a moment of God’s time. It came back to me when I heard of the death of Diana Matchett. I first met her many years ago when I was first a student and then a chaplain in the years when Diana was, virtually single-handedly, Edinburgh University’s Accommodation and Welfare Service. The number of students she counselled and found places to live was countless and she was indomitable. But the memory I have is more recent. It was a Sunday morning a few months ago when I was in the congregation, and as we slowly moved up the aisle to take communion, I saw Diana, who always sat near the front and had returned from the rail, kneeling in prayer. She had been ill and I think it was her first Sunday back in St John’s. And as I saw her kneeling, tears came to my eyes – not of sadness, but of gratitude for the sight of a great spirit in communion with her God. The best words I can think of to describe that sight are those of another joyful Bach chorale:
What God does, that is well done,
To this I will be constant,
I may be driven on to the rough road
By distress, death and misery,
Yet God will hold me
Just like a father
In his arms.
*published in 2005 by Fourth Estate. ISBN 0-00-715392 -9
Worship >> Sermons >> Sermons