Revealed – the secret
spiritual messages in
Bach's Masterpieces

Paul Robertson on new research which shows the composer hid personal messages of faith, hope, love and dedication in his music.

When JS Bach wrote his six Sonatas and Partitas for solo violin he was in his early thirties. Married and with seven children to support, he was working under the patronage of Count Leopold of Coeten.

The Sonatas and Partitas are master­pieces. Beautiful and moving, they are as musically complex as they are technically demanding. But they are in many ways mysterious. Why did Bach, master of polyphony and counterpoint, create some of his greatest and most personal work for a single violin, an instrument essentially dedicated to playing one note at a time?

To find the answer we need to look at the complex of hidden meanings which, embedded within the music of each of these pieces, are only now – almost 300 years after they were written – being revealed to us. Count Leopold insisted that Bach write only secular instrumental works. In completing the three Sonatas for solo violin, Bach wove into the music a pattern of chorales which, virtually undetectable, are associated with the ecclesiastical calendar: Christmas, Easter and Pentecost.

The Count also demanded that Bach accompany him on his extensive tours of Europe.When, in 1720, Bach returned from one such tour he discovered that his wife, Maria Barbara, had died. Perhaps as a way of dealing with his grief he completed the three Partitas, building into these traditional Dance Suites a complex series of mathematical and musical references to his wife and children.

Today, thanks significantly to recent research by the German musicologist Helga Thoene, these magnificent and often perplexing works are yielding this multitude of hidden meanings, expressing faith and hope in redemption and resurrection, and personal love and dedication to his wife and children in a musical, mathematical tapestry of creed, song, dance and magic.

Drawing on this research, and following convivium the lead of my own intuitive awareness of the presence of these hidden meanings, I have become convinced that in writing the Sonatas and Partitas Bach was practising a very personal, spiritual, algorithmic system or schemata.

Following in the footsteps of a long tradition of ‘esoteric’ researchers and Bach aficionados, Professor Thoene has not only revealed the chorales lying hidden within these compositions, but has also finally ‘cracked’ a whole series of numerical/ alphabetical ‘Gematria’ (a system for converting letters and words into numbers, most commonly associated with the mystical Jewish tradition of Cabbala) upon which the music is composed.

It is interesting to note that in the early 1700s there was a ‘popular’ use of mathematical poetic conceits called ‘paragrams’, in which various ingenious number and letter devices and codes were hidden within odes and verses as a clever way of flattering patrons. Indeed, Picander, the author of many of the texts for Bach’s Cantatas, was one such ‘mathematical poet’ and follower of this fad.

As well as being intellectually stimulating, such artificially applied ‘games’ or ‘conceits’ also had a touch of danger about them, since they seemed to stem from a much more dangerous world – that of alchemy, magic and the Cabbala. The Lutheran Pastor Muller wrote in his 1707 study of Christian and Jewish Cabbala that ‘...this [Jewish] Cabbala is packed full of arcane arts, great idolatry, superstitions, deception and magic art.’

It is hardly surprising that Bach chose to be utterly discreet about his involvement with these traditions, but he left us some clues. Bach’s Bible, believed to be annotated in his own hand, shows the composer painstakingly marking references in the Old Testament, particularly those which refer to King David playing or singing to the Lord. Comments such as ‘This justifies the musician in the eyes of God’ are touchingly written alongside.

Despite the Lutheran antipathy towards these practices, we now know that, in great secrecy, Bach went on creating a series of personal ‘Christian Cabbalistic’ musical codes. Instead of the traditional Jewish systems, where letter names increasingly became associated with large multiples of ten, Bach’s personal ‘Gematria’ seems to follow a naïve Latin model as follows:
A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, And so on….

It is quite a straightforward matter to transliterate names into number.The name BACH, for example (B=2, A=1, C=3, H=8) totals 14. Using the same ‘Gematria’ it may well be that Bach identified himself – or at least his earnest desire to be a spiritually inspired and a truly ‘Godly’ musician – with David, the first great Biblical performer, whose own name (as a Gematria in Hebrew) also numbers 14.The numerological connections are extensive, for example:
J. S. Bach = 41, [which is also numer­ologically attractive as an ‘inversion’ of 14] Joh. Seb. Bach = 80 Johann Sebastian Bach = 158 Maria Barbara = 81

Other ‘significant’ numbers also present themselves: JESUS CHRISTUS (182); SANCTUS (92); AGNES DEI (77) and many others.There are also numbers of a mystical order such as perfect numbers, perfect square numbers, and so on. Esoteric numerologies of this kind can create in their practitioners a whole alternative reality that often tends to take on deeply superstitious, even magical potency. Even today, within a supposedly ‘rational’ society, such number-magic can play a curious part.

The mathematical codes are matched by musical patterns. Professor Thoene has uncovered in the Chaconne, the final movement of the D minor Partita, the Creed and Kyrie Eleision, as well as bar by bar representations of Bach’s own and Maria Barbara’s names and even those of their children and their children’s dates of birth.Whilst some of the chorales are hidden almost in the manner of complex cryptic crosswords, others clearly form the very substance of the music itself. All carry a precise reference to key events in the christian calendar.

Furthermore, as one might expect from this master of polyphony, even these codes are multi-levelled and often simultaneous, some based on note names, others on note lengths, others again on pitch differences. Bar numbers, movement proportions, and even visual notational motifs, all play a part.

Numbers traditionally associated with Jesus seem to have special importance and, as ever, Bach’s own musical signature – b/ flat, a, c and b/natural, occur at critical and significant moments. Often those bars which occur at the numbers associated with Christ act as a kind of nexus of events, overt and hidden, perhaps reinforcing a world view in which the saviour is both foundation and sovereign power.

It now seems extraordinary that all this direct musical reference has not been properly appreciated in the 280 years since the Sonatas and Partitas were written. Imagine a contemporary piece composed with TV soap tunes as its musical reference without anyone realising! Even more remarkable is that composers such as Brahms, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Dohnanyi, all of whom created ‘realisations’ or accompaniments of these works in order to explicate more fully their implied harmony and counterpoint, never discovered either the chorales or the Gematria.

When we consider that they shared Bach’s musical and ecclesiastical traditions, and would have continually heard and sung the chorales in Bach’s own harmonisation, Bach’s achievement in hiding these multiple musical threads becomes even more outstanding.

A divine marriage of the sacred and profane

It was a long and very hot day, and by the end of it we had been time which was not Bach’s, to show us what dance music was like filled with knowledge about Bach, hermeticism, gematria, baroque and, by contrast, how undanceable Bach’s partitas must have been. dancing, eurythmy.We had been told how the violin only plays Then came the longed for moment: the D minor partita in full. Paul single notes.We had listened to chorales and sung some hymns.We Robertson played the violin while Maren Stott performed eurythmy. had had lectures, demonstrations, coffee breaks and lunch. He named each section: allemande, courante, gigue.

In the eurythmy workshop, we not only learnt how to walk to eurythmy we were able to see the implied, silent music made Bach’s music and catch the rhythm of his beats by clapping, but visible, and the message Bach had hidden in the work. How he also how not to trip over each other in a dense circularity of people would have appreciated Maren’s ethereal understanding! And then reminiscent of sinners passing time in Dante’s Inferno. it came, the fourth part,

In the singing workshop we learnt that the Chaconne was a wild It is quite impossible to describe what was heard. Tears start to Mexican dance of the late 16th century which had become the rage my eyes at the recollection of it. That violin of single voice was in Europe, though tempered and restrained by the conventions of splitting into so many notes. It sang, it wailed, it screeched, it the time. squealed, it implored, it keened, it cried out with the agony of Christ.

The day was full of sparkle and interest, but very long and very, on the cross – so many notes and harmonics all sounding at once very hot, and by the end of it we still had not heard the partitas while Maren dipped and rose and flew about like a leaf on the wind. that were the subject of the course, nor understood why the The sound, the music, was supernal. The mind could not Chaconne was always referred to as ‘great’. Since there was a break comprehend it, but the heart could, and it listened in rapture, barely of two and a half hours before the evening concert, it was tempting able to contain its emotion. An audience of the 21st century sat in to give up and go home. utter transport, party to a private conversation held between Bach

Those that did not stay for the concert missed something. They and his God about death and resurrection. went home with all the ingredients but not the meal. Those that The day, which began somewhat chaotically, ended in order – came only for the concert enjoyed the meal without being involved the divine order that informs the universe, God’s music heard only in the secrets of its preparation. Those that were present for the by the heart and the intellect. A marriage of the sacred and the whole eleven and a half hours, transcending heat and tiredness, profane indeed. experienced sublimity.

Robin and Chris Stoke danced in full costume to music of the Linda Proud
Schumann in particular was a man modelling,2 it is surely impossible to spiritual and worldly implication and obsessed with codes and hidden messages conceive of such an immensely complex suggestion. Guided in my exploration of and used them continually in his music, and in many ways ‘artificial’ abstraction as this by Baroque Dance specialists Robin particularly referencing his beloved Clara Bach’s being other than entirely conscious. Stokoe and Christine Stokoe, I have by means of musical and notational Whilst much of this ‘implicit’ content discovered another immensely enriching ‘devices’ and games. How he would have was clearly designed to be hidden, other way of directly experiencing Bach’s world. delighted in these glorious mathematical key elements which would have been self A more contemporary and yet equally and linguistic constructs! evident reference points to Bach’s powerful non-verbal evocation of this

A question that often arises is whether contemporaries, have become submerged ‘silent music’ is also explored by way of Bach was conscious that he was applying by history. One such very significant Steiner’s unique ‘embodied language’ – these organising principles.We might note ‘thread’ is that of Baroque Dance which Eurhythmy. In this I am working with Alan here Leibniz’s fascinating comment that had, by this time, evolved its own and Maren Stott, who feature in the ‘music is the human mind using immensely rich and complex language of workshops and performances associated mathematics that is unconscious, that it is courtship and communication. with the ‘Marriage of the Sacred and calculating’.While this is a very compelling Although Bach’s Sarabandes, Profane’ project. thought, and one which certainly acts as a Allemandes and Courantes were almost As with so much that is real in music, philosophical precursor to much con-certainly not directly intended for dancing, words cannot do more than distantly temporary brain science and computer they DO carry a whole ‘hinterland’ of both evoke a far richer experience. Bearing in
Rex Features

mind the truth of the famous remark made
The significant and

by Bach’s first great exponent, Felix

mysterious patterning

Mendelssohn, that ‘Music is too precise for Words’, how could I summarise some of of sound that we call the more complex and subtle rewards of

music is uniquely able

this exploration?

to express the whole

Music is more than a mere patterning of sound; or perhaps we should say that gamut of human the significant and mysterious patterning

experience.

of sound that we call music is uniquely able to express the whole gamut of human experience - emotion, culture, philosophy, intellectual and social and personal aspiration.
Great works of musical genius represent a culmination, or nexus, of all these qualities.This is why masterpieces such as the Sonatas and Partitas by Bach are capable of infinite exploration and interpretation.Whilst the specific language and gesture of music is necessarily redolent of its historical time and place, we must seek to understand and share this cultural lexicon in order to appreciate the music in depth. However, through its personal reference points the music reveals itself to be a multi-dimensional, emotionally precise map of the human condition.

Albeit in their own very specific language, these six master works are an archetypal testament of the human spirit: a veritable ‘Soundtrack of the Soul’.
This article is taken from Paul Robertson’s forthcoming book ‘Drugs, Sex and String Quartets’Website: www.musicmindspirit.org
Copyright Paul Robertson August 2003

1 Professor Thöne’s main work on Bach’s unaccompanied violin music, and particularly the Chaconne from the Partita in D Minor, was published in Germany in 1994, and elaborated in the booklet accompanying the CD Morimur, with performances by the violinist Christoph Poppen and the four vocal soloists of the Hilliard Ensemble (ECM 2001). Other useful references can be found on the website of Music Mind Spirit: www.musicmindspirit.org.uk

2 As does his remarkable work on creating an entirely mathematical language, which never caught on as a truly objective ‘Esperanto’, but remains the foundation of some systems of library cataloguing and much other current thinking.

THE WORKSHOP

A MARRIAGE OF THE SACRED AND PROFANE’: AN ALL-DAY WORKSHOP

The workshop provides attendees with the opportunity to take part in a unique participative exploration of the hidden structures and meanings of Bach’s work for unaccompanied violin, and their implications for the way we think, feel and act today. The workshop uses song, baroque dance and eurythmy to help gain an insight into the composer’s own powerful personal spirituality.

Paul Robertson with Robin and Chris Stokoe (baroque dance) and Maren Stott (eurythmy).

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE ON PAUL ROBERTSON

Musician, lecturer and scientific explorer, founder member and, for more than 30 years, leader of the world famous Medici Quartet, Paul Robertson is currently on a three year Fellowship from NESTA (National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) in which he is studying, in depth, the music, psychology and contemporary significance of the solo violin works of J.S. Bach.