Today’s the 26th of May, but I would rather go with the liturgical calendar, which makes it Ascension Day. I decided to update this post, which I wrote two years ago. That was in May 2020, when COVID was relatively new to all of us, and I spent a couple of paragraphs lamenting my own quarantine (because of age) from public rehearsals and performances of choral music. Singing and recording at home on Zoom really didn’t cut it for me – but that was the best I could do until 2021, when vaccination was my ticket to return again to my various choirs. But two years later, it’s still generally true that choirs are still putting up with the imposition of N-95 grade masks, largely now for their own protection.
But two years ago, while I was sequestered, my thoughts went back to Ascension Day, which has always been special for me for two memories.
The first revolves around a piece of music that, if I was invited to be on the “Musical Chairs” program on KING-FM, would be on my “top ten.” Back in 1973, when I was finishing up my thesis for an M.A. in Music History at the University of Washington, I was sharing a house with Richard Sparks and Nancy Zylstra (who have gone on to great musical fame), and we all three were excited to get the latest LPs of the Complete Cantatas of Bach, which were just coming out. In particular, the final movement of the Ascension Oratorio, BWV 11 (think of it as a “super-sized” cantata) really grabbed me. And when I wrote about this two years ago, I learned that the performance, by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Concentus Musicus Wien, was on YouTube, so you can hear the same performance I heard almost 50 years ago!
[I’ve set the YouTube example to begin with this final chorale of the oratorio.]
In the last movement Bach takes the words of stanza 7 of the hymn “Gott fähret auf gen Himmel” by Gottfried Wilhelm Sacer (1697), but uses the chorale tune “Von Gott will ich nicht lassen” in the treble.
The whole idea of Ascension is that the resurrected Jesus is going into the different dimension that we all, as pilgrims, are heading for. And this last chorale encapsulates this immense longing, that is expressed in the words:
When will it come to pass,
When will come that blessed time
That I shall see Him,
In His glory?”
O day, when will you come,
When we can greet the Saviour,
When we can kiss the Saviour?
Come, make ready!
Bach underscores this happiness as well as bittersweet longing by concerted duos of the flutes, oboes, violins, and trumpets, especially between the A and B sections.
Well, I’ve said enough. Hopefully I’ll post about my other memory of Ascension next year. [Or, if you can’t wait, you can look at p. 46 of Prayer as Night Falls.]