Organ music for the Second Sunday in Lent

Prelude
Kyrie, Gott Vater in Ewigkeit [BWV 669] – Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Christe, aller Welt Trost [BWV 670] – J.S. Bach

Postlude
Kyrie, Gott heiliger Geist [BWV 671] – J.S. Bach

Today's organ music comes from the third of a series of volumes J.S. Bach published as Clavierübung (“Keyboard Practice”) in time for the Leipzig book fair at Michaelmas, 1739. The third volume is made up of a prelude and fugue, settings of the chorales for the Lutheran mass, and settings of chorales from the Catechism. One of the curiosities of this collection is that every chorale is set twice: once in a large-scale form using older techniques of counterpoint using two manuals and pedal, and then in a smaller setting using more modern idioms for manuals only. In the chorale settings we will hear today, Bach uses composition techniques such as cantus firmus, imitation, fugue, canon, and modal harmony, which look back to the music of Palestrina and Lassus. A further dimension of Clavierübung III is the constant use or evocation of the number three. We know that Bach was examined on the doctrine of the Trinity as part of the selection process that led to his appointment as Cantor at the Thomaskirche in Leipzig in 1723.

The three settings of the Kyrie chorale are based on the plainsong Kyrie fons bonitatis (Mass II in the modern Kyriale Romanum). In Lutheran practice the Kyrie was sung as a trope, similar to the way the Kyrie is used as a form of confession today. These chorale settings addresses each person of the Trinity in turn, and this is represented musically through the migration of the cantus firmus through the texture. In Kyrie, Gott Vater the chorale can be heard in the uppermost voice, depicting the transcendent nature of God the Father as the first person of the Trinity. In Christe, aller Welt Trost the chorale moves to the tenor, a musical invocation to the middle person of the Trinity. The third chorale, Kyrie, Gott heiliger Geist places the chorale in the pedals, depicting the third person of the Trinity present among the faithful. These chorale settings are in the key of E-flat major (a key with three flats), a further reference to the Trinity, and draw on compositional techniques and influences that looked to older influences, giving the pieces an air of eternity.

In another way, these chorale settings suggest that the divine movement is towards the hearer. We are invited to call on God in the expectation of God's mercy, and the hope of eternity.