133: Ascension Oratorio

 Today is the Ascension, the latest of 3 days this liturgical year (which runs from late November or early December of one year to the next, so Christmas is right at the beginning of “Q1”) for which Bach wrote an “oratorio.” As I’ve said in previous articles, what exactly an oratorio is isn’t really well defined, so both the Ascension Oratorio and the Easter Oratorio operate much more like regular Sunday cantatas that happen to be written for special days, whereas the Christmas Oratorio (and Handel’s Messiah, also an oratorio) are each about twice as long as the Ascension and Easter Oratorios combined.

The title is “Lobet Gott in seinen Reichen” which means “Praise God in His Realms”—in contrast, for instance, to the Christmas Oratorio, whose collective title is actually “Christmas Oratorio” and only the parts have individual cantata names, because that’s what they are.

The Ascension Oratorio makes heavy use of the specific combination of trumpet + timpani. As I’ve mentioned in previous articles, in Bach’s religious musical language, “trumpet + timpani = power and awesomeness of God.” Almost all the movements (in fact, every single one until the last) ends with a PAC, which, among Bach’s large-scale choral works (here I mean “the oratorios plus the B minor Mass”) is an unusually high proportion of the use of the most final of cadences.

The uncertainty of the days of waiting locked in the Upper Room, of Good Friday evening and all day Holy Saturday, is long gone (“Did the Romans just kill our friend? Is this the end? What now? He said he’d be back, but…. what? How?”), and now, six weeks into Easter, all that remains is the all-encompassing joy of the resurrection and the Great Commission. The triumph of Easter, and that of the Son returning to the Father, is evident all throughout the oratorio, and is the key motivating factor in all of Bach’s writing in this half hour or so.


Here are some great recordings:


1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoIV8ouBb2E&list=RDYoIV8ouBb2E&start_radio=1&t=1577s

2. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Vv2vV1zTnc&list=RD_Vv2vV1zTnc&start_radio=1

3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlyE7wQeYUw&list=RDUlyE7wQeYUw&start_radio=1

4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hl1e28rF-i4&list=RDHl1e28rF-i4&start_radio=1

5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gasKGNPJ1SY&list=RDgasKGNPJ1SY&start_radio=1


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