I’ve just had the pleasure of attending another Bach Collegium Japan concert, which took place on May 22, 2022. It was the eightieth in the BCJ’s church cantata series. It opened with a delightful display by Maestro Suzuki on the Opera City organ playing the Prelude and Fugue in A (BWV 543), followed by the two cantatas and an oratorio.
As with the Passions performed during Holy Week, the music was chosen to reflect this Easter season on the Christian calendar. “Bisher habt ihr nichts gebeten in meinem Namen” (BWV 87) was written for the fifth Sunday of Easter, Rogate, which introduces a brief penitential season before the major holiday of Ascension. Cantata “Wer da gläubet und getauft wird” (BWV 37) and oratorio “Lobet Gott in seinen Reichen” (BWV 11) both go with that festival, which takes place today (May 26, 2022).
In fact, the consonance of program and church calendar for this concert prompted director Masaaki Suzuki to put together a three-page spread in the program explaining the entire ecclesiastical year in some detail, complete with a helpful diagram. He helpfully explains that the year is a mixture of fixed dates (Christmas and Epiphany) and moveable feasts (Advent and everything stemming from Easter). The brief commentary makes a point that most significant festival of the Resurrection is itself fixed to the Jewish calendar and the celebration of the “Passover” of God’s wrath.
Thereafter come brief explanations of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Passion (Holy Week), Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, and Trinity. For Bach aficionados are added the three Marian holidays celebrated by Lutherans for which Bach wrote cantatas (Purification [Candlemas], Annunciation, Visitation), as well as the Reformation—obviously not an ecumenical feast!
Interestingly, these holiday names are all written first in English (partly to refer to the above diagram), with kanji afterwards. But for those such as myself taxed with teaching church history in Japanese—and often for pastors addressing a bewildered flock—these Japanese words can be quite difficult to understand. Some, such as 四旬節 (shi-jun-setsu; four-[ten-day-period]-season) for Lent, make literal sense; it’s exactly like in Spanish (cuaresma) or French (carême), which mean forty days. Other holidays, like 降誕節 (kou-tan-setsu; [regal] birth-season) for Christmas, are old translations made during the Meiji period when everything was written in Chinese characters, kind of like how English builds medical or scientific words from Greek roots. Anymore, everybody just says “クリスマス,” that is to say, “kurisimasu” (Christmas), “イースター” (Eesuta, Easter), and “ペンテコスト” (Pentecost).
The word used in the article for Epiphany, 顕現節 (ken-gen-setsu, manifestation-season) is the right word, but can be confusing, complicated by the fact that the festival refers to various celebrations in differing traditions: from the visit of the magi, to the presentation of Jesus at the temple, to Jesus’ baptism and the start of his ministry. You will find it under 公現祭 (kou-gen-sai; presentation-ruler-festival) on Wikipedia, the word for the festival day itself. They just write “Epiphany” in the booklet. A Christian friend of mine confirmed that she did, in fact, learn the word and used it in church, but that a non-Christian would not comprehend its meaning.
As readers will surely know, all of Bach’s church music is embedded within the church year. Most Christians will know the vague outlines of this cycle—at least Christmas and Easter. But a deeper understanding of any given work is hardly possible without knowledge of the associated introits, psalms, periscopes, and chorales. These were legally dictated by the 18th-century Leipzig church order, and, fortunately for contemporary students, the heroically detailed www.bach-cantatas.com website has full information.
If the confusion of a cultural Christian is great, you can imagine that of the Japanese, who don’t even have words for these dates. But who says complications make people less interested? It is a joyful pageant, perfect for the Bach otaku and the seeker alike to immerse themselves in arcane details. Music scholar Maruyama-sensei asked for baptism after studying these liturgies.
There’s always more to discover. Much as the eschatological scene in C.S. Lewis’s The Last Battle depicts it, with Bach and his Gospel message it is always “further up and further in.”