May 18, 2014
- Jesus Christ: Our Savior!
We continue the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection with today’s postlude by J.S. Bach. Amidst the series of countersubjects a chorale prelude with four variations take shape. In the first variation, tied notes create pungent harmonies that may possibly depict the pain Jesus went through before He rose from the dead. The interest in variation two comes from the two
anbasis (“upward”) passages which very likely represent Jesus rising from the dead. After the chorale is introduced, the third variation
groppo (“notes decorated with their neighbors”) forges a unique chromaticism that could possibly relate to the Jesus’ suffering for all of the world. Finally, in the fourth variation the loud pedal point below the virtuosic scalar patterns symbolizes Jesus’ defeat over death and the breaking of sin.
