Bach’s Major Vocal Works: Music, Drama, Liturgy by Markus Rathey (review)

When approaching Bach’s choral works, listeners, students, theologians, performers, and musicologists who are new to Bach studies may be unsure of where to begin. The scale and complexity of these pieces render them daunting, but their beauty ensures that people will continue to explore them. Markus Rathey’s Bach’s Major Vocal Works: Music, Drama, Liturgy provides a starting point for any study of Bach’s choral works. Rathey discusses Bach’s largest and arguably most famous vocal pieces: the two Magnificat settings, the Christmas Oratorio, the two Passions, the Easter Oratorio and Ascension Oratorio, and the Mass in B Minor. While discussions of theology and musical expression are central to each chapter, Rathey skillfully investigates the philosophical underpinnings and gendered implications of Bach’s character portrayals. He guides the listener not only through the overarching structure and analytical details of these works but also through their relative cultural context. The book focuses on three themes: the musical works themselves, the life of Christ, and the theme of Christ’s love for the Believer as portrayed through the text and music. Since Rathey intended his book to reach a broad audience, the tone is conversational and approachable. He acknowledges the fact that some readers may simply wish to know more about Bach’s music before going to a concert, yet invites them to examine the visual elements of the scores (i.e., phrase contour and groupings of notes) even if they cannot read music. In its amiable tone and use of personal pronouns, this book is reminiscent of John Eliot Gardiner’s Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven, though Gardiner’s approach is intentionally more anecdotal.1 Rathey encourages the reader to explore Bach’s choral works with him, rather than simply presenting factual statements or analyses. It is clear that one of the book’s main purposes is to cultivate an informed audience of listeners for Bach’s music. While Rathey focuses on the amateur music lover, the book also holds appeal for more specialized readers. For the general reader, the book will help orient them to Bach’s style and context. For the musicologist, it will potentially provide new details and angles for research or serve as an excellent resource for a collegiate-level Bach seminar. Performers will obtain insight into each work’s historical context, which can help them to make historically informed performance