When the key of C decides to express music in tragic tones rather than comedic, it flats its E note and B note. One could say that in the key of C minor, there exists a B-flat and an E-flat. True enough, but this is a somewhat individualistic understanding – one that assumes B-flat is its own independent tone distinct from they keys which contextualize it. Again, how is this wrong? B-flat is indeed its own physical key on the piano (the first black one below C). It exists in C minor and exists in other musical key signatures as well (such as F major or B-flat minor). B-flat would cry out, even when the rocks do not.
But in another sense, B-flat doesn’t exist. Only B exists. In fact, only the notes A, B, C, D, E, F, and G exist. They represent the eight tones of the harmonic octave, and are present in every scale in the 12-tone system of Western music. This is what it means to think completely in key. Formally, each musical key has eight tones, and these tones are identified by which alphabetical letter they are associated with. The key of C-minor has a C tone, an E tone, a G tone, and so on. In C-major, all of the alphabetic tones happen to be natural. But in C-minor, the E tone is flatted and the B-tone is also flatted. But it is still the B tone in the C-minor scale. Put another way, in the key of C-minor the B-flat key on the piano is the B tone in the scale. It isn’t B-flat; it’s simply B in the key of C-minor.
This brings me to Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, Part 68 “Wir setzen uns mit Tränen nieder” which is translated “We sit down in tears.” It is the very final movement of Bach’s masterpiece, in which the choir imagines itself to be witnesses of the burial of Christ and the sealing of the tomb. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion is a tragedy in that it ends here, with the Messiah of God dead and buried. “Your grave and tombstone,” they sing, “shall be for the unquiet conscience a comfortable pillow.” And yet he lies there, dead and gone. Though we know of Christ’s resurrection, our experience of death is still captured in the tragic timeline of St. Matthew Passion in that our last movement in the story is being sealed in the grave. Our resurrection is yet to come, and I think Bach understood this. We might all be tempted to write the final movement of our own choral work by ending with a stanza or two about the resurrection and ascension. “Death isn’t the end!” we say. And we are right about that if we trust in Christ. But right now that is faith, not sight. Death IS the end for us in this present age. St. Matthew Passion is fitting in this way – it places us precisely where we are, and fills our hearts with the tones of death and a lament over Christ’s dead and buried body. We sit down in tears every time we stand next to an open grave, and we do not arise from that grief fully in this age.
This is where the B-note gets really interesting. There is no resurrection in St. Matthew Passion, but Bach adds a discordant B-natural in that same final movement. It is distinguished as a B-natural for the reasons discussed earlier – in the key of C-minor the B-tone is flatted. The B-natural therefore sounds discordant, and in the case of John Eliot Gardiner’s rendition of St. Matthew Passion, the B-natural is progressively more emphasized as it is repeated again and again in the final movement. The final discordant strike in the final measures of the movement is held almost irreverently long, and the resolution back to B (B-flat that is) is a welcome finis in the ear of the listener, even though it is a return to tragedy. I believe the musical interjection of a discordant B-natural chord was intended by Bach to be a brief interjection of discordant comedy into the tragedy of Christ’s death. Because the death and burial of Christ was a tragedy, any interjection of a comedic element would by nature be discordant, almost unwelcome, in the minds of the hearers.
For the death of my grandmother, Mavis Broberg, and for her burial and the sealing of her tomb, the experience was exactly like Bach intended. We are situated in a time and place where death is, in fact, the final movement of her musical life. The resurrection is yet to come. Like St. Matthew Passion, her story ended with her head on a pillow sealed in the grave. But while the ordinary attitude of C-minor tragedy is felt in her passing, the notion of irreverent comedic hope (discordant B-natural) was ever so present in her burial and memorial service.
L'eau Nouveau 