Jesus begins to speak at the age of twelve, at least in the Bible.

For three days Joseph and Mary had been desperately looking for him because they had lost the child during an Easter visit to Jerusalem.

When they find him, he sits among the scholars in the temple who marvel at his understanding.

Horrified, his mother asks him: “My son, why did you do this to us?

See, your father and I searched for you with pain. "Jesus answers her:" Do you not know that I have to be in what is my father? "The child sings bass.

Jan Brachmann

Editor in the features section.

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    Johann Sebastian Bach set the first traditional words of Jesus - in the Gospel of Luke - to music: in his cantata "My dearest Jesus is lost" BWV 154. Felix Schwandtke sings them in Leipzig's Nikolaikirche, accompanied by the Collegium 1704 under the direction of Václav Luks, like one a roaring dulcian, a piercing Renaissance bassoon, so that the Corinthian columns, which are shot into the acanthus, tremble under the green-white-pink vault.

    What a bass!

    Graceful but radiant majesty.

    Bach did not miss the opportunity to set Jesus' first words to music. And as a bass, this twelve-year-old has "

    the same authority

    with the

    vox Christi

    that we know from the Passions," says Michael Maul, the director of the Leipzig Bach Festival, in an interview with the FAZ

    With Bach, Jesus always sings bass. The bass is the foundation. “No one can lay any other foundation than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ”, Paul writes in the letter to the Corinthians. Jesus only becomes a hero tenor later, in times that are already doubting whether the Christ, the Son of God, the Messiah and Redeemer can also be seen and, above all, heard in the great man Jesus of Nazareth. The fact that Christ always sings bass with Bach, even as a twelve-year-old, is a musical decision of far-reaching theological dimensions. Bach's music is not naturalistic, but rather christologically oriented and therefore not theologically neutral.

    When on the evening of the same day the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin and the Rias Chamber Choir, under Justin Doyle's direction, performed the cantata “Lord, don't go to court with your servant” BWV 105 over Bach's grave in the Thomaskirche, Anja Petersen sent the light of hers from heaven Soprano through the room and sings "How tremble and shake the sinner's thoughts".

    The accompanying oboe, whose mouthpiece is already reminiscent of the swaying reed in the wind, fluctuates between the keys with alternating notes and the indecision between the minor and major seventh.

    The strings tremble in the bow vibrato.

    The trembling and swaying is painted;

    but here too there is a theological symbol: the bass is missing!

    Sinful man is torn from his foundation.

    And Jesus Christ is this reason who reconciles the sinner to God again.

    A chant against fear

    In the cantata "Jesus sleeps, what should I hope" BWV 81, which was heard immediately before and refers to the miracle of calming the storm in the eighth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, the Rias Chamber Choir interpreted the miracle Christologically: the stanza "Under your umbrellas" from the The chorale “Jesus, my joy” relieves the sinner of fear by referring to the Atonement of Jesus. The fear of nature, of drowning and the storm, is fear of the

    natura lapsa

    , the fallen nature that became guilty with the fall of man. But faith is the victory that overcame the world of this fallen nature.