The Divine Embrace
[This article, sent by Bill Wahman, a Pietisten reader and an outstanding musician in the San Francisco Bay Area, is reprinted with permission of Magnificat, a Bay Area music organization. It is taken from the program notes of a concert presenting two seventeenth-century settings of the Oratio Rhythmica, one by Buxtehude, the other by Paul Gerhardt. Readers may wish to review the third in Don Franidin's series "J. S. Bach and Pietism — Apprenticeship with Buxtehude" (Fall, 1993). — Ed.]
Our modern cult of the body with its emphasis on youthfulness and beauty, and our analgesic culture where even the slightest discomfort is regarded as an affront to our control of our own destinies, contrasts sharply with the 17th-century attitude toward the body. In Buxtehude's cantatas and the chorales of Ebeling we are presented with something quite outrageous — the image of a lover embracing a broken and disfigured body, compassionately desiring to examine its wounds. To our modern sensibility it is shocking and revolting, or at the very least in questionable taste. Today we hide our wounded in institutions, and we are required, in the interest of increased productivity, to conceal our own wounds.
To approach this music in something like the spirit in which it was written, it may be helpful to remember that from earliest times, the Body of Christ was an image of the entire human community, wounded and healed in an endless cycle. For the 17th-century German religious thinkers who saw themselves and their community wounded and disfigured by the atrocities of the Thirty Years' War, the image of the body was a metaphor for their pain as well as their hope, in short, for the transfiguration of suffering into beauty.
The Religious and intellectual climate in Buxtehude's Germany: Pietism
Disputes and divisions within the early Protestant church led to the formulation at the end of the 16th century of a precise theological method and vocabulary known as Orthodoxy, and which was resisted by those who, while remaining within their organized churches, were interested in individual growth in religious experience, or as it came to be called, the practice of piety.
In 1675, in response to the disillusionment and decline in the wake of the Thirty Years' war, Phillip Jacob Spener published his treatise Pia Desideria, arguing that the rejuvenation of Europe could only be accomplished through the reawakening of individuals to spiritual life and the cultivation of heartfelt love for man and God. The treatise outlined proposals for practically directed reforms which were the beginning of the movement within 17th-century Protestantism called Pietism. The main characteristics of the movement were insistence on the need for significant spiritual experience on the part of individuals, expression of religious life as love for man and God, and the renewal of the community through the renewal of individuals. Although enemies of Pietism saw this elevation of personal piety above orthodox doctrine as a potentially divisive force, it was possible to embrace Pietist principles and still remain within an organized church; such people were called Church Pietists, as distinguished from Radical Pietists who in fact did separate from their parent churches. Such composers as Buxtehude, and later J.S, Bach, managed to remain within the Orthodox Lutheran establishment while setting Pietist texts.
The medieval mystical poem: Oratio Rhythmica
Concern with the experientially verifiable authenticity of Gods' revelation in Christ led many pietists thinkers to the poetic vision of the medieval mystics. Oratio Rhythmica was one of the most popular such texts in seventeenth-century Germany, and was widely circulated under the name of Bernard of Clairvaux; it hardly matters that it was written by one Arnulf of Louvain (d. 1250). The medieval Latin poem is an extended meditation on the Passion of Christ, divided into seven sections, each devoted to a part of Christ's body: feet, knees, hands, side, breast, heart, and face. Such lines as "veni sponte scrutari tua vulnera" (I come freely to scrutinize your wounds) were for the 17th-century German reformers a perfect expression of both the need for direct personal verification of religious teachings, and of the longing for religious life to become part of mundane life, that is to say, embodied life. Oratio Rhythmica was paraphrased in German verse, and translated both literally and freely by many writers.
The mystical love relationship of the soul and God, is at the heart of the poem, the apprehension through the senses of a real presence in a real body. The believer contemplates the body on the cross, addressing it mystically in the present moment, uniting with it through layers of allegory, comparison, and symbolism. In Ad latus, for example, the spear wound in the side is seen as a crevice in a rocky wall where the dove, who is in turn a symbol of a shy bride, which is in turn a metaphor for the soul, is hiding. "Surge, amica mea!" then, is understood as the cry of Christ the amorous bridegroom to his bride the soul, but also as the cry of the hungry worshipper to God the source of spiritual food; and the wound, which is the secret location of both the dove-bride and the spiritual nourishment, becomes the entry way to the trysting place where love and hunger are fulfilled. It is outrageous, certainly, and what strikes one again and again in the texts chosen by the Pietist composers is their emotional intensity and the boldness with which they approach the unapproachable.
Upon the side (Ad latus)
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away:
O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock,
in the cave in the wall.
Hail, side of the Saviour,
in which lies hidden the honey of sweetness,
in which lies open the power of love,
from which gushes the fount blood
wherewith soiled hearts are washed.
Lo, I approach Thee,
spare me, Jesus, if I fall short;
shamefaced as I am,
yet have I come to Thee of my free will
to examine Thy wounds.
At the hour of my death let my breath
enter Thy side, O Jesus.
As it passes hence do Thou receive it,
lest the fierce lion invade this body —
but let my soul remain with Thee.
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away:
O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock,
in the cave in the wall.