A Thread of Recitative Ruffs

Abstract

This article presents a schema-driven analysis of the accompanied recitative “Erbarm es, Gott” from Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. Matthew Passion. Arguing that the scene is best understood in dialogue with the conventions of the Italianate “galant” style of eighteenth-century recitative, we suggest that the music is guided by a simple thread of modulation upward through the circle of fifths. This thread is driven by repeated application of a particular harmonic schema—the “ruff,” as described in Sherrill and Boyle (".fn_cite_year($sherrill_2015).")—which prototypically displaces a consonant harmony with a ".fn_sharp('')."4 figure over a static bass. Tonal arrivals are repeatedly implied and then evaded, such that the recitative’s simple tonal thread is best understood in terms of events that do not actually occur. This interpretation counterpoints Heinrich Schenker’s analysis of the recitative in Der Tonwille, whose details are explored in conjunction with the schema-based perspective. The final portion of the article advances an expressive interpretation of the music, engaging also with scholarship on the Passion such as Chafe (".fn_cite_year($chafe_1991)."). In our reading, the recitative’s tonal shape stages an experience of progressive engrossment in the diegetic world of the Passion, broken off by an abrupt narrative negation at its end. In doing so, the article synthesizes divergent music-theoretical methodologies, hoping to show how the stylistically and culturally informed perspective of schema theory offers a site where the formal insights of Schenkerian theory can be integrated with semiotic criticism.