Musical Meditation

An Wasserflüssen Babylon BWV 653 – J.S. Bach 

By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept, when we remembered Zion. As for our lyres, we hung them up on the willows that grow in that land. For there our captors asked for a song, our tormentors called for mirth: ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion.’ 

How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?

J S Bach sets these words of Psalm 137 to music in this melancholic interpretation By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept.

The music is in the form of a solemn sarabande, a slowly dancing lament for the past and for a lost home. In this piece we hear the sorrowful voice of those who have lived a long time, whose eyes have seen suffering beyond measure and who know that things will not be righted in their own time- they cling on in faith to an unknown future.

This is a psalm for the long haul, a song of refugees, the dispossessed, the dislocated, for those who cannot see the change but who know in their heart that hope for change is something they must dearly hold on to. 

So there is a resilient hope which Bach illustrates in the sustaining notes of the melody- which courageously battle onwards despite the sadness which is so clearly evident in the surrounding accompaniment. 

What kind of song would we sing if we were driven from our homes into a strange land with no imminent possibility of homecoming? 

There is little wonder that the instruments of a musical people were put down, organs and harps were hung up on willow trees- there was no longer any use for music, other than to sustain the faintest possibility of a new life and accompany the suffering and pain of walking on a path which only ever unfolded one day at a time.  

This psalm would have been passed on as a communal lament from generation to generation, in the hope that one day the harp would be taken down from the tree and played amidst singing and dancing. 

Psalm 137, and Bach’s chorale derive their hope from the possibility of homecoming, which though distant is not for one moment in doubt. The music of Bach strengthens faith in desperate straits. It calls us to lift up our eyes to hills and see that help will come from the Lord. 

The strong and sustaining voice comes through the middle of the chorale as the hopeful voice of the Jewish people in exile. The melody sounds out over the other parts, being accentuated by the drawn out rhythm. In this way, he emphasised the point of this chorale, which is expressed in the latter verses of the text, where the Israelites are forced to sing a song of praise. 

But how are they to sing in such hopeless circumstances? That is precisely what Bach conveys in this chorale prelude. Although the oppressors have got the exiles right where they want them, the timid middle voice keeps going courageously, and with all the ornamentation displays faith in a good outcome, one day, one day.

Perhaps this music and the words of psalm 137 might have something to say to our world today where we see the biggest displacement of people from their homelands since records were begun by the United Nations just after the second world war. Today, 66 million people have been displaced by conflict and persecution, Syrians, Afghans, Somalians, Ukranians the list could go on- one in every 122 people is currently a refugee, internally displaced in their own country or seeking asylum.

I wonder whether these communities have the strength to sing a song of their homeland- or perhaps they, like the Jews in exile have hung up their harps in the trees as it is far too painful to sing anything at all in a strange land?   As we listen to the music of J S Bach, we might also in this lenten meditation offer a prayer for those who walk into an unknown future and find themselves far from home. 

We pray that they may be given strength to walk in hope, and that they might one day find their voice to sing again. 

Almighty God, whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified: mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.