Listening today: Johann Sebastian Bach – Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu ChristBWV 639
by Marialuisa Veneziano
23 August 2026
Before you start music
There are Sundays where we don't need a music that distracts us.
We do not need someone to convince us that everything will be fine, nor those too well-packed consolations that come when, frankly, we would rather be left alone.
We need something different.
Something he can stay.
Without explaining.
Without fixing.
Without rushing.
For the first Sunday listening Let's start right from here.
For less than three minutes of Bach.
Three minutes in which, apparently, happens very little.
And maybe almost everything.
🎧 Open listening. Then keep reading.
This page is designed to be read with music next door.
Johann Sebastian Bach, Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ, BWV 639 – organ. (click on the black arrow to make the video appear)
Inside the score
Now let Bach play.
Don't try to understand.
In the upper voice there is the coral: a slow, clear, almost vulnerable melody. He doesn't conquer space. He's not raising his voice.
Question.
Under her, the left hand continues to move in a regular plot of semichrome.
The song breathes.
Time continues.
And even deeper, on the pedal, a third voice proceeds with quiet, essential step, supporting the entire building without ever reclaiming the center of the scene.
Three lines.
Higher voice → question
Internal voice → movement
Pedal → support
One question.
Something that keeps walking.
Something, below, that supports.
It's counterpoint, of course.
But in Bach the counterpoint, when it reaches this dizzying simplicity, almost ceases to look like a compositional technique and becomes a way of thinking about existence.
Words don't have to look like they can be together.
Everyone keeps their way.
Yet none is completely alone.
🎧 Listen to this.
If the track is still in progress, try to follow only the Upper heading.
Let her breathe.
Then, at the second listening, forget it for a few moments and seeks the continuous movement of internal voice. You will notice that, while singing hardens and seems almost to stop, under him something continues inexorably to flow.
Finally look for pedal.
It's nothing to be noticed.
Bach, fortunately, had not yet known the need to become viral.
Yet without that discreet line everything would lose its weight.
At this point he listens again to the set.
You won't hear three parts anymore.
You'll feel an organism.
The note remains
Bach does not interrupt the pain. He builds a large order around him to contain it.
Maybe that's what makes this little page so necessary.
Bach does not eliminate dissonance.
He leads it.
It doesn't erase the tension.
He gives her a place.
He doesn't want what hurts to stop doing it immediately.
It gives him a form.
And the difference is immense.
We live in a time in love with solutions. If we're restless, we have to react. If we're tired, we have to start again. If something breaks, we may have already transformed it into "growth opportunity" by Monday morning.
Bach's not in a hurry.
The title itself of the coral was born from an invocation: "I invoke you."
It is not the statement of those who already have the answer.
It's someone's voice calling.
And music preserves exactly this condition: not the triumph of those who understood everything, but the dignity of those who continue to seek.
Take him with you
Now the song is probably over.
And nothing around us has miraculously changed.
The room is the same. The issues left open are still open. The absences were not filled. And on Monday, with the proverbial delicacy of Monday, it continues to approach.
Yet something could have moved a few millimeters.
We listened to a voice capable of asking without shame.
Once able to continue without becoming an enemy.
And something, lower, which continues to support even when we almost don't notice it.
Bach didn't promise that everything will be okay.
He offered us something more serious:
a form in which even what we cannot solve can continue to breathe.
Three minutes.
No final answer.
But maybe a little more space within us.
And this Sunday can be enough.
What did you hear?
Listen to the song once again, this time without reading. Then tell us in the comments which of the three voices remained within you.
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