Mar 23, 2014
‘Tis the Season To Be…
3-24-14
At Christmastime many people listen to Handel’s “Messiah.” Some of us listen to excerpts; some listen to the entire work. Some people attend performances at local churches or watch television broadcasts. For some people it is their only exposure to Baroque music during the year… and for too many, sadly, their only exposure to church music. Yet, in the words of the Sursum Corda portion of the liturgy, it is meet and right so to do. In all times and in all places – or, as often as possible – we should commune with our God. And that should apply to Easter as much as Christmas; with other supernal music as much as the traditional “Messiah.”
If we would wade into the waters of debate about the relative importance of dates in the Christian calendar, we would be reminded that over the centuries, Christmas was a relatively minor celebration, at least compared to Easter. (And that the Feast of the Ascension – marking Jesus’s physical rise to Heaven, completing the affirmation of His divinity, closing the theological circle of the Incarnation, begun with the Virgin Birth – was once more observed than it is in today’s churches.)
A propos these observations, I offer a suggestion that we all reverently replicate the consideration we give to Easter, and the attention we pay to the “Messiah,” by something new this Lenten season. Lent should be more than giving up chocolate, anyway!
Additionally, Lent gives us 40 days (that is, more than the week or so that Christmas affords) to enjoy music, and contemplate this season, concerning the most profound event in the history of humankind.
Let us avoid the temptation, for a time, to watch and wait upon events that explode in our midst, as compelling as are Russian osmotic invasions, or the perplexing disappearance of passenger planes. Let us look inward and commemorate an event 2000 years old but as immediate as the seconds and minutes of our fleeting lives.
I suggest we listen to one of the greatest creative works of the human race, Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Passion According to St Matthew.” The word Passion refers specifically to the rejection, betrayal, suffering, humiliation, torture, pain, and death of Jesus. That we should focus on these details indicates no prurience: that any person, much less the Son of God who could have waved it all away, endured such things, for us, ought to inspire our devotion.
So the “St Matthew Passion” enables us to understand, to internalize, to enrich our faith. There is a link below to an astonishing performance. I commend it, to watch in portions or in one dedicated private time. If you cannot, I will still explain why it is beneficial, and how art can serve our appreciation of the gospel.
Johann Sebastian Bach’s setting of the Passion story is based on Matthew chapters 27 and 28. Christian composers, as early as the eighth century, but mainly in the 16th-18th centuries, wrote Passions to be distinct from other church music. Passions used large ensembles, sometimes two choirs, orchestras, and organs. They were dramatic presentations, with “narrators” and soloists. Sometimes they were performed outside churches, occasionally in costumes and with dramatic action, a halfway-house to oratorios or opera.
In Bach’s version, he declined costumes but achieved great drama. In our video link you will see a stark and spare performance stage, singers in simple suits or dresses. There are no props; it is not in a cathedral. However you will notice profound symbolism in the changing placement of the singers; the colors that light the performance stage; and the illuminated Cross that floats above the performers – changing shades, morphing from dark to light to dark.
This video – made in 1971, and conducted by the legendary Bach interpreter Karl Richter – is an immense work of art in itself.
You will be grateful that the text, translated to English, is on the screen. When subtitles do not appear, it is because singers are repeating phrases. This impactful video allows you to appreciate the myriad of subtleties Bach used to emphasize the STORY of the Passion, behind the lyrics and melodies. Words are biblical passages, or the librettist’s paraphrases.
Take note of the highlighting of meaningful words, by orchestral emphasis. Notice that solo voices have keyboard accompaniment; Jesus has keyboard and strings… except for His dramatic cry “Why hast Thou forsaken me?”
Notice the music (instrumentation and style of play) reflecting singers’ hope, sorrow, or desperation.
Notice the musical (and the camera’s) emphasis on words like “Barabbas!” and “kill Him!” and “crucify!” Notice Bach’s use of musical devices – pulsating rhythms for tension; short bursts by the flutes to suggest tears; upward modulation when hope is displayed.
Note the repetition of musical themes (popular church tunes) by the choruses to unify the narrative themes.
This is a monumental work of art.
The “St Matthew Passion” was considered by Bach to be his most significant work. It was first performed in Leipzig at the St-Thomas Church in 1727, and many Holy Weeks thereafter; he frequently revised it. His autograph score shows loving attention, written in red or brown inks according to the biblical and dramatic libretto sources, and employing calligraphy in careful Gothic or Latin letters. He preserved it as an heirloom.
Baroque music and Bach’s genius temporarily were out of fashion after his death in 1750, and the “St Matthew Passion” was never performed again until 102 years after its debut. Felix Mendelssohn had discovered it, conducted a condensed version in Berlin… and the Bach Revival, which has never stopped, began. Mendelssohn, a Jew converted to Christianity, found his Lutheran faith much strengthened by Bach’s work.
Other famous Passions of our time include the play in Oberammergau, a small Bavarian town of two thousand inhabitants, half of whom stage and act in the seven-hour re-creation of Holy Week events. The play has been produced every ten years since 1634 when the town, threatened by the bubonic plague, collectively prayed for mercy and vowed to share with the world this portion of the gospel story if they were spared. In Drumheller, Alberta, Canada, every July the Canadian Badlands Passion Play is presented in a thirty-acre canyon bowl that forms a natural amphitheater. And of course many people watched the movie “The Passion of the Christ” a decade ago.
None can be more powerful than Bach’s version. If you are unfamiliar with, or dislike, “classical music,” this video will not kill you. If the hairstyles or once-cool eyeglasses of 1971’s performers look squirrely, just imagine how we would look to them; or how a magical capture of the actual 1727 debut in Leipzig would look to us. Or how the original suffering and death of Jesus, nearly 2000 years ago, would have seemed if we were there…
… ah! THAT is the art of J S Bach. This performance of the “Passion of Jesus Christ as Recorded by St Matthew,” DOES bring us back to the amazing, profound, and significant events of our Savior’s willing sacrifice for us. It is REAL. All the elements of Art – not just music and words, but the nuances of staging – drive the meaningful messages home. To our hearts.
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Click: Bach’s “St Matthew Passion”
The conductor and musical director of Munich Bach ensembles, as noted, is the great Karl Richter. The members of the instrumental and vocal ensembles are more numerous than in Bach’s more intimate times. This performance is longer than three hours (and was originally performed in segments during the weeks of Lent in Bach’s churches) but I beg you not to make it “background music.” The staging – the arrangement of the singers, the lighting, especially the position and illumination of the cross that floats above all – is profoundly significant.
Quick correction. None of the Passion Oratorios (the music ones) in Germany were ever stage performances. That is because they were part of the Liturgical cycle (at least in the Lutheran Churches) of Good Friday. Other great Lutheran composers such as Scheidt, Schutz, Telemann, Kuhnau, et al. all wrote Passion Oratorios in the same way with certain voice parts playing characters (tenor for the narrator; baritone for Christ; bass for Pilate) with chorus joining in to play the turba (Latin for crowd) and to sing general choruses meditating on the Scriptural texts just quoted as well as the chorales which often were embellished chorales the people knew.
As with the Motet, a form that evolved from plainsong to polyphony; and whose function, ensemble sizes, and accompaniment changed through the years, so did the Passion evolve. (And, significantly, J S Bach helped codify conventions toward the end of both forms’ lives.) Musical Passions took the forms, in rough chronology, of Choral Passions, Motet Passions, Scenic Passions (when elements of drama entered, Luther’s partner Walther being the earliest exponent), Oratorio Passions (Schutz predominant, responding to Italianate influences; that is, preserving the texts but adding dramatic elements in scoring and staging), and the Passion-Oratorio. Two figures connected to Bach were central to the new dramatic — i.e., operatic — presentations of Passions. His predecessor at St Thomas Church in Leipzig, Johann Kuhnau, infused dramatic elements in the presentation (music critics of the time wrote about the slight distinctions between cantatas, oratorios, and operas, depending on levels of drama and performance venues). You are correct that up to this time they were Good Friday performances in churches. But Erdmann Neumeister’s Passion was a cycle of cantatas, and he described the cantata as “a fragment of Opera.” Another writer defined the oratorio as merely (?) a “sacred opera.”
It was significant, then, that in Hamburg — the place of musical experimentation during the Middle Baroque (especially in organ music, as in Luneburg) — the organist and composer Johann Adam Reincken, whom Bach revered, established a special theater at which “operatic Passions” would be performed. That is: Passions, complete with dramatic (extra-musical) aspects, outside churches… but no less reverent thereby. In the same city, the Hamburg Opera House’s premier performance was a biblical subject, “Adam and Eve” by Theile, featuring dances on stage. This was followed by many biblically themed operas, not just Passions… all this before Bach’s birth or during his formative years.
When Bach wrote his two Passions (a third, St Mark, has been lost), he was a part of a movement, rather informal but probably spurred by the rise of Pietism, that pushed back against theatrical aspects of Bible stories addressed by composers. Ever the master, Bach retained intense dramatic elements, and the “voices” and separate characters, but forsook “acting” and costumes. And he kept to churches. If I remember correctly, the St Matthew Passion was performed in alternate years in Leipzig’s St Thomas and St Nicholas churches, yes, at Good Friday vespers, thank you (Bach being musical overseer as cantor of the city’s four main churches) but I believe settling at St Thomas every year after a while. Bach considered its acoustics superior to anywhere else.
Because of Bach’s musical and theological approaches, majestic in their simplicity and, as I said above, inarguable as supreme codifications of form, the “theatrical,” operatic presentation of the Passion virtually disappeared from Northern Europe, certainly north Germany, during Bach’s lifetime. Where it survived it was scarcely employed, and then only in places where the Italianate opera craze held sway. For the most part composers there moved on from their experiments of musical incorporation… or literally moved to where the cross-pollination was more accepted. An example was Handel, moving from north Germany to Italy, then to England. The appeal of operatic elements (not at all only its secular thematic tendencies) was strong to him and others.
But my response to you is to note that Passions, during Bach’s lifetime and in Bach’s area, were also performed outside churches. Thank you for your interest!
Small correction. The “Assumption” refers to the Virgin Mary’s dormition and receipt in Heaven.
When Jesus went back to Heaven, it was called (and still is) the “Ascension”.
How embarrassing to mix my A’s of the church calendar. I am not a Mariologist beyond acknowledging her lineage, the Magnificat, being overshadowed as a virgin by the Holy Spirit, and respect for her as mother. Yes… of course I mean Jesus’s Ascension into Heaven, and its commemoration. Thank you! I will correct my text.