Monday Morning Music Ministry

4-3-15

Some non-Christians, and many Christians, are a little confused about the term “Passion” when describing the final week of Jesus’s earthly life, the pre-risen Savior. Normally, being passionate is a good thing, something we all seek or endorse.

In fact Passion is from the Latin, patere, meaning to suffer. It describes an emotion at the extremities of enthusiasm or sorrow. Diderot, father of the modern dictionary concept, described Passion as “penchants, inclinations, desires, and aversions carried to a certain degree of intensity, combined with an indistinct sensation of pleasure or pain.” The fine line between joy and aversion, desire and rejection. (The passion fruit is not a putative aphrodisiac; when sliced in half, the pulp encases seeds bundled in the shape of a cross.)

Advising students, “Be passionate about what you pursue,” and Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ are different sides of the very same coin.

And so, on Holy Week, we may pause at the supernal St Matthew Passion of Johann Sebastian Bach. Listen to it. Learn from it. For Holy Week vespers services, Bach wrote the St Matthew Passion, performed in Leipzig’s St Thomas and St Nicholas churches on alternate years, for decades. He periodically made improvements to this, possibly his most favored of approximately 1800 works he composed.

Bach employed a “surround-sound” structure in the St Matthew Passion:
stereophony. At St Thomas Church, certain movements were performed from the
east organ loft, the “swallow’s nest” opposite the main musician’s gallery at the
west end of the church, a double-choir structure “that produced a splendid and
festive effect.” Smaller groups of musicians and singers performed from the church’s many corners; worshipers heard music coming from every direction.

The structure of Bach’s Passions were strictly traditional; he changed little of the form he inherited. The straight biblical narrative was distributed among soloists (evangelists and various soliloquentes, or individual speakers including Jesus, Peter, Pilate, et al) and choirs (various turbae or crowds: high priests, Roman soldiers, Jews, etc). The Passion’s flow was dotted by narration, hymn strophes, and contemplative lyrics, “madrigal pieces” of free verse, mainly delivered as arias. One can begin to appreciate the spectacle that audiences beheld: a combination of church and theater, Greek-style drama and opera, music and voice, costume and acting.

Bach revised the St Matthew Passion several times through the years (his best works were repeated in his churches, and performed elsewhere, just as he occasionally performed works of esteemed contemporaries), and, of his manuscript scores that survive today, none bears such respect as St Matthew. In 1736, at least, he considered it his most significant work. His autograph score shows loving attention, written in red or brown inks according to the biblical and dramatic libretto sources; calligraphy in careful Gothic or Latin letters; and preserved as an heirloom. In fact it appears that a later accident, perhaps a spill, damaged portions of some pages, and Bach lovingly repaired those sections with paste-overs.

For half a century after Bach’s death his musical style was out of style, and he slipped into relative obscurity. Eventually, however, the floodgates opened. The great German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe discovered Bach’s music and described it: “Eternal harmony carries on a dialogue with itself on what God felt in his bosom shortly before the creation of the world.” The composer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, a Lutheran converted from Judaism, was awestruck by the St Matthew Passion and staged a legendary performance on Good Friday, 1829. Its revival was repeated, and Mendelssohn brought his enthusiasm for Bach to England, where Felix was a favorite of the German-descended Queen Victoria (of Saxon and Hanoverian royalty).

Since then it is performed regularly, everywhere and at any time through the year. However, it is most appropriate during Holy Week. Its parts were performed on
separate nights of daily services between Palm Sunday and Good Friday, each re-creating the events of Holy Week – Jesus’s entry to Jerusalem; the contention with the Jewish Sanhedrin and Roman authorities; the Last Supper; His betrayal; the trials and persecution; the Crucifixion.

… The Passion that Christ endured for us, willingly taking on Himself the punishment and death we deserve as sinners who have separated ourselves from God.

As I have recommended before, if you are a person who listens to traditional hymns or Handel’s Messiah at Christmastime, or even if you are not, you will profit from setting some time aside and listening to Bach’s St Matthew Passion, and absorb its musical grandeur, its setting, its cultural history… its meaning. No less today than when it was first performed 275 years ago. Or when events took place, 2000 years ago.

Bach took the same care that the early evangelists, or recipients of their Epistles, might have shown to ancient events and texts. It is notable that history came to call Bach “The Fifth Evangelist,” the accolade bypassing even his spiritual mentor Martin Luther.

+ + +

A performance of the Passion based on St Matthew’s Gospel. The great Bach interpreter Karl Richter conducts the Munich Bach Orchestra and the Munich Bach Choir. With English subtitles. This production is a work of art in itself: an appropriately bleak but very expressive setting. The cross, overhead the performers, grows lighter and darker responding to the dramatic narrative.

Click: Bach’s “St Matthew Passion”

4-1-15

I recently have quoted St Augustine, from more than 1500 years ago, to the effect
that “He who sings, prays twice.” In the early days of the church, it was music
that helped attract worshipers… and was, naturally and powerfully, an irresistible
means to praise God and express joy.

Before the church fathers (and mothers; St Cecilia becoming the Patron saint
of Music) Plato identified not only music but harmony as capturing – as best
humankind could – the abstract but Perfect Good that reigns over us. Plato did not
particularly ascribe it to the manufactured Greek gods, but he believed that there
existed an Absolute Truth; and that, even if we could never fully know it, humans
are ennobled by seeking it. Although he lived 300 years before Jesus, the early
church recognized his philosophy in some ways as proto-Christian; and many of
them were neo-Platonists.

So the musical impulse, in many ways, was concurrent to the institution of
worship, formal and informal. Plainsong and chants predominated, and in the
evolution of corporate worship, the trends moved from singing individuals to
ensembles and choirs. In the Gothic era, polyphony – “many sounds,” part-
singing, basic harmony – entered church music. There was actually a time when
the Roman church considered banning harmony as rebellion against tradition, but
the impulse of reformers from Luther to Bach opened the floodgates of glorious
harmonies, attractive melodies, the regal organ, full organs, and the resumption of
congregational singing.

This is a brief introduction, in Holy Week, to a brief introduction to the history of
church music. Linked here is a 90-minute BBC-TV documentary on sacred music,
using Easter themes as the touchstone.

It covers approximately a thousand years of Western church music, from Plainsong
to Polyphony, simple chants to the complex but captivating musical expression of
J. S. Bach. The setting is St Luke’s in London, staged as a reverent mixture of the
ancient and modern. There is tasteful narration between numbers. It ultimately is
a concert, not a church service, and I hope the occasional audience applause is not
disconcerting.

If you are a person who enjoys listening to the Messiah at Christmastide, or even
if you are not, sometime during Holy Week you should find this interesting.
The church’s heritage; musical history; the sweep of cultural changes; artistic
expression of another time, almost another world, are here. And, by the translation-
subtitles of chants, songs, choruses, and motets, the essence of the Easter story is
told.

… as, maybe, only music can bring it to our souls.

+ + +

Click: An Easter Celebration

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.

+ + +

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.

9-16-13

Either God exists, or He doesn’t.

The question this statement poses, among uncountable other speculative, philosophical, ontological, and even religious questions, is THE most basic and most important that can be asked of human beings, or any beings.

As someone who is secure in the answer, I was confronted by the question this week in a way that never escapes anyone’s imaginings. The Voyager I spacecraft, NASA announced, has left the friendly confines of our solar system. Not the universe, of course, for that ends… well, we are not quite sure where. But Voyager has crossed the border of our Sun’s “bubble” of “plasma” – charged electrons in “empty” space whose density changed, though differently than expected, when Voyager passed over the line into interstellar “space.”

The inherent limitations of conceptualizing scientific facts, no less than imperfectly understanding scientific theories, has us turn to inverted commas and air-quotes. I will save electrons, myself, by dropping all these quotation marks. But we should keep them at the ready, because they represent the intellectual crutches we often need when discussing such things. We – humans – know more and more every day; by one estimate, every eight months we discover and learn more things than in all of mankind’s previous history. Yet even with Voyager the assumptions about the density of outer-space electrons, in these otherwise empty-seeming neighborhoods of the universe, have been revised. Interstellar plasma is acting differently than scientists predicted. And brand-new questions about magnetic forces in space, not just as carried by solar wind inside the solar system, have presented themselves.

My brain starts to hurt too, despite the thrill of such data. Perhaps we will learn more when Voyager reaches its next sun’s neighborhood. Be sure to stock up on provisions, if you plan to wait for that news; that will not happen for another 40,000 years. Such is the vastness of our universe.

By then, Voyager probably still will be hurtling along, but its information-gathering and transmitting facilities expired. Interestingly, the probe, which was launched in 1977, has computers far less complex than of any smartphone today. It records data on… yes, an 8-track cassette. And it sends that data back to earth by a 20-watt signal. By comparison, a radio station near where I live has a thousand-watt transmitter, and can be heard for a range of 25 miles or so. Yet, we launched Voyager, it observes, and we learn: a modern, and more peaceful, turn on Caesar’s “Veni, vidi, vici” – “I came, I saw, I conquered.”

Amidst this week’s tsunami of news of wars, rumors of wars, crises, corruption, killings and beheadings, revolutions, disasters of weather, economies, and human folly, we have this news that takes our minds (and I hope the imaginations of our spirits) to other things. Out of this world. Almost by definition, eternal things. If you didn’t see photos or artist conceptions, or movies of distant solar systems and planets, watch the video whose link is at the end of this essay. We inevitably are in awe.

In awe of what? There is that question again. If God doesn’t exist, the theories of atheists and agnostics and secularists about when the universe was formed, why it was formed, and how it was formed are interesting (or not) only as speculation.

Although theories abound, no one comes close – absent the God Proposition – to advancing any sort of a definitive idea about when the universe began (including the question of what was here previously, wherever here is); how large the universe is (when the question includes “what, then, lies beyond its borders?”); and how, just how, then, did we get here? There are scientific ideas… that often change. And these questions are lights-years from the larger question facing scientists: Why?

The fact that no human has, by oneself, answers for such questions does not automatically prove the existence of God. There is no proof, which is why it is called Faith. But it does suggest a universal prerequisite, humility, when one addresses such questions without what I call the God Proposition.

My explanation of why many “intelligent” (yes, I will resurrect the quotation marks) people reject God is that we all of us have a latent desire to BE God, to be in control of our situations, to have all the answers. Unfortunately, among the primitive, including sophisticated primitives, this leads to superstition. At the other extreme it leads to oppression, destruction, and death; that is, when clever and resourceful men presume to be gods, the eternal temptation consumes. Never has a mortal been able to benignly control others – an oxymoronic concept anyway – when none ever has been able to control his own self, and the “base passions” of our spiritual DNA… absent the God Proposition.

More than the rudimentary computer systems on Voyager was something of greater significance. In the hope that the craft might meet some alien civilization in a remote part of the universe, it carried a unique payload – a copper and gold alloy disk (estimated by its designers “to last a billion years”) with greetings in 115 earth-languages; some images of our species and schematic maps of earth; and music. The first selection was a recording of the Second Brandenburg Concerto, first movement, by Johann Sebastian Bach, performed by Karl Richter and the Munich Bach Orchestra. Among the playlist of global music, Bach was the only composer represented thrice; the Gavotte from the Violin Partita No. 3, and the Prelude and Fugue from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 2 were the other pieces chosen to represent humankind’s creative profile.

Biologist Lewis Thomas was asked what he would have nominated for this message to unknown civilizations. “The complete works of J.S. Bach,” he said. “But that would be boasting.” I love the (proper) tribute to mankind’s greatest music-maker, but it is interesting that our greetings, our physical likenesses, and our greatest artistic expressions were sent aboard Voyager, in hopes of telling the Universe about us.

… but, significantly, the designers and programmers chose to skip the crowded narratives of human history that are filled, like this week’s headlines, or any week’s headlines, with war, cruelty, murder, and oppression. A half-truth can be no different than a lie. We wanted to show what earth is like, what humanity has done. We just wanted to sanitize the story.

But in my view, there comes that “God Proposition” once again. The dirty little secret, deep down in all our souls, is that our natures are sinful, and many humans have tended to kick and scratch and resist God… but there is also a part of us that yearns for the God who sees good things, and has created good things, and wants to share good things. Part of us – because God planted such yearnings – seeks the good: sometime, occasionally, we have the same impulses as our God.

We don’t need to understand every little (unknowable) thing about the universe and God; we do need to accept Him. It should not be difficult! We cannot be God, no matter how hard some will try. And though we know Him imperfectly, and even love Him imperfectly, we can rest assured that He knows us, and He loves us, perfectly.

Just look at the stars and the galaxies and the universe, fellow voyager.

+ + +

I chose another of Johann Sebastian Bach’s immortal works, the second movement of his Third Orchestral Suite, BWV 1068, commonly known as “Air On the G-String.” Images are from NASA probes, including from the Hubbell Space Telescope. N.B.: the text’s passage about Bach’s music aboard Voyager is adapted from my biography of Bach published by Thomas Nelson, 2011.

Click: Bach’s Air On the G-String

3-14-11

The events of recent days should persuade even the most cynical and least alarmist among us that we are in fact living in a “page-turning,” if not “chapter-ending,” moment of world history. Endemic economic troubles, from budget crises to virtual national bankruptcies; street protests resulting in governments’ instability and regime changes across the world; devastating earthquakes and tsunamis in Japan, with incalculable tolls in terms of life, infrastructure, and health, there and elsewhere… we are indeed on the cusp of a new world.

The old order changeth, yielding place to the new;
And God fulfills Himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.

Many of the changes we see, such as the overthrow of dictatorships, are harbingers of hope. But many other changes clearly suggest the contrary – the unleashing of anti-Christian persecution; long-term economic downturns; serious challenges to health and recovery in Japan. Human beings often hope for change, but when it brings insecurity and misery we are constrained from embracing the New without praying for wisdom, and discerning God’s hand.

We have entered the season of Lent. Is there a temptation to avoid looking inward and commemorate an event 2000 years old, when we feel the need to watch and wait upon events that, instead, are exploding in our midst?

The opposite should be our reaction. And the coming observance of Easter is splendid timing.

As with the woman who anointed Jesus with precious oils, disasters and troubles of the world we will always have with us. But we serve God’s purposes when we honor Him by drawing closer in communion, when we enter into His suffering that He endured to identify with our suffering (o sweet mystery), when we contemplate the Passion of His sacrifice, death, and resurrection. We will make the world a better place by achieving these things ourselves… and sharing them with the world.

It is a custom to “give something up” for Lent. I am going to suggest to you something different from chocolate and sitcoms. Give up two hours of your life this week, in advance of the Easter season. Set aside the time, shut out possible distractions, and prepare for an exposition of Christ’s suffering and death that will touch your soul. You will do your understanding of Christ’s sacrifice and your devotion to the Cross a favor to watch the video you can click to, below.

Johann Sebastian Bach’s setting of the “Passion” story (Jesus’s intense emotions and sacrificial suffering) is one of the great works, not only of church music or the Baroque period, but of human creativity. Based on Matthew chapters 27 and 28, the St Matthew Passion was in the form of a once-common performance vehicle, the “musical passion.” Christian composers, as early as the eighth century, but mainly in the 16th-18th centuries, wrote Passions to be different from other church music. Passions used large ensembles, sometimes two choirs, orchestras, and organs. They were dramatic presentations, with “narrators” and singers. Sometimes they were performed outside churches, and sometimes in costumes and with dramatic action.

In Bach’s version, he declined costumes but achieved great drama. In the version you can download below you will see a spare performance stage, singers in simple suits or dresses. There are no props; it is not in a cathedral. But you will notice great meaning in the changing placement of the singers; the colors that light the performance stage; and the lighted Cross that floats above the performers – changing colors, 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 tunes. 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 stark, solo 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.

As Baroque music and Bach’s genius temporarily was out of fashion after his death in 1750, the 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 since, commenced. Mendelssohn, a Jew converted to Christianity, found his Lutheran faith much inspired 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 10 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 recent movie The Passion of the Christ.

None can be more powerful than Bach’s version. If you are unfamiliar with, or dislike, “classical music,” this 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 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.

A better understanding of what He did for our sake will make us better stewards to minister to the world – especially in these horrible times – for His sake.

+

Click: The St Matthew Passion — Johann Sebastian Bach

This will be a complete performance, in many segments of various lengths; a total of about two hours. Each segment will automatically move to the next. If you desire a full-screen (and one does not automattically pop up), click only this icon, once, at the beginning: the “joint arrows” that point right and down; that, when your cursor hovers over it, is called EXPAND. Click that for a full screen of the video. It is from the amazing YouTube channel of SoliDeoGloria.

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. The accessible profundity is akin to Bach’s, however, without doubt) Soloists are Peter Schreier as narrator; Walter Berry, bass; Julia Hanari, contralto; and Helen Donath, soprano. You will notice, of course, that this a Lenten subject; it will bring you right through the Crucifiction.

The quotation above is by Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “The Passing of King Arthur” from Idylls of the King.

A Music Ministry Special

Christmas week. Even the most spiritual people among us – plausibly, the MOST spiritual among us – easily can be caught up in the THINGS of this week. Touching bases, checking lists, doing this and that, going here and there… all of which is legitimate. All of which we routinely regret, to an extent. All of which we resolve, nest year, to balance with quiet time to reflect on the meaning of Christmas.

At your service, folks. Here is a 2010-style method of slowing your pace, soothing your soul, and communing quietly with, maybe, your family; with God… and with Johann Sebastian Bach.

At the end of this message is a link to a performance of Bach’s immortal CHRISTMAS ORATORIO. We are used to hearing Handel’s “Messiah,” at least several famous portions. No less beautiful, and powerful, and spiritual, is Bach’s “Christmas Oratorio.”

An oratorio is best explained as a religious opera without a stage. Drama based on biblical stories is presented employing overtures and instrumental movements, solos and choruses, and often a narrator – an orator, providing one theory of its name – in the form of a singing narrator who stands apart from the “action.” Oratorios sometimes were performed outside the settings of churches. The most famous composer of Baroque oratorios is Händel, who wrote one German, two Italian, and seventeen English-language oratorios.

The opening of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio, Jauchzet, Frohlocket!, with timpani drums tuned to different notes, is among the grandest music Bach wrote. And the close of part two, Wir Singen Dir In Deinem Heer, seamlessly combining two previous beautiful melodies, is magical. The Sinfonia, a purely instrumental movement, is sublime. Does it advance the “action”? – No, except to set the mood of the peaceful night in Bethlehem, where the shepherds watched over their flocks.

May I invite the uninitiated to this glorious piece, or to Baroque music in general: Let Bach, and the biblical text, carry you on a spiritual trip. The Bible is quoted; the chorus and soloists take the part of Christmas-week players; and the ancient, beautiful music will touch your soul. Give this time… and it will be a special part of your Christmas.

In this video, Sir John Eliot Gardiner conducts the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists; the setting is the historic Herderkirche in Weimar, Germany, a city where Bach once lived and worked. The Christmas Oratorio originally was performed on six different days, from Christmas to Epiphany. Technically it is six cantatas, a form within the liturgy of which Bach was master.

The small choir… the original ancient instruments… the soloist in the box… the setting of the historic church… bring you close to the music as Bach would have conducted it himself. The first such time was Christmas of 1734.

I am linking you to full-screen downloads of this masterpiece (I daresay many of you will rush to find the DVD version of this to watch on a bigger screen next year!) Of several good versions available on the web, this is the only one with English subtitles; when they don’t appear, it is because singers are repeating passages. ALSO: this is not just “sit back and close your eyes.” Every once in a while a download will end, and a screen will appear with freeze-frame options. Click the largest box, upper right, labeled “Up Next,” or the logically numbered screens in the strip below.  (This will give you a chance to take a break if needed – this is more than two hours long, like “Messiah,” so plan some time! – or, you will see, you will want to repeat a passage whose musical beauty and spiritual power has impressed you!

Take time. Make time. Have a merry, and meaningful, and musical, Christmas!

Click this link: Christmas Oratorio — J S Bach

Merry Monday to all.

I am in the process — yes, it is a process — of writing a biography of Johann Sebastian Bach. Specifically about the role of faith in his life and work. It is a humbling privilege to deal with, and introduce a new generation of readers to, the greatest musical genius the human race has produced. I will say, somewhere in the book, that the music of Bach is hard to explain but easy to understand.

In a similar way Bach, being as intensely devoted to his faith in God and love of Jesus as to his music, used his talent to make the complicated theology of 18th-century Germany nevertheless understandable to the masses. I was struck in my studies, listening to his astonishing “Magnificat” — the prayer of Mary (Luke I) when she learns she has been visited by the Holy Ghost and is with child — how brilliantly he used his talent to explain Gospel truths. In her prayer, Mary says, “henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.” Bach used that verse for the fourth movement of “The Magnificat”… and he might have dwelt on the words, the concepts, of “henceforth” or “me” (as veneration of Mary was a theological issue), or “blessed.”
But he chose to focus on the word “generations,” the phrase “all generations,” and drive home several biblical points. The birth of Jesus became the focal point of creation’s unfolding work: the fulcrum of history. More, all generations to come would look back on Mary and call her blessed. Further, all previous generations looked forward to the birth of the Messiah. And, having isolated that phrase to imbue the Virgin Birth with its spiritual profundity, Bach capped it all by using musical composition to do more than merely quote the Bible verse.

The Latin words for “all generations” is “Omnes Generationes.” In his “Magnificat” Johann Sebastian Bach endows his five-part choir with a cascading multiplicity of that phrase — up the scale and down; women’s statements and men’s responses; from the left (as it were, in the choir loft) and from the right; in repetition and staccato fashion — “all generations,” “all generations,” “all generations,” “all generations.”
Truly, before the short but awesome chorus is finished, listeners have a mental image of the numberless hosts of heaven rejoicing: a mighty cloud of witnesses, to be sure, of the past and of the future.
The brief clip this week has two halves: one, the score of the movement, leading your eye through the multi-part composition — how Bach worked out the concept of future generations blessing Mary. But the second half is a unique piece of speculation by an internet musical-theologian. Along the lines of typology, numerical symbolism, and “Bible codes,” here is speculation that Bach composed this movement to precisely enumerate the generations of Jesus’ ancestry.

Speculation only, but as Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever, we know that saints of previous days indeed looked forward to the Incarnation (“It seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order…” Luke I:3).
Here is Mary’s prayer (“The Magnificat”) as recorded in Luke I: 46-55:
“And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord, And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. For He hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. For He that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is His name. And his mercy is on them that fear Him from generation to generation. He hath showed strength with his arm; He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich He hath sent empty away. He hath helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy; As He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham, and to His seed for ever.”

Join the heavenly chorus! Picture countless angels and saints praising the Incarnation:
click All Generations!

Have a great week. Come on Bach now, y’hear?
Rick Marschall