Because I suspect that a whole two hours of passion music would turn off almost anyone, I’m going to play some extracts from the Bach St. Matthew Passion for an hour or so, then concentrate on music for brass instruments, especially Baroque brass.
The Matthew Passion, or in German: Matthäuspassion by Bach is one of the most ambitious Baroque works. It was written for two whole choirs, each with its own orchestra and organ, two sets of soloists, and in addition a small chorus of young trebles. Choirs in the time of Bach were small, we are fairly sure today, except for very special occasions; the massed choirs of today were unheard of. Remember, there were no headphones or TV monitors to keep enormous choral and orchestral forces together. Assuming choir sizes of about 16 each, and orchestra sizes of about the same, this would have meant about 65 personnel, which would have counted as a major spectacle.
Nikolaus Harnoncourt, in 1970, made a fantastic stereo recording with ‘original instruments’, and two boy’s choirs. This was a major departure from current practice at that time, the 1970's, when it was considered that the music was too difficult for kids to sing, so that it was usually sung by adult women singing the boys’ parts. For whatever reason—perhaps for publicity, perhaps something else— Harnoncourt chose to use the best-known boy’s choirs of the time: The Vienna Boy’s Choir (Wiener Singerknaben) and the choir of King’s College, Cambridge. He disposed the two choirs on the left channel and right channel, respectively, to make full use of stereo technology, used the appropriate pitches (Bach’s pitches were quite different from A=440), and used Baroque brass and strings, to create a sound experience that was irresistible for the time. That recording is still in demand by collectors.
I have blogged about the Matthew Passion before. As the person who wrote the original liner notes of Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s original project for Telefunken observes, a performance of this work today has a fascinating aspect of time-travel.
Firstly, we’re taken back in time to around 1746, when Bach was putting the finishing touches to this composition which was last known to be performed a few years earlier.
But of course, the Passion relates a story recounted by an author, written around the end of the First Century (according to Wikipedia, around 80 AD. While it may be that the Gospel of Matthew is strongly tied to Matthew the Tax-Gatherer, it seems unlikely). And the author was recording facts, or more properly, traditions, of half a century earlier.
These layers of distance in time give the Matthew Passion a strange aura, created by our needing to sort through the emotions of Bach, layered over the responses of the author of the gospel, to the emotions of the protagonists. Of course, the story is recounted with a certain immediacy that transcends cultural differences. We can readily understand the motivations of those disciples of 2000 years ago, as they feel a dreadful unease, not knowing how Jesus would react to what amounted to taunting the Pharisees and the Romans with his triumphal entrance to Jerusalem. Though it should be hard to look into the mind of a man of that time, in some ways we’re not very different from them.
The unique culture of Lutheran pietistic observance of Holy Week seems, to my eyes, to have an echo in how Good Friday was observed in a certain Christian Ashram in Sri Lanka in the Sixties. The adults fasted almost the entire day, with breaks at noon and in the late afternoon for austere refreshments of essentially water or tea. The elderly and the children were excused from this discipline, but there was a relentless immersion in the horrors of the crucifixion, moderated only by passion hymns. Though the scene in the Ashram was far removed from the Baroque opulence of Protestant Saxony, the mood was probably not. (It is possible that some of the ornate excess of the church decorations in Protestant Germany were shrouded with cloth during Holy Week, and removed only at Easter.) So, even if Bach himself was skeptical about the Resurrection, he would have put himself in a mental state in which immersing himself in the drama of the events leading up to the crucifixion was an aspect of his praising god. This is the sense in which this music should be interpreted.
In between recitatives in which the scriptural text is used, there are arias composed by one Picander, which are reflections on the action, and choruses of two kinds. One kind are verses from hymns that are appropriate to the moment. Others are brief choral passages called turbas (properly turbae), where the choir takes the part of groups, such as those who roar Barabbas! when Pilate asked which prisoner should be released. There is actually a third category of choruses, which are composed choruses which mark major points in the Passion: the great opening chorus Kommt ihr Tochter, which exhorts the Daughters of Zion to come mourn, the great central chorus: O Mensch, bewein dein’ Sündre gross, (O Man, bewail they grievous sin), and the final chorus: Wir setzen uns, which closes the work with a mournful dirge, the choir speaking for itself, and declaring its despair.
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| A page from the manuscript, showing text in color. |
Part A
Bach: Ich bin's, ich sollte buessen
Bach: Erkenne mich, mein Hueter
Bach: Ich will bei meinem Jesu wachen
Bach: O Mensch, bewein dein' Sundre gross
Bach: Bin ich gleich von dir gewichen
Part B
Bach: Erbarme dich (aria soprano)
Bach: Gebt mir meinen Jesum wieder (aria bass)
Bach: Wir setzen uns mit Tranen nieder
Bach: Et ressurexit --from the Credo of the Mass in B minor
Bach: Et in unum Dominum --from the Credo of the Mass in B minor
Bach orchestral Suite No 3 in D, Gavotte I&II
Suite for orchestra No 3 in D major, BWV 1068- Gigue
Part C
Lennon+McCartney: Penny Lane
Handel: Allegro-Watermusic
Handel: Water Music- Suite No1-7
Mahler: Symphony No 8 in E flat major Part I, Veni Creator Spiritius- Gloria Patri
Bach: Cantata No 147 'Herz und Mund und Tat und Leben' BWV 147
Part D
Lennon+McCartney: Got To Get You Into My Life - Beatles
Lennon+McCartney: Got to Get You into My Life - Earth, Wind & Fire
Lennon+McCartney: Taxman
Mozart: Concerto 4 E Flat Maj 3
Flanders & Swann: Ill wind
Jeremiah Clarke: King of Denmark March
Earth Wind & Fire: September
Richard Wagner: Tannhauser Overture
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