Reprise on the St John Passion

Tue, 11 Apr 2006 14:38:44 GMT

Our rehearsals for the St John Passion culminated in the performance in Leicester Cathedral last Saturday evening, with the Leicester Bach Choir, six soloists and the Musical Bonum Dei baroque orchestra.

Afterwards, I spoke to our rehearsal accompanist who had been listening in the audience. He told me that it had been very moving. So moving that the audience had been reluctant to applaud at the end because it would have broken the spell.

I had gone to the free talk in the Leicester Guildhall prior to the performance, hoping to hear something of the influences on Bach which would have made him write such compelling music.

The speaker did not elaborate on the social and environmental influences which brought to bear on the work. Instead, he dwelt on the music as an aesthetic discipline. He said that Bach was an intellectual composer, which cannot be denied. He played several small excerpts showing how Bach commonly intertwined two contrapuntal themes in his music. He highlighted the tenor aria in which the music is said to replicate the rainbow arcs of the bruises on Jesus' back after his scourging. I did learn that the chorales were based on Lutheran hymns, which would explain why I thought Bach repeated his themes.

What astonished me was his claim that Bach was not dramatic. How could he be dramatic, he said, when he was a creature of intellect and form, rather than emotion. Rather, Bach was a painter of musical pictures.

Excuse me? You only have to sing the music to feel the intensity of the drama. Various sources that I have scanned, have said that the Gospel of St John is frequently considered to be the most anti-semitic of the New Testament. The 'turbae' choruses, in which the mob yell for Jesus' crucifixion are, undeniably, sung by the Jews.

But as I wrote before, they could have been any vicious mob of people, anywhere. Bach simply took the words of the St John Gospel in German, and wrote music that matches them. He might equally well, perhaps, have written a work to reflect the Roman mob in the Coliseum watching spectacles of gore there. However, he was employed by the Lutheran Church in Leipzig, so that's who he wrote for.

As a whole, the piece asks its listeners to reflect on their own participation and guilt in the death of Jesus, and how the sacrifice of his life won redemption for Mankind. As listeners, we should be humbled by the appalling treatment of this man, dying for us.

One other thing that I learnt from the talk was that the St John Passion is performed only rarely in comparison with its later sibling, the St Matthew Passion - a work of considerably greater scale, but certainly its equal in music. I wondered why not. I am probably politically incorrect to venture this, if not outright wrong, but perhaps producers, performers and audiences recoil from the implied, but not intended, anti-semitism.

See this discussion on the Institute for Christian and Jewish Studies website for an insight.

Addendum: How could I have forgotten! A member of the audience at the pre-concert talk asked if anyone knew what it was like singing under Bach's direction. The speaker replied that Yes, there had been a chorister who had sung in one of Bach's choirs, and who had been asked this self-same question when he was a very old man. "We sang atrociously, and were flogged thoroughly afterwards",was his response.

Singing J S Bach's St John Passion

Sun, 22 Jan 2006 22:13:13 GMT

I'm one of the awful bourgeoisie who buy classical music for the shelves, so that a visitor can idly glance over the collection and be impressed by all the titles. Actually, that's no longer strictly true, inasmuch as that since I returned to UK from overseas, I have no room to exhibit CDs and all the music and the inlay leaflets are now stored in those big CD holders. This is a much more compact solution, and also less dust-catching.

When I earn money, I buy more CDs. Which is why, while in Oman, my music collection expanded considerably.

I bought my fair share of Johann Sebastian Bach. I'd play the music, but not really listen to it. I found it odd that certain parts of the St Matthew Passion sounded very similar to the St John Passion, as if Bach re-used his themes. Well, he was a jobbing composer, so I suppose that wasn't reprehensible.

Now I'm going to talk here in totally non-musical terms, so if you are a real musician and would be better able to define with the appropriate terminology,what I have picked up by way of impression, I beg your pardon.

I joined the Leicester Bach Choir last May. This entails singing some Johann Sebastian Bach, and maybe some JC Bach and/or CE Bach from time to time. We have already had three rehearsals of J S Bach's St John Passion, which we are to perform in early April.

The music is mesmerising me. This was not some staid, provincial composer. This was a man of passionate intensity and awareness of drama, as well as a total command of musical form. To those not familiar with the genre, the passion of Christ is the story from Christ's betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane through his interrogation before Pilate, the scourging and mocking, the casting of dice for his clothes, to his death on the Cross and removal to his tomb. The St Matthew Passion uses the gospel of St Matthew, and the St John Passion uses the gospel of St John. The evangelist, who sings the actual words of the story-teller, is a tenor. The words of Christ are sung by a bass. Pilate and Peter are also sung by bass voices.

Not only do the chorus annotate the gospel and comment on proceedings in chorales of sorrowful remorse, it also takes the part of the jeering mob that sent Christ to his death. It's almost scary singing number 23 in which the mob whips itself into a menacing frenzy with Pilate, If this man were not a malefactor (we should not deliver him unto thee). The piece is written as a fugue, with the four parts singing similarly written ascending and descending chromatic scales but at intervals, rather like overlapping rounds. The discordance of the notes sounding between the parts and the biting force of the words sounds totally contemporary to me. I can really believe that we are a very ugly, intimidating crowd that threatens to break into anarchy, chaos and revolution at any minute, although we are reminded that the Jews would not enter the judgement hall lest they defile themselves just before the Passover.

All the time, the harpsichord marks out a regular rhythm which reminds me of Purcell's ground bass.

This music lives in the present. Even if you are sceptical of Christian history, you cannot help but recognise the reality of mob rule and violence in this tale. I gather that some Jews do not like the St John Passion, which they interpret as being anti-semitic. On the basis of the words and music that I am experiencing, I can understand that, but I think you have to remember that any mob, anywhere in the world, could react like this, given encouragement. 'Let any man without sin, let him cast the first stone.'

I have bought a copy of the recording made by Benjamin Britten conducting the English Chamber Orchestra at The Maltings, Snape, in 1971, with Peter Pears, Britten's life-companion, singing the part of the evangelist. This has the advantage of being a translation into the English, which makes it far more accessible. One could almost weep at the point when the evangelist sings of how Peter goes outside Caiphas' hall at cock-crow, realising that he has fulfilled Jesus' prediction that he would deny him three times before dawn. The pathos is tangible.

There's nothing like singing a work in order to become involved in it.

The kitchen drawer: Music

Reprise on the St John Passion

Singing J S Bach's St John Passion