Yesterday evening, the Kalamazoo Bach Festival under the direction of Jim Turner performed the St. John Passion of Johann Sebastian Bach.
I’ve been looking forward to singing the St. John Passion for quite a while. Several times I’ve told Jim that singing one of the Passions was on my life list of things to do before I die.
I would say it was a good performance. You can read a review here. We had some great soloists. The venue, at Kalamazoo's First Presbyterian Church, has acoustics that made it difficult for the audience to hear all the words, even though we were singing it in English expressly so that our listeners could hear the story in their own language.
Obviously I don't have a recording of this performance to share (yet), but below the fold are a few YouTube clips.
Opening Chorus "Herr, unser Herrscher", Suzuki & Bach Collegium Japan
(An excellent performance on period instruments with a small chorus)
First, some statistics: there are 68 movements in the Passion. This is counting all the small sections as separate movements. 31 of these are recitatives by the Evangelist, plus one or more soloists portraying Jesus, Peter, Pilate, or a few other characters. 14 movements feature the chorus portraying groups such as the soldiers, the priests, or the crowd. That makes 45 movements, or about two-thirds of the total, which are moving the story forward. In terms of time, however, these take up only a bit more than a third of the two hours of the Passion.
Then there are two large choral movements, the majestic “Lord our Master” to open the work, and then “Rest well”, the next to last movement, which is essentially a lullaby to the dead Christ.
In addition there are two layers of commentary on the events – firstly, 10 arias, which also take up a bit more than a third of the time. These are highly emotional and for the most part intensely personal – the soul in dialog with itself – an interior focus which, it seems to me, is a relatively new thing in Bach’s time, that is not present in the earlier Reformation hymns.
The second layer of commentary is the 11 Reformation-era chorales. These are the ‘folk songs’ of the Reformation Church. They are in a style that was part of the popular music of the day. The one that Bach chose for movement 11, “O Welt, sieh hier dein Leben”, is based on a popular song “Innsbruck, ich muss dich lassen”, which is about a man who loses his job and has to leave town and leave his lady behind. (Today, this would be a Country-Western song!) Luther was criticized by other church leaders for bringing popular music into church, and his classic line was, “Why should the Devil have all the good tunes?” In the name of historical accuracy, this is an apocryphal quote, and has been attributed to Charles Wesley, and half a dozen others.
In any case, Lutherans such as myself have not left this heritage of hymnody behind. In fact, the 11 chorale movements in the Passion, are based on seven chorales –some are repeats – and the current hymnal our church uses, which was published just five years ago, has six of those seven in it. We have not moved very far from our roots. Come to a Lutheran service, and you’ll hear these chorales, some of them quite often. You may even hear them in four-part harmony.
The texts of the chorales – for the most part, there are exceptions – are like miniature Lutheran sermons. They move from the Biblical text, to a practical application, to the Gospel of forgiveness. Now, I mean the whole chorale text does this – some of these were 20 verses long, and back in the day the congregation would sing them all. But you can see a bit of this even in the single verses Bach sets here… A good example is movement 14, where Peter’s denial becomes the basis for an appeal to God’s grace.
The chorales can be emotional, but usually not so over-the-top as the Arias are. Again, they would be very familiar to Bach’s audience, and form anchors to hold onto in the midst of the more elaborate and artistic movements.
Finally, let me ask that most Lutheran of questions, “What does this mean?” (You have to have paid your dues in the Small Catechism to fully appreciate this). What is the theme of the St. John Passion? I submit that it is a simple question – who nailed Jesus Christ to the cross? And the answer, of course, is – I did. Not the Jews, not the Romans – me. This is not feel-good theology. This is not the Prosperity Gospel.
Who hath thee now so stricken,
My Savior, and with torments
Such ill upon thee laid?
For thou art not a sinner
Like us and our own children,
From evildoing thou art free.
I, I and my transgressions,
Which to the grains are likened
Of sand beside the sea,
These have in thee awakened
The sorrow that doth strike thee
And this most grievous host of pain.
Regardless of whether this makes any sense to you or not, and I understand that this is more of a stretch for some of us than others, this is the thought that I tried to keep at least in the back of my mind in order to authentically approach the performance of the St. John Passion.
Having said that, leaving the specifically religious aspect aside, the Passion also presents us with the universal human themes of loss, suffering, sacrifice, love, and empathy, that all of us can identify with, whatever our religious position.
I am sorry that this diary is late this evening -- I had it ready to go, then got a call from the nursing home where both my parents are that my dad had fallen -- again. He is 97, and my mother is 95. Both suffering from dementia, and I am unable to do anything much from a distance.
Well, what is on your minds this evening?