We are an intentional Christian community of more than 3,000 people living in twenty-eight settlements on four continents. The view of the St. Matthew Passion as a symmetrical double-chorus work has arisen largely from the experience of modern performances that use distinct soloists and two large choirs. IHS 89 Key G Dorian mode Year/Date of Composition Y/D of Comp. This music sheet has been read 4160 times and … It is almost miraculous that the complete renaissance of Bach’s music which took place after 1829 was due to the performance of a work that had been quite forgotten yet is regarded today as one of his most complex and profound creations of Western music. In St. Matthew Passion as in his other choral works, Bach devised specific “tone pictures” or “musical pictures” to help deliver his narrative. Versions and contemporaneous performances. (For a peerless example of such chorale singing, listen to excerpts 5, 6, and 7.). 40, while the tenor sings “My Jesus remains silent before the liars’ falsehoods,” the accompaniment is made up of 39 brief chords. Bach did not act as his own librettist for the St Matthew Passion. St. Matthew Passion is an oratorio, which is a musical drama. In 1725, two years after he took up his appointment of cantor at St. Thomas’s, he wrote the Passion According To St. John. I keep trying to like “purist” performances including Gardner but I can’t mare up to them. John Eliot Gardiner’s benchmark recording of Bach’s St Matthew Passion can be bought here. Then there’s the so-called Lord Supper sequence, where, as mentioned earlier, the phrase “Lord, is it I?” is repeated eleven times – once for each faithful disciple. Recordings – hundreds of them. Google “St. This moment in our country’s history demands a response. Even the deepest aria – take, for instance, “Have mercy” – remains a solo, performed by one person; everyone else remains a listener. Buy download online. Every note is performed in … “As Sir David points out… Bach might well have approved of making the “fullest use of the resources available to him”…The crowd choruses are vividly characterised, the chorales sung with unaffected naturalness.” – Gramophone. Listen to Bach: St Matthew Passion by Christa Ludwig, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Helen Watts, Nicolai Gedda, Otto Klemperer, Philharmonia Choir, Philharmonia Orchestra, Sir Peter Pears, Walter Legge & Wilfred Brown on Apple Music. In the biblical text, vocal soloists portray Jesus, Pilate, other individual characters, and Matthew the Evangelist, delivering their narration and … The story for the work was taken mostly from the Gospel According to Matthew , but the actual verses that Bach set to music were provided by several contemporary poets. This is a reference to Psalm 39, which contains the line, “I will keep my mouth with a bridle while the wicked stand before me.”. Just at this point, Bach interrupts the narrative to insert the chorale “’Tis I who am most guilty,” a stark reminder that the real responsibility for Christ’s betrayal is not Judas’s alone, but that each of us must bear our part. German language . Among other duties, his post required him to instruct the members of the Thomanerchor (the boys’ choir of St. Thomas) in singing and in Latin, and to provide weekly music at both of these churches. Levang, Rex. In the end, perhaps it is Bach’s insistence on reminding us of this “whole Gospel” that gives his Passion such depth. The full title (from the cover of Bach’s fair copy) is Passio Domini Nostri J. C. Secundum Evangelistam Matthaeum; that is, “The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ according to the Gospel of Matthew.” Of course, the word “passion” does not refer to “love” in this instance, but comes from passio – a participle of the Latin verb “to suffer.”, Bach sets out to make this suffering palpable in the first chorus by its mood: turbulence, anguish, minor chords, and then light breaking through with what Leonard Bernstein called the “redemptive clarity” of the ripieno. Finally, Bach employs a sort of Greek chorus to respond to the events. But he then tells his mother that he did go to hear Bach’s “St. In the short choruses “Not upon this feast!” and “To what purpose is this waste?” it is clearly a crowd speaking, if not shouting, in response to the words of the evangelist. Matthäus-Passion Alt ernative. With respect to the chorales, their poetic lyrics are perhaps just as moving as their musical power. Jens, Inge, ed. In the early 1820s, the director of the Berlin Singakademie, Carl Zelter, got hold of a copy of Bach’s St Matthew Passion and rehearsed some of the choral movements in private. Writing about the place of the Passion in Bach’s life, David Gordon, a musicologist, writes: With this performance Mendelssohn revived, almost single-handedly, interest in Bach. We're an intentional Christian community with locations worldwide. Geiringer, Karl. (Instead, the choir, dressed in street clothes, was arranged on a round stage, with the audience around it, to invite maximum participation in the experience.) Every year for Good Friday Vespers, a Passion would be performed in one of Leipzig’s two principal (Lutheran) churches, St. Thomas and St. Nicholas. We gladly renounce private property and share everything in common. There was a lot to copy: during his life Bach wrote some 250 cantatas, plus scores of sonatas, concertos, trios, oratorios, masses, motets, keyboard exercises and variations. The Joy of Music (2nd Edition) J.S. Voices is a blog by Bruderhof members, covering topics important to us and to you. Johann Sebastian Bach's St Matthew Passion, BWV 244, is structured on multiple levels: the composition is structured in three levels of text sources and by the different forms that are used for musical expression. Ross, Alex. SWV 479 I-Catalogue Number I-Cat. On the occasion of the centenary of the first performance of the St Matthew Passion in Aberdeen in 1912, Peter Parfitt, Musical Director of Aberdeen Bach Choir, has prepared a musical commentary on the work with the text (in German) and translation into English. In Bach’s time, St Thomas’s had two organ lofts – the larger of the two accommodating the musicians for Sunday services throughout the year, the smaller loft used for the additional numbers needed for the music at Christmas and Easter. Leaving the cyber-world for the real, it’s much the same. There was no room for a stage, and no time for scene changes.) A local Lutheran preacher, Salomon Deyling, supervised the writing of the text, using the 26th and 27th chapters of St Matthew’s Gospel (in his manuscript, Bach underlined the words of the Scripture with red ink). The story was arranged by Christian Friedrich Henrici, a postal official in the city who wrote verses using the pseudonym of Picander. Without guilt, forgiveness is meaningless, and without death – without Good Friday – there could not be possibly be such a thing as resurrection and the joy of Easter. Peter’s weeping, after his betrayal of Christ, is also vividly depicted by the vocal line Bach gives the soloist at that point in the story. Sign up for a weekly email from the Bruderhof, Follow us on Instagram for snapshots of Bruderhof life. In Hans’s reply (from Munich, where he is studying medicine), he says he didn’t go; he fears it wouldn’t have meant much to him. Notes at the Bach Museum in Leipzig contain complaints by his contemporaries suggesting that he was too easy on the pupils in his care, who, instead of doing their studies in the evening, ran wild through the streets. Back to the composition of the music itself, Bach was also keenly aware that his talent was a gift. Your email address will not be published. We’ll start in one of the most sublime and powerful corners of J.S. He died of a stroke (after an unsuccessful eye operation) in 1750, at the age of 65, and was buried in an unmarked grave. In yet another, the basses stumble over and over the same phrase, illustrating Jesus’s footsteps as he stumbles under the weight of the cross. According to the Japanese Bach scholar Tadashi Isoyama, recent research indicates that Bach’s librettist (the Leipzig poet Christian Friedrich Henrici, who went by the pen name Picander) drew on collections of passion sermons included in Bach’s personal library, and that “it seems probable that Bach did not simply select verses and set them to music, but rather influenced the construction of the texts.”. Listen to excerpt 2 – and note the evangelist, the turbae, and the strings accompanying the voice of Jesus. Days before, I had arranged tickets for two other groups who plan to attend performances in the vicinity; and come April, the yearly Bach-Wochen (“Bach Weeks”) will be drawing musicians and music-lovers from around the globe for an overwhelming smorgasbord of offerings put on by local conservatories, churches, choirs, and orchestras. Specific actors – Pilate, the High Priest, Judas, the crowd – have roles too. John Eliot Gardiner’s benchmark Archiv recording of Bach’s St Matthew Passion, which will be reissued on vinyl on 10 April 2020, was recorded back in 1989, a masterstroke that remains a milestone in the catalogue. Bach's St. Matthew Passion: A Rudimentary Psychological Analysis, Part II by Vladimir J. Konecni University of California, San Diego Arousal-raising devices: Psychophysical and collative variables Paradoxical as it may seem, it is generally considered that Bach was able to achieve great variety through his ingenious counterpoint. In 2020 the whole world seemed to be waiting for the great conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter. In St. M… Unlike the opera, the best-known type of musical drama, the oratorio does not use costumes, makeup, or musicians who act while they sing. When all is said and done, the best testimony to the meaning and power of the St. Matthew Passion is the music itself, and the best way to approach it is simply to listen to it, whether by means of a recording or a live performance, and to let it work in you. This tradition of borrowing music is still going strong; though whereas 300 years ago serious musicians were borrowing popular tunes, it’s now working the other way around: popular musicians are borrowing from classical tunes. Scholars now agree that an early version was first heard two years earlier, a second version in 1729, a further revised version in 1736 and a final one – the one we hear today – in 1742. In the 1740s, he began to go blind. Bach revised the piece considerably several times, but the final performance during his lifetime, in 1749, was similar in form to the first version. It sets chapters 26 and 27 of the Gospel of Matthew (in Luther's German translation) to music, with chorales and arias. In consideration of the story to be told, the words are treated with great importance; one can see an … According to the critic Alex Ross, all this is a fruit of Bach’s intent, which was not merely to set an important text to music, but to bring to life a theological truth. As with all great religious art, there is no need to explain or justify such an assertion: the piece has, in and of itself, sufficient power to touch the heart, awaken the imagination, and enliven faith. Bernstein, Leonard. No one but the individual concertgoer can answer that question, but in the interest of piquing the interest of those to whom Bach’s “Great Passion” is a foreign, inaccessible enigma, here are a few thoughts. The libretto of the St. Matthew Passion combines freely composed poetry and hymn verses with chapters 26 and 27 of The Gospel According to Matthew. What sort of piece is Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, that it has such a wide reach and such tremendous staying power? The music is seductive, even voluptuous. To me, the most vivid tonal depiction comes in the alto aria “Have mercy,” which Alex Ross calls “the most beloved passage in the St. Matthew Passion.” Evoking Peter’s bitter weeping after his denial of Christ, the “keening melody” is interwoven with a “sad, serene, gently dancing violin solo… The singer tries to emulate the violin’s endless melody but keeps falling short, because parts of it lie outside her range. It’s a melody originally written by one Hans Leo Hassler (1562-1612). Obviously, our anguish is vicarious, limited to the realm of Bach’s (and our) imagination. Discourses on historically accurate performing standards and instrumentation. The available information derives from extant early manuscripts, contemporary publications of the libretto, … These events were so well attended that you had to come several hours early if you wanted a good seat. We might think of them as sober, earnest hymns, but some were originally street tunes. Highlights to look out for are the alto aria ‘Buss Und Reu’ (‘Penance And Remorse’), one for soprano, ‘Blute Nur, Du Liebes Herz! No. The best known of these, often referred to as the Passion Chorale, is ‘O Haupt Voll Blut Und Wunden’, usually sung in English to the words ‘O Sacred Head Sore Wounded’. It was performed only a few more times, “always under his own direction and with his apparently meager ensemble of church musicians.” (David Gordon). Listen to John Eliot Gardiner’s benchmark recording of Bach’s St Matthew Passion right now. “Programmatic Notes to Bach’s St. Matthew Passion” (1999) Like operas, though, oratorios do have casts. Bach’s Passion is unique in this regard. We try to love our neighbor and share everything, so that peace and justice become a reality. There was no room for a stage, and no time for scene changes.). Listen to excerpt 10, which depicts the whole sequence of Peter’s betrayal, and ends with him weeping. Listen to excerpt 1 – “Come ye daughters.”, To hear both examples, listen to excerpt 8, Listen to excerpt 9 to hear the rippling motion, Not a Time to Take Sides – Except God’s Side. This Easter-time Berlin presentation was a stunning success and was followed by others. His second wife, Anna Magdalena, was a singer, and bore him thirteen more children. On the other hand, as the writer Johann Heinrich Arnold (a lifelong lover of the St. Matthew Passion) stresses in his book Discipleship (1995). (‘Bleed Now, Loving Heart!’); the sublime alto aria with violin obligato ‘Erbame, Dich’ (‘Have Mercy’), a second soprano aria ‘Aus Liebe Will Mein Heiland Sterben’ (‘Out Of Love My Saviour Is Willing To Die’); the blood-curdling moment when the mob calls for Barrabas to be freed and Christ to be crucified’; and the final number in the Passion, the double chorus ‘Wir Setzen Uns Mit Tränen Nieder’ (usually translated as ‘ In Tears Of Grief’). I, II What is the Bruderhof? Wolff, Christoph. Even the larger “double” choruses, divided in today’s editions simply as “Choir I” and “Choir II”, were originally conceived as having specific historic roles to play. Many were written around Lutheran chorales, such as “Wake, awake” or “How brightly beams the morning star.”. For instance, whereas the St John Passion had a mere continuo accompaniment (harpsichord or organ), its successor had an orchestra with Christ’s words accompanied by strings (an effect that has been compared to a halo round the Saviour’s head). We are a fellowship of families and singles, practicing radical discipleship in the spirit of the first church in Jerusalem. “What makes Gardiner’s St Matthew Passion stand out in the face of stiff competition is, more than anything, his vivid sense of theatre. Preview bach aria erbarme dich from the st matthew passion bwv 244 arr for violin solo viola solo and string quartet optional mezzo soprano replaces viola sol is available in 6 pages and compose for intermediate difficulty. In another number, the oboe seems to represent Mary running first one way in the garden, and then the other, looking for Jesus. A Study of The St Matthew Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach Music Assignment Grades 6-8 Name_____ Date_____ Listen to Leonard Bernstein’s musical analysis of the Bach St. Matthew Passion (16 minutes) and answer the following questions: 1. Who does the chorus represent? At the Bach House in Eisenach, where he was born and raised, numerous Bibles, hymnals, and multi-volume works by Martin Luther (in some cases heavily marked in the margins) attest to the fact that he had more than a passing interest in theology, and that he took his faith seriously. The best example is (again) the chorales, which often have similar (if not identical) melodies but are harmonized differently in order to evoke different emotions. Listen to excerpt 9 to hear the rippling motion. Bach came from a family of prominent musicians. Is it really just the music drawing people? The story here is as follows: Caiaphas consults with leaders to kill Jesus. Johann Sebastian Bach's St Matthew Passion was first performed on 11 April 1727 in St Thomas Church,Leipzig,Germany. A smaller piece than the 1727 St. Matthew, Bach’s St. John Passion was first performed in 1724. The chorales, by the way, are not Bach’s own melodies, but familiar tunes that he borrowed and arranged. (This is because most religious music was performed in churches. By great good fortune, two of his singers were Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn. Why the odd title – St. Matthew Passion – when Bach, a staunch Lutheran, would never have referred to the apostle as a saint, and the “passion” is Christ’s, not Matthew’s? He began earning his own living at fifteen as a chorister and violinist in a court orchestra, and later became a church organist. Note Bach’s use of a most simple, childlike tune – an old French street song that recalls “Twinkle, twinkle, little star.” Listen to excerpt 1 – “Come ye daughters.”, St. Matthew Passion is an oratorio, which is a musical drama. “Bach’s Große Passion,” (1989), The recorded excerpts in the notes are from John Eliot Gardiner’s recording with the Monteverdi Choir (Archiv Produktion, © 1989). Bach: Texts of Vocal Works in Translation, with Commentary Some of these are obvious because of the interplay of music and text; others are open to interpretation and have been “discovered,” so to speak, by critics over the years. For example, he wrote melodies comprised of 14 notes, 14 being the sum of the letters of his name, with each letter representing a number (A = 1, B = 2, etc). Listen to Bach: St. Matthew Passion by Peter Schreier, Rundfunkchor Leipzig & Staatskapelle Dresden on Apple Music. The St Matthew Passion performed by the Netherlands Bach Society for All of Bach. But what should it be? Fania Records: How A New York Label Took Salsa To The World, Pride Of The Opry: Charley Pride Makes Musical And Cultural History, ‘Here Come The Warm Jets’: Bathing In Brian Eno’s Genius. Rather, the composer restricts himself to creating a drama whose full force comes to expression through the musical delivery. Conversations (1996-1998) In a way, it’s hardly surprising. Like operas, though, oratorios do have casts. Until 1975, it was held that the first performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion was on Good Friday 1729. Bach’s first wife died in 1720, and he remarried the next year. The solo vocal and multipart choral styles of Italian Baroque music were strongly influential in Germany. Whether a singer in the choir, or as a listener, we are thus drawn into the story. It is said to be the greatest peice of sacred classical music ever written. At the Heart of the White Rose: Letters and Diaries of Hans and Sophie Scholl Whereas the recitatives and arias dramatize the agony of Gethsemane and Golgotha, the chorales give one a chance to “breathe in,” as it were, and respond on an even more personal level to the unfolding story. A fine example of Bach’s use of repetition to make connections is noted by the scholar Christoph Wolff, who suggests that the use of the same melody for “O blessed Jesus,” the first chorale in the oratorio, and one of the last “O wondrous love” is intentional. Some illustrations: In No. J.S. We are interested in two inhabitants of the city, the composer Johann Sebastian Bach, Cantor of the Thomas School and Church, and the writer Christian Friedrich Henrici (pen name: Picander), Post Office Commissioner. (“Soli Deo Gloria,” which means “to God alone be glory”), I.N.J. This not only varies and enhances the texture of the music, it also emphasizes the dialogic character of the poetry. Here, a few examples: In one number, the cello ascends a major scale, as the singer describes Christ’s ascent of the Mount of Olives. In the best recordings, these nuances are taken into account, avoiding the tedious delivery that so many people unfairly (but understandably) associate with chorales; in fact, their delivery will be appropriately varied, according to the context. The crowd says, “Not upon this feast!” Then the evangelist sings of the anointing of Jesus in Bethany, and the crowd reacts, “To what purpose is this waste?” to which Jesus responds by singing of how the woman who anointed him will always be remembered. Singing a chorale, on the other hand, presumes the participation of everyone in the choir (and in Bach’s day, the entire congregation as well), and allows each singer to voice – and thus admit – his complicit guilt in relation to Christ's death, and his longing for redemption. The new pressing from original sources is on 180gm vinyl and, to enhance audio quality, no side exceeds 30 minutes. Listen to excerpts 12 and 13 - the last recitative, followed by the powerful closing chorus, “In tears of grief.”, Ambrose, Z. Philip. Notizen zur Matthäus-Passion 1: No. Johann Sebastian Bach is widely regarded the greatest musical genius of all time. “Bach’s St. Matthew Passion” (2001) As Hans David Each of these performances sold out quickly, despite tickets ranging from $30 to $80 apiece. Yet this remastered recording of Bach's St. Matthew Passion--like that of his Bach concertos with Glenn Gould and others--is a moving document of musical and emotional empathy. It’s not just a regional phenomenon. And not just one orchestra – but two. There had already been a long history of Passion music – that is musical settings telling the story of the final, short period in the life of Jesus. In April 1829, despite strong opposition from some quarters, the twenty-year-old Mendelssohn, with the help of Zelter and his friend the actor Eduard Devrient, mounted the work’s first modern performance, albeit in an abbreviated form, given to mark what was then thought to be the centenary of its first performance. This was an unorthodox way of presenting religious history and not the kind of thing that the more devout members of the congregation / audience felt was appropriate for a church, the feeling being that the work was too ‘operatic’. When my wife and I lived in New York, the Brooklyn Academy of Music was offering a series of special Passion concerts each spring that dispensed with the customary stand-and-sing presentation. As he noted, in a scribbled comment in the margin of his Bible, “In music of true worship, God is always present with his grace.” Many of his scores are inscribed with an abbreviated heading (or footer) expressing devotion, for example: S.D.G. It is composed in two parts, that were to be … Driving some friends to the train the other day – they were headed to Leipzig for a performance of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion in the church where he composed it – it struck me that Bach is everywhere at this time of year, at least here in his home state of Thuringia. Listen to excerpt 3: the Passover story; Jesus’ prediction that one of his disciples will betray him; the evangelist’s depiction of their growing sorrow; and finally, the question, “Lord, is it I?”, The following chorale (excerpt 4) answers their question from our perspective: “Lord, it is my sin that binds thee – I am the one who ought to be suffering such tortures.”. 3. Required fields are marked *. The St. John Passion. Bach’s St Matthew Passion this evening and it is particularly special to be finally performing this great work given the unexpected weather that forced us to cancel this event in March 2018. To kill Jesus mastery of musical forms to create powerful contrasts of mood and Diaries of Hans and Sophie Levang... 244 is a massive oratorio set for double chorus and orchestra 1, chorus and... The chorales, by the Netherlands Bach Society for all of Bach ’ s ‘ St Matthew Passion BWV. ‘ St Matthew Passion ” ( 1999 ) Geiringer, Karl Thomas s. 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