No one will read it.
If they do, they won’t comment.
On y va.
VR: There’s St Matthew Passion at the Proms tonight. BBC 4
RR: Uh-huh.
A Bach choral masterpiece, but demanding. Four hours long. Musically downbeat since Christ’s passion stops short of the Resurrection. We last saw it in Birmingham conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. Beat that. But VR rarely utters a preference and we’re two old folk alone in our four-bedroom house. We’d missed the first ten minutes but I knew how it went.
One soloist was Roderick Williams (baritone). I’m the only other baritone called Roderick but he wasn’t the main attraction. I’m not normally an enthusiast for counter-tenors (men who sing notes usually reserved for women) but Iestyn Davies, whose first name is Welsh, sang with soul and that seemed appropriate.
The main singing part is that of The Evangelist (Stuart Jackson – tenor) who tells the familiar narrative of events preceding the Crucifixion. A role that risks monotony but not the way Jackson sang it.
The libretto was written specially for Bach by a specialist in saucy words for what Brits would call music hall and Americans vaudeville. In German of course but with sub-titles in English. But I knew all that stuff about the Last Supper and Gethsemane.
Turns out I didn’t. Time after time things were expressed differently, if only slightly. The terrible story took on a grimness and force that seemed more like a Martin Scorsese thriller. Contempt for those anonymous soccer fans who wanted Christ dead for shoddy political reasons. The story vibrated with feeling.
In fact it lasted three hours, not four. I realised the Rattle version had two intervals. We were in time for the ten o’clock news.
VR: Pretty good, eh?
RR: Pretty damn good.
I read it. I'm commenting. Maybe I will listen to some music by Bach someday. Perhaps in winter when the light fades early.
ReplyDeleterobin andrea: Thanks for gainsaying my predictions.
DeleteThe first piece of classical music I heard and personally appreciated was a Bach cantata (ie, choral singing with soloists but much shorter than the Passion) on my mother's rickety radio. I was probably about 13. Now, another Bach work occupies - and has occupied for a dozen years - a place in my top five favouriites. Unfortunately this piece, the Goldberg variations, usually played these days on a solo piano, lasts almost an hour and for that reason alone is an unsuitable introduction to JSB's repertoire for you.
Much, much shorter (say 3 minutes) and of more direct appeal, how about another solo piano piece popularly known as Jesu Joy of Man's Desiring. If this leaves you cold you may safely conclude Bach isn't for you.
I did watch it. Splendid. Apart from the stunning music, like you I was intrigued with much of the detail of the story and the enigmatic statements of J. What a massive performance as the BBC continues to hang in there.
ReplyDeleteSir Hugh: We must consider ourselves members of a tiny and shrinking elite. When the media (excluding Radio 3 but including even The Guardian) use the unqualified noun "music" it's usually safe to conclude the reference is to pop/rock etc. Tears of sadness flow regularly on The Guardian's letters page as a result. Me, I don't worry too much. I can avoid what doesn't appeal to me and there's a mite of proof in my collected scores that I'm not entirely a snob. Cole Porter, Stephen Sondheim and Ewan MacColl are represented.
DeleteCor! A criticism of the Guardian albeit however small, but that's how the rot sets in.
DeleteSir Hugh: Many cast-iron Guardian readers would say just that: the rot has already set in. Supported by the proviso that any replacement daily newspaper would be even worse.
DeleteWent to a live performance - shortened to 2 hrs - some years ago with the Windsbach boys choir. Windsbach is a Franconian village in northern Bavaria and home to a boarding school originally set up for impoverished farm boys and now home to one magnificent world renowned choir. I also saw them in Leipzig performing Bach chorals in the church where once upon a time Bach was employed to play the organ.
ReplyDeleteSabine: Fascinated to know what they cut out. The libretto is quite tightly written, even if Roderick's part involves a good deal of repetition. I am an enormous Bach fan but V, my teacher, says Bach doesn't allow any time for taking in breath. I watched, enchanted, as the soloists discreetly sneaked their "illegals".
DeleteI listen to classical music about all day long. I start with Public Radio from the state of Maine because they don’t have classical music on the radio in Nashville (no surprise.) Then I switch in the kitchen to classical music on the TV (music section.) I leave it even when I go away so that my cat can listen as well as my plants – I read an article that house plants like the vibrations from music, really. But I am not into “religious” music and three hours? Goodness no. I fall asleep listening to Hildegard von Bingen. The only “religious” type I like would be something like Sonnerie de Ste. Geneviève du Mont-de-Paris by Marin Marais (1656-1728.) I much prefer opera. Although I’ll admit having a soft spot for the chorus “See, the conqu’ring hero comes” from Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus.
ReplyDeletePS – Judas Maccabeaus is the story of Hanukkah. It is a 3-act dramatization of the Maccabean revolt (167-160 BC) when the Jewish army rose against the Seleucid Empire (now called Syria.) (I am not Jewish, just Buddhist leaning.)
ReplyDeleteVagabonde: I'm a self-avowed atheist yet I've never subscribed to the old saw about the devil having the best tunes. In any case it's possible to get the best of both worlds from a single composer: Handel, for instance, not only wrote Messiah but a whole slew of operas some of which I've seen and/or heard. And I'd hate to forgo Mozart's Requiem almost as much as doing without Figaro. Interesting that Verdi (whose operas I'm not especially keen on) was an atheist yet also wrote a Requiem which I rather like.
DeleteWords may be religious but can the same be said of music? During my face-to-face singing lessons, now reaching the end of their sixth year and currently conducted by Skype, one of my aims was to make a fair fist of Handel's alto solo "He was despised". And in this case it wasn't just the minor-key melody I relished but the words too. Notably the poetry of:
He was despised, despised and rejected,
A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
Which I sing without reference to the long-bearded guy sitting on a cloud.