Bach to the Bronx
It has been my happy custom over the past years to celebrate Holy Thursday at Sacred Heart Parish in Newton Centre where I reside. Then on Good Friday morning I drive to the Bronx, arriving at St. Theresa’s parish for the afternoon Service. On the way I play Johann Sebastian Bach’s “St. John Passion.”
My favorite recording is that sung by the men and boys of New College Oxford, directed by Edward Higginbottom (Naxos), as perhaps coming closest to what was heard in Leipzig in the first half of the eighteenth century.
From the booklet notes of the recording:
Bach’s music played no part in Mozart’s upbringing. He may not even have known of his existence. Johann Christian Bach he knew. Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach he knew of. But Johann Sebastian? He might have heard him mentioned in passing as their father … It was not until he was at the height of his career that Mozart first came across the music of Johann Sebastian, and it changed his life.
It has changed the life of many, by no means all, or even most, of them musicians. The universality of experience reflected in Bach’s music far transcends his own profound religious faith. Yet in one sense, and in one sense only, his faith was his sole limitation as a chronicler of humanity’s inner life: it barred him from despair.
Bach was no stranger to suffering, but taken as a whole his music is suffused by joy, and of a profundity beyond the limits of mere happiness. No composer’s music is so deeply imbued with the spirit and style of dance, and his spirituality was matched, and complemented by his robust physicality.
There are dances aplenty even in a work as awesomely serious and harrowing as the St. John Passion, which ends with a sarabande. Yet there is scarcely a work of his, however slight, however light, that is not consecrated in spirit to the glory of God. His overtly sacred works give us perhaps the most comprehensive portrait of religious experience ever achieved.
The magnificent opening chorus seems to me to sum up the distinctive vision of the Fourth Gospel:
Lord our Redeemer, whose Glory fills the whole earth: show us in this thy passion, that thou, the true Son of God, hast in the deepest humiliation, through all the ages, sovereignly triumphed.
I have not listened to the John passion for a long time. This year I am listening to the Mendelssohn arrangement of the Matthew passion — which was not performed outside of Leipzig until Mendelssohn’s performance in Berlin in 1829. There is (I think) only one recording of the Mendelssohn version, with Christoph Sperling conducting. It is a happy thought that the grandson of the Jewish philosopher Moses Mendelssohn resurrected Bach’s –western music’s? — greatest work.
“The universality of experience reflected in Bach’s music far transcends his own profound religious faith. Yet in one sense, and in one sense only, his faith was his sole limitation as a chronicler of humanity’s inner life: it barred him from despair.”
What must this writer mean by “faith”? Bach’s faith saved him from despair — and did nothing else for him? How can any experience transcend faith?
My first experience hearing Bach was, of course, Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring when I was 14, and listening exclusively to bebop. I was in the band at Notre Dame High School, and I immediately loved it, and have listened to Bach ever since. While studying at Los Angeles City College, I took a survey course of Baroque and post Baroque music, and was fascinated to hear about Bach’s life as a family man; all those kids, and his constant scuffling to get commissions. He was an inspiration to me, and his music is so foundational to western music.
He was in many ways a model for the Catholic artist, and I suspect he always will be.
Reporting in from the Bronx:
Listening to the radio on the way down, I discovered that today is Bach’s birthday.
Bob, many children and much joy; but much sorrow too — losing his own parents at a young age, as well as his beloved first wife.
Ann, I don’t think the implication of the writer is that Bach’s faith “did nothing else for him.” It allowed him to see God’s Glory and to celebrate it: soli Deo gloria.
My Bach listening for Holy Saturday is Cantata #4: “Christ lay in the bonds of death” — an early and sublime work.
Think all the world has lost with the disappearance of Bach’s Luke and Mark Passions. (I’m not up on my Bach scholarship and maybe what I learned years ago — that he set all the passions of the four evangelists is now considered wrong, but I don’t think so).
The Matthew Passion would be my desert island piece if I had to choose only one.
http://www.monteverdi.tv/matthauspassion/
St. Matthew Passion
Live Broadcast Naarden, The Netherlands
14 – 21 March (year unknown)
Performed by The Netherlands Bach Society
Conductor Jos van Veldhoven