Matthew Passion

BACH Matthew Passion Alice Evans (Violin) Alice Evans Director Kristian Bezuidenhout Wed 12.4.17 - New Auditorium, Royal Concert Hall, Glasgow Thurs 13.4.17 - Perth Concert Hall, Perth Fri 14.4.2017 - The Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh 2 MATTHEW PASSION BWV 244 MATTHÄUS-PASSION J.S. BACH (1685-1750) PASSIO DOMINI NOSTRI J. C. SECUNDUM EVANGELISTAM MATTHAEUM Dunedin Consort acknowledges with grateful thanks the generous support of the Dunard Fund whose financial assistance has enabled us to present this timeless masterpiece in Edinburgh for many years. MATTHEW PASSION 3 KRISTIAN BEZUIDENHOUT DIRECTOR, ORGAN & HARPSICHORD CHORUS 1 Rachel Redmond — Soprano & Maid Emilie Renard — Alto Daniel Norman — Tenor & Evangelist Robert Davies — Bass & Jesus Christ CHORUS 2 Miriam Allan — Soprano, Maid & Pilate’s Wife Rory McCleery — Alto & Witness David Lee — Tenor & Witness Jimmy Holliday — Bass, Pilate, Priests, Peter & Judas ORCHESTRA 1 ORCHESTRA 2 Violins Sophie Gent (Leader) Violins Matthew Truscott Sarah Bevan Baker Hilary Michael Alice Evans Rebecca Livermore Sijie Chen Kristin Deeken Viola Alfonso Leal del Ojo Viola Oliver Wilson Cello/Gamba Jonathan Manson Cello Andrew Skidmore Violone William Hunt Violone Christine Sticher Oboes Alexandra Bellamy Oboes Joel Raymond Frances Norbury Tatjana Zimre Flutes Katy Bircher Flutes Amelia Shakespeare Graham O’Sullivan Fiona Ferguson Organ David Gerrard 4 MATTHEW PASSION PROGRAMME NOTE The tradition of singing one of the four Gospel greatest ironies about Bach’s Passions is that their Passion narratives on Good Friday and Palm original audiences were far less familiar with the Sunday stretches back to the beginnings of the genre than we are; moreover - as is the case with formalized Christian liturgy. Like the other all Bach’s most celebrated music - we have often Gospel readings, it was originally chanted by a heard it many more times than did the original single deacon but, in the course of time, he began performers or even Bach himself. to alter his tessitura and style according to his role as the Evangelist, Jesus or the other characters and Bach’s Passions were performed during the crowd. These three roles were eventually taken afternoon Vesper service on Good Friday, their over by separate singers together with a choir two parts replacing the cantata and Magnificat to recite the crowd scenes. It was basically this which were normally sung on either side of the format that the Lutheran Reformers inherited in sermon. With a hymn opening and closing the the sixteenth century and early Lutheran settings, liturgy, the entire service was thus symmetrical, such as Johann Walter’s, were still chanted within with its central axis falling on the sermon. Like the Eucharistic celebrations on Good Friday and Bach’s cantatas, the Passions adopt something of Palm Sunday in Bach’s era. What is especially the sermon’s function since the free poetry of the interesting is the fact that the Passion story had arias, ariosos and framing choruses provide both a musical-dramatic tradition well before the a commentary and an emotional interpretation of invention of opera and oratorio. It was only a the biblical text, one that is designed to effect an matter of time before these later dramatic genres actual change of mood and attitude on the part of would cross-fertilize with the church tradition. the believer. Moreover, the symmetrical structure of the Towards the end of the seventeenth century liturgy finds its analogue in Bach’s musical pacing several more elaborate versions of the Passion were of the Passion. This is most evident when Bach developed, involving independent instrumental wishes to highlight the importance or irony of parts, introducing free poetry around the biblical a particular event or concept. For instance, the narrative (Oratorio Passions) or presenting point at which Peter swears that he will not deny entirely free elaborations of the Passion story. Christ is surrounded by two verses of the ‘Passion These latter were designed for spiritual concerts Chorale’, the second (‘Ich will hier bei dir stehen’) rather than for Holy Week liturgies and are thus a semitone below the first (‘Erkenne mich, mein termed Passion Oratorios. Most of these genres Hüter’). This therefore functions as a musical incorporated the most up-to-date musical forms metaphor of descent or depression, alluding and devices from Italian opera, capitalizing, as it to the frailty of human promises. The aria ‘Aus were, on the conventions that congregations would Liebe will mein Heiland sterben’ is perhaps the have learned in the world of secular entertainment. most important of all since it underlines one of However, the Oratorio Passion did not arrive in the central themes of the Matthew Passion - that Leipzig until 1717 (at the modish Neue-Kirche), Christ died for the love of humankind - and this and the Cantorate of the Thomasschule, under the is the focal point falling between two matching aging Johann Kuhnau, did not perform its first choruses ‘Laß ihn Kreuzigen’. These - depicting Oratorio Passion until 1721, shortly before Bach the crowd’s desire to crucify Christ - provide a himself came to Leipzig (1723). Thus one of the vivid antithesis to Christ’s love, but, given the MATTHEW PASSION 5 fact that the second chorus (coming directly after nicht!’), complimentary points (‘Ach, nun ist mein ‘Aus Liebe’) is a tone higher, there is a sense that Jeusu hin’/’Wo ist denn dein Freund hingegangen’) Christ’s supreme act of love has changed things or a dialogue between a single speaker and a group in an ‘upward’, positive direction: we recognise (‘Ich will bei meinem Jesu wachen’/’So schlafen it as precisely the same music, yet every note is unsre Sünden ein’). All of these devices serve different. Thus the music could act as a metaphor to personify the various ‘voices’ within a single for the mystery of our own spiritual development: listener, acting out one’s reactions and conflicts. we remain exactly the same beings yet we are profoundly changed. The most impressive of the dialogue numbers is the opening chorus, which could be considered It is not difficult to understand some of the the ‘Exordium’ (the traditional opening section of complaints that members of the congregation an oration). This is a dialogue between Christian voiced in Bach’s time; the Passions do, after all, believers and the Old Testament figures, ‘the borrow liberally from secular conventions such Daughters of Zion’ (from the Song of Songs). as dance and, particularly, opera. However, the The theme of love in the Song of Songs is recast Matthew Passion also draws heavily from the in a Christian context with Christ as the loving long traditions of spiritual meditation by which bridegroom and the church as his bride. A third the story is interspersed with the regular breaks element is introduced with the German chorale on (fifteen in all) provided by the paired ariosos the Agnus Dei, ‘O Lamm Gottes, unschuldig’, sung and arias. These force the implied listener into by ripieno sopranos (often boys’ voices today, in a personal contemplation; the chorales moreover tradition that dates back to the nineteenth century). engender the sense of a community response to This would have had particular significance the biblical events. The whole thus has something for members of Bach’s congregation since they of the character of a Lutheran Stations of the Cross. would have heard this hymn at the conclusion The free text follows Luther’s own meditations of the morning Eucharistic liturgy. Christ is thus on the Passion which require the believer first to portrayed as an innocent sacrificial lamb, an image acknowledge his own guilt and show remorse, which points towards the Apocalypse when Christ then to recognize that Christ has suffered on our as a lamb rules the new Jerusalem, a bridegroom behalf – that his love will conquer all -and, finally, to the (‘feminine’) community of all believers. to experience reconciliation with Christ and to In Bach’s time this melody would have sounded imitate his example (most movingly captured out loudly from the second organ at the east of in the fiinal aria, ‘Mache dich’). According to the church, a graphic depiction of the direction Luther, this ambition to imitate Christ could not of Christ’s throne in the new Jerusalem. In all, be fulfilled without our having gone through these then, this chorus sets up three temporal levels, the earlier stages. ancient Daughters of Zion in dialogue with the Christians of the New Testament, both pointing Particularly subtle in the construction of the free forward to the future union with the Lamb, poetry (by the Leipzig poet, Picander) and Bach’s achieved through his ultimate love (of which we musical setting is the emphasis on dialogue form are about to hear). We may also note that the -- necessitating the performing format of double chorale is the only element of the chorus in the chorus and orchestra. This rhetorical device major mode, a vision of the celestial city which, allows for contrasting or even opposing points of at this time, is still subservient to the earthly tonic view to be presented simultaneously (e.g. ‘So ist of e minor. mein Jesus nun gefangen’/’Laßt ihn, haltet, bindet 6 MATTHEW PASSION The analogy between the Bach-Picander Matthew Bach shared something of the encyclopaedic urge Passion and a sermon is thus not to be taken of his age, and, in the Matthew Passion compiled lightly. Moreover, for about half the aria texts virtually every possible musical form available for Picander drew from a series of passion sermons an oratorio: recitatives (accompanied and secco), by the theologian Heinrich Müller (published in arioso, aria (several types which include dance 1681). Given that Bach himself possessed these, and concerto elements), chorales, chorale settings, he may have instigated the borrowing.

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