Bach's St. John Passion

Some of those late night internet time-wasters, end up at Berlin Phil's digital concert hall, an amazing archive of hight quality classical music. Surprised by the limited amount of Bach in the archive, I looked through what seemed to be another multimedia madness of "let's popularize classical music", and I ended up trapped and enchanted in this amazing world of St. John Passion. 

With a good friend and baroque music listener, I decided to present it to Listening Club. Timing was right because Tafelmusik was also going to perform it in a week. Berlin Phil's rendition was absolutely fantastic, with some theatrical and staged embodiment elements, which brought the story to life. We prepared this by reading of the text, and hearing parts of an interview with conductor Simon Rattle director Peter Sellars, as well as notes on historical performance practice. I included some personal suggestion on how to relate to the story today, in a non-religious atheist world. It was a night that surprised me with the positive reception from the folks present.

So, the concert with Tafelmusik:

This is a what I wrote to the amazing soprano, Julia Doyle:

 "... I meant to come back-stage afterwards and thank you in person, but for several reasons it didn't happen. I wanted to tell you that I was deeply moved by the performance as a whole, but particularly by your solo "Dissolve, My Heart,...". The experience was something that is hard to speak of... Perhaps enough to say that I was, myself, left with a flood of tears. Your pure voice and sincere performance, and of course Bach's greatness, pierced through me. Afterwards I wondered if 'composer' is too little a word to describe Bach. He had, it seems, deepest understanding of life, and must have had a deep spiritual practice. And then, I realized that of course that practice is music itself. But your singing free of ego, and pure, echoes in me like something from beyond. ..."

Julia Doyle's aria was where I gave way, I gave up. I had been following the words, trying for getting at some of the German also; It makes a difference when you know that the long held words with chromatic descent are weinete bitterlich (wept bitterly),  to hear the word painting, and to listen to the music too, with it's turns and twists...

Somewhere in the midst of the soprano aria, something stirred in the hall, was it someone weeping? then, ... all of a sudden I started hearing all of the music, or maybe inside the music, or the music itself: a sorrow and a suffering that was bound and free at once, light and heavy at once, and quite grand. I remember watching an interview of Menuhin, speaking of Enescu, where he used this word - "shattering", and it was indeed shattering! I suspect that the presence of near 700 pairs of listening ears had to do with that too. A special night.

In a way I wish to listen to the Passion again and again, and in a way, I'm afraid somehow - not a light undertaking, you know - that I might get bored and that the magic goes away... But I'm filled with questions. What is this suffering? What is this broken-ness. How does Bach get into my skin and pierce me with the lines of melody that seem to get at my conscience? Part 1 ends with the words "stir my conscience". How do "notes", "sounds" (i.e. play of frequencies and durations) stir you such, shake you such? 

I'm reminded of listening to an improvisation by the arabic nay master Bassam Saba on an informal performance where it seemed to me that he might have psychic powers, in knowing where I was in me, and from there to strike a chord inside and another one beside and take me away, in me to a new place in me. I remember being quite surprised. Music, it seems, can be like a chiropractic adjustment for the feelings, or if one believes in it, for the soul.

I'm not sure what remains of the "high" of the performance, other than memories. But both J.S.Bach and Julia Doyle now have a new fan... One is not around to know, the other once, I made sure I wrote to.