Bach's Johannespassion (Part 1: the mystery of the music)

I had the intense pleasure of hearing Bach's Johannespassion on Palm Sunday in the Grossmünster of Zurich. It was sung by the Bach Collegium, of which my friend Laura is a member, and it was the first time I had heard the work live. I have been listening to it for about a year. I am besotted by it and am writing a few notes in the hope that you might also find it meaningful.

Photo Credit: Bach Collegium Zürich

Beginnings: the opening chorale

"Herr, unser Herrscher": the strings come climbing at you from a low octave, woodwinds darkening the atmosphere with a plaintive cry. The pulse is gentle and insistent. The first climax ('43) is full of mercy, climbing back down as gracefully as the ascent was anguished. Then comes the crescendo of first text: Lord, our master. It is proclaimed exclaimed, private and piercing. It feels fortissimo and sounds mezzo-forte. The strings and winds continue their ostinato thrust. 11 full minutes it takes for the ternary opening to announce that God is great, to evoke Christ's humiliation and lowliness, to announce anew that God is great.

The psychology of such music is hard to pin down; it is stupendously beautiful, affecting. It is grandly convinced of God's greatness, as bold a sound as anything intended to witness something magisterial. And the pain that accompanies it, borne of Christ's suffering, becomes our own pain, the people's pain, the choir's pain, as the choir plays the part of Christ's followers and indeed all humankind. 

How can these two conflicting sentiments be mixed? Why is it that Bach's Pietism is so articulate, so lavish in showing the exquisite nature of joy amidst suffering? Why is joy itself true most when it is seated at the table of morbidity? I think of New Orleans and its jazz funerals, the dirges preceding the hymns, death before life, Mahler's "Sterben will ich, um zu leben". They make so much of our modern pleasure-joy appear hollow, unaccompanied as it mostly is by any rootedness in the yang of sadness. 

Beginnings: the first arias

The structure of this piece allows for a multitude of solos that intersperse the choir (the choir itself has two roles -- to sing to God as Christians, and to reenact the passion as a mob, as Jews). The Evangelist, tenor, reads John's gospel in recitative with harpsichord. There are tenor arias that the Evangelist can also sing. A bass sings Jesus himself, and nothing else. Pontius Pilate is also a bass; and there are additional bass arias that he can sing. The only arias that can be sung by women are two each for a soprano and an alto, all the more moving for their infrequency. 

("All the more moving for their infrequency" may sound like an overwrought statement of half-pathetic torpor, but I mean it sincerely. When you only hear a soprano voice sing twice in two hours, amidst a very male palate, it stands out; the four women's arias are some of the most moving in the work. Yet even these are sung frequently by countertenors, and my understanding is that in Bach's time they were sung by boys, women not traditionally involved in church music solo singing.)

The vulnerable, mystified worship of all of the arias makes them as beautiful as any other sung music. I draw a line when I'm listening from Bach to Glück ("Che farò senza Euridice") to Mahler ("Der Mensch liegt in größter Not") to Pärt ("Vater unser"), to Mahalia Jackson ("Precious Lord take my hand"), to any music of humility borne of wretchedness with a call to something or someone above us. Consider the alto's first aria, sung with two Nightingale-twirling oboes:

Von den Stricken meiner Sünden
mich zu entbinden,
wird mein Heil gebunden.
Mich von allen Lasterbeulen
völlig zu heilen,
läßt er sich verwunden.

From the bonds of my sins
to set me free
my saviour is bound.
From all infections of vice
to heal me completely
he gives himself to be wounded.



I find the structure of the work fascinating in the way it moves back and forth between different characters, arias, recitative and the chimerical choir, mixing storytelling -- there is as much drama here as in a staged work -- with songs at a remove from the drama, which testify devotion or penance or reverence. What at first may sound like a limited musical palate to tell a repetitive sequence of biblical platitudes reveals itself instead to be an operatic portrayal of a life, of an entire religious mystery, and of the fellowship of Christians living in the legacy of Christ's crucifixion. 

   
Part 2: The mystery of Bach