March 28: St. Matthew's Passion, BWV 244; Gewandhausorchester, St. Thomas Boys Choir; Eduard Mauersberger & Rudolf Mauersberger, conductors

What masterpieces are still on your shelf?

Welcome Marginal Revolution readers! This blog is about my reflections on listening to the complete (known) works of J.S. Bach. (More on the project’s origin here.) I’m aiming to get through all of it by New Year’s Eve, so we’re about a quarter of the way there! Some of my favorite posts so far:

On good fortune and overwhelming emotion (Peter Schreier and Karl Richter, BWV 140)

The Goldberg Variations, (Vikingur Olafsson, BWV 988)

On Bach and Death (Ton Koopman, BWV 106) (The first of many on this matter.)

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One of my high school English teachers would frequently implore her students to read the Western canon: ‘You must become culturally literate.’ This was in the mid-1990s, and her advice felt directed as much toward enhancing our career trajectories as it was toward personal enrichment. I read a lot in college and after — but still not enough of the Greeks, only about half of Shakespeare and the Bible, no Milton or Chaucer, skipped “Ulysses.” Readers, I am making myself vulnerable to you here.

Isn’t there just too much of everything?

Plus, I needed to follow my heart. My reading taste in the ‘90s leaned more 20th century: Nabokov, Bellow, Tobias Wolff, David Foster Wallace. Mass culture pointed me to grunge rock and Dave Matthews Band, my heart pulled me to the Beatles and the Flecktones, and my friends opened me to Coltrane, Davis, Evans, Mingus, Brahms, Rachmaninoff, and Bach. I became deeply invested in learning to perform the fingerstyle guitar music of Michael Hedges, Leo Kottke, and Alex De Grassi.

And even then, I still have knowledge gaps of my literary and musical heroes that can be closed only by investing substantial blocks of time. I’m in my mid-40’s, climbing towards the apex of life responsibility: raising young kids, tending to my marriage and friendships, nurturing an ambitious career, and actually exercising. (It’s no longer an option, and Bach is not jogging music.)

Big sacred choral works have always come last. I’ll attribute my ignorance of them to aesthetic and content biases. As a 21st century American Jew, I’m just so far removed from the cultural milieu that fostered Bach’s Passions. (I feel closer to 19th century German lieder; we’re still singing heart-rending love songs.) I’m also more temperamentally suited to intimate performances, and prefer shorter musical works to epics.

And so I’ve listened to Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis once, Brahms’ Ein Deutches Requiem once, Mozart’s “Requiem” once (!), and before this blog, none of Bach’s Passions, Oratorios, or his Mass in B Minor.

(But have I been to 30 Steely Dan concerts? Yes. Yes, I have.)

I didn’t connect with the Christmas Oratorio in January, but I sloshed through the antisemitic text of the St. John’s Passion in February to discover music I very much enjoyed.

Today, as we enter Easter weekend, I’m writing about St. Matthew’s Passion, as recorded in 1975 by the Gewandhausorchester and St. Thomas Boys Choir, conducted respectively by the brothers Eduard and Rudolf Mauersberger. (Youtube, Spotify, Apple Music.) There is much music to enjoy in this piece, though for many devoted contemporary listeners, I imagine I’m grievously understating the case.

The album’s graphic design is on point, college dorm poster-worthy:

Note to Bach: this piece is too long. I listened in three sessions of an hour each. The third hour is the strongest! But if I had been sitting on a wooden bench for the previous two hours, I might not have been able to absorb the beauty and anguish of the final one. My sacrileges have begun, it seems.

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Here are highlights from my first encounter with this monumental setting of the Passion:

The violins enter gorgeously as the basso Theo Adam playing Jesus takes over the story from evangelist Peter Schreier in the second movement; Bach orchestrates Jesus’ words with strings throughout the piece:

Exquisite tone in the upper register from Schreier in Movement 18:

Movement 19 has almost classic rock vibes from the pulsing strings, giving way to searing vocal lines. The first line is, ‘Oh sorrow’:

Movement 27 tells the story of the moments of Jesus’s capture, with startling intrusions by the choir. (I jumped a bit in my chair, you’ll hear where.) The crowd is shouting, "Lasst ihn, haltet, bindet nicht!" (‘Let him go, stop, do not bind him’):

Heartbreaking singing from Schrier on Peter’s rueful memory of his denial of Jesus in Movement 38:

Movement 39 is perhaps the most familiar melody from the Passion: “Erbarme dich” (‘Have mercy’). Don’t love our alto singer here:

Bach builds momentum into the Passion’s final hour, which features the strongest writing in the work.

Flute and double oboe aria? I’m in, this is just beautiful playing, with lovely singing from Adele Stolte. (Movement 49, an extended excerpt):

Some of the harmony in Movement 50 wouldn’t be out of place in Stravinsky centuries later — the Classical and Romantic composers seem to have been less influenced by this face of Bach:

Here’s Paul Simon’s “American tune” again in Movement 54:

Low in the mix on the left channel in Movement 56, an arpeggiating cello burbles. It’s reminiscent of the violin in Bach’s famous Chaccone:

In the last 20 seconds of Movement 62, Bach maneuvers a few harmonic hairpin turns toward a perfect resolution:

This section of Movement 63 gave me chills:

The exquisite opening of Movement 64, and its closing chords that telegraph those of “Eleanor Rigby”:

Opening:

Closing:

With twenty minutes to go, we reach the climax of the piece in Movement 65:

The poem is touching:

Make yourself pure, my heart
I want to bury Jesus himself within me,
For he now within me, forever
Shall have his sweet rest.
World, depart from my heart, let Jesus enter!

The closing of the final movement delivers a punch with the flute coming in flat on the highest note in the chord, and resolving in a deeply unnerving way. A wild way to end three intense hours:

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That was so much music to absorb, which is perhaps the point. I may understand it all better after repeated listens, but, you know, if and when. When I turn 50, I think I’ll re-read Proust…