There is no paywall on this one
As we approach Holy Week and Easter, I will post my own thoughts about some of the great music for this time of the year. In the meantime, I want to share with my readers the words of Leonard Bernstein regarding what many consider to be the greatest musical masterpiece ever written for Passiontide, that time in the Liturgical Year when we reflect on Christ’s suffering. Johann Sebastian Bach composed the Saint Matthew Passion as music for Good Friday, specifically for April 11, 1727 to be performed in Leipzig in the Thomaskirche (Church of Saint Thomas). The audio track embedded below is the last track on what was a two-disc record, later and rereleased as a two-disc CD. Bernstein, raised in Judaism, understood well the Christian mysticism of Bach’s achievement.
By the time we come to Bach, we find the great beauty of God’s love celebrated in very down to earth Lutheran fashion, probably some of the best devotion of that tradition within Christianity. While never losing sight of Divine transcendence, we find within this great work and its expression of faith in the Incarnation a capacity for speaking in very plain and personal terms, phrases like “Mein Jesu,” i.e. “My Jesus.” In such devotions as these we see reflected the words of Saint Paul from Galatians 2:20, a simple childlike appreciation that comes from taking the love of God personally: “The Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.” In the music of Bach and the words of the poet Christian Friedrich Henrici who used the pen name Picander, we are able to appreciate the humanity of Jesus as he suffers the pains that belong to all of humanity. We suffer with him. We die with him. The burden he carries is our burden. At the end of the piece he has been buried, and the final chorus is one of simple lamentation, very human lamentation, and mourning that stays with us until the following Sunday when he will rise again. But for now, like the disciples, we are filled with sorrow, and have yet to be comforted.
When listening to any recording of the Saint Matthew Passion, it is best to hear it in stereo because it was written for two choirs that create an effect by use of space which is an intended component of the music in several places. When Bernstein recorded it, he used an English translation. At first, I did not know if I would like that because I have known the piece in German for decades and have memorized much from Picander’s poetic texts. But it was performed and recorded so well that I could not object for long; in fact, I recommend it to people who do not understand German, but who do understand English, so that they may sit back and hear the words with the music. The Passion contains chapters twenty-six and twenty-seven of The Gospel According to Saint Matthew. As an Anglican this seems to my mind more appropriate to Palm Sunday as Matthew’s Gospel is the Passion narrative in our Book of Common Prayer. We read The Passion According to Saint John on Good Friday (which is also what Bach used in his other great musical Passion). A singing narrator reads the scripture to the accompaniment of either an organ with a quite registration or a harpsichord (at the conductor’s discretion), and minimal use of strings. In between sections of the Biblical text are the movements with Pecander’s poetry.
So now, sit back and listen to what Leonard Bernstein had to say about Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion.