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ABSTRACT
Recent thinking about Intellectual History has moved beyond studying only verbal texts, to encompass other kinds of visual and aural texts that can be vehicles for generative thought. Where might music fit into this expanded conception? If ideas are defined purely as concepts that can be expressed in words, music can be no more than an “epiphenomenon”, a consequence or representation of ideas that lie behind it, but not capable of embodying those ideas in itself. Yet to many musicians, it seems obvious that music can function as a way in which ideas are developed and worked out. What kinds of knowledge might be embodied in music, then, and how do its meanings change over time? In this paper, I examine some of these issues through consideration of one of the key texts of Western art music, J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, exploring how it was conceived in a liturgical context in Bach’s time, how its meaning changed when transposed to the very different milieus of concert performance in nineteenth-century Berlin and colonial Sydney, and as it has been re-imagined in a variety of recent staged and recorded versions.
Notes on contributor
Alan Maddox is senior lecturer in Musicology at Sydney Conservatorium of Music, The University of Sydney. He is an associate investigator with the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, and consultant musicologist to the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra. He also trained as a singer, working with Australia’s national opera company and as a freelance performer. Recent publications include a series of articles on rhetoric in early modern Italian vocal music, and a study of the role of music in 19th-century Australian prison reform.
Notes
1 Whatmore and Young, eds. Palgrave Advances in Intellectual History, 4. See also Michael Biddiss's prescient comments on non-verbal texts, including music, in Collini (“What is Intellectual History?”, 49).
2 Brett, “What is Intellectual History Now?” 127.
3 DeNora, Music in Everyday Life; see also Hallam, Cross, and Thaut, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Music Psychology and Huron, Sweet Anticipation.
4 Brett, 127.
5 Bach, Die Kunst der Fuge, BWV 1080; Goldberg-Variationen, BWV 988; Musikalisches Opfer, BWV 1079.
6 Abbate, “Music – Drastic or Gnostic?” See also Small, Musicking. This kind of thinking about the performative nature of music is reflected in conductor Gardiner's biography Bach. Gardiner constructs an understanding of the composer and his music mainly through his own embodied experience of performing virtually all of Bach's vocal compositions over a lifetime.
7 Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach, 55–57.
8 Leaver, “Johann Sebastian Bach”; Leaver, “The Mature Vocal Works and Their Theological and Liturgical Context,”; Leaver, J.S. Bach and Scripture; Leaver, Music as Preaching. Amongst many other contributions, see also Darmstadt's recent Johann Sebastian Bach – Matthäus-Passion BWV 244.
9 Marissen, “Blood, People, and Crowds in Matthew, Luther, and Bach.” Marissen, Lutheranism, Anti-Judaism, and Bach's St. John Passion. Marissen, The Social and Religious Designs of J.S. Bach's Brandenburg Concertos.
10 See, in particular, Kevorkian, Baroque Piety.
11 Smend, “Bachs Matthäus-Passion”; Houten, “Ich kenne des Menschen nicht”; Chafe, Tonal Allegory in the Vocal Music of J. S. Bach, 337–423. On the St. John Passion in particular, see also Chafe's J. S. Bach's Johannine Theology.
12 For the most recent and extensive contribution to this line of enquiry, see Tatlow, Bach's Numbers.
13 See Berger, Bach's Cycle, Mozart's Arrow; Butt, Bach's Dialogue with Modernity; Begbie responds to both Berger and Butt from a theological perspective in his “Disquieting Conversations: Bach, Modernity, and God.”
14 Butt, “A Mind Unconscious that it is Calculating?” 71.
15 For more detailed analyses of this passage and its theological and philosophical implications, see, for example, Gardiner, 408–10. Butt, Bach's Dialogue, 99–102.
16 Butt, Bach's Dialogue, 29–30.
17 See Bartel, Musica Poetica; Mattheson, Der Vollkommene Capellmeister, 242.
18 Many recordings of this passage are accessible online, for example, at the time of writing, that of Clare Wilkinson with Octopus Chamber Choir and Le Concert d’Anvers, directed by Bart Van Reyn, could be found on the choir's official Youtube channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJhitQuil6Q.
19 Herreweghe, Philippe, Liner notes to J.S. Bach: St. Matthew Passion. Harmonia Mundi HMC 901676.78, 2010.
20 Burton, Silva rhetoriae, http://rhetoric.byu.edu/. Accessed December 23, 2016.
21 Walther, Musicalisches Lexicon oder musicalische Bibliothec, 148. Quoted in Bartel, 273, 76.
22 Gerber, Historie der Kirchen-Ceremonien in Sachsen, 284.
23 Forkel, Ueber Johann Sebastian Bachs Leben, Kunst und Kunstwerke. Translation in Forkel, Johann Sebastian Bach, xxv–xxx.
24 Devrient, My Recollections of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy and His Letters to Me, 62; Quoted in Applegate, Bach in Berlin, 38.
25 Applegate, 44.
26 Goehr, The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works, 203–4.
27 Dahlhaus, Nineteenth-Century Music, 247.
28 Michael Marissen has argued that the cuts were designed to curtail anti-Semitic elements, though other practical reasons, including the length of the piece and the capacities of the performers, may also have played a role. See Marissen, “Religious Aims in Mendelssohn's 1829 Berlin-Singakademie Performances of Bach's St. Matthew Passion.”
29 Letter to Marc-André Souchay, 15 October 1842. Mendelssohn, Briefe aus den Jahren 1830 bis 1847, 221. My translation.
30 Todd, Mendelssohn, 182–3.
31 Weber, “Did People Listen in the 18th Century?”
32 Johnson, Listening in Paris, 53ff.
33 Quoted in Todd, 194.
34 Quoted in Watkins, Metaphors of Depth in German Musical Thought, 94.
35 A more detailed account of the 1880 Sydney performance is given in Maddox, “The Finest and Grandest Work Ever Created by Human Genius.”
36 “Music and the Drama,” Australian Town and Country Journal, 17 Apr. 1880, 13.
37 “Amusements … Sydney Musical Union,” Sydney Morning Herald, 12 Jan. 1880, 6.
38 “Bach's ‘Passion’ at the University,” Sydney Morning Herald, 19 Apr. 1880, 5.
39 Some of the key interventions in this debate have been Taruskin, Text and Act. Butt, Playing with History; Haynes, The End of Early Music; Wilson, The Art of Re-Enchantment: Making Early Music in the Modern Age.
40 Johann Sebastian Bach, Matthäus-Passion, with the Münchener Bach-Chor und -Orchester, conducted by Karl Richter. Deutsche Grammophon, 1971. Re-released on DVD 00440 073 4149, 2006. At the time of writing, this recording was available online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xdl0m1v5el8.
41 Bach, Matthew Passion with the Dundedin Consort & Players, directed by John Butt. Linn Records, CKD 313, 2008. At the time of writing, this chorus was available online at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECWPpJjGK7k.
42 The case that these smaller performing forces match Bach's likely personnel in Leipzig is examined in Parrott, The Essential Bach Choir. On the disposition of forces in the St. Matthew Passion in particular, see Melamed, “The Double Chorus in Bach's St. Matthew Passion.”
43 An audio recording of Miller's production was released as St. Matthew Passion – Highlights: The Jonathan Miller production. Cala Records, CACD88030, 1994. A video recording of this production was made by the BBC, but as far as I am aware, is not commercially available. See also J.S Bach, St. Matthew Passion. Directed by Peter Sellars, conducted by Simon Rattle. Berliner Philharmoniker, BPH 120011, 2012.
44 Varwig, “Beware the Lamb,” Abstract.
45 Johann Sebastian Bach, arr. Vladimir Ivanoff. The Arabian Passion according to JS Bach. WDR JARO 4294 2, 2009. At the time of writing, a sample of the recording was available at http://www.sarband.de/Prog_APe.html. I am grateful to Bettina Varwig for first introducing me to this recording in her presentation at the Bach Network UK meeting in Warsaw, 3–7 July 2013.
46 http://www.sarband.de/Prog_APe.html. Accessed May 26, 2015.
47 Cook and Dibben, “Emotion in Culture and History” 69. On the idea of music as providing “hooks” onto which audiences are encouraged to attach meanings, see Butt, Bach's Dialogue, 19–21.
48 On the development of this idea in the context of literary criticism, see Fish, Surprised by Sin.