Quarterback Trent Edwards went out with an injured hand for the second time this season. And yet at the end of the game Stanford (5-4, 4-3 Pac-10) was playing an offense minus every single starting skill-position player. Stanford won 20-17 to go into Saturday’s Big Game one win away from a winning season and bowl eligibility. That’s what makes what happened last Saturday against Oregon State all the more remarkable. On more than one occasion this season he has said: “We have good players, just not enough of them.” The annual performance by the Bach Society in Naarden grew to become ‘the’ Dutch St Matthew Passion.Stanford coach Walt Harris often laments his team’s lack of depth. The founders thought that the St Matthew should be performed where it belonged – in a church. In reaction to the Mengelberg performances, the Netherlands Bach Society was formed in 1921. With the Concertgebouw orchestra, Willem Mengelberg then instituted a Passion tradition in Amsterdam that still continues today. The first performance of the St Matthew Passion in the Netherlands was in Rotterdam in 1870. Each town has its own performance and any reasonably large concert hall has at least two or three. Every year, there is a real ‘Matthew madness’ in the month before Easter. Whether or not they are lovers of classical music, practically everyone in the Netherlands knows the St Matthew Passion. The first choir always takes the lead, and the second follows. He also uses both choirs together where he wants to portray the furious crowd to maximum effect, as in ‘Lass ihn kreuzigen’. In the chorales, Bach combines the two ensembles, and the whole group supports the spoken word. The second choir asks questions, provides commentary and draws conclusions. The first choir is part of the story and provides the most important emotional reactions, as in the arias ‘Erbarme dich’ and ‘Aus Liebe’. Each of the two ensembles has its own function. Bach reinforces this dialogue effect by having two separate ensembles of singers and instrumentalists, which he refers to as coro I and coro II. Picander often puts these two groups in dialogue with one another. In his lyrics, Picander distinguishes between two groups of people: the ‘Daughters of Zion’ (Jerusalem) on the one hand, and the faithful souls on the other. Both the arias and the chorales often link up seamlessly with the evangelical words. The lyrics for the opening and closing choruses and the arias were brand new, however. Even though Bach’s harmonies were new, everyone would have recognised the melody and the words. The chorale lyrics and melodies come from the Lutheran hymn book, and were well known to the congregation in Leipzig. The action is suspended and the events are placed in the theological context of Bach’s day. As different groups or people have their say, the singers get different roles – Christ, Judas, Peter, a slave girl, the pupils, the high priests, the people and the soldiers, etc.Īt key moments in the story, Bach and Picander added chorales and arias as a reflection of the biblical story. For their theme, they took the story as told by St Matthew the Evangelist. The lyrics were compiled by Picander (the pseudonym of Christian Friedrich Henrici), probably in close consultation with Bach himself. He is betrayed, tried, crucified and buried. The St Matthew Passion tells the story of the last days of Jesus. Wir setzen uns mit Tränen nieder (Chorus) Wahrlich, dieser ist Gottes Sohn (Chor)Ħ3c. O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden (Chorale)Ħ3b. Ich will bei meinem Jesu wachen (Aria)Ģ7a. Ich will hier bei dir stehen (Chorale)Ģ0. Ich will dir mein Herze schenken (Aria)ġ7.
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