Coral: Ich bin’s, ich sollte büßen

THE PASSION ACCORDING TO MAESTRO BACH

Bàrbara Duran

ENG

Imagine for a moment that, in the twinkling of an eye, Picasso’s Guernica appeared hanging from a wall in your living-room. Or that, in your chamber, over your bed head, you could suddenly see the vaults of the Sagrada Família. Or, what is more, that you were to wander the passages of the Great Pyramid of Gizeh as if around your own home corridors. Such experiences would be unique and are almost unimaginable, but they are not at all different from listening to Maestro Bach’s St Matthew’s Passion.

We are talking about monuments erected by human hands, works that will outlive generations because they constitute (by themselves) proof of the sacred and the unattainable, of the power of creativity that feeds life in all its dimensions. Bach wrote a treaty on human emotion: love, despair, solitude, neglect, vital questions... He wrote about the greatest challenge in life which is, without a doubt, death.

Maybe this is why his St Matthew’s Passion stirs passions, precisely. It is still being interpreted around the world, often including participation (the audience is allowed to sing, if they wish to). While churches are increasingly becoming empty, this work can fill up cathedrals, chapels and auditoriums. Bach finished composing it on Good Friday, 1727, and reviewed the piece later on. It was performed twice during his life, and we must bear in mind that the ensemble of musicians he counted on were very far from the ones who interpret the piece today. Another important fact relates to this Passion: in 1829, Mendelssohn recovered the piece in Berlin, and the event is considered to be the first step to a new vision of music, from the historicist point of view, initiating one of the main interpretative schools in the XXth century.