mobster
Six hours of "St. Matthew Passion" rehearsal this week. I spent three hours last night belting out the words of a mob, fast and loud, over and over again. It's invigorating to use the full power of my voice like that, but it's also a bit scary to find out how much I can scream and sneer and mock in the midst of a lovely fugato. Scary, and revealing. I suppose it's meant to be.
A Passion isn't a Passion without the hate and anger. Drawing on memories of college German, I noticed something last night about our text--earlier, we're addressing "Herzliebster Jesu" (beloved Jesus, literally "heart's love") and calling him "du," the intimate you. We also use "du" for mocking lines like "Bist du Gottes Sohn, so steig herab vom Kreuz!" ("If you're God's son, get yourself down from that cross!") The tenor Evangelist uses the formal "Sie" instead of "du." An interesting point, that.
We use the formal for "Laß ihn kreuzigen!" ("Crucify him!"). That's our only line in that section, repeated in fugue. Was Bach depersonalizing the crowd in this instance? Must hunt around and find some articles about this. Maybe when we're done with it and I have time!
Not sure if the music influenced me or I was just being my usual musically intolerant self, but when whoever it was behind me put their "zig" on the wrong syllable for about the fifth (sixth? seventh?) time in a row, I felt the desperate desire to bludgeon her about the head with my score. Draw a fucking line where the syllable changes, bitch! Do it the first time you fuck up, not the tenth! Plunging from the sublime into the depths of depravity...
A Passion isn't a Passion without the hate and anger. Drawing on memories of college German, I noticed something last night about our text--earlier, we're addressing "Herzliebster Jesu" (beloved Jesus, literally "heart's love") and calling him "du," the intimate you. We also use "du" for mocking lines like "Bist du Gottes Sohn, so steig herab vom Kreuz!" ("If you're God's son, get yourself down from that cross!") The tenor Evangelist uses the formal "Sie" instead of "du." An interesting point, that.
We use the formal for "Laß ihn kreuzigen!" ("Crucify him!"). That's our only line in that section, repeated in fugue. Was Bach depersonalizing the crowd in this instance? Must hunt around and find some articles about this. Maybe when we're done with it and I have time!
Not sure if the music influenced me or I was just being my usual musically intolerant self, but when whoever it was behind me put their "zig" on the wrong syllable for about the fifth (sixth? seventh?) time in a row, I felt the desperate desire to bludgeon her about the head with my score. Draw a fucking line where the syllable changes, bitch! Do it the first time you fuck up, not the tenth! Plunging from the sublime into the depths of depravity...