jwilzewske: buxtehude

Showing posts with label buxtehude. Show all posts

Saturday, June 13, 2009

BEMF Organ Mini-Festival: Baroque Lutheran Rhetoric Revealed

B egin with simple ingredients, such as a melody limited only to three notes, then four, then five, etc. Exploit a certain interval—for example, the major second or the tritone. Improvise a short motive—for example, B-A-C-H (B-flat, A, C, B-natural)—and transpose it, invert it, augment it, condense it, expand it. Improvise melodies within the compass of the octave. Imitate various instruments or voices and styles. Use all keys, modes, and meters. You can do this!”
— Jan Overduin, Improvisation for Organists, p. 7.

T he BEMF organ mini-festival included segments yesterday offered by Joan Lippincott on Bach’s ‘Art of the Fugue’, by Bálint Karosi and Chris Brown on ‘Rhetorical Forms in Lutheran Worship’ illustrated by works of Böhm, Buxtehude, and Bach, and by William Porter on comparing the fantasias, fugues, and sonatas of J.S. Bach and C.P.E. Bach.

J oan Lippincott is Professor Emerita of Organ at Westminster Choir College of Rider University, Princeton. She trained with Alexander McCurdy at Curtis Institute and for some years was principal organist at Princeton University. Her activities concertizing and recording currently occupy her full-time.

B álint Karosi is presently Minister of Music and principal organist at First Lutheran in Boston. He was born 1979 in Budapest, Hungary, and began playing piano and clarinet at age 6 and at 16 he began to study the pipe organ. In the 1990s, he studied at the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music with Gábor Lehotka. Subsequently, he was at the Conservatoire Superieure de Musique de Geneva with Lionel Rogg from 1999-2001, where he was awarded the ‘Prix de virtousité avec distinction’ in both organ and clarinet. He has two Masters degrees from Oberlin, studying with James David Christie. He was the winner of the 2008 J. S. Bach international organ competition in Leipzig, Germany. His honors also include an award for best modern improvisation at the organ competition in Brno, second prize at Prague’s Spring International Clarinet Competition, first prize and the audience prize at the Dublin International Organ Competition, first prize at the Arthur Positer Organ Competition in Syracuse and second prize at the St. Maurice International Organ Competition in Switzerland.

T he beautiful Kellner-tempered Richards, Fowkes ‘Opus 10’ (delivered to FLC in December 2000) is a joy to hear. The 70 mmH₂O (0.1 psia) wind-pressure has plenty of power and CFM flow-capacity to fill the tall, austere, brick-and-oak, barrel-ceilinged Lutheran sanctuary. The Posaune 16' and Sub-bass 16' ranks give impressive sounds that can be put to a variety of innovative, coloristic religious and secular purposes. The low end is also aided by Bourdon 16', Dulcian 16' and Krummhorn 8' on this instrument.

T he First Lutheran congregation in Boston was founded in 1839 as the German Lutheran Society and is the oldest Lutheran congregation in New England. The church, at Marlborough and Berkeley streets in historic Back Bay, was designed in 1957 by MIT Dean of Architecture, Pietro Belluschi. In 1995, Professor William Porter and church organist, Mark Meyer, initiated the process commissioning this new Kellner-tempered Richards, Fowkes instrument.

T he BEMF organ mini-festival afforded an excellent chance to consider Brad Lehman’s ideas about Bach’s temperament—especially in the Bach Contrapuncti in D minor and other works in flat keys.

A ll those major and minor keys sound objectively different from one another, having slightly different semitone and tone arrangements in their scales, and different harmonic balances of the triads and more complex chords. These differences render all the keys recognizably distinct, as to the tensions and resolutions in the way tonal music behaves. The triads and diatonic scales of F and C majors are the closest to regular 1/6-comma temperament. D major and E-flat major each have an average quality resembling equal temperament. The scale of E major is the closest to Pythagorean tuning. We have the complete flexibility of modulation as if it were equal temperament, but also a third dimension of depth: natural motion forward through the music, in a well-organized and dramatic manner. … Short of hearing this directly for oneself at a keyboard instrument, how may we describe the most noticeable musical effects of the temperament? Sharps are high and bright, with a strong and rather ‘hard’ (dur-) tone that creates ‘forward motion’ when they are used in dominant triads. Flats seem warm and vibrant, ‘soft’ (moll-) and gentle, with a shimmer to their chords and scales. The naturals, with the exception of B, have the same neutral and resonant character that they do in a complete 1/6 comma layout. The biggest difference here, as compared with other familiar ‘well-temperaments’ like Kellner’s, is the treatment of the flats. With the sharps placed so uncommonly high, the major and minor 3rds are especially euphonious when those same levers are played on the keyboard as flats. They serve very well as the tonic under natural notes, making major 3rds (for example, D-flat under F, or A-flat under C).”
— Brad Lehman, Univ Michigan.

T he performances also afforded a special opportunity to hear the rhythmic control and clarity that are possible with the excellent tracker mechanism design by Richards, Fowkes Organ Company. A tracker organ is one where the key action physically connects the keys and the windchests through a series of rods called ‘trackers’. When the organist presses a key, the corresponding tracker moves, and wind enters the pipe corresponding to the key pressed. (This is contrasted with a ‘mechanical stop’ action, where each stop control is physically connected to a rank of pipes. When the organist activates the stop control, the action allows wind to flow into the selected rank of pipes. This control is usually a stop-knob, which the organist activates by pulling towards himself/herself.) The tracker mechanism usually entails somewhat greater finger effort in playing but achieves a more direct keyboard ‘feel’ and a more responsive control of the pipes’ valves, a big plus for fast, virtuosic passages.

C P. E. labeled the final page of Bach’s manuscript with the message that Bach died while introducing B-A-C-H as a countersubject in the third part of the fugue. Ignoring for the moment that B-A-C-H is here a subject, not a countersubject, the whole story [that this Contrapunctus was composed by Bach on his deathbed, pen falling from his hand in the midst of measure 239] is apocryphal [false]. The piece was further labeled ‘Fuga a 3 Soggetti’ (Fugue with 3 Subjects) in the 1751 published edition, despite that fact that it was patently Bach’s intention that it be a quadruple (four-subject) fugue. But how can we be sure of that?”
— Jeffrey Hall, FlagMusic.com.

T he incompleteness of ‘Die Kunst der Fuge’, BWV 1080, will probably always remain controversial. Bach probably started writing it sometime in the 1740s or maybe earlier. The first known surviving version, which contained 12 fugues and 2 canons, bears Bach’s copy date of 1745. Bach’s second version was published in 1751 after his death. That one contains 14 fugues and 4 canons. Göncz about 12 years ago investigated the combinatorics of the construction of Contrapunctus XIV (see link below), coming up with new ideas that, to me, are really persuasive.

T he sudden ending of Contrapunctus XIV in mid-sentence, in bar 239, was beautifully and dramatically rendered by Joan Lippincott, to the delight of the festival attendees. In summary, yesterday provided an emotionally moving and very illuminating session—one that I hope leads to follow-on organ mini-festival offerings in future years’ BEMF programs.

Denn gleich wei di Rosen stehen As fair roses are bounded
unter spitzen Dornen gar, By sharp thorns on every side,
also auch die Christen gehen So with perils sore surrounded
in viel Angsten und Gefahr... Christians in this world abide...
Ob mire schon die Augen brechen, Though my eyes should dim, and hearing
das Gehor auch gar verschwind't; Fail in silence quite away;
meine Zung nicht mehr kan sprechen, Though my tongue should cease from speaking,
bist du doch mein Licht, mein Wort. You are still my Light and Word.

— Old-School Lutheran rhetoric (‘Freu dich sehr, O meine Seele’)

J osephus – I come to you, venerable master, in order to be introduced to the rules and principles of music.
Aloysius – You want, then, to learn the art of composition?
Josephus – Yes.
Aloysius – But are you not aware that this study is like an immense ocean, not to be exhausted even in the lifetime of a Nestor?”
— Johann Joseph Fux, Gradus ad Parnassum, 1725.

Saturday, January 12, 2008

Neo-Neo Look: Avant-Garde in the Eye (Ear) of Once-and-Future Beholders

D uring the 17th century there was great interest amongst scholars and performers in the question of temperament and use of more ‘extreme’ keys. Old quarter-comma meantone tunings were gradually giving way to circulating temperaments (called ‘unequal’ temperaments today) where there was freedom of modulation. In meantone, pure major thirds are on C, D, E-flat, E, F, G, A, B-flat, whilst unusable thirds are on C#, F#, G# (A-flat does not exist!) and B; the ‘wolf’ fifth is from G# to E-flat. As the century progressed, there were increasing signs of dissatisfaction with the old tunings, and in the F-sharp minor Praeludia we see Buxtehude making a clear avant-garde statement to the world, for here is a piece which is totally unplayable in the old tunings.”
— Douglas Hollick.

The term ‘avant-garde’ usually means contemporary new music. But consider the premise that ‘contemporary’ is context-dependent—‘new’ is always new in the eye of the then-current beholder. Each age has its avant-garde, its innovators, anarchists. ‘Avant-garde’ can be accurately applied to innovative works of any era. Douglas Hollick notes that the avant-garde tends in each era to be linked to and critically dependent upon technology: the great organs of North Germany in the first half of the 17th Century were pushing the technology ‘envelope’ with the architectural requirements arising from their size and geometry; with the mechanics and mechanical engineering requirements associated with their pneumatics; and with metallurgical and 17th-Century machine-shop requirements in the production and machining of metal for the pipes. Electroacoustic music of the 1950s was comparably dependent upon then-current developments in electronics.

Dieterich Buxtehude (1637-1707) lived his whole life near the Baltic. Buxtehude grew up in Helsingør, Skåne, where his father was organist, tinkerer, and amateur metallurgist. The young Buxtehude served as organist at Helsingborg St. Mariae (1658 - 60) and Helsingør St. Mariae (1660 - 68). In 1668 he was appointed to St. Marien in Lübeck. Sadly, not much of Lübeck survived the WWII bombing of 1942. Although St. Marien was rebuilt, none of the original interior or Buxtehude-era pipe organs survives. We can therefore only make educated guesses about the sounds that Buxtehude composed and created there. But some of the most inspired and convincing conjectures imaginable come from Hollick.

M ost of Buxtehude’s Praeludia are for organ with pedals. But BuxWV 162 is for manuals only, and it can be played either on the organ or the harpsichord. Perhaps one of the least obviously ‘avant-garde’ works in the programme, it does show the desire in the later 17th Century for the freedom to modulate beyond the confines of the old meantone tuning, here moving to E minor, and desperately needing the dominant of that key, B major with its D-sharp. With the luxury of recording, it has been possible to use a variant of the normal meantone for this work and the Weckmann, with E-flat replaced by D-sharp. The final harpsichord work by Johann Christoph Bach probably dates from near the end of the century, and is in the (then) ‘very modern’ key of E-flat major. This is a key that is completely impossible in meantone, and clearly demonstrates the move towards greater tonal freedom in keyboard tunings by the end of the 17th Century.”
— Douglas Hollick, liner notes, Baroque Avant-garde.

Hollick’s performances reveal how Buxtehude’s improvisational works—toccatas, praeludia, chaconnes, passacaglia, canzonas, and so on—had to depart from then-conventional quarter-comma meantone tuning. There would’ve been horrific wolf-tones in meantone temperament. Do you hear the interval of C#-F as a diminished fourth, or as a major third? It depends on how the scale is tempered. Have a look at Bill Sethares’s excellent book for lots of examples and clear illustrations on the CD that comes with the book.

S ince, through the grace of God, music has so progressed and changed, it would be absurd if we had not tried to improve the keyboard, so that well-composed modern pieces should not be ruined, and a howl come out of them … Some would like to say that one should not compose in every key, such as C-sharp, F-sharp and G-sharp. But I say that if one does not do it, another will …”
— Andreas Werckmeister, Orgel-Probe, 1698.

The intense chromaticism in much of Buxtehude’s writing is the locus of much of his envelope-pushing. But there’s ample rhythmic iconoclasm in Buxtehude as well. For example, the insistent, repeated bass line is varied but lends an avant-garde Baltic / North German ‘straight-ahead’ quality to many of the pieces. Eighteenth-century Baltic Lutheran avant-garde, that is.

T hat’s a lotta ‘look’! [so extreme or excessive, in fact, that I really recommend that you reconsider what you’ve composed, and reflect on whether it will suit the client for whom the piece is intended]”
— Tim Gunn, Parsons New School for Design, ProjectRunway (BravoTV television series), 2007.

Toward the audience, this music maintains a ‘missionary’, ‘therapeutic’ intentional stance. As such, Buxtehude should be considered ‘avant-garde-proper’ instead of ‘neo-avant-garde’. In other words, Buxtehude didn’t compose in this way as a matter of personal cliché or throw-down creative novelty or cultural conquest or as a gesture of ironical fashion-conscious ‘lookism’. This music is ‘precarious’ but not narcissistically so. And that is part of Buxtehude’s enduring, sempervirens ever-green charm—part of the excitement and authenticity and power to captivate our ears and minds as Buxtehude’s music can do, even today. That is part of the ‘newness’ that Hollick so ably recreates for us. Baroque avant-garde!

Dieterich Buxtehude: Fantasizing? Inebriated? Mad?

H ollick’s wide repertoire includes major works like the Goldberg Variations and Clavierübung III of Bach, and also works by lesser known composers such as Kuhnau, Benda, Moyreau and Séjan. His programmes often have a particular theme (such as ‘Fantasy, Inebriation and Madness’ [!!] ), and his mixed harpsichord-and-organ programmes can be particularly interesting.”

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Koopman’s Sacred Canopy: An Abcediary of Baroque Spiritual Excitement

O ne mode of emotional excitability is exceedingly important in the composition of the energetic character, from its peculiarly destructive power over inhibitions. I mean what in its lower form is mere irascibility, susceptibility to wrath, the fighting temper; and what in subtler ways manifests itself as impatience, grimness, earnestness, severity of character. Earnestness means willingness to live with energy, though energy bring pain. The pain may be pain to other people or pain to one's self—it makes little difference; for when the strenuous mood is on one, the aim is to break something, no matter whose or what. Nothing annihilates an inhibition as irresistibly as anger does it; for, as Moltke says of war, destruction pure and simple is its essence. This is what makes it so invaluable an ally of every other passion. The sweetest delights are trampled on with a ferocious pleasure the moment they offer themselves as checks to a cause by which our higher indignations are elicited... The collective name for the ripe fruits of religion in a character is Saintliness. The saintly character is the character for which spiritual emotions are the habitual centre of the personal energy; and there is a certain composite photograph of universal saintliness, the same in all religions, of which the features can easily be traced. They are these:
A feeling of being in a wider life than that of this world's selfish little interests; and a conviction, not merely intellectual, but as it were sensible, of the existence of an Ideal Power. In Christian saintliness this power is always personified as God; but abstract moral ideals, civic or patriotic utopias, or inner versions of holiness or right may also be felt as the true lords and enlargers of our life, in ways which I described in the lecture on the Reality of the Unseen.
A sense of the friendly continuity of the ideal power with our own life, and a willing self-surrender to its control.
An immense elation and freedom, as the outlines of the confining selfhood melt down.
A shifting of the emotional centre towards loving and harmonious affections, towards "yes, yes," and away from "no," where the claims of the non-ego are concerned. These fundamental inner conditions have characteristic practical consequences, as follows:
Asceticism: The self-surrender may become so passionate as to turn into self-immolation. It may then so over-rule the ordinary inhibitions of the flesh that the saint finds positive pleasure in sacrifice and asceticism, measuring and expressing as they do the degree of his loyalty to the higher power.
Strength of Soul: The sense of enlargement of life may be so uplifting that personal motives and inhibitions, commonly omnipotent, become too insignificant for notice, and new reaches of patience and fortitude open out. Fears and anxieties go, and blissful equanimity takes their place. Come heaven, come hell, it makes no difference now!
Purity: The shifting of the emotional centre brings with it, first, increase of purity. The sensitiveness to spiritual discords is enhanced, and the cleansing of existence from brutal and sensual elements becomes imperative. Occasions of contact with such elements are avoided: the saintly life must deepen its spiritual consistency and keep unspotted from the world. In some temperaments this need of purity of spirit takes an ascetic turn, and weaknesses of the flesh are treated with relentless severity.
Charity: The shifting of the emotional centre brings, secondly, increase of charity, tenderness for fellow-creatures. The ordinary motives to antipathy, which usually set such close bounds to tenderness among human beings, are inhibited. The saint loves his enemies, and treats loathsome beggars as his brothers.”
— William James, 1901, Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 234.

DSM: Ton Koopman’s performance yesterday in Utrecht was a dazzling, athletic tour de force. It was a veritable ‘catalogue’ of Baroque varieties of religious experience.

Buxtehude—Praeludium in G minor (BuxWV 149)
Buxtehude—Nun lob, min Seel, den Herren (BuxWV 213)
Froberger—Toccata in D minor (FbWV 102)
Frescobaldi—Toccata terza
Buxtehude—Preludium in D major (BuxWV 139)
Buxtehude—Nun lob, min Seel, den Herren (BuxWV 212)
Buxtehude—Canzonetta in A minor (BuxWV 225)
Buxtehude—Kom, heiliger Geist (BuxWV 199)
Buxtehude—Praeludium in G minor (BuxWV 148)
Buxtehude—Canzonetta in C major (BuxWV 167)
Bach—Praeludium in C minor
Bach—In dulci jubilo (BWV 608)
Bach—Fugue in G minor

CMT: We have, too, the fantastical rose window of the church where Koopman gave this performance. It reminds me of Rilke’s famous poem—the rose window propelling one’s heart toward God. It reminds me of Borges’s famous Book of Imaginary Beings.

DSM: The relationship of the idea of ‘journey’ to the emergence of image is difficult. In terms of their symbolism, rose windows and labyrinths are paradoxical. They are simultaneously in two categories: a ‘multicursal’ form, associated with literary and verbal and musical practice, and a ‘unicursal’ form, reflected in architecture and the visual arts. In contrast to the multicursal form, the unicursal has only one entrance point, which inevitably, though not easily, leads to the center. Unlike the multicursal model, which requires constant judgment to successfully traverse, the unicursal model demands endurance and patience—it requires determination and stamina, emphasizing judgment only in the initial decision to enter.

CMT: It evokes a winding road or a meander—maybe even a fatalistic view of life, or the reception of the literal level of a literary or musical text or philosophic argument. It signifies patience in adversity, but paradoxically also persistence in folly. The adaptation of the unicursal model to textual purposes can be seen in its combination with the wheel and the rose window in Gothic cathedrals.

DSM: This transformative effect of labyrinthine music and labyrinthine iconography is reinforced through repetition: the stonework tracery of the rose window viewed from outside the structure before we go in and hear Koopman, the labyrinths woven into the music as Koopman plays, and the rose window realized as a pattern of light when viewed from within the cathedral following the shifting sun during this performance. These repetitions create a ‘coincidentia oppositorum’ that mirrors the cathedral’s primary function in guiding the community and individual souls to the perfection of the rose. They evoke a grand, labyrinthine and uncertain wheel of fortune which governs the world of human affairs and the universe. The music plays upon the clockwork of our mind—the effect is to inspire and impel us, in directions we may desire or, alternatively, in directions some of us in the audience may prefer not to go.

CMT: The surprise—my eyes were damp several times as Koopman performed—is that such music can take hold of us and transport us, can propel us so forcefully—even in directions that we may resist. For some of us, it’s not a question of resisting—it’s more the shock or surprise at being escorted to a perception of transcendence that we have known before but have not visited recently. That is what a performance of the caliber that Koopman delivers can do. He physically takes us there, regardless whether we anticipated the journey or not.

DSM: The ‘nonconsensual’ aspect of the experience is a major part of its shock value. We make our way through the routine of most days under the illusion that we have autonomy, have power, are free to choose, are masters of our lives. The ecstatic journeys that Koopman takes us on remind us of our utter dependence on others—it is not merely a sacred or ‘Godly’, let alone ‘Christian’, notion; it is instead a powerful reminder of this profound connectedness, a reminder of our inescapable mortal frailty and diminutiveness, a reminder of this ineffable and fantastic vastness of the cosmos.

I n de eerste helft van de zeventiende eeuw waren ht vooral leerlingen van Jan Pietersoon Sweelinck die de Noord-Duitse klaviermuziek nieuwe implsen gaven. Later doen ook Italiaanse elementen hun intrede, zoals de ‘stylus phantasticus’. Vanmorgen volgen we de lijn die van Frescobaldi naar Bach loopt, met Dieterich Buxtehude als stralend middelpunt… Hierin verschijnt de cantus firmus als canon tussen sopraan en tenor, terwijl ook in de andere stemmen imitatie voorkomt: oude technieken worden hier door Bach zeer geraffineerd toegepast.”
— Wilmer de Jong, Program Notes, 2007, Oude Muziek Festival.

I n the first half of the seventeenth century the pupils of Jan Pietersoon Sweelinck gave particular impulse to the North-German keyboard music. Later on, Italian elements also appeared, as the ‘stylus phantasticus’. This morning we follow the line tracing Frescobaldi to Bach with Dieterich Buxtehude as radiant center… In this appeared the cantus firmus as a mutually-reinforcing ‘canon’ between the soprano and tenor voices on the organ, while in the other voices imitation and parallelism ‘prevent’ and ‘rebut’ each other: the by now old techniques are refined and applied here by Bach.”
— Wilmer de Jong, Program Notes, 2007, Oude Muziek Festival.

D a drin: das träge Treten ihrer Tatzen
macht eine Stille, die dich fast verwirrt;
und wie dann plötzlich eine von den Katzen
den Blick an ihr, der hin und wieder irrt,

gewaltsam in ihr großes Auge nimmt, -
den Blick, der, wie von eines Wirbels Kreis
ergriffen, eine kleine Weile schwimmt
und dann versinkt und nichts mehr von sich weiß,

wenn dieses Auge, welches scheinbar ruht,
sich auftut und zusammenschlägt mit Tosen
und ihn hineinreißt bis ins rote Blut -:

So griffen einstmals aus dem Dunkelsein
der Kathedralen große Fensterrosen
ein Herz und rissen es in Gott hinein.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Die Fensterrose, Neue Gedichte, 1907.

I n there: the lazy pacing of their paws
creates a stillness that’s almost dizzying;
and as one of the cats then suddenly
takes the gaze that watches it carelessly

and snatches it into its own great eye, -
and that gaze, as if caught in a whirlpool’s
circle, for a little while stays afloat
and then goes under and is lost to oblivion,

when this eye, which apparently rests,
opens and slams shut with a roaring
and yanks it all the way inside the blood -:

this in olden times out of the darkness
the cathedral’s great rose windows
would seize the hearts and forcibly propel them toward God.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Rose Window, New Poems, 1907.

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Koopman & Amsterdam Baroque: Buxtehude = Theater

H et idioom van Buxtehude vraagt een enorme creativiteit van de speler. Bij Bach kun je gewoon de nootjes spelen of het werk op een draaiorgel laten uitvoeren. Zelfs dan is het nog mooi. Buxtehude vraagt meer van de musicus. Het is heel theatrale muziek. Heel creatief, geestig en soms enorm macho. Hij kan heel deemoedig zijn in de koralen, om vervolgens in de orgelwerken weer flink uit te pakken. Al in zijn eerste periode, waarin hij nog voornamelijk in de middentoonstemming schrijft, is Buxtehude buitengewoon avontuurlijk. Hij schakelde over op de Werckmeister-stemming en dat leverde hem zowel harmonisch als melodisch een enorme vrijheid op. Hij durft het bijvoorbeeld aan om te beginnen met een lange pedaalsolo. Dat was ongehoord in die dagen. Hij was als een jazzimprovisator en de toehoorders lieten een vergelijkbaar enthousiasme horen. Mensen stonden in de kerk gewoon te klappen. Buxtehude is theater. Critici uit zijn tijd zeiden vaak dat Buxtehude geen opera hoefde te schrijven: de kerk is zijn theater.”
— Ton Koopman, interview with Paul Janssen, Tijdschrift Oude Muziek, 2007, Band 2, 23.

B uxtehude’s musical idiom demands enormous creativity from the player. In Bach, you can play the notes normally or allow the organ to do the work. Even then it is beautiful. Buxtehude asks more of the musician. It is quite theatrical music. Quite creative, lively and sometimes very ‘macho’. Buxtehude can be not quite humble in the chorale, and then ‘take it out’ in the organ part. Already in his first period, in which he writes yet mainly in a middle-tone mood, Buxtehude is extremely adventurous. He communicates with a masterwork-mood and that, for him, is a very harmonious, tuneful mode in which he exercises enormous compositional freedom. He dares to begin a piece for instance with a long pedal solo. That was outrageous in those days. Buxtehude might be heard as jazz improvisation—and the listeners had a comparable enthusiasm and personal investment in the music. People in those days routinely stood and applauded in the church. Buxtehude is theater. Critics who were Buxtehude’s contemporaries said often that Buxtehude did not need to write opera: the church was the theater of the time.”

— Ton Koopman, interview with Paul Janssen, Tijdschrift Oude Muziek, 2007, Band 2, 23.

DSM: The late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are, basically, a golden age of theater. Throughout western Europe, the dramatic arts carried tremendous cultural prestige, political importance. They were also highly commercial.

CMT: The interactions between the Baroque audience members and performers were also intense and stylized. This is one of the points in Larry Norman’s book, published several years ago, and Kerala Snyder’s book, just published. The audience directly—not vicariously—participated in this popular form of social performance. The participation was a kind of ‘acting out’—a reification of the Enlightenment’s exalting of the individual. This is part of what Koopman means in his remarks during the interview with Paul Janssen. It was highly ‘active’, not ‘passive’.

DSM: Some of the aims of Buxtehude’s music—prime examples are the Cantatas in last night’s performance by the Amsterdam Baroque in Utrecht—are the shaping of space and time for the individual—the performer and the listener alike. There is a transcendental motive that directs the participant to consider her or his responsibility to regard the finiteness of human life and time’s passing—a duty to consider her/his place in the Universe. The individual in Baroque society has wonderful rights and new entitlements but with them come new duties—at least in Buxtehude’s Germany. Beautiful, inspiring Cantatas! But, still, these are cantatas for a fastidious German culture.

CMT: These Cantatas also call into question the relationship that musical and theatrical representations have to the subjects they portray. The Membra Jesu Nostris cantatas BuxWV 75 are sacred pieces, and yet they compel the performers and the audience members to examine what it is to be human, what it is for humans to regard their relationship to the Divine. Who are we to offer prayers of praise and supplication? Buxtehude is asking ‘What kind of supplicatory prayer is authentic?’

DSM: These Cantatas are not only authentic in and of themselves—they ‘ring true’ in the capable hands of Koopman and the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra (Miriam Meyer, soprano; Bettina Pahn, soprano; Bogna Bartosz, alto; Marco van de Klundert, tenor; Klaus Mertens, bass; Margaret Faultless, violin; David Rabinovich, violin; Jon Manson, viola da gamba; Susanne Braumann, viola da gamba; Alberto Rasi, bass viol; Michael Fentross, theorbo; Ton Koopman, organ). They also stand as exhortations to authentic conduct in all aspects of life—they assert that beauty and dignity depend on such conduct. Dialogical consonances, not just hierarchical ones. Narrative counterpoint with moral imperatives and individual free-will and consequences, not just passively-received, priestly counterpoint filled with determinism and dogma. The elegant tonal progressions and persuasive cadential ‘points’: these Cantatas function as philosophical meditations on right conduct in bourgeois secular society. In other words, they are not merely sacred ‘cantatas’—they are much more.

CMT: You mean they stand as propositions of the meaningfulness of human existence when one conducts one’s life with authenticity and earnestness. I think this is true. They’re convincing arguments against futility, absurdity, and nihilism. These are filled with emblems, symbols—you could say these Cantatas are allegorical in their rhetoric. I know that there are those who deny that music can use symbolism at all, who deny that allegory in music is even possible. To be sure, music doesn’t represent abstract concepts directly. But that doesn’t imply that allegory is impossible. The music supplies a sensual impression, and the meaning is superimposed on the impression by us. If we enter into the music at all, the meaning must be an individual, personal one—although we may be led to some degree by the composer, the artists' gestures, the program notes, other experiences and expectations, and so on. Individualism! All who participate—the performers, the audience members—turn that proposition round and round, during the time the music lasts and afterward. That’s part of the theatrical magic that Koopman and colleagues worked last night. That’s part, too, of what Koopman means regarding Buxtehude and baroque theater—theater that is intellectually deep, theater that can move minds and hearts. ‘Baroque’ as “irregular, individualistic pearl.” Bravo!

Sonata in A minor, BuxWV 254
Membra Jesu nostri, Cantatas 1 – 7, BuxWV 75
Sonata in C major, BuxWV 266

Denn gleich wei di Rosen stehen	As fair roses are bounded
unter spitzen Dornen gar,	By sharp thorns on every side,
also auch die Christen gehen	So with perils sore surrounded
in viel Angsten und Gefahr...	Christians in this world abide...

Ob mire schon die Augen brechen,	Though my eyes should dim, and hearing
das Gehor auch gar verschwind't;	Fail in silence quite away;
meine Zung nicht mehr kan sprechen,	Though my tongue should cease from speaking,
bist du doch mein Licht, mein Wort.	You are still my Light and Word.