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Date: | Fri, 3 Oct 2003 17:44:54 +0200 |
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Yoel L. Arbeitman wrote in reaction to my question:
>>What is the mysterious X which makes Bach's music so touching that even
>>an agnostic guy like me feels like a Christian when listening to the St
>>Matthew-Passion?
>
>I cannot concur in the fullness of your assertion. I cannot
>dispute your own reaction, but I can assert mine to be quite different
>and somewhat the same. As a Jewish atheist I find Bach's two passions
>the most incredible works of music ever. I still see the plenitude of
>Judenhass which informs the Johannes-Passion.
You are quite right, Yoel. The Gospel according to St John itself is
anti-Semitic. It is a problem for me that a lot of great artists were
not very fine characters: take only Wagner (I like the Dutchman and
utterly hate the man), Strauss and Orff (cowards who served the Nazi
government). Not a compliment for my country (I am a German). There
is a medieval painter, Stefan Lochner. You can see an altar by him in
the Cologne Cathedral, a work of breathtaking beauty. If you then go
to a near-by museum (Wallraff-Richartz-Museum) you can see a Judgment
Day painting by the same painter: in it can see men with bizarre hats
thrown into hell - the Jews. The same man was able to promote beauty
and to propagate hatred. And isn't a lot of the music we admire exactly
this - propaganda, for church and for state?
>But, for all that, this music has always overwhelmed me in a way that
>no other music ever will. I must believe that Bach was infused with
>your "X" and personally I believe that, had he lived in a different
>culture and time, his greatness would have been employed to express
>the belief system of that other place and time.
A fine thought but doesn't this mean that indeed a lot of his music was
propaganda: the Brandenburg concertos state propaganda, the Passions and
cantatas church propaganda?
>Think e.g. Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides. The greatness of Bach's
>music need not depend on the message of his texts. For those for
>whom it does, it does. For me, it is great in its universality and
>it transcending of the texts of its culture.
Well, I partly disagree. For me as a lover of poetry the words are very
important and a song like Bach's (or Stolzel's) Bist du bei mir is moving
because of the blend of the tender words with Bach's tender setting.
The same is true for most of Schubert's Lieder. But you are certainly
right at the same time: I am regularly moved by vocal music in languages
I do not understand.
Robert
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