Early Music for Holy Week
Passions, Oratorios, Cantatas, and Tenebrae Services
Having previously listed some of my favorite pieces of early Christmas music, I thought it only proper to do the same for Holy Week, in particular Good Friday and Easter. Rather than provide a numbered list, I have grouped a series of pieces into appropriate genres, commenting on each genre and the gems within.
Passions
A passion, drawn from the Latin passus (to suffer), is a musical setting of the Passion of Christ– the final stage of His life. Musical passion settings were typically performed on Good Friday.
Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672) and Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) were born a century apart, within less than a hundred miles of each other. Both were staunch Lutherans and wrote music for their Church. Schütz’s output consisted almost entirely of sacred music. His passion settings were written in the 1660s, after his retirement from the court of Dresden. Bach wrote both his surviving passion settings in the 1720s, revising all three pieces later in his career.
Schütz’s Matthew Passion is structurally simple— polyphonic opening and concluding choruses sandwich a series of recitatives, dialogues, and dramatic choruses. The recitatives are unaccompanied, carrying a modal lilt to them reminiscent of plainchant. His John Passion follows a similar structure and is written in Phrygian mode– often associated with grief. The choice of mode might be a nod to Martin Luther’s belief that the Gospel of John more effectively contrasted Christ’s humanity with His divinity– the emotional affects associated with Phrygian mode make the deliberative and plaintive aspects of the passion even starker. Schütz gives characters their own recitative patterns and uses the bookending choruses to provide room for contemplation.
Bach wrote the Matthew Passion in 1727, to be performed on Good Friday in Leipzig, where he was cantor of the St Thomas Church. Bach lays out fiery choruses of pharisees, resplendent arias of devotion, gripping dialogues between Jesus and his disciples or Pontius Pilate, and reflective Lutheran chorales, or hymns, to let the emotions and devotions thus expressed settle into the minds of his congregation. He highlights the Voice of Christ by surrounding it with a halo of strings, except when Christ says his final words from the cross.
Bach wrote the John Passion in 1724 as the centerpiece to his annual Cantata cycle as Thomaskantor. It has the regular cast of characters- Jesus, Pilate, Peter, Judas, among others. Again, keeping the Lutheran interpretation of the Gospel of John in mind, Bach’s John Passion is more dramatic and uses various musical means to emboss Christ’s status as God and Man into the listener’s heart. Bach’s opening chorus masterfully captures the dichotomy mentioned above in its two parts; the first addressing Christ as Lord and Master with eternal fame and glory, and the second showing the more human side of Christ, how in his Passion he was subjected to the most lowly humiliation.
Oratorios and Cantatas
An oratorio is a dramatic composition, often for full orchestra and chorus, with biblical or religious themes, performed without being staged. Schütz’s Auferstehungshistorie (Resurrection Story) is not strictly an oratorio, but a clear antecedent to the genre. Dating to 1623, the piece is written for six to eight voices in the choir, along with strings and organ. The music is lively, containing surprising progressions and dissonances to pummel in special connotations. Schütz’s sacred music is always brimming with musical rhetoric; the Resurrection Story does not disappoint. Repetitions of key words, ascending phrases on texts containing questions, and character-specific wordplay and instrumentation weave a thrilling picture for the congregation.
Bach’s Easter Oratorio, dating to 1725, balances shock, surprise, awe, faith, and jubilation to produce a cohesive Easter narrative. The opening sinfonia is in two parts, one joyful and one lamenting—reminding the congregation of the immense sacrifice of Christ three days ago on Good Friday—before returning to the previous jubilation, now launching into the opening chorus. The cast of characters includes Mary Magdalene, Mary of James, and the apostles Peter and John, each singing of his or her love for Christ, be it through the joy of serving Him, sorrow turned into disbelief turned into quiet contentment at news of His Resurrection, or utter jubilation and gratitude.
A cantata is a short-to-medium piece of vocal music, typically sacred (though at times secular), with orchestral accompaniment, broken up into solo and choral movements. Bach’s Cantata for Easter Day, Christ lag in Todesbanden (Christ lay in the bonds of Death), BWV 4, stems from very early in his career, written in 1707. The central theme is the eponymous Lutheran hymn, drawn from the older German liturgical song Christ ist erstanden, which itself is drawn from the Catholic chant Victime paschali laudes. The cantata has an opening sinfonia and seven vocal movements setting seven stanzas of the text. These are laid out symmetrically: the first and last vocal movements are a polyphonic chorus and a chorale hymn respectively; the second and sixth duets; the third and fifth solo arias; and the fourth a chorus. Each employs the central melody in brilliantly innovative ways, highlighting various aspects of the Resurrection: the grim reign of death helped by human sin, the arrival of Christ to wrest power from death, death’s defeat at the hands of life, Christ as the Passover Lamb offered up by God, and the celebration of Christ’s sacrifice.
Tenebrae Services
The Tenebrae services, in the last three days of Holy Week before Easter Day, are among the most intense and holy in Catholicism. Rooms were typically lit with very few candles during these (Tenebrae translates to darkness) and these were extinguished one by one as the services progressed. These services often included readings from the Book of Lamentations, a collection of poems lamenting the destruction of Jerusalem in the 5th century BC. Many composers set these to music, including Thomas Tallis (1505–1585), Orlande de Lassus (1532–1594), Emilio de’ Cavalieri (1550–1602), and Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679–1745) among others. My advisor and musical mentor, Professor Robert L. Kendrick, has produced a remarkably profound study of Lamentation settings between the 16th and 18th centuries, examining how they shaped culture and religion in this time.
Cavalieri’s settings, composed around the turn of the 17th century, are emblematic of the many significant changes in musical style happening at this time. A thrilling mixture of late-Renaissance polyphony, rich with dissonance, this collection also features the newly minted monody, showing off the beauties of the human voice, rank with virtuosity. Settings by Lassus and Tallis are also particularly striking.
Finally, we have the famous Miserere mei, Deus by Gregorio Allegri (1582–1652). This setting of Psalm 51 was composed exclusively for the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, performed during the Tenebrae services. It employs the centuries-old technique of falsobordone, adding different voices to a psalm tone to create polyphony. The verses of the psalm alternate between two choirs, each singing its own falsobordone, and a monodic chant. Both choirs unite for the final verse. Most versions of the Miserere performed today are the result of a musicological error as the piece made its way through the ages, resulting in a wrong transcription of the piece which transposed one ending a fourth above the original.