Bach, Bach, Bach!
In this Substack world of words, a thought on music.
This week-end was the annual - AMAZING - Toronto Bach Festival created and organized by John Abberger. A wonderful moment every year. Bach, Bach, Bach! In many forms.
This year it closed with the St. John Passion which brings out the terrible contradictions of beauty. The words are filled with what we can only call ‘out of control’ antisemitism. The music, on the other hand, is glorious.
Why was St John’s Gospel so antisemitic? One short answer is that the Bible as we know it was finalized around the time the Roman Empire decided to become Christian. And after all, it was the Romans who had crucified Christ. They weren’t exactly going to adopt and promote a religion in which they were the villains. So the easy way out was to ensure that the Biblical text shifted the blame to someone else. The Jews for example.
What I wanted to focus on here is how strongly I was struck by the difference between what words can do versus music. After all, my whole life is built around writing, but writing has difficulty conveying multiple emotions at the same time. Bach, on the other hand, has no trouble with such complexity.
Before the concert started, the director John Butt told us the story of Bach and the writing of the Passion.
As he pointed out, many in the Baroque period were against the complexity Bach brought to religious music. They wanted things nice and simple — good vs. evil. Things haven’t changed. Think of the guy with funny hair in Washington, the most powerful man in the world, desperate for people not to think. Bach had to please his patrons with great art - not a courtier like the followers of yellow hair.
Bach devoted his life to proving again and again that complexity can be the greatest good.
Incidentally, the St John Passion was performed about five times during Bach’s life. And here we are, 300 years later, still under its spell.
