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So, yesterday... Good Friday, marked the end of the crazy Passion season for musicians in Netherlands, and most of as are busy recovering sanity and sleep. Thankfully for me, I was involved in a longer project that had a great artistic vision for the Matthew Passion (by JS Bach) which was dramatic and done from a real narrative perspective rather than an overly reverent perspective. The piece is long enough (nearly 3 hours...) without having the director decide on monotonous and slow tempi with the emotional punch of a wet dish cloth....

Unfortunately, in the break during the larger tour... I had the misfortune to be playing in one of the latter "reverent" ones... which was heartbreaking after having such a great tour surrounding it.

Anyway, all of that musician's griping aside... I wanted to share one of the best moments for me in the Matthew Passion... a piece near the end, after Jesus has passed away. I'm not religious myself, but I do find that the Passion story as presented by Bach's music really touches upon many universal emotions that don't require religion to experience.

"Mache Dich" is an aria near the end of the piece and is scored for the Bass singer and the 1st orchestra (the actual text is below the video). It is a piece where the living is remembering the dead, and it always invokes such a beautiful feeling of loss and inadequacy, the fear and hope to be good enough... to be something that the lost one would be proud of. It is the hope of the child that they can live up to the expectations (wrong word... but I can't find the word in my head...) of parents who have past. It is also about all the things that you wished that you could have said... but now can not.

It is a piece that brings me so close to tears every time... as the yearning and struggling of the strings and the oboes, constantly rising and touching on so many harmonies that pull at the heart. The tempo for me here is the paramount decision... many directors aim for a slow tempo, where they think that the piece is a reverent desire to honour the dead or something like that (thanks, Victoria era... shaping our modern sensibilities...)

However, I really think that the faster tempo is really the intended version (there are musical arguments... based on the choice of tempo metre 12/8 and choice of key... but I'll avoid those, for the sake of a general audience...). I think the honouring of the dead, and the recounting of their great achievements is something that you are breathless to tell everyone about... not a slow list reading of things that they have done or stood for. Likewise, when you are thinking of the things that you admired and want to live up to... then it is a moment of joy and desire... not something that is sad...

Anyway, the pickings on YouTube are pretty thin... most go for the deathly slow tempi... but here is one that I found that was close to what I think it should be!

Text

Mache dich, mein Herze, rein,
Ich will Jesum selbst begraben.
Denn er soll nunmehr in mir
Für und für
Seine süße Ruhe haben.
Welt, geh aus, laß Jesum ein!

Make yourself pure, my heart,
I want to bury Jesus myself.
For from now on he shall have in me,
forever and ever,
his sweet rest.
World, get out, let Jesus in!