Sunday, 22 March 2015

St. John Passion

It is the time of year for St. John Passion and last night I heard a splendid rendering of Bach’s Johannes Passion in the Freiburg Münster. Bach in his great talent managed to vividly bring home the story told in the Gospel of St. John. Almost like an impressionist painter, with his choir, Bach brings out the atmosphere, the [Jewish] crowds and hysteria. The result is anti-Jewish agitation to the most beautiful music.

Sitting in the sombre gothic cathedral, I remembered my mother – who sang in the choir that performed the Passion in Israel in the late 60s and early 70s of last century – telling me that the words of the Johannes Passion made her feel more uncomfortable than any text she had previously sung. At the time, I did not really take much heed. I loved the music and that was enough. Having grown up in Israel, anti-Judaism was something I had never experienced. My other, who was born in Germany and had to flee with her family had first hand experience.

45 Year later, leaving the Freiburg Münster, I found myself thinking of the many generations of Christians leaving their solemn churches after hearing Bach’s Johannes Passion depicting the Jews driving the death of their Lord. How many of them, upon subsequently meeting a Jew in the streets of their town, then reacted with hatred, aggression and even violence, as a result of the animosity towards Jews that was planted in their hearts with the aid of the beautiful, so very beautiful music of Johan Sebastian Bach?


  1. It’s tripe, what you say about Bach, but I think you, the arch-provocateur, know it?

    Sebastian Bach is personally involved in the propagation of texts that foment anti-Semitism? No, David. Ridiculous. You’re going home after hearing the Passion, in Leipzig in 1730, and Bach happens to come towards you. What do you say?

    An utterance as great in human history as the St John Passion, or the St Matthew, is not beautiful, by the way, it has the truth.

  2. nichts hätte Bach ferner gelegen, als seine Musik in den Dienst des Antisemitismus zu stellen. Auch Mathias Grünewalds Issenheimer Altar, den ich mir in der nächsten Woche in Colmar wieder einmal anschauen möchte, ist in seiner ergreifenden Kreuzigungsszene keine Anklage des jüdischen Volkes. Die menschliche Grausamkeit schlechthin wird hier verhandelt, wie wir sie derzeit von der IS jeden Tag vor Augen geführt bekommen.

    Den Evangelisten Johannes magst Du des Judenhasses zeihen. Doch auch für ihn stehen in der Passionsgeschichte nicht die Peiniger im Mittelpunkt sondern Gottes Sohn, der die Sünden der Menschen getragen hat und für uns gestorben ist.

    Wer nach Schlusschor und -choral der Johannes Passion zu irgendwelchen Hassgefühlen fähig ist, hat weder Bach noch die christliche Botschaft verstanden. Ein so göttliches Werk kann nur als Friedensbotschaft verstanden werden.

  3. Dein Artikel über die Johannes-Passion hat mich sehr berührt !

  4. For as long as I can remember I felt the same as your mother did. Every year with Easter I respond to people who enthuse about the Mattheus Passion and Johannes Passion that how beautiful Bach's music may be I protest against this yearly injection of antisemitic texts. And for many years now I refuse to listen to the music because of the words.

    Most people do not understand, saying the music is so wonderful and the words do not distract from the beauty. I still disagree.

  5. Well, you have not seen fit to say anything, still less defend what you say about Bach, so let us now have a closer look at what you said.

    Of Bach's St John Passion:
    An anti-Jewish agitation to the most beautiful music.
    and -

    'the animosity towards Jews that was planted in their hearts with the aid of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach'

    Are you intent on promoting ignorance, or what?

    First of all, do I understand that you paid for a ticket to go and hear this anti-Semitic musical text?

    How? You say that (via your late mother) you knew what was coming, namely sheer anti-Semitism, expressed to music?

    Does David therefore definitely say:
    Sebastian Bach willingly wrote music with the intention of inciting animosity towards Jews?

    I and any reader, especially musicians, wish you would enlighten us as to whether you really say this or not!

  6. As I recall from my obligatory Religious Instruction lessons (once, the only requirement of the British school curriculum), the St John Passion takes its cue from the Book of John, the product, like much of the New Testament, of erstwhile Jews, who more often than not blamed the well padded jewish religious establishment for the demise of Jesus and their persecution. Pontius Pilate gets a bad press for being weak, the Jewish elite are fingered as the instigators and the mob bays for blood. Add 1500 years of wilfull church dogma to the mix and there you have it. Art is an elaboration of culture, irrespective of morality, more often than not, and its emotive sucess often lies in that.

    I am reminded of a scene from Shoah, where the local mayor of some minor Polish village near the site of one of those nameless, but equally hideous, 'second-rate' death camps, responds to Lanzmann's typical probing about why the locals stood idly by, with the cold observation that the passivity of the victims was a demonstration that they recognised their historic guilt. Why should the locals interfere, if they were reconciled to their divine fate?

    I doubt that he or the local peasants had heard much Bach.

    I recommend occasional doses of Lanzmann as an antidote to any lingering optimism about the human condition and the nature of its subjects.