Matthäus-Passion (St. Matthew Passion)

It may well be that some composers do not believe in God. All of them, however, believe in Bach.

- Béla Bartók.

 
(See: Sir John Eliot Gardiner conducts the English Baroque Soloists  in the opening movement of St. Matthew Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach)

I had the great good fortune to see a staging of J.S. Bach's St. Matthew Passion, considered one of the greatest choral works ever written. The Passion is also what is responsible for putting Bach on the map in the popular pantheon of composers: while Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven studied Bach, the general concert-going public never really paid much attention to him until Felix Mendelssohn staged an "off-Leipzig" revival of St. Matthew's Passion in 1829.

I will say that prior to this performance I had not thought much of the piece. I certainly thought that there were some excellent movements, but with a lot of boring stuff in between. This probably speaks more to how I had listened to the piece before now, i.e. when doing something else as opposed to entirely focused on it as one is forced to be in a concert hall. And a lot of the recitatives are dull when considered entirely by themselves, but when considered as part of a larger work they are very good. For example, the aria Mache dich, mein Herze, rein is one of my (and, ironically enough, one of Richard Dawkins') favorite pieces of music, but its placement in the oratorio only makes it more powerful: after 2 hours and 30 minutes mostly in a minor key, suddenly we are confronted with the first really hopeful movement of the entire work in gently-rocking 12/8 time. I would say this is a piece very much worth seeing live.

A central problem is that it is easy to give a mechanical and overly cerebral performance of Bach. After all, he's one of the few composers who writes counterpoint for an angry mob. However, I believe that works such as the St. Matthew and St. John Passions are dramatic and deeply emotional. Indeed, regardless of whether the Gospels are seen as truth or not, the reason they've spawned so much "fan fiction" is that they are excellent literature.

One thing that I always wonder about when going to performances of famous religious works such as this one or The Messiah is how many people are there for the music and how many people are there for the religion (or both). Some would even claim that such works come from God himself, but I believe that so thinking gives human creativity far too little credit.

The Cappella Cracoviensis performed the piece on period instruments and with a small choir of 12 people who sang both solos and ensemble numbers (2 quartets consisting of soprano-alto-tenor-bass, singing as a double-choir, 3 sopranos singing the children's choir parts, and an additional bass who sang the roles of Caiaphas and Pilate only.) While period performances have gotten to be somewhat of a fetish in recent years, one advantage they have over larger, more spectacular stagings is a cleaner, crisper, clearer sound. With larger ensembles, even good ones, I've noticed that counterpoint can sometimes be lost in the sheer massiveness of the choir's sound. There are also noticeable color differences between the cello and viola da gamba that make the former an inadequate substitute for the latter.

Of course, all of this only works if the singers, who are effectively soloists, are good. Fortunately in this case they were, by and large. The mezzo-soprano had intonation and other issues, and the tenor singing the vital role of The Evangelist occasionally strained for notes. Generally, I think the singers had not warmed up sufficiently prior to the performance: the first few movements were somewhat thin-sounding and a few runs were unclean, whereas later movements did not have a volume problem in the slightest. The orchestra was somewhat spottier. The oboes had noticeable difficulties with certain passages, as did the violin soloists. The continuo was very solid, as was the viola da gamba soloist. The second half was quite affecting. I only wish the audience had held its applause longer after the final note.

In general, this was quite simply the best concert I've seen in Poland up until this point.

Habemus Papam

Annuntio vobis gaudium magnum; habemus Papam:

Eminentissimum ac Reverendissimum Dominum, Dominum Georgium Marium
Sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae Cardinalem Bergoglio qui sibi nomen imposuit Franciscum

And with that, Pope Francis was presented to the world as the first non-European pope of the modern age. While I was not in Rome for the news, and heard of it via the internet here in Poland, I feel like I should comment on this major occasion considering that Poland is 93% Catholic, at least officially, and that Francis ascends the Throne of St. Peter at a very interesting time. 

One thing I can't help but notice when reading about this election is how many practitioners of faiths other than Catholicism are taking a keen interest in the activities of the new Pope. This includes quite a few Protestants, some of them even evangelical, who as little as 50 years ago would have dismissed Francis as just another iteration of the Antichrist. From what I've observed, it is slowly beginning to dawn on religious people in the West that the commonalities between the various flavors of Christian are much more important than their differences, and the religious right is figuring out that their biggest opponents are those pushing relentless secularism, not the church in Rome. I think that John Paul II deserves a lot of credit for seeing this development decades ago, and working on improving interfaith relations. 

From what I've read of the American press, many American journalists who complain that the Pope is "out of touch" are themselves stuck in a parochial point of view. In Poland, where the faith is strong, nobody is pushing for allowing priests to marry or for gay marriage to be recognized. On the other hand, you can buy condoms just about anywhere you can get them in the States, and one Polish condom-maker has even gone so far as to have huge advertizements placed on the sides of prominent buildings endowed by a woman who is herself well-endowed endorsing the Skyn brand. The Polish answer to Viagra has commercials that air on prime-time TV, and unlike their American counterparts (which often suggest that this product will cause your spouse to put down the magazine she's reading, or will improve your ability to throw a football through a tire-swing), the Polish commercials are not coy about the intended purpose of the medication. Indeed, they feature a rear view of a shimmying woman (possibly the same one seen on the Skyn billboard) unclipping her bra, with a voiceover saying "some pictures look better when your equipment is working properly." 

My point is, yes, Poland is religious, but not repressed/begging to be set free of the bonds of overbearing religiosity. Some proposals that, say, The New York Times holds as vital if the Church is to survive and thrive are seen as weird, funny, and/or dangerous. 

The Pope is the leader of a global church, and must take the wishes of those outside of the United States (or indeed, the wishes of conservative Catholics in the United States) seriously. I do not expect to see major doctrinal changes coming out of the Vatican anytime soon. Though I do not want to get too political, I would also point out that some of the same organs that make the loudest arguments for cultural relativism and multiculturalism are the same that are the first and loudest to condemn the Roman church for having a dogma that they do not see as politically correct.

 I believe Francis' biggest challenges are going to be bureaucratic, not dogmatic. While many have said that the Pope's primary role is going to be as an evangelist, this time, ironically, to the First World, I don't see this as as large a role for this particular pope. Those who are still interested in the faith can probably be brought back if they see that the Church is well run or fulfills their spiritual needs better than some other sect. Those who are not interested in the faith in the West are probably not going to be brought around by slick marketing campaigns. Even if the Church does try to appear slick, young, hip, with-it and modern the result might well be another example of New Coke. 

What this particular Fisherman has to do is right the ship of state. The Church has been rocked by a number of scandals in recent years, and in the worst one, the sexual abuse cases, the Church has often come out looking shifty, callous, negligent and stupid. Leaks of Vatican documents and funny business at the Vatican Bank are also not helpful. By putting in a relative outsider from South America who is well-known for his frugality and modesty, I think the College of Cardinals made an inspired choice. The question is, will he be able to govern?  

A review of Król Lear

In my ongoing attempts to go to as many cultural events as possible, I spent last Thursday evening at Scena Stu's performance of Król Lear (King Lear). The theater itself is a very intimate space, with the house holding perhaps 200 on three sides of the stage. Unfortunately, the back rows in particular feature an almost hilarious utter lack of legroom to the point where it is almost more comfortable to sit in a lotus position. I was fortunate to be able to move...directly behind a pillar downstage-right.

Lear is probably my favorite Shakespeare play, as it is complex and weaves many threads much more seamlessly than Shakespeare manages in some of his other plays. Lear features primary protagonists who are archetypical anti-heroes (Lear, Gloucester), one villain who could be treated sympathetically (Edmund the Bastard), a protagonist who could have put a stop to all of this nonsense, but was too clueless to do so (Albany), three completely evil characters without redeeming features (Goneril, Regan, Cornwall), a fool who is wiser than the king he serves (The Fool) and three people who are faithful and loyal despite being badly mistreated by those to whom they remain loyal (Kent, Cordelia, Edgar). Loyalty is a central theme of the play, but so are statecraft, senility, old age, stubbornness and the need to heed good counsel and relations between parents and children. If handled well it's a beautiful play. If handled poorly it's an absolute mess.

What was striking about Scena Stu's performance was that they made certain alterations that fundamentally changed the character of the play. Most importantly, in the original text Cordelia marries the King of France after being disinherited, then invades Britain at the head of the French army. In the Stu version, the Kings of France and Burgundy don't make an appearance, and Cordelia goes into hiding as the Fool along with Kent! It's a handy way of explaining what happens to the Fool after act 4, as in the original that character just sort of disappears. However, it fundamentally changes the nature of the characters of both Cordelia and the Fool: the loyal daughter spends half the play making fun of her old man and mocking the fact that he let flattery get the best of him.The problem with this change is it makes the ending really really confusing: the army of France shows up in Dover....why? And why are all of our heroes trying to get to that army in Dover again? In the text that's very clear: everyone is trying to get to the location of the last decent person in the play with any kind of power.

This performance also entirely eliminates the characters of Cornwall and Albany, and with it the company cut out my favorite lines, namely "O my good lord, the Duke of Cornwall’s dead, / Slain by his servant, going to put out/ The other eye of Gloucester. (IV.2.71-73)" While this may have saved on personnel, I think this was ultimately a mistake: having those characters underscores the fact that Goneril and Regan are cheating on their respective husbands by pursuing Edmund, even when Regan's husband, Cornwall, is every bit as brutal and evil as his wife. In Cornwall and Regan I also see an interesting inversion of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, a dynamic that this play lacked. I've always found Albany to be an interesting character as he epitomizes the old saying that all that is needed for evil to prosper is for good men to do nothing. I've also always wondered if he was intended to be dumb or just stupid, i.e. how he could be that clueless is beyond me. Indeed, I've taken to calling him the "Dork of Albany" as that's a very suitable moniker.

Cutting Albany actually makes the very end of the play more unsettling than in the original, as after the death of Cordelia, Goneril, Regan and Lear the original implied that Albany (or in the Quarto version, Edgar) is now King. This version actually left it entirely unclear who's in charge of the country, leading to a lot of implied mayhem later. This led me to an interesting observation about both Poles and Shakespeare. In even the most tragic of Shakespeare tragedies, it is always clear who is in charge of the State at the end of the play. Though Hamlet ends with mostly everybody dead, at least Fortinbras is around as a designated successor to clean up the mess. Even when the play ends with power usurped, as it is in Richard II and Henry VI, it is usurped "cleanly" in that somebody is in charge by the end. In fact, in Romeo and Juliet Verona is much more orderly and peaceful at the end than it was at the beginning as a consolation prize for the fact that the two title characters were teenagers who just killed themselves. A possible exception to this rule is Julius Caesar, partly because Shakespeare wrote a sequel to it.

However, the Polish interpretations of Shakespeare I've seen tend to play up this idea of the State in chaos. The interpretation of Lear ends with both Edgar and Kent on stage, and it seemed to be implied that anarchy now reigned. In Macbeth, while Malcolm was left in charge it was implied that he was not up to the job. In both cases, I think these interpretations would hit very close to the bone in Poland: the history of this country is full of examples of tyranny, anarchy, and unclear political transitions. The Second Polish Republic from 1919 to 1939 was rife with strife including a Soviet invasion and a military coup. This country's last major political transition was only 23 years ago, and it's still far from completely smooth and completely finished. So while Shakespeare probably thought of anarchy as a very real threat, it was something unthinkable. Yet here, it's a recognized element of real-life drama. Aside from that, Lear was presented as mostly a drama about a family.

In general, I thought that this play was just a little bit too loud for my taste. The company as a whole seemed to have roughly two emotions: angry and crazed. Lear was read as a loony from start to finish, which is alright but I always found him more interesting as an unpleasant jerk who is gradually revealed as crazy. I thought the actor playing Lear was probably the weak link in the play, as his emotional range was simply too narrow. Goneril and Regan were good, and Gloucester was very solidly played as a kindly-enough salt of the earth type. Edmund was probably the best-played character: that actor has a career ahead of him as Richard III if he wants. Kent was just a little too hot-headed and angry for my taste. Edgar was perhaps the most disappointing, as he found himself mostly providing comic relief and acting more or less loony throughout. Though this made him a good foil for Edmund it did not make him a good foil for Lear: Edgar is the sane man who pretends to be crazy as a disguise, and in one scene he is found together with Lear, who actually is crazy. Cordelia/The Fool was well-played, though the Fool's wit was not as biting as I remember it being in the original. 

All in all, I found this performance bold but not entirely satisfying, as some of the changes simply did not work from a plot or dramatic perspective. A good ensemble also did not entirely cover the weaknesses of the lead. All in all, I give this performance two and a half stars out of four.

Pompeii and Herculaneum

"But afterwards there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune all your warlike men in a body sank into the earth, and the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea." -Plato

...Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

- Percy Shelley, Ozymandias

Pompeii and Herculaneum are perhaps the most famous Roman cities outside of Rome itself, and the tragedy that consumed both cities in 79 AD actually preserved a great deal of what we know about Roman life in the glory days of the Empire. In the death of both cities, Rome yet lives.

Herculaneum is the smaller and better-preserved of the two cities, partly because it was excavated later and not as extensively. A number of the houses still have wall frescoes and the baths still have their floor mosaics. Most of these pieces of art are about as artistic as the stuff most people probably have hanging in your living room, i.e. not all that good. Herculaneum was apparently a ritzy seaport town, and the quality of construction is highly variable from very cheap and shoddy to largely intact despite having been hit with pyroclastic surge. In short, it was Roman Suburbia sans two-chariot garages. Interestingly enough, speaking of cheap construction it was interesting to note that many of the Corinthian and other columns at both Pompeii and Herculaneum were not sold stone as we would think they are, but rather a brick core surrounded by a kind of concrete cladding. Some of the house construction did look a little slapdash/not exactly up to code, and in fact Herculaneum was home to a kind of "experimental" construction made largely of random rocks and library paste, more or less, that is not found in Pompeii because Pompeii apparently had stricter building codes.

Pompeii is much larger, though not many artifacts have been left in situ: if you want to see those frescoes and mosaics you've seen in all the books, you need to go to the Archaeological Museum in Naples. Apparently at some point the authorities were afraid of Vesuvius erupting again and burying the site along with destroying the now-very-vulnerable uncovered works of art. As such, entire segments of walls were removed for safekeeping. A fair amount of that artwork is erotic and as such was highly offensive to the Catholic rulers of Naples. For quite some time such works were kept behind locked doors in a "Secret Cabinet" (yes, that's what it is still called), and to this day in theory you need to be at least 14 and have an appointment in order to enter. This being Italy that for all intents and purposes means you can walk right in as long as you don't snicker too much or otherwise act like you're 12.   

What I found interesting about Herculaneum was that the buildings were very similar to the buildings of contemporary Italy as well as those of places like California: the Romans were doing Spanish Style Architecture well before the Spanish. It goes to dictate the mantra of architect Louis Sullivan that form follows function: the function is living in a Mediterranean climate without air conditioning, and the low-slung buildings have forms that were very familiar. Also, the shops and taverns in both locations were identifiably so, and not just because I read the brochure that came with the cost of admission. An eatery typically had two walls more or less open to the outside to let air in, the front was lined with a bar with built-in holders for soup urns, and to eat you would go to a back room. And in some of these back rooms were found carvings along the lines of "Naughtius Maximus was here" and "I have a very great friend in Rome called Biggus Diccus" proving that the human urge to leave graffiti on things is very, very old. I might have seen some of that kind of Roman graffiti, but (and this seriously irritated me), much more visible was modern graffiti, some of it dating back nearly 40 years ("Bob and Louise [heart] forever, May 1976" for example).

Pompeii was probably the more impressive of the two sites just for its sheer scale. We're talking block after block of complete devastation in a city that measures around 160 acres but feels bigger. It's probably about a mile long by about 3/4 of a mile wide. The baths, theater, and amphitheater stayed more or less intact, but other than that, well, you try dumping a layer of rocks 5 meters thick on your house from a tremendous height and see how the roof holds up. Oddly enough, the amphitheater is still in use as a performance space today, as there are row and seat numbers in each place. I will say that the legroom is not tremendous.

The curbs on the Roman sidewalks are actually quite high, and many streets had two large stones built into them. I need to do some reading as to what they were there for, but they appeared to function as a combination of speed bump and crosswalk. There are still wagon ruts visible in the streets closer to the industrial quarter of the city, and what seemed odd to me was that the fancier houses tended to be found closer to that quarter whilst the more modest ones were located near the theater. Some of these, in fact, looked like miserably small places to live though it is possible a few of them could have been shops instead. The main street of Pompeii (and it's fairly obvious which one this was) still has a few buildings with signs painted on the walls, things like "Gaius Flavius Wine Co.", that sort of stuff. There are also the ruins of a brothel in Pompeii, complete with 8 small rooms containing stone beds that are clearly too short for sleeping, and frescoes that show presumably satisfied customers. The historical record is mum as to whether certain politicians may have been recorded on plaster or papyrus and thereby blackmailed.

In general, I would recommend seeing the ruins in the order I saw them, i.e. seeing Pompeii with Herculaneum firmly in mind. Herculaneum makes it much easier to imagine what Pompeii must have been like when it was an active city, but Pompeii sparks more of the imagination in my opinion.

A roommate of Cassie's said that she doesn't like to go to Pompeii or Herculaneum because they remind her of Sachsenhausen. As someone who has also been to a concentration camp (see my earlier post in December on Majdanek), I think that's not a fair comparison. Both were places where about 20,000 people died in one day. Despite that, while Pompeii can be a sad place, it is not a place of evil. It was a place that had an accident. Vesuvius didn't kill those people on purpose, it erupted because, well, that's what volcanoes do. I am not yet so thoroughly cynical that I would say, "well, in the camps people killed people, because that's just what people do."


It is also worth noting how people died in both Pompeii and Herculaneum. I saw two of the famous plaster-cast people at Pompeii, and it was remarkable how peaceful both of them looked, as if they were just sleeping. Current thought is that what killed the vast majority of people at both sites is in fact pyroclastic flow, or a rush of hot gases at temperatures of above 250 C. Most of those who died never knew what hit them.

Instead of being monuments of human evil, Pompeii and Herculaneum are monuments of human frailty and that's what makes them scary. Looking up at the mountain looming over the entire scene, and perhaps feeling a small earthquake while walking in the street, were reminders that even though 2000 years have passed, when Vesuvius rumbles and erupts again, we are still powerless to do anything other than get out of the way.