BACH AND HIS PASSIONS

The MBC has organised a fascinating interactive symposium which will serve to whet our appetite for the March 19 concert. This will take place on Monday 1 March at 7.30 pm in the Aikenhead Lecture Theatre, Aikenhead Wing, St Vincent’s Hospital, c/o Nicholson St and Victoria Parade (enter on Vic Pde about 20 metres from the intersection).

We are fortunate to have on our panel John O’Donnell - founder/director of the Ensemble Gombert and  internationally renowned keyboard artist and musicologist;  Andreas Loewe - the newly appointed chaplain of Trinity College, University of Melbourne and a former member of the Faculty of Divinity at Cambridge University; and our very own John Gregory – an art historian at Monash University who has a particular interest in sacred art.

There is no need to book for the symposium; just come along on 1 March.  $10 donation.

                           THE PRESENTERS AND THEIR THEMES:

John Gregory

…… who has been singing in choirs since he was young, is a senior lecturer in Theory of Art & Design at Monash University. He completed his PhD at the University of Melbourne working on German medieval manuscript illumination. He teaches and writes on various topics in art history and visual culture from the medieval and Renaissance periods to the present. His monograph on Melbourne painter Howard Arkley was published by Cambridge University Press in 2006.

John will provide a visual backdrop to Bach’s vivid and emotional setting of St Matthew’s narrative of Christ’s Passion, through a consideration of aspects of the rich artistic tradition associated with the theme. Over the centuries, artists have depicted images and episodes from the Passion story in widely differing ways and for different purposes: as a ‘Bible of the Illiterate’ (to quote Gregory the Great), to elicit intense emotional responses from worshippers, to probe complex theological questions, or to ponder the universal themes involved: betrayal, suffering, sacrifice, redemption and love. John will discuss a range of works of art from the medieval era to the present, including Australian examples.

Andreas Loewe

….has been singing the music of J. S. Bach since he was a treble boy chorister and hasn’t tired of it. An academic historian and theologian, he has written extensively about the history of the German and English reformations.  He is the College Chaplain of Trinity College, the University of Melbourne, and very much looks forward to a liturgical performance of CPE Bach’s St Matthew Passion in Chapel on this coming Good Friday..

Bach’s Passions revolutionised Lutheran passion-tide devotion.  Unlike earlier plainchant or polyphonic settings of the biblical texts, his libretti combined Luther’s translation of the Biblical narrative with popular hymns and contemporary devotional poetry. For Luther, music was a fundamental vehicle to communicate the Word of God and to effect a personal response.  Bach’s detailed musical exegesis and word setting perfect Luther’s ideal and reveal the composer as theologian and preacher. Where earlier composers regarded the congregation as passive, Bach’s Passions call for a personal and corporate response. Andreas will examine Bach’s word setting in the Passions, the relationship between music and theological interpretation, and his belief that ‘in devotional music God is always present by his grace.’

John O'Donnell

…. Choir Director, Ormond College, and Monash University Organist, is an internationally renowned keyboard artist, choral conductor and musicologist. As organist and harpsichordist he tours Europe regularly and is the first person ever to perform Bach's complete keyboard works in public. His recordings of the keyboard works of Johann Caspar Kerll and organ works of Bach have met with international acclaim, the latter named "Recording of the Year" (2000) in the International Record Review. He is keyboard player of Capella Corelli, musical director of the choir of the Canterbury Fellowship, and founder/director of Ensemble Gombert.

Johann Abraham Birnbaum (1702–1748), Professor of Poetics and Rhetoric at Leipzig, said of Bach that “he so perfectly understood the resemblance that the performance of a musical piece has in common with rhetorical art that he was listened to with the utmost satisfaction and pleasure when he discoursed on the similarity and agreement between them; but we also wonder at the skilful use he made of this in his works”. John will consider Bach as musical orator, looking at some of the means he employed to communicate his message to his congregation. John will also touch on elements of symbolism, overt and covert, that are part of Bach’s language.