Good evening friends, I hope you’re all well and are looking forward to the weekend! Another fantastic rehearsal on Wednesday as we continue our romp through Bach’s St John Passion. I want to reiterate what I said on Wednesday here – please don’t be daunted by the piece as we rush through it! I know it’s a lot and it is tricky, but my aim with this month is to give you a good overview of the whole work, rather than breaking it down and learning it in great detail; we’ll be doing that in Spring 2025 as we work towards the concert.
What we did – Wednesday 11th September
This week was an interesting one – we looked at one of the larger structures in the piece – the Herzstück (the centerpiece of the entire work). Below is the whole chiasmus (symmetry) structure, which draws our focus to No. 22 – the chorale Durch dein Gefängnis, Gottes Sohn. Hopefully it makes a bit more sense now we’ve sung it and you can see the corresponding highlighted numbers.
- We began with No. 39 (p204), finishing up the ending from last week. We got a bit of a feel for the text, emphasised by that lamentation through the flowing melody.
- Following this we looked at the outer symmetry, learning and comparing Nos. 18b (p88) & 23f (p140), then Nos. 21b (p102) & 25b (p152).
- After this we saw the inner symmetry of Nos. 21d (p107) & 23d (p133), and Nos. 21f (p113) & 23b (p124).
- We finished by learning the focus of the entire work, No. 22 (p123).
To catch up: If you missed this rehearsal, please study this chart above, and listen to each of the corresponding numbers, noting their similarities.
What we’ll do – Wednesday 18th September
This week we’ll be looking at the climax of the work, then the end of the first half. The numbers we’ll cover are: No. 26 (p157), No. 27b (p159), No. 28 (p170), No. 32 (p178), No. 11 (p52), No. 12b (54) and No. 14 (p64).
Below is the rehearsal plan for the September rehearsals of the Bach. If you’d like to get ahead of the game, this is what we’ll be doing.
Marked Scores
The marked score will be provided over Christmas, in time for the Spring rehearsals, but below is a link to the unmarked score for anyone who would like to use it on their tablets. As the edition is still in copyright, and this page is open to the public, the document is password protected. Annabel will be sending round an email shortly with the password to view it. Sorry for the inconvenience, and thanks for understanding.
Learning Guides
We’ll be providing plenty of resources for the Spring term to help you with learning the piece, including lots of language pronunciation guides for the German (we’ll also be organising some language coaching for the choir too)!
In the meantime, I’ve found a pronunciation guide for the chorales, as well as some note-learning via John Fletcher Music and Choralia, which you can check out free of charge below.
– Chorale Pronunciation Guide HERE.
– Choralia HERE.
– John Fletcher Music HERE.
Listening Guides
As always I try to provide good recordings for you to listen to to help with the learning.
The recommended recording on Spotify HERE. For those who don’t use Spotify, this is the recording by John Eliot Gardiner and The Monteverdi Choir (2011).
The recommended live performance is on YouTube HERE.
Of course, the other recording that’s worth listening to is the BBC Prom, where it was performed this year. It’s available on BBC Sounds HERE.
Future Events
One last plug for the newCHOIR vocal workshop on Saturday 14th September, led by guest conductor Janet Lincé – if you’ve worked with Janet before, you’ll know how brilliant she is, so this is not one to miss! Places are very limited, so do check it out HERE.
And... CRAG concerts are back! Do go and support this wonderful concert series.
This Week’s listening
More lovely dissonance from Bach – one of his cantatas for Alto: Like the John Passion, it has an absolutely arresting opening, filled with wonderful crunches. Check out Widerstehe doch der Sünde HERE.
See you all on Wednesday 18th September
– Ben