I'm not sure what you mean by that, but to the extent you imply that his
performances are based on musicology, for what it's worth he denies being
a musicologist.

 Herreweghe offers a radical interpretation of the Christian
: drama. Gone is the agony and grief suggested by "Come ye daughters, share my
: mourning ... he himself his cross is bearing" and in its place a jaunty
: opening chorus reflecting the joy of the liberating crucifixion. Jesus will,
: after all, rise again in three days bringing victory - and in the meantime
: the demons are happy. Purged of all negative emotions, this performance can
: be safely recommended for children everywhere.

Jauntiness is in the ear of the beholder, of course.  I wonder what you
make of Scherchen and Koussevitzky, who take a mere extra 10 and 30
seconds respectively over the opening chorus.

Sounds jaunty to me. I'll take Klemperer - I'm in no hurry.

Dave

SDG,
Zach

  As you know all too well -- in the period-performance
renditions, the tempo for the opening tends to be faster,
causing some listeners reared on the Klemperer to be very put
out by its seeming shallowness and lack of a feeling of
emotional loss.

  Here's my own summary of the defense for the newer (to us)
approach (much discussed through the years on various forums).

  The opening, when we read the text carefully, has as much to
do with the marketplace as it does a funeral.  It's not so
much 'dance' - as some complain - (though baroque music just
tends to be based on dance) but the pulse of life, and here we
have people who are seeing Jesus marched through the streets but
who have no idea why, nor who he is.  What?  Who? is the
continuing voiced question.  The movement of daily life is the
focus, interrupted by these interjections, as people going about
their normal day wonder what is going on.

  In other words, the opening-scene/play is performed as if we are
back there, in the present, living/re-living that Passion-story,
rather than only remembering the ending of that story or even
noting it in advance though we sure have plenty of clues.

  So, rather than the lament we're used to hearing from
Klemperer (which I love), we're hearing something more like a
play -- the movement of notes now based on the other part of the
text of Bach's composition.  I think this is certainly a valid
interpretation of the music, even if what we're used to is valid
also, in another way - the Klemperer a lamentation based on what
we know is ahead, even if the people exclaiming 'Who? What?'
have no idea and at this point in the re-enacted Passion don't
care that much.

  My own preferred performance of the opening to the St. Matthew
would combine both approaches, as both are found in the music.
All in minor, and in one of the most beautiful series of
progressions we'll ever hear, we're told that behind the hurly
burly and the bzzz about who that is and what is happening, is a
universal horror story of what man will to our best and how
easily we can do it.

  So, I guess what I would like in another version is a somewhat
less leaden tempo, using instead the tension of the lines but
not short-shrifting the underlying sorrow of the storyteller,
while we also hear the sounds of ordinary life, of innocence and
curiosity, of people not yet touched by what is happening.

  - A

On 2 May 2000, Andrys D Basten wrote:

You presented well your case, but I simply don't believe that that is a
winning case.

1) Those rhetoric questions (part of the musical antiphonal concept
"staged" by Bach in Matthaus) cannot be undamagingly isolated from the
entire conception of the piece, or, if that's too much, from the initial
piece. How can one isolate the questions you are talking about from their
answers? How could one obscure that the CROSS appears from the first piece
(Holz zum Kreuze selber tragen!)? Then the concept of "innocent God's
lamb" (i.e. *sacrificial* Holy "Lamb"), already present in the fourth
verse, refers directly and painfully to the incoming scriptural facts.

2) The rhetoric questions of the choir may be: an oratoric pretext for
giving *the answers*; an (antique Greek tragedy choir-like) comment, which
may *seem* detached from the point of view of the "action", but it is very
much part of the dramatic web.

3) A la rigueur, the antiphonal concept present even in the first piece
may be imagined as to aggregate already the conflict between the two
"future" (in theatrical time) concepts of "human agglomeration"--cruel and
gregarious vs. communitarian and compassionate.

The "asking" crowd might be as well, perhaps, embodying the indifference,
the one that do not care about the divine message and messenger, thus
becoming the potential condemners of Jesus vs. the "answering" crowd may
be the conscious-become community unto faith.

4) Most important: the music itself. The tension created by the immensely
prolonged E pedal in the beginning, which bears the enormous "quiet
tumult" in the upper voices.

From a musical point of view, it is remarkable, in an 18th century piece,
written in a minor key, this continuation of such a pedal (and the
reiteration of it, later, on the dominant, presented as a *minor* chord as
well), as exceptional as the absence, on this pedal, of the dominant major
chord. We have, at least for part of the piece, only the [minor]
subdominant, the [minor as well!] dominant, and myriads of different
altered seventh and minor ninth chords, all of which objectively
contribute to build long-line tension, and not dancing-like staging of a
real (-only) people's being "surprised" and "informing" themselves
in the agora on "what's happening, folks?". Bach's use of harmony is so
masterful, that he makes the "lowest" (i.e. most "depressing") point of
his harmonic travaille to coincide with the words "auf unsre Schuld", the
psychological climax of the piece. Such words Bach, as a passionate
Christian, could not have intended to be said just as "un petit mot en
passant". He did mean them, ritually *and* literally.

5) Architecture: Bach was one of the greatest "organicists" in music, but
was as well the splendid architect we (perhaps better) know. The initial E
Minor piece is one of the two (or three, if we count the middle one, in E
Major, if memory serves) great pillars of the whole Matthaus-P,
corresponding to the final C Minor one.

Yes, between the beginning and the end, something "evolved" but something
remained "the same" as well, as in Christian theology Jesus' drama is
*concretely* "happening" all the time, 'till the end of history, but
Christ, as Son of God, transfigured figure beyond history, the "Word
that was in the beginning", Christ will exist before the beginning as he
existed after the end (pardon my wilfully contorted tenses).
Matthaus-Passion does "evolve" and does "become", but a tragic
wind blows powerfully from the first low E of this masterpiece, because
the knowledge of the tragic exit informs each temporally-"staged" Passion.  

(I always wondered if this beginning inspired Brahms in his own beginning,
on an F pedal, of the German Requiem).

I would also add that the choice of fast tempi is not the first and
foremost problem in the HIP versions I've heard. Actually I always found
the tempo adopted by Klemperer a bit slow, *in principle*, if, however,
perfectly justified by that particular master. Also the problems are not
necessarily the period instruments or the soloists or the choirs (which,
sometimes, especially the choirs I've heard, happen to be truly excellent)
but the conductor and his musical conceptions. Harnoncourt conducted
awfully SMP even with Concertgebouworkest. Some good soloists were
wasted, IMO, in terribly conducted recordings. If, in the opening mvt. of
SMP, the conductor's MAIN concern is rendering the 12/8 rhythm in an
um-pah-pah, um-pah-pah manner, this approach, combined with the fastish
tempo, gives an involuntarily funny and undeniably inappropriate waltz
spirit, obscuring in the same time the "urlinie" that grants organicity to
the music, as well as the radical harmonic events that should inform the
color and the phrasing of the poli-melodic texture. (A very simple example:
right in the beginning, there is a fundamental line,  e--f#-g#-a-b-c#-d#-e
line, hidden in the rich texture, and having a rhythm of its own,
compellingly irregular--[unwritten] dotted half-notes mixed with
quarter-notes. With Harnoncourt, the obstinacy of the dancing, invariable
rhythmicized ornamentation makes the grander line [that reflects the
harmonic progression] indistinguishable. Harnoncourt's use of staccato
also obnubilates, even in HIP terms, the cathedral resonance that makes
the staccato more a matter of eloquent declamation -- clearly *started*,
"attacked" sounds that reverberate freely afterwards, than a matter
of concrete, aural shortness, sounds being drastically cut). More some
other time.

The rhythm in the opening is a Heart Beat representing Jesus in his humanity
in the supreme act of the heart - "Greater love has no man ...". At
Klemperer's tempo, one can also hear the pulse of the breathing of Jesus -
again reflecting his humanity. It is perverse scholarship, that turns this
into a dance!