Passiontide Music Of Masters

Radio Record, 8 April 1938, Page 19

Passiontide Music Of Masters

WORKS OF BACH AND STAINER TO BE BROADCAST

S Passiontide comes round each year, the churches \ prepare special music to commemorate ‘the solemn events of Holy Week. On Good Friday evening, radio listeners will have the choice of Bach’s "Passion According to St. Matthew" relayed by 3YA from the Christchurch Anglican Cathedral. and Stainer’s oratorio, "The Crucifixion," which is to be broadcast by 2YA on relay from St. Thomas’s Church, Wellington, and by 4YA from a special choral rendering in the studio, When the great Bach set himself, more than 200 years ago, to compose ‘his Passion music, he had perforce to use the form which the church of his day accepted, strange medley as that was of operatic and ecclesiastical Styles. He cast his ideas in that mould with such splendid effect that, to this day it seems exactly right, simple, and yet with a nobility which no one else has ever since achieved. It is on a very big scale, for solo voices, three choirs, two of the usual men’s and women’s voices, and one of boys’ voices, and-orchestra. The choirs are used sometimes to round off the scenes of the narrative, either with simple chorales or with choral meditations, and sometimes to take part: in the actual unfolding of the drama,

The telling of the story is in the hands of a narrator-called the Eyan-gelist-a tenor soloist in a series of recitative, with orchestral and organ accompaniment, The utterances of our Lord. Himself, though also recitatives. are more neatly in arioso form, with a.more flowing. melodious line, and.are meant to he accompanied by the strings alone, By that Bach had in mind, no doubt, the more ethereal tone quality. which belongs to the strings than to the full orchestra and organ, Within its smaller frame, Sir John Stainer’s oratorio, "The Crucifixion," is as true a picture of the church of his own age and country,-as Bach’s great musie is of romantic Germany and Luther’s Reformation. The work is quite short; solo voices and chorus in turn set forth the story, heginning "And they came to a place named Gethsemane." The -utterances of our Lord are given sometimes to a solo tenor voice, sometimes to a bass, and at several points to the chorus; as in the "St. Matthew Passion," choral and orchestral. .as well as solo, interludes break in on the narrative with meditations, and each section is closed by a simple hymn, in which the congregation is instructed to join with the choir. The musie is English in restraint and dignity.