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| Photo: Maxim Reider |
The Jerusalem Baroque Orchestra opened its 30th season with a concert commemorating 400 years of the Thirty Years’ War. Guest conductor and prominent musicologist Joshua Rifkin (USA), no new face to JBO audiences, directed a program of pieces from Heinrich Schütz’ “Symphoniae Sacrae” and other of the composer's choral works. This writer attended the event at the Jerusalem International YMCA on October 15th, 2018. Prior to the concert, Oded Feuerstein (Faculty of History, Tel Aviv University) filled the audience in on the hairbrained roller coaster course ride of the Thirty Years’ War, a war of shifting alliances fought primarily in Central Europe from 1618 to 1648. One of the most destructive conflicts in human history, it resulted in eight million fatalities, those not only from military engagements but also from violence, famine, and plague.
Often referred to as the greatest German composer of the generation before Johann Sebastian Bach, Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672) left almost no secular music and, though a celebrated organist, he published no instrumental music. Nearly all his surviving works are settings of sacred texts, many of them in the grand style of the Flemish polychoral writing he had learned from Gabrieli, in which individual voices clash in emotionally-laden dissonances, then resolving into gentle consonance; then there are works in the newer, dramatic style of his other great teacher Monteverdi, these fired by the emotional power of detailed, visual description and vivid poetic imagery.
Rifkin’s article in the printed program offers a vivid account of the connection between the great Protestant composer and his times, claiming that “Schütz had repeated occasion to reflect the course of the war in his music.” Providing the motet texts (some in German, others in Latin, together with translations into English and Hebrew) was a great advantage to the audience, offering the listener more than a glimpse into Schütz’ involvement with the war, either emotionally or, as in “Da pacem, Domine” (Give Peace, O Lord), in point of fact. Composed for the Mühlhausen Conclave of 1627, to which Schütz accompanied his employer Elector Johann Georg and the court ensemble, “Da pacem, Domine” is scored for two choirs. Having opened with a prayer for peace, it then proceeds to welcome the VIPs attending the meeting:
“Vivat Moguntinus, - MainzVivat Coloniensis, - Cologne
Vivat Trevirensis, - Trier
Vivant tria fundamina pacis. (= the three Founders of Peace)
Vivat Ferdinandus, Caesar invictissimus. - Emperor
Vivat Saxo, - Saxony
Vivat Bavarus, - Bavaria
Vivat Brandenburgicus - Brandenburg
Vivant tria tutamina pacis. (= the three Peace Keepers)
Vivat Ferdinandus, Caesar invictissimus.”
Accompanied by organ (David Shemer, JBO founder and musical director), this made for interesting listening, with the singers’ individual timbres and utterances emerging with clarity.
Reflecting religious attitudes of the time, the Thirty Years’ War was seen as an expression of God’s anger to man, with some motets, such as the more intimate “Aufer immensam” (Take away, O God, your great anger) showing man as a sinner and giving expression to the people’s helplessness in the plight:
“Why does your great wrath
Descend on us poor worms
O great creator of the world?”
Others, such as “Teutoniam dudum belli” (Germany is so long beset by war’s dark perils) anticipate more peaceful times:
“Let the whole of the Elbe resound, and all of Meissen:
O may good peace bring a thousand joys to all!”
Peace is also idealized in “Siehe, wie fein und lieblich” (Behold, how good and pleasant), (Psalm 333), the JBO’s splendid instrumental playing matched by buoyant singing of the almost visually descriptive text, also taking the Israeli listener to locations close to home:
...“It is like the precious ointment
That flows from Aaron’s head
Into his whole beard,
Flowing down into his robe
Like the dew that falls from Mt. Harmon onto Mt. Zion…”
Apparently written for the thanksgiving service in 1650, with the withdrawal of the last foreign troops from Saxony, the lush, tranquil “Nun danket alle Gott” (Now let everyone thank God), highlights the word “Friede” (peace). At the Jerusalem concert, dialogue between the violins and between the various singers created a sense of community and well-being.
Performed by six singers (two choirs), violins, violone and organ, “Saul, Saul, was verfolgst du mich?” (Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?) was for me the high point of the concert. Here, Schütz’ daring writing takes on an enterprising- and emotional approach, as the repetition of Saul’s name, separated by rests, starts out as mysterious musings, then to burgeon into a vehement volley of accusations. Violinists Noam Schuss and Dafna Ravid’s playing added more intensity to the already gripping effect of the monosyllable cried out and tossed between the two halves of the double choir. As the piece nears its conclusion, the music leaves no listener unmoved as it soars to dizzying contracted rhythmic patterns and terraced echoes.
Joshua Rifkin has put together a program of great interest, presenting audiences with detail of the direct encounter between Schütz and the religious/political events of the Thirty Years’ War. A collaboration between young professional singers and those longer established on the early music scene, Rifkin varied constellations of singers and players for the different pieces, some to be conducted by him, others collaborating by way of their acquired insight into the music and, of course, by eye contact. The small instrumental ensemble offered some exquisite playing.
Singers: the Cecilia Soloists Ensemble - Hadas Faran, Tom Ben Ishai, Hillel Sherman, Yoav Meir Weiss - and Adaya Peled, Simon Lillystone (UK), Haggai Grady, Jonathan Suissa, Elam Rotem. Instrumental ensemble: violinists Noam Schuss (leader) and Dafna Ravid, Orit Messer-Jacobi-’cello, Hen Goldsobel-violone, Alexander Fine-dulcian, David Shemer-organ.
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