Introducing the Mattäuspassion to a Japanese audience
Piety and scholarship
As a followup to my recent post on the BCJ’s performance of the St. Matthew Passion, I was curious to know what sorts of matters—musical, historical, theological—needed to be explained to a Japanese audience. Bach’s Lutheran piety is slightly off-center to mainstream English-speaking Christianity, which trends either Evangelical Protestant or Roman Catholic. But the cultural heritage of Christianity weighs heavily with those of us raised in the West.
Readers of this site likely have some knowledge of Jesus’ life, are aware of the sources of that story, and the significance of the passion event for Christians. You might even know that Jesus was from Galilee, not Jerusalem, which is important for the story. In my educational work here in Japan, including among my students at Japan Lutheran College, I am assured by colleagues that there is no such thing as too much introduction to Christianity. Abraham? Moses? Ten Commandments? Psalms? Gospels? Prophets? Scripture? Forgiveness? Baptism? Hope? Resurrection? All of these are very foreign terms, and need constantly to be reinterpreted.
Or better: there’s nothing native for Christian vocabulary to stick to. I understand this reality very, very well as an (eternal!) student of Japanese. It’s such a foreign language, that at first, and for a very, very long time, the words just passed through my brain like water through a sieve. Until the basics settle in, until the neural scaffolding is in place, linguistic construction languishes. It’s the same for Christian concepts here. No explanation can be too much.
The first thing the neophyte (or veteran, for that matter) will note is that this program is no joke. The sixty-six-page booklet sold for ¥2000 is a bona fide study edition of the text. A full 32 pages are given over to a German/Japanese parallel of the libretto, with a translation by Kazuhiro Fujiwara, who spent most of the 1990s in Tübingen studying under Ulrich Siegele. The ample textual notes were created by Maestro Suzuki himself, with keyword descriptions by the translator.
This study text is preceded by several introductory articles. Maestro Suzuki’s six-page Preambulum places the world-theological significance of the St. Matthew Passion in its geographical, then musical setting (more on this in a subsequent post). Ancient music critic Hiroko Kato’s “Navigate” article describes how the Passion is performed in today’s Leipzig, and how originally it was a Christian worship service. For this critic, St. Matthew is more accessible than St. John for its gentleness, as indicated especially by “Erbarme dich,” a meditation on Peter’s denial, which Bach has painted musically in the same style as Rembrandt did artistically: “The dramatic effect of Jesus turning and staring at Peter [in the moment of his denial] is breathtaking.”
The customary bios of the featured artists follow, then a further six-page text by musicologist Kazuo Niibayashi introduces the history of the Passion as a musical form in Western culture up to and after Bach. In addition to a general outline of the musical forms and the sources of Picander’s libretto in Luther’s translations of Scripture and church chorales, Niibayashi outlines the basics of Bach’s musical rhetoric, including the use of various instruments for meaning and affect. He ends by calling attention to the privilege of carrying on the long Passion tradition in this year’s troubled world.
Following the libretto (more on this later) are a couple of short pieces by Take5 (BIS) producer Marion Schwebel and soprano Aki Matsui about their experiences with the Bach Collegium Japan. The program concludes with several more pages dedicated to sponsors and advertisements, including the newly formed “Grand Bach Hotel” (more on this, too!)
So this year’s St. Matthew Passion concertgoers received a thorough introduction to Bach’s music, its history, and how the thousand year old tradition of passion music continues to live and console in the troubled Japan of 2022.