Musical Event

Mass in B Minor

Last Sunday afternoon a goodly number of musical enthusiasts armed with rugs and cushions defied the hardness of Room B2 seats for three hours to hear a rare treat—the Mass in B Minor.

Bach wrote several masses, and parts of them were sometimes performed in the Lutheran churches of Leipzig—but the B Minor is written on such a scale that it is quite beyond the bounds or any church service—either Catholic or Protestant. It is only heard occasionally now at a concert performance.

The "Kyrie Eielson" (No. 1) is surely the greatest fugue ever written—the instruments and voices play and sing the subject alike, moving through the strong rhythm and difficult intervals with certainty. For some reason or other I have never appreciated Walter Widdop's voice to the extent it probably deserves admiration—consequently during his arias and duets I was slightly bored, but the florid passages of the arias were full of deep feeling and meaning—be it the joyousness of the "Laudamus te" or the Intensely earnest prayer of the contralto's "Agnus Dei."

In places Bach seems to deliberately illustrate the meaning of special words by some feature of his music—in the "Credo" there are some wonderful passages where the voices sink to low soft tones: In "Crucifixus" a remarkable and overwhelming feeling of hopeless sorrow is obtained by a ground bass descending in semitones. From the low tones of "Passus et sepultus est" there is a pause before that exhilarating and thrilling [unclear: re le co] challenging and carrying one along in that perfect impersonal exulted way that only Bach alone can do.

Another flashing splendour of his imaginative insight is the "et expecto ressurectionen mortuorum" which seemed to give a glimpse of that boundless eternity. Throughout these two choruses I was inevitably reminded of the great double chorus of his St. Matthew's Passion—both are so full of realism, and mystic beauty linked with strength.

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The Passion Music will be presented some time later, too—just a word in advance.

—V.E.