“Speak what we feel not what we ought to say.......”

In the past two or three weeks Pat and I have been fortunate to attend two wonderful events. Just before Easter we went again to King’s College Chapel in Cambridge, this time to see the mighty St Matthew Passion by JS Bach and two nights ago we attended, here in Nottingham,  a live streaming from the National Theatre in London of Shakespeare’s monumental work King Lear. These two overwhelming works are without doubt high water marks of western culture – the Passion often regarded as the greatest musical and devotional work of all time and Lear  one of the very greatest pieces of literature, the defining work of Shakespeare and the role that all great classical actors aspire to play once in their life time.

Simon Russell Beale - arguably the greatest classical actor
of his day and his Lear one of the great interpretations of the role

On these evenings as we walked through the two cities’ streets after the performances our minds were a confusion of what we had seen and heard. On both occasions I felt both overawed and humbled, privileged to have been there but at the same time reminded of my smallness in the great scheme of things. Both works, in their different ways, are about the essential nature of mankind and our tiny place in things greater than ourselves. Both works remind us of what it is to be human, of mankind’s frailties and his darker sides. Both equally remind us of mankind’s great capacities to rise to the heights of human endeavour and to reach for the heavens. Both are massive, sprawling works – they are not really “entertainments”, as are most plays or pieces of music, but rather expressions of faith and of man’s journey through life with all its triumphs, hopes, joys,  fears, disasters and failures. Watching King Lear makes us peer into the darkest recesses of our souls. Listening to the Matthew Passion confronts us with mankind's primitive and innermost need for a belief in something greater than us. Both are works that raise questions and emotions about the things that separate us from the animal kingdom. At the end of each applause seemed an inadequate or indeed inappropriate response for such works – although applaud the audience did for the wonderful performances and talents of those taking part.

Andreas Scholl (centre) takes his final bow

As we walked through the streets of Nottingham on Thursday night after sitting, open jawed,  for three and a half hours as the mighty tale of Lear  unfolded a few of the final words of the play repeated and repeated in my mind...

“The weight of this sad time we must obey;

Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say....

“Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say” - words indeed seemed inadequate to describe the performance of Lear and in particular the performance of actor Simon Russell Beale who played the part. Such was the intensity of the play that for the three and a half hours the audience had sat totally engrossed, overwhelmed, I think. Not once did I find myself casting my eyes around the darkened auditorium, my attention starting to flag. Not once did I look at my watch or wonder how much longer it would be before the end or the interval. I was aware that during the harrowing first half of the play, the two ladies sitting at the side of me were a little unsettled, often looking down and away from the screen. At the interval they left – they were finding it all just too intense and overbearing – not violent or unseemly, but rather, the feelings and emotions of the characters just too much to bear. I could understand that – it was pushing our emotional parameters to the very edge. I can only assume that the actors (and Russell Beale in particular) must have left the stage at the final curtain their emotions and minds shredded. Such words as Pat and I were able  to mumble as we left the Broadway Cinema to make our way back to the car park seemed strangely misplaced and irrelevant.  We could make no great perceptive comments about the quality of the acting or the way the play had been produced but just simply mumble our amazement, our awe, our emotional response to a gut wrenching evening - in fact, playing out Edgar’s words in those last few lines of the play “Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say” . It was a time for the emotions rather than the head to rule the mouth. Indeed, even when we got home and enjoyed a cup of coffee before going to bed we sat, gazing in front of us, still lost for something clever or meaningful to say!

The glory of King's College Chapel

It was the same with The St Matthew Passion. Like Lear  it begins mightily – the opening chorus “Come Ye daughters, share my weeping....” one of the great pieces of western music. A piece that stirs dark feelings of unease – sadly it is often today cheaply used in crime or horror films to depict an evil setting. As the first strains of the chorus were heard in King’s College Chapel the hairs on the back of the neck tingled. And at the end the equally unsettling final chorus “We bow our heads in tears and sorrow..... “  a piece of quite overwhelming desolation left everyone silent and emotionally drained. Either of these two great choruses could have begun and ended Lear – the emotions and messages about humanity were the same. And between these two choruses, as with Lear,  three hours of gut wrenching intensity as the tale of the Passion unfolds and man’s inhumanity to man and to Christ is retold. As I sat in King’s, listening there appeared often in my mind’s eye a picture of  the great  statue by Michelangelo – the Pietà in St Peter’s in Rome. That statue, like Bach’s great work, speaks of the human condition and the extremes of humanity - it goes beyond a simple work of art to enjoy or to make meaningful  intellectual comment upon its quality. It is, instead, an emotional, human and spiritual experience where words are an irrelevance.

The Matthew Passion comes to an end in King's

The Passion  in Cambridge was performed by a world class group of performers. Steven Cleobury, Director of Music at King’s, conducted the Academy of Ancient Music and his own boy and men choristers of the  King’s College Choir. The soloists were world class but above all one stood out – indeed, it was the prime reason for Pat and me attending the concert. It was a once in a life time opportunity to see and hear the world’s greatest countertenor - the German singer Andreas Scholl. In the Passion  the countertenor does not have a huge part but Scholl was magnificent – like the supreme singer and musician that he is he looked totally at ease and “connected” with the audience. It felt as if he was singing personally to everyone in the Chapel such was his magnetic power and wonderful voice. 

A contemporary print of a castrato - note his massive
chest and long legs

For those unfamiliar with the countertenor’s voice and history it is the role that in the 17th and early 18th century was taken by the great castrati of the day. In those days the castrati were revered above all singers – they were males with a singing voice equivalent to that of a soprano or mezzo-soprano. The high pitched male voice was produced by castration of the singer before puberty. As the castrato's body grew, his lack of testosterone meant that bone-joints did not harden in the normal manner. Thus the limbs of the castrati often grew unusually long, as did the bones of their ribs. This, combined with intensive training, gave them unrivalled lung-power and breath capacity. Operating through small, child-sized vocal cords, their voices were also extraordinarily flexible, and quite different from the equivalent adult female voice. Their vocal range was huge and the greatest of the castrati such as  the Italian Farinelli, became the first operatic superstars, earning enormous fees and hysterical public adulation. When Farinelli performed in London one report said “Farinelli drew every Body to the Haymarket. What a Pipe! What Modulation! What Extasy to the Ear!”  Another said "Farinelli has surprised me so much that I feel as though I had hitherto heard only a small part of the human voice, and now have heard it all ...."  One titled lady was so carried away that, from a theatre box, she famously cried in the middle of the performance: "One God, one Farinelli!"  Though his official salary was £1500 for a season, gifts from admirers increased this to something more like £5000, an enormous sum at the time. Farinelli was not unique – he was by no means the only castrati singer to receive such large amounts.

Andreas Scholl

Of course, times changed and castrati died out – but countertenors like Scholl who train their voices to reach the higher registers are still much in demand, superstars in their own right and absolutely essential if the great music of those past years is to be reproduced with any accuracy.  And, whatever the issues surrounding the castrati or the modern countertenor there is absolutely no doubt that the sound produced by Farinelli or his modern day equivalent  Scholl is quite superb – giving a rare quality  and depth of sound, emotion and feeling that no other singer can begin to match – perfect for a piece such as the St Matthew Passion.

But, wonderful though the night in Cambridge was it was not only about Scholl. It was wonderful to see and hear the famous King’s College Choir. We had seen them only a few weeks before in the Monteverdi Vespers of 1610 (see blog of March 9^th) but the Passion is a different thing altogether if only because of its massive length. It was a salutary and humbling reminder of what even young children can do when expectations of them are high, they are motivated and when their teacher (Stephen Cleobury) demand the very best. To see the boy choristers – many of whom were not yet ten  produce a world class musical sound, retain their total concentration, stand for extended periods holding a weighty score and do all this in a foreign language was both inspiring and rewarding. It was a timely reminder of how little we, as a society, often expect from our children – and in doing so do both them and our society a grave disservice. Every child cannot be a King’s College chorister – but every child can show the sort of commitment and be subject to the same expectations for work, concentration, and maturity as these boys showed. When one sees something like the King’s College Chapel choristers it brings it home how, in recent years, we have as a society trivialised, patronised and deskilled our children and childhood and denied them their birthright by eternally dumbing down, not expecting the highest standards, not wishing to offend them and sacrificing all in the name of having fun and making life pleasant. So often in school and at home we praise the mediocre and the expected rather than the excellent and the outstanding - I call it the "fridge magnet syndrome" where anything that the child produces is displayed on the fridge or the classroom wall as "good" when in reality we should only be praising and displaying the very best that each child can do. The King's College Choristers were not subject to that depressing and patronising approach - the best was expected and demanded - anything less was a failure - and it showed. And, importantly, when those boys grow up I have absolutely no doubts that the valuable lessons they learned under the care of Cleobury will ensure that they continue to give of their best and be able to "hang in there when the going gets tough". It was indeed a salutary lesson watching and listening to them.

Russell Beale as the ageing and demented Lear

But back to Lear!  The performance of Simon Russell Beale – today regarded as perhaps the outstanding classical actor of his generation - was one of the great interpretations of Lear. The intensity of his performance,  the brilliance of his acting as the ageing king descends into madness and physical decline, his family disintegrates around him and his kingdom descends into turmoil was breathtaking and utterly convincing . How can he perform this massive role night after night, how can he manage the emotional and physical drainage that must take its toll after three hours on stage? It is totally beyond my comprehension - this was true greatness.  But he wasn’t alone – he was more than ably supported by an equally outstanding cast, who, like Beale churned our emotions and our innermost feelings in equal measure as the plot unfolded: man’s – and women’s - darker sides were revealed, passions were aroused, evil stalked the kingdom, Gloucester’s eyes were gauged from his head, the world crumbled around them and finally Lear stumbled onto the stage with animal like wails cutting into our very souls as he carried his dead daughter Cordelia into view. This was not simple entertainment to be enjoyed – it was a lesson in life and death, of mankind and of the slippery slope into chaos that humanity is always on. The atmosphere in the theatre was so intense as to almost constrict the throat and lungs - I'm absolutely sure that everyone's blood pressure was raised a few notches for the whole evening! It was edge of seat stuff of the extreme kind. And when the final words were spoken and the stage fell into darkness there were several moments of stunned and total silence............ and when at last we all left our seats it was noticeable that voices were subdued, no happy chatter, eye contact was avoided. Everyone knew that they had been emotionally "mugged" and given a lesson in humanity and its many failings.

In Cambridge Bach’s great music and the words of the Passion or my vision of Michaelangelo’s Pietà reminded us that the Easter story is just as relevant (perhaps even more so) today in our so very clever and technologically savvy modern world as it was at that first Easter 2000 years ago.  Evil, and man’s inhumanity to man, crosses the centuries. And so, too, with King Lear.  Shakespeare’s words from half a millennia way spoke to us and we were forcefully reminded and warned that mankind does not change.  Humanity lives on a knife edge, the abyss is always just around the corner both for individuals and society. Man is a weak and basically dishonest creature and that what was true in the time of Shakespeare or in the mythological time of Lear is still true today. When Lear says to the blinded Gloucester,

“....Through tatter'd clothes small vices do appear;
Robes and furr'd gowns hide all. Plate sin with gold,
And the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks;
Arm it in rags, a pigmy's straw does pierce it.....”

  Or when he tells Gloucester

“.......Get thee glass eyes,

And like a scurvy politician seem

To see the things thou dost not......”

Michaelangelo's Pietà

then everyone in the audience could, and did, relate to Shakespeare’s observations of inequalities of justice between the rich and the poor or the moral bankruptcy of politicians.  These human failings and social characteristics were just as relevant in Shakespeare's  world as they are in ours. He would look at the modern MP's expenses scandal and nod his understanding. He would look at the social, political, educational  and economic inequalities in modern Britain and said "it was just the same when I wrote my plays!"   The continuing relevance in the modern world of Lear and the Passion are what makes them so powerful and so memorable. Everyone in the audience, whether as observers at Lear’s court or witnesses to Christ’s execution in the Passion,  knew that what we were watching from our seats in the darkened auditorium was not some  irrelevant historical tale but works that were mirroring ourselves. It was mankind of the past and the present “warts and all”. Great drama is not a fantasy – it reflects back to us what we all know of ourselves and others and the St Matthew Passion and King Lear do just that.  They speak of our capacity to love, to hate, to act rashly, to be influenced by others, to kill, to care for, to lie, to aspire to, laugh, to cry, to fear, to dream, to endure great burdens and disasters, to enjoy great triumphs and moments later to do great evil. They remind us of our common humanity and how it must be guarded and enhanced - for if it is not cherished then we are, indeed, no more than animals.