"All Life is Here"

The sub heading to the now mercifully defunct and rightly shamed British newspaper the

News of the World  was, for its entire existence of over 150 years, “All human life is here” and I suppose the newspaper was true to its motto – all human life was indeed present in its pages – sadly, in all its unpleasant, voyeuristic, gory detail. Nothing was too scandalous, sordid or shaming to be printed to titillate the fantasies and lowest aspirations of its readers. Fortunately, the newspaper was brought to its knees in 2011 because of its shameful behaviour and operating procedures in relation to phone hacking; it was shown to all the world that not only did the paper and its owner – Rupert Murdoch - print unpleasant items it was in itself, and Murdoch himself was, sordid, unpleasant and thoroughly shameless.   

It might seem monumentally perverse but I thought of that News of the World motto, “All human life is here”  on Saturday night as I stood at the back of St Peter’s Church here in Ruddington enjoying Ruddington & District Choral Society perform JS Bach’s Magnificat and his cantata Sleepers, Wake,  plus other wonderful musical items performed by the Ruddington Chamber Ensemble: the  much loved and well known Pastoral from Handel’s Messiah, the sublime Sinfonia from Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and the achingly beautiful Pastorale from Correlli’s Concerto Grosso often called the Christmas Concerto. This was an Advent night to remember and there was absolutely no doubt at the end of the concert that every member of the large audience filling St Peter’s went away knowing that they had not only got value for money but enjoyed something very, very special.

As my last blog ( http://arbeale.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/all-right-notesbut-in-right-order.html ) suggested the choir, orchestra and soloists had to be on top of their game if they were to pull off two of Bach’s most well known and complex works  – and on top of their game they were. As I stood listening to Bach’s glorious music – so well and richly mastered by the players and singers – I thought, as I often think when listening to Bach, that to hear a few bars of his glorious music is to hear and be made privy to all the joy, pathos, exuberance, weaknesses, glory, baseness, humanity and spirituality that makes up man and womankind; to coin the News of the World, all life – human and spiritual - is indeed here. The opening movement of his monumental St Matthew Passion  - "Come, you daughters help me lament"  - has a dreadful bleakness that could easily drive you to the edge of despair as it prefaces the terrible tale of the Crucifixion and at the other end of this massive work the final chorus, "We sit down in tears" has an awful sorrowfulness and sense of abandon that it seems to take onto its shoulders all the grief and distress of the whole of mankind; in between those two desolate but perversely beautiful movements is some of the most intimate and soul searching music ever made by man. But, equally, listen to the Agnus dei and the Donna Nobis Pacem from his B Minor Mass and your spirits  will be raised to the edge of heaven so charged are they both with the essence of mankind’s ability to glorify and celebrate. On Saturday night the Ruddington singers and players captured this essence to perfection and in doing so, as Bach intended, the music reflected and reminded us of our human frailty whilst at the same time encouraged our spiritual aspirations and showed us what we are and what we might be.  All the hard work on fugue and counterpoint that I mentioned in my last blog had paid off and these hugely difficult pieces had been mastered - and the result was a glorious and uplifting performance. The young soloists, Grace Bale, Rebecca Sarginson and James Farmer, all students at Nottingham University, wove their solos perfectly into the complex web of Bach’s orchestral and choral accompaniment whilst Musical Director Paul Hayward brought the whole together skilfully and sympathetically ensuring that the finished result was not only memorable but a true and sincere rendering of Bach’s great works. In our modern world we are so used to hearing perfection when we listen to apiece of music - be it classical, pop or any other kind; our CDs have been tweaked by sound engineers and their state of the art equipment to ensure that what we hear is close to perfection and only in rare cases what one would hear in a live performance. Our radios and CD players have infinite adjustment possibilities  to make sure that the sound that comes out of  them matches the sound that we want to hear. And the voices and music that are digitally inscribed on our CDs are those of the musical superstars - Callas, Rattle, Von Karajan and the rest all performing in the technically acoustic perfection of the recording studio or some other perfect setting - all a very far cry from what the composer intended or had available at the time. So when we go to live concert what we should be looking for is not the perfection that we hear on our CD but something of greater integrity, more real - the essence of what the composer intended - and that is exactly what we got on Saturday night: the essence and glory of Bach. It may not have been as perfect as my CD recordings of these works, it might not have been the exact sound that Bach's Thomaskirche choir produced  three centuries ago but it was a faithful and celebratory capturing of what the music of Bach is about - and all the better for it.

From what we know of Bach it might be argued that he was a bit of a curmudgeon – certainly he was diligent and hard working and expected others to be so. He was not a freewheeling musical impresario like  Handel who courted Kings and made the London opera stage his home. Nor was Bach a musical genius of the Mozartian mould – a man who could churn out some of the world’s greatest and most divine melodies at the drop of a hat. No, Bach was a Lutheran, a stoical Saxon, perhaps somewhat dour, a man for whom the term "Protestant work ethic" might have been invented. In 1705 Bach, as a young man and anxious to learn his trade walked almost three hundred miles from his home in Arnstadt to Lubeck in northern Germany to visit Dietetrich Buxtehude then regarded as one of the premier church organists of his time. Almost four months later he walked back again and when one considers that this journey was taken over the winter of 1705/06 when weather and roads would have been at their worst this was no mean feat, even for a stern, hard working and committed Lutheran! - it suggests a man who was hugely driven and prepared to put up with any hardship to further his skills and improve himself. He was too, it seems, similarly driven when it came to others: there are many records of his chastisement of the pupils at the Thomaskirche for their musical failings or lack of commitment  and endeavour, and of his disagreements with his employers about his terms and conditions of work. Bach famously said of himself:  “I have been obliged to be industrious. Whoever is equally industrious will succeed equally well “ and of his music “The aim and final end of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul.”. Wonderful quotes and anyone who has enjoyed Bach’s work will recognise the truth of the latter comment in whatever he composed – music for "the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul". But, I fear Bach undersells himself! - one needs to be a little more than simply “industrious” to produce the sort of stunning work that he composed. It was once said the "genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration"  and whilst Bach may agree with that I fear that most of us would believe that maybe talent too has some part in the equation! As a confessed Bach addict I would go along with the great Bach interpreter and pianist, the late Glenn Gould who said of Bach's work: “I were required to spend the rest of my life alone on a desert island, and to listen to or play the music of only one composer during all that time, that composer would be Bach. I  can think of no other music which is so all-encompassing, which moves me so deeply and so consistently, and which, to use a rather imprecise word, has a value beyond all of its skill and brilliance for something more meaningful than that – its humanity”. When I sit in a quiet room and listen to Gould play the Goldberg Variations – a work that has been called “a high point of western civilisation” - or I sit spellbound as Gould plays the 48 Preludes and Fugues -  a work that perhaps more than any other has influenced the development of western music - or I sit quietly in awe listening to and admiring the complexities of the Two and Three Part Inventions or the Art of the Fugue, or I am humbled as the B Minor Mass or the Christmas Oratorio or the Matthew Passion fill my office or lounge, then it is at these times that deep down I know that I am not just listening to great music, rather, I am listening to and peering into the  very soul of mankind and into his most intense human and spiritual dimensions. As I said at the top of this blog “All human [and spiritual] life is here".

Paul Hayward

So, as I stood and listened on Saturday night, wondering to myself how could it be that this self confessed, hard working, driven but self disciplined and industrious curmudgeon – in his later years, a confirmed “grumpy old man” – could produce work of such uplifting brilliance? Bach had a large family, a busy family life, and a work schedule which forced him to work the longest of hours just to keep on top of the basic demands of his job; he was also a man who largely cut himself off from unnecessary social interaction and was obsessive about his work and the spiritual nature of his labours - how could this man find it within himself to produce music that has spoken to and inspired the very hearts, minds and souls of men and women for three centuries?  The answer, of course, is beyond knowing but as I stood in St Peter’s listening to the performers it occurred to me that Bach’s profound commitment to the human and spiritual aspects of music – the ability of a work to speak to the inner mind and heart - is something that all good music must have. Put simply, whether it is a religious work like the Magnificat or Sleepers, Wake  or a secular work such as the Brandenburg Concertos or the Goldberg Variations Bach was composing music with the clear intent to speak to people as individuals and to lift their very souls.  He did not simply write good tunes - he wrote musical conversations that addressed the  innermost mind, emotions, spirituality and soul of both performers and the listeners. We see this, occasionally, in works by other composers: when I listen to Beethoven’s gloriously mighty 9^th Symphony, Mahler’s gut wrenching 1st Symphony, Purcell’s Funeral Sentences, Mozart’s Piano Concert No 23 or Kathleen Ferrier singing  Blow the Wind Southerly or a thousand more I can be similarly uplifted and made to feel humble in the great scheme of things. And it isn’t just classical music – any music can have this capacity to reach our innermost feelings and make us examine who and what we are: when I listen to Dire Straits perform Telegraph Road or Romeo and Juliet, or the Everley Brothers (remember them!?) sing Cryin’ in the Rain, or Eric Clapton sing “My father’s eyes”, or Kirsty MacCall & Shane MacGowan perform Fairytale of New York  these might not be great artistic works in the way that Mahler or Mozart might be but they are works that poke at the very essence of the human condition, they are about what makes us “tick” and in a small way encourage us to think about our humanity, and by association, our mortality and spirituality. The difference is that most composers or artists do this, if they are lucky, only a few times in their lives; Bach does it each and every time – all of his music, be it spiritual or secular, has the capacity to make us examine ourselves and our condition – and more importantly addresses our humanity and asks us to be better. 

Glenn Gould

And as I listened on Saturday I saw and heard the singers, soloists and players bring out this essential message and quality. In every note and in every bar what shone through was the disciplined Lutheran that wrote the work; each note important in the great scheme of things, measured, calculated to inspire and magnify mankind and to glorify God. There was no flippancy, no concession to trivialise, this was "strictly Bach"; as Glenn Gould said: “all-encompassing music..... valuable beyond all of its skill and brilliance for something more meaningful ”.  What we saw and heard was a rich tapestry of contrasts – haunting spirituality interspersed with glorious humanity. The threads of fugue and counterpoint were woven into a multilayered tapestry by choir, orchestra and soloists; the great choruses beautifully counterbalanced the quieter solo sections whilst the sublime serenity and joy of the sopranos and altos contrasted with and complemented the power and strength of the tenors and basses. And through it all, the lyrical and disciplined playing by the Ruddington Chamber Ensemble wove a sensitive but at the same time glorious musical framework underpinning, supporting and enhancing while the gentle musicality of the three soloists was both precise and evocative, producing a sincere and heartfelt sound that prodded the very soul.

Michael Overbury

At  the end of the performance, as Director Paul Hayward turned to receive the applause of the audience he had every right to smile – he, and his associate Michael Overbury (Organ Continuo), have moved this Choir and Ensemble once again significantly further up the musical ladder. In May when I blogged on the last concert by the Choir (http://arbeale.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/music-to-hear-indeed-it-was.html ) I commented that these two leaders had significantly widened the choir’s (and audience) repertoire when they performed George Shearing’s beautifully lyrical but difficult Music to Hear with its jazz undertones and sophisticated syncopations followed by the daunting but hauntingly  atmospheric Five Mystical Songs by Vaughan Williams; the concert on Saturday was further evidence of that widening and deepening  repertoire. The programmes sung by the Choir this past year have been amongst the most taxing of the choral repertoire and the response of the members of  the Choir has been first class; they have raised their game and it was both understandable and absolutely right when on Saturday night, as the last notes died away and the applause rang round the church, that the smiling, relieved faces of the singers showed their elation and pride in their performance.  Both Paul Hayward and Michael Overbury clearly have the knack and the musicality to get the best out of their charges and to ensure that everyone responds to the demands and joys of the music. But there is more; making and listening to music is not a passive activity, it is, at its best and most profound, an activity of engagement and involvement where performer and listener are moved by what the music conveys – be it in the disco or the concert hall. And as I watched and listened on Saturday the engagement, involvement and yes, joy, of those taking part was self evident and that in its turn gave the sound that emanated from the front of the church a joyousness, a depth, an integrity and an enthusiasm – and I wondered if, perhaps, these are the qualities of which Paul Hayward and Michael Overbury should be most proud to have instilled. Such joy, enthusiasm and willingness to improve are precious commodities, they are the building blocks of improvement and success - Hayward and Overbury should be delighted to have ensured these qualities in their charges.  Perhaps it is the aspect of the night that the old curmudgeon Bach, had he sat in the St Peter's roof beams, would have approved of most of all: to see and hear his music being performed with such industry, enthusiasm and joy for the greater glorification of God.  

And if Bach was sitting under the eaves of the Church on Saturday night I have absolutely no doubt that he would have nodded his head in approval at what he saw and heard, for like me he would have known that both performers and listeners left the Church feeling a little more human, a little more humble in the great scheme of things, a little more understanding of our fellow man and a little more aware of the glory and the magnitude of God’s universe.  In a modern world torn by strife, dissent and discord, where rampant consumerism - especially at this Christmastide – stalks our streets and the wider world, where obscene wealth rubs shoulders with abject poverty and need, where it seems man's inhumanity to man increasingly seems to know no bounds and where the strident and false voices of leaders like Donald Trump seek to marginalise and pervert our very humanity and our ideals it is perhaps the music of Bach and the message that it brings that can sustain and inspire us to do better and to be better.

Paul Tortlellier

The great French cellist and Bach lover Paul Tortellier once said "Bach is my great hope for the future of mankind ..... a fugue by Bach is the perfect image of how the human society should be; it is the most beautiful thing you can hear". He was not wrong  and whenever I listen to Bach and as I stood entranced in St Peter’s on Saturday night I reflected that perhaps the world and our society  has never needed this message and this image so much - for within Bach there is indeed all human and spiritual life to uplift and remind us of higher thoughts, better things and more worthy actions - music, as Bach said "for the refreshment of the soul". 

Thank you to all for a wonderful and uplifting performance.