Bach’s Colossus

Bach’s Mass successful B Minor begins with a majestic howl of pain—four adagio bars that harvester ceremonial grandeur with writhing interior lines, arsenic if figures successful a cathedral frieze of the Last Judgment were coming to life. The substance is “Kyrie eleison,” oregon “Lord, person mercy,” and the organisation of the words successful the chorus suggests the flailing of a hopeless crowd. Half the sopranos sing “Kyrie, Kyrie, eleison, eleison,” the different fractional sing “Kyrie, eleison, eleison, eleison”; the altos sing “Kyrie, eleison, Kyrie, eleison,” the tenors and basses “Kyrie, Kyrie, Kyrie, eleison.” Only the archetypal and past chords successful the series are coagulated triads, the remainder tinged by dissonance to 1 grade oregon another. The orchestration is simply a interaction grotesque, with the archetypal violins fixed a shrill D 2 octaves supra mediate C. The bass enactment retreats toward the treble, creating further instability. After a infinitesimal of repose connected F-sharp major, an immense fugue connected “Kyrie eleison” unfolds, successful 2 gradually cresting and subsiding waves—ten minutes of sublime churn.

A caller signaling of the B-Minor Mass by the French ensemble Pygmalion, nether the absorption of Raphaël Pichon, delivers that four-bar exordium with maximum force. The value of the sound—incorporating 5 vocal soloists, 30 choristers, and thirty-three instrumentalists—harks backmost to lumbering mid-twentieth-century accounts by Otto Klemperer and Hermann Scherchen, earlier the original-instrument question dictated airy textures and fleet tempos. Yet play benignant inactive adheres, the timbres pungent alternatively than plush. Urgency animates each constituent of the whole, whether it’s the punchy “K”s successful the antheral voices oregon the penetrating chants of “eleison” successful the sopranos. A crisp intake of enactment earlier the archetypal chord heightens the impact. The plea for mercy is dire: arms are held up to ward disconnected a blow.

Pichon, a erstwhile countertenor, founded Pygmalion successful 2006, erstwhile helium was inactive a pupil astatine the Paris Conservatory. The radical began issuing recordings successful 2008, archetypal connected the Alpha statement and past connected Harmonia Mundi. One aboriginal task was to papers Bach’s “Missae Breves,” oregon abbreviated masses, among which is the Missa 1733, the root of the Kyrie and the Gloria sections of the B-Minor Mass. (Bach completed the afloat mentation of the Mass successful 1749, astatine the extremity of his life; helium ne'er heard it whole.) From the start, Pygmalion’s musicians stood out, not truthful overmuch for their pristine intonation and liquid legato—today’s early-music ensembles person transcended the scrawniness of yore—as for their vibrant phrasing, their bold colors, their aerial of spontaneous excitement. Lately, they’ve been tackling pinnacles of the ineffable repertory: Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers, Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, Mozart’s Requiem, and present the implicit B-Minor Mass.

Pygmalion’s signaling of the Mass has galore stretches of sonic splendor, which bloom successful the acoustic of the Cathédrale Notre-Dame-du-Liban, successful Paris, wherever Harmonia Mundi’s sessions took place. Purists whitethorn consciousness that Pichon and institution person gone overboard, but, fixed that the Kyrie and the Gloria were intended for the glittering Dresden court, a spot of opulence seems apt. If the “Kyrie eleison” casts a chilly shadow, the closing movements of the assorted sections erupt with joyful noise, each skirling trumpets and banging drums. “Cum Sancto Spiritu” has a dancing drive; “Et expecto” is simply a virtual stampede; and “Dona nobis pacem” builds to sonorities truthful monumental that they endanger to enactment Bruckner retired of business. (Play it loud.)

At the aforesaid time, this B-Minor Mass is notable for its intimacy, its confiding humanity. It’s not 1 of those self-serious endeavors successful which everyone genuflects earlier God’s chosen composer. In “Laudamus te,” Sophie Gent, Pygmalion’s concertmaster, delivers her violin solos with an astir folkish twang, arsenic if sauntering astir portion she plays. The flutist Georgia Browne brings conversational warmth to “Domine Deus,” with Thibaut Roussel strumming sympathetically connected the theorbo. Alongside the radiant climaxes, the chorus achieves spells of shivering inwardness. In the nebula of chords that ushers successful “Et expecto,” the imaginable of the resurrection of the dormant engenders an awed pianissimo connected the connection “mortuorum.”

As I followed on with the 2010 Bärenreiter variation of the score, I noticed however the musicians heed the dynamic and tempo markings that look successful the alleged Dresden parts—materials that Bach prepared for a prospective Dresden show of the Kyrie and Gloria. The glacial gait of the “Kyrie eleison” introduction, for example, is justified by the denotation “molto adagio”—“very slow”—in the cello part. (For immoderate reason, Bach wrote lone “adagio” elsewhere.) In “Laudamus te,” Gent syncopates the reprise of her opening enactment with a Lombard rhythm, successful which a speedy abbreviated enactment precedes a longer one; this, too, tin beryllium recovered successful the Dresden parts. Such discrepancies successful Bach’s manuscripts amusement that nary definitive mentation of the Mass exists and that modern performers are escaped to travel their intuition.

Pygmalion’s effort, thrilling arsenic it is, falls abbreviated of perfection, arsenic each signaling must. The vocal soloists are impeccable, yet lone the mezzo-soprano Lucile Richardot arrives astatine a truly idiosyncratic approach, her haunted, aching “Agnus Dei” mounting the signifier for the “Dona nobis pacem.” An oddly assertive “Crucifixus” lacks mystery. The accelerated tempos verge connected the hectic. Among latter-day accounts of the Mass, I’ll proceed to revisit the devotional precision of the Bach Collegium Japan, the austere blendedness of the Netherlands Bach Society, and the chiaroscuro glow of the Collegium Vocale Gent. I besides treasure the effusive pomp of Karl Richter, who led the archetypal unrecorded show of the Mass I heard, successful 1978. But Pygmalion’s rendition, with its passionate clasp of quality extremes, belongs among the greatest.

At the onset of this acheronian American summer, I’ve gone backmost and distant betwixt Bach’s colossus and a modern instauration of radically antithetic character: Timothy McCormack’s hour-long soft enactment “mine but for its sublimation,” which has been recorded by Jack Yarbrough and released connected Another Timbre. According to the composer’s programme notes, the portion is “about letting go; othering; uncovering beingness done evaporation. Obliteration.” The euphony is, for the astir part, quiescent and slow, often hovering astatine the borderline of silence. Yet it has a cumulative powerfulness that near maine a small dazed the archetypal clip I listened.

McCormack, who uses the pronoun “they,” was calved successful 1984, successful Cleveland; studied astatine Oberlin, the University of Huddersfield, and Harvard; and is present based successful San Diego. At first, their euphony tended toward density and frenzy, echoing the maximalist aesthetics of Helmut Lachenmann, Brian Ferneyhough, and Chaya Czernowin, 1 of McCormack’s teachers. In caller years, they person adopted a sparser, if not simpler, style. The mildly rocking, softly cryptic chords that inaugurate “mine but for its sublimation” bring Morton Feldman to mind, yet that content dissipates arsenic the soundscape grows much variegated and unpredictable: bell-like azygous tones, rumbling clusters, plinks and thumps from wrong the piano, showers of harmonics produced by deploying e-bows, oregon electrical bows, to vibrate the instrument’s strings without touching them. By the end, Yarbrough’s soft seems little a carnal instrumentality than a portion of resonance. “Presence done evaporation,” indeed.

About nineteen minutes in, aft a meditative drawstring of A-flats, a halting procession of immoderate 2 100 and seventy-five chords begins—permutations of 8 basal types, containing up to 12 notes. It is opaque music, numbing astatine times, yet the receptor soon picks retired patterns. A rising enactment of B, D-flat, and E-flat makes itself felt, and earlier agelong those notes are ringing retired successful a short-long pattern, similar a languid Lombard rhythm. The harmonies disperse and gravitate toward tonal nodes, until, suddenly, stunningly, axenic E-flat large materializes. I thought of the “Et expecto” from the B-Minor Mass, which wanders from D large to the verge of oblivion. Here, thing similar the other happens, though lone for a moment. The tonal mirage vanishes. Perhaps the proximity of the Mass affected my thinking, but I heard that E-flat chord arsenic a spiritual event. It was arsenic if nary specified chord had existed earlier oregon would beryllium again. ♦