Idle Thoughts on the St. Matthew Passion and Millennial Software -- 4/2/24 (Pt. I)

A plastic skull is on my desk. Q— bought it when she was interested, in her youth, in becoming a doctor, before the blood and guts of the vocation became unavoidable and the thought was abandoned. Now, though she suggested we sell it, I find it makes for an interesting subject of study, for literary and plastic arts. Already, as I draw it, it makes me think of several friends, family, and acquaintances, tribulations, brushes with illness or tragedy. Missives such as this are always an attempt to make up for innate failings in a manner that others might benefit from reading. It is striking to me, perhaps humorous in itself, that I am ebullient, easy-going, humorous, and optimistic in my day to day life, whereas my diary is rather plagued by moody brooding over skulls and like such melancholy themes. To be sure, I was once, not too long ago in the grand scale of mankind, a despondent individual in life and art. Writing may work as a lagging indicator of the changes I know as a man, a report on a previous state that is rendered at unreliable intervals. That would suggest that I can look forward to a period of forthcoming output that reflects my daily happiness, indeed my idleness, at this point in early spring, which I cherish. Artists are collectors of moods, all of which, from the minutest to extremest, require that the artist remain at attention if they are to reflect in their work these moods.

Listening to the St.Johns Passion on a PlayStation 2 creates, for me, a hypnotic study of contrasts. Not knowing, for certain, where this version was recorded, even after consulting the CD case and its booklet, the music calls to mind cathedrals and choristers, or an idea of them, where this music was originally intended to be performed. Light comes through my rolling shades. I sit and stare at the rotating 3-d model that accompanies the UI for audio playback. John Eliot Gardiner conducted this recording, which was performed by the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque soloists on period instruments. It was released on the Archiv Productions label. I had to torture the booklet to transcribe that information. Afterwards, I was again mesmerised.

The only suggestion as to where this was recorded comes from the black and white photo across two pages at the rear of the booklet, showing choir and performers awash in chairs, stands, microphones, cases, instruments, scores, and panels. There are stone columns in the background that suggest the musicians are not in a studio, but rather a church of some kind. Ah, but here, in looking for the credit of the cover’s depiction of the deceased Christ before a tomb, I see that it was recorded in London, All Saint’s Church. The painting on the cover was painted by Rogier van Der Weyden and was, in 1986, the year this CD was issued, to be found in the Galleria deli Uffizi, Firenze. I imagine that the painter lived and worked when Bach lived and worked, based partly on the style and my knowledge of art history, but mostly on the editorial sense it would make to juxtapose one religious work of art with another of similar moment. The painting shows, or, it may be more prudent to say the detail of the painting shows, Mary, with a full halo of light emanating from her head in rays that irregularly describe a circle, holding up the arm of her dead son, from whose fallen head produce three discrete sections of rays of the same sort that ring in full his grieving mother’s tear strewn visage. Christ’s body is supported by two men. His other arm is held by a man in a red robe, around whose head is a single perimeter of light. At the bottom can be seen a portion of another such single halo, suggesting that more figures are below those before the mound and tomb. Stonework buildings are represented in the distance above the mound, where grass and some foliage grow, as well. The right edge of the painting has been digitally extended in an odd fashion I never noticed before, despite many years of owning and listening to these cds, with the color at every point continuing in a band to extend the image by less than a centimeter, presumably to make it square. It is a typo of graphic design and more difficult to describe than it is worth.

I could carry on in this manner, power on the wi-fi, and open my laptop while I wait for it to connect to the internet, before proceeding to Google the All Saint’s Church and more works by Rogier van Der Weyden. A stupor would be the result. I would fail to carry out my original thought. A charnel house of diverted attention and stifled ideas is entered when I begin to think of how many times I have opened my internet connected laptop with the best intentions, only to see myself falter. I invite you, instead, into greater intimacy, as I continue to meditate upon my divergence from the typical methods of my day, the methods of my day and age, and why I felt a longing, for what I do not yet know, whilst I sat listening to the St.John’s Passion on an old PlayStation 2 in my office.