Studying Bach with Mel Gibson

Performances of Bach's Passions, particularly in light of the attention that Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ has received, present an opportunity for Christians and Jews to confront issues of religious intolerance, the role of the arts, and how the arts might, advertently or inadvertently, promote intolerance. We can use our role as musical leaders to engage in this important dialogue on religious intolerance.

At this writing, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ is well on its way to grossing $400 million dollars. A picture book from the movie is No. 2 on the Amazon.com list, and related merchandise (crucifix nail necklaces, etc.) is flying off the shelves. Johann Sebastian Bach knows a little about artistic renderings of the Passion story, and organizations who perform the St. Matthew and St. John Passions can learn a lot from the controversy surrounding Mel Gibson's film.

Expanding the Passions Dialogue

The Baltimore Choral Arts Society has collaborated with the Institute for Christian and Jewish Studies to produce "Sing to the Glory of God," a one-hour radio program that was broadcast nationally during the spring of 2004. Tom Hall, Dr. Christopher Leighton, the executive director of ICJS, and Dr. Michael Marissen, a Bach scholar from Swarthmore College produced two radio programs entitled "What To Do When the Words Hurt: Religious Intolerance in the Passions of J.S. Bach," which were broadcast as part of the "Choral Arts Classics" radio series in Baltimore.
For free recordings of these programs, contact ICJS at 1316 Park Avenue, Baltimore, MD 21217; 410-523-7227; [email protected].

Bach's St. Matthew Passion and the St. John Passion are, each in their own way, uniquely powerful artistic and theological discourses. They have justly achieved iconic status in the history of art and humankind because they remain as moving, vital, and convincing today as they were more than 250 years ago. These pieces exemplify all that is good and possible about the arts: They explore the universal themes of redemption and salvation in a more imaginative and riveting way than countless attempts by others to do the same thing. They are important because they have lasted for so long and have been so meaningful to so many.

But as the controversy surrounding The Passion of the Christ demonstrates, the Passion story, particularly as it relates to the role of the Jews in the death of Christ, is problematic, complicated, emotionally charged, and difficult to address. In many communities, performances of the Bach Passions elicit the same kind of polarized reactions that Gibson's movie does. Both the movie and Bach's musical settings are considered by many to be anti-Semitic, and while there is by no means universal agreement on that contention, there is no doubt that Bach's music and Gibson's movie have been enlisted in the service of anti-Semites who use these works of art to justify their accusations of deicide against all Jews, past and present.

Like The Passion of the Christ, Bach's musical Passions don't sugar-coat the horrific treatment of Jesus by his tormentors, nor are they free of insinuations and intimations that the real culprits in this incident are Jewish rather than Roman. Like the movie, Bach's music is often shocking and frequently, purposefully ugly, as befits the nature of the story it tells. Gibson and Bach both present us with numerous heartbreaking images of grief and utter despair, and the music and the movie concentrate on the suffering and crucifixion, mostly leaving for another day a consideration of what happened before or in the aftermath of Christ's death.

But Gibson's effort, its huge commercial success notwithstanding, by my reckoning, fails miserably as a work of art, while Bach's music succeeds on every imaginable level. One reason is theological. Bach embraces the gospel narratives, while Gibson simply doesn't trust them. Because he adds huge dollops of non-biblical matter, he greatly attenuates his claim to have made a faithful, unexpurgated rendering of what "really" happened. In the narrative sections of the Bach Passions, Bach takes the gospel as gospel, without apology, or the need to amend that narrative with anything else.

Another reason is historical. Gibson combines elements from all four gospel accounts, and in so doing, he generates a fifth gospel that heightens the complicity of the Jewish leaders while whitewashing Pilate's role. To make a movie that refuses to acknowledge the historical context in which the characters lived is tantamount to putting his head in the sand and simply refusing to recognize what we know, factually and without dispute, about the people involved. Bach's musical Pilate and Gibson's cinematic Pilate are two very different guys. Gibson's depiction of Pilate's relationship to the Jewish leaders is ridiculously uninformed. Bach, on the other hand, knows what the bible says, but he also understands the dynamics of the situation and he communicates them with masterful, subtle, and razor-sharp acuity. Gibson simply picks the good guys and the bad guys and fails to consider the political, social, and religious institutions that are entangled together.

But most importantly, what makes Bach's art so effective is that it actively involves the listener in thinking about not only what the bible says about Christ's mistreatment, but, in accordance with Christian dogma, humanity's collective responsibility for Christ's suffering. Throughout both the St. Matthew Passion and the St. John Passion, the narrative of the story is suspended while poetic commentary on the meaning of the story is expressed in music that is as intense, heart-wrenching, and moving as the music that depicts the action in the gospel account. In fact, more than half of the texts of the Bach Passions are commentary about the gospels, juxtaposed next to the gospels themselves, affording the listener an immediate, vibrant opportunity to consider how this story, so central to Christian faith, impacts on that individual listener. With fantastically nuanced, sophisticated musical language, Bach entices us to think in an active way about the meaning of the story for our lives. By becoming creatively engaged with Bach's art, we veer away from any antiquated notion of blaming the Jews for the killing of Christ, as Bach leads us to consider how it is the "sins of the world" that caused this situation to occur. I've read interviews with Gibson in which he asserts that the responsibility for Jesus' death is shared by all humanity, but unlike Bach's masterful scores, there isn't one frame of the movie which makes that point. Gibson simply bludgeons us with ham-handed, violent images of a two-hour mugging that are clearly intended to disturb us. In Bach's Passion settings, the story is told with no less ferocity and power, but the experience of listening to the music is more about personal reflection than mere shock and horror.

For our audiences to understand this, however, requires that we explain the subtleties of Bach's music, and that we correct many long-held misunderstandings. (For example, many people don't realize that the text sources for the Bach Passions include biblical and poetic texts.) In my experience, the best way to do this is to hold a thoughtful pre-concert lecture in which theological, musical, and historical experts discuss the many facets of these complex works. This is not the kind of thing that can easily be done in 30 minutes before the performance. Rather, I have found that it is helpful to have an event several days before the concert so that the information can be presented and audience members have a chance to think about it. We must also be careful to publish correct translations of the German texts, and/or to perform these works in English translations that do not further inflame the thorny issues inherent in the words. We must make sure our choruses know what it is they are involved in and that our performances may be received differently by Jews than by Christians.

To perform sacred music without understanding the religious tradition from whence it comes constitutes dereliction of duty. Performances of Bach's Passions, particularly in light of the attention that The Passion of the Christ has received, present an opportunity for Christians and Jews to confront issues of religious intolerance, the role of the arts, and how the arts might, advertently or inadvertently, promote intolerance. We should be leaders in this important dialogue and demonstrate to our audience that by exploring these issues, we will know the music better and we will know each other better.

"Music is a universal language, and choral music is a universal art, whose beauty and power can be enjoyed by people of all ages and backgrounds." Many of us use this argument, or some variant, to promote choral music to the public. Singing is for everybody, so therefore, the stuff we sing must resonate with everybody, right? Wrong. Some terrific examples of non-Christian music notwithstanding, many of the undisputed icons of the choral art are derived from the traditions of Christian liturgy and scripture. Can we perform "Christian" music in a compelling way without negating or vilifying the convictions of people who may believe otherwise? Our concerts should be about art, not about religion, but what about those pieces (and there are a lot of them) whose artistic agenda is to enliven, illuminate, and energize the faith convictions of Christians? The canon of choral music abounds with great art that seeks to illuminate sacred and liturgical texts for believers. But our responsibility as artists must extend to the non-believers in our audience as well. Understanding music in this context will further engage us with our art and not only make us better performers, but better people.


This article is adapted from The Voice, Summer 2004.