When I’ve finally made my mind about the item for this week’s Music Lounge, I was faced with a problem: I had never heard a recording of the famous bass aria from the Matthäus-Passion Mache dich, mein Herze rein that fulfilled all my expectations about how it should be performed. It is a piece of music usually mentioned as an example of Bach’s ability to create surpassing spiritual beauty, but my usual experience is of frustration. Mache dich is a piece of music that relies in so many interdependent elements to take off – and the sad truth is that there usually is a weak link somewhere. I know, there are uncountable examples of complex music everywhere, but the problem with this particular one is that, for some reason, the spiritual dimension only appears when every little piece of the puzzle is well aligned. When that doesn’t happen, the music still sounds beautiful if earthbound. And here one wants to be transported to other dimension.
The first challenge in Mache dich is the text. From the content, we infer that the singer is voicing the thoughts of Joseph of Arimathea, mentioned by the Evangelist in his recitative previous to the aria, the text of which is: Make yourself pure, my heart/I myself am burying Jesus/For He will from now on/forever and ever/ Have in me His sweet repose/World, go out/ let Jesus in. So, as we see, there are two dimensions here: first, Joseph informs that he will take care of the funeral rites (and expenses, for he was a rich man); but then he says to himself that he will also let all worldly matters behind for he is carrying Jesus inside himself, now that He is not physically present in this world. The text does not deal with the subject of resurrection (it is a bit early in the story for that), but it makes it seem also irrelevant: Jesus is forever alive in the hearts of those who believe in him. And I bet that this is Bach’s point-of-view just by the tempo he chose to set these words: a 12/8 siciliano, i.e., a dance rhythm with a noticeable lilt. It was associated to pastorale life during the baroque, and evokes an atmosphere of a mild, simple, pleasant life. So very distant from any solemnity or gloominess. On the other hand, the siciliano is no gigue – it isn’t supposed to show any exhilaration or animation. This seems obvious, but what we usually hear is conductors that are either trying to make Mache dich more “serious” than it should be or really carried away by the dance rhythm and the “trochaic” phrases with repeated notes. As always, virtue is in the middle – Joseph of Arimathea is not bouncing and twirling in his intent of keeping Jesus alive in his heart, but the aria must suggest a genuine sense of joy derived from PURITY. On leaving all worldly matters behind, one finds again the lightness of childhood and innocence in one’s heart. And that is why the word rein (pure) is so important in this piece. A singer who does not understand that is not going to succeed in this aria. Unfortunately, most basses try to make it a momentous statement and adopt an “important” adult tone, often too heavy, too dark, too vibrant, too serious, certainly jarring with everything the siciliano rhythm is supposed to suggest.
Then you’ll ask me – why the bass voice then? “Because Joseph of Arimathea is a man” is not the right answer here. Since the Matthäus-Passion has only a few pre-established characters (such as “Jesus” or “Pontius Pilate”), many texts that could be attributed to a biblical figure are simply sung by any soloist or even the congregation (in the “chorale” passages). Bach could have used the soprano voice to suggest the purity the text speaks about, but that would not illustrate the true content of this aria – this is not about being innocent and pure, but rather about MAKING ONESELF innocent and pure. It is a decision, a choice, it is about changing one’s life. And that is why it has be sung by the bass voice (also, an aria for the soprano would have been performed by a child in St. Thomas Church). However, that poses an extra challenge for the soloist – one has to hear that purity, that innocence in the singer’s voice. It is not an ordinary bass voice – it is a voice transformed, made something new. One must hear a child-like, clear-eyed quality in the singing. And that rules out almost every singer in the discography. One may point out that there are very clear-toned baritones – especially in historically informed performances – that sing it in a pop-like, almost tenor-ish tone. I would call it marginally preferable to the gravitas of a Wotan lost in Bach-land, but it does not translate the idea behind the music, which is hearing a full, dark voice made light and angelic by the effect of a spiritual transformation.
The writing for the voice in Mache dich is ambiguous on purpose – the aria can be too low for singers in the baritone range and too high for singers in the bass range. We often hear baritones almost whispering the lower end of the tessitura and basses that tense up in higher reaches. Bach does not make their lives easy there – we must hear someone in a state of grace. If he sounds strained in his high notes, woolly or short in resonance in his low notes, nasal in his melisme, caprine in his trills, the thrill is all gone. That is why it was so frustrating for me the experience of hearing twenty, twenty five recordings and – in spite of all talents involved – finding at best vocally solid performances church-like in their austerity but entirely devoid of any true sense of spirituality. It is never enough to remember: this is the LAST aria in the Matthäus-passion, the last time a solo voice (apart from the Evangelist’s narration) expresses an inner thought about the passion of the Christ in a long work. You have to hear the EFFECT of the experience in it, the transformation has to be immediately hearable. Again: I had never heard a performance to my satisfaction until recently. I won’t say it is perfect (nobody is in this particular aria) – one must point out that there are more breathing pauses than with many singers, to start with – but this singer goes straight to the heart of the matter in terms of interpretation and tone colouring. He also masters the ambiguous tessitura as few others – his voice rings with bass-like resonance in the low notes and yet his high notes float with extreme purity of tone.
German bass Michael Schopper is a specialist in baroque music and Lieder. I have never heard him live, but one can hear him in recordings with conductors such as Nikolaus Harnoncourt (Matthäus-Passion), René Jacobs (L’Incoronazione di Poppea) and Gustav Leonhard (Cantata BWV 56). He started his career as a choir boy with the Regensburger Domchor, and his first concert appearance (in 1968) was Bach’s Christmas Oratorio under the baton of Karl Richter. It seems that he first sang all kinds of role such as Osmin, Ochs and maybe even Wotan, but he would later concentrate in baroque opera and sacred music. Here we hear him in mysterious circumstances – the clip on YouTube seems to be taken by filming a TV screen. I’ve looked everywhere for this video in better quality but in vain. There is no information about venue and performers, but the orchestra is the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and, therefore, we would guess Ton Koopman is the conductor. After a bit detective work, I can tell you that, yes, it was been recorded in Aardenberg’s St. Bavo’s Church on March 18th, 1989 and the soloists were Barbara Schlick, Ulla Groenewold, Ian Honeyman, Guy de Mey, Peter Kooy and, of course, Michael Schopper. As far as I understand, this performance was never officially released, but rather one recorded six years later in Amersfoort’s St. George’s Church with Jörg Dürmüller and Klaus Mertens. I feel sad for not being able to keep a memento of Schopper’s performance in decent recorded sound.
As it is, the video shows us not only the aria, but the beautiful recitative too – In the evening, as it was cool/ Adam’s fall was made known/ In the evening, the saviour overwhelmed him./In the evening, the dove returned/and brought an olive leaf in its mouth/A beautiful time it was the evening hour!/The pact of peace has been made with God/for Jesus fulfilled his cross. His body comes to rest/Ah, dear soul, pray go, let them give you the dead Jesus/O salutary, precious memento! Schopper sings it with disarming simplicity. He does not try to make any point there and trust the meaning of the words, while singing with instrumental poise and crystalline diction. One line shows all his vocal credentials – O schöne Zeit! O Abendstunde! (A beautiful time it was the evening hour!). In the first part he soars in absolute cleanliness of tone to his high register just to sink with absolute ease and chocolate-y resonance to his low notes in the second part.
For the aria itself, Koopman chooses the ideal tempo, the siciliano is not overdriven, the lilt is gentle and reassuring, the trochaic repeated notes subtly and smoothly articulated, the pastoral atmosphere is immediately established, we’re in the Christian version of Arcadia. From the first phrase, one can see if the singer is up to the task. We have to hear the rich resonance in the dich from Mache dich (make yourself) so that the contrast to the purity of tone of rein (pure) make any sense. This is the expressive cell of the whole aria – we hear that voice rise from its depth and then float in absolute purity. Schopper finds the choir boy in himself to sing it with such disarming, instrumental clarity there. This may sound exaggerated, but believe me – this note can go awry in many different ways. Many singers cover it excessively and we almost hear the muscular effort (and they do not sound “pure” at all); a few just cannot control the vibrato; others go for vibrato-less only to loose control of it in the end; many just loose focus in the process. It usually is the beginning of a bumpy ride! The next line – Ich will Jesum selbst begraben (I myself am burying Jesus) – has a bit of a ping-pong outline between registers – almost as the aural description of the movement of shovelling. It has to be sung with absolute accuracy, including in what regards the syllables that need to be stressed: JE-esum beGRA-aben. As before, Schopper is at ease both in his low and high notes, stresses the right syllables smoothly (some singers sound strained with the high notes, others hard to hear in the low notes and there are those who stress the rhythm too strongly, making the phrase graceless). The next phrase – with the ornament that takes the singer to a high e flat on dich – may be problematic for some singers, some do away with the ornament, others resort to voix mixte to deliver it smoothly. Schopper does not make much of it and focus on the next rein, which he sings more strongly and firmly, almost as a proud statement of his intent of being pure. We’ll hear that he sings all the reinstatements of the thematic material already presented in extremely unproblematic voice – it all sounds velvety, rich and gentle. There is not one moment when the listener hears anything grandiloquent, overstated or vocally narcissistic there. We hear a dark, resonant voice at its lightest – made pure – warm, reassuring at all times, für und für, to quote the text. A few singers do the long melisma on begraben on the breath, what is quite a feat. Schopper is not one of them, he makes himself even an extra breath pause at some point. Old-timers may find that frustrating, but what we see is that baroque specialists tend to prefer it this way, often making the pause right in the beginning, as in begra-aaaaaaben. In Bach, that doesn’t bother me personally (especially because I doubt any of his malnourished singers in St. Thomas would actually be able of singing such kilometric phrases in one breath). If the singer has the control to go to the end of a long phrase with consistent tonal quality, then bravo/a. But I’d rather hear a breath pause than constriction, discolouring and poor intonation in the end of the breath.
In the B section, Schopper goes a step further in terms of lightness, dangerously close to a “white” tone. It is admirable that the voice still retains some velvet and one can see in the video how he negotiates nasal resonance to focus his high notes. The result is conversational, light but instrumental in sound, especially in the upper register. Only from Welt, hinaus (World, go out), his voice gains roundness again. This is a passage where many singers – to produce some contrast with the previous moments, when the key word is “repose” – adopt a more imposing tone, as if the text implied that the text were directed to the world, as if he were saying “keep away” to a crowd or something like that. I like better the way Schopper does, he is not speaking to the WORLD here, but rather to himself. The idea is to make his soul focus entirely in spiritual matters from that point on. In the repeat, there is not much difference from the beginning in terms of tone, except in the very end, when, instead of making his last statement of “I myself want to bury Jesus” more emphatic, Schopper sings with the sweetest and lightest of tones. I find it particularly convincing in the way it shows some sort of hushed enthusiasm. It is a performance that has a dignified, serene, unpretentious quality that goes straight to the heart of the imaginary “congregation” in its lack of affectation or portentousness. It is a testimony rather than a sermon.