The Sound Of Guilt

Reviewing Peter Sellars’ “already legendary” staging of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, which was performed in New York City earlier this month, Alex Ross explores the distinctive theological vision that informs the oratorio:

Martin Luther, in a treatise on the Crucifixion in 1519, had grim tidings for those of his followers who wished to lay the blame for Christ’s death entirely on the Jews. You killed Jesus, Luther told them: “When you see the nails piercing Christ’s hands, you can be certain that it is your work.” Luther’s message served as a warning to those who felt secure in their faith, their virtue, their worldly position; guilt for the crime at Golgotha is ubiquitous, seeping forward in time. Dietrich Bonhoeffer echoed the point in the early twentieth century, emphasizing how the Passion story shatters the illusions of a prosperous, self-satisfied modern society: “The figure of the Crucified invalidates all thought which takes success for its standard.”

Lutherian severity lies at the core of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, which, scholars have argued, takes that 1519 treatise as a model. The immensity of Bach’s design—his use of a double chorus and a double orchestra; his interweaving of New Testament storytelling and latter-day meditations; the dramatic, almost operatic quality of the choral writing; the invasive beauty of the lamenting arias, which give the sense that Christ’s death is the acutest of personal losses—has the effect of pulling all of modern life into the Passion scene. By forcing the singers to enact both the arrogance of the tormentors and the helplessness of the victims, Bach underlines Luther’s point about the inescapability of guilt. A great rendition of the St. Matthew Passion should have the feeling of an eclipse, of a massive body throwing the world into shadow.