Christ at the Mountain of Olives

Audio transcription

From an interview with Stephan Kemperdick, spoken by Andrew Redmond, bass in the RIAS Kammerchor Berlin

We see the cup in front of Jesus on the rock and above it hovers the wafer. There is this strong sacramental reference, not just a narration from an episode from Passion but here it is very symbolically loaded. Christ himself is full of fear and would probably like to avoid his own sacrifice of giving his body and his blood to humankind.

And this beautiful angel hovers freely and at ease. He can’t be mistaken as a divine being who has descended to earth. He has brought the cup, places it here and ascends again. The message is clear and Christ himself knows for he is God himself. But the human soul, and this is all too human, wants to avoid the execution, of course. And yet it has to be accepted.

It is equally interesting that the cup is shown so subtly. Mere reflexions on the golden background and this almost spectrally invisible wafer, it’s really subtle. Nothing is shown explicitly.

Perhaps it would be less convincing. Imagine there was a big golden cup, that would be just a sign, a hieroglyph. And we would know: “Ah, it’s the cup.” Because it is atmospherically integrated into this scene and almost invisible, nearly submerged, it wins persuasive power in this dramatic narration with the desperate Christ, God’s plight and this angel.

Audio transcription

From an interview with Stephan Kemperdick, spoken by Andrew Redmond, bass in the RIAS Kammerchor Berlin

A really strange and unusual Christ type. He’s got such a weird face with a stubby nose. It's quite an astonishing depiction. He looks a little like a child or a woman. So it is strange. Gossaert has often painted faces in a strange fashion. Perhaps he means to depict Christ like a child, although he’s on his knees of course, he prays. And he has indeed pleaded to God regarding the cup.

Audio transcription

From an interview with Gregor Meyer, artistic assistant of the RIAS Kammerchor Berlin, spoken by Andrew Redmond, bass in the RIAS Kammerchor Berlin

Kuhnau’s original motet draws on the text “Tristis est Anima mea”, exactly the scene that we see here: The saddened Jesus who’s afraid and complaints about the sleeping disciples. Bach then used a text from the Book of Jesaja from the Old Testament that deals with the fact that the just will die although nobody really wants to see that. So humankind in a way ignores this and sleeps.

And when we die in justice we might not get the attention we may hope for, yet at its core, that’s not what this is about.

Bach does this in a very interesting manner. Kuhnau’s motet is only for five voices: two sopranos, an alto, a tenor and a bass. And you can render these voices really flexibly in terms of tempo. There are caesuras, actual breaks that give us opportunity to listen back.

Bach added a string movement and two wind instruments that play the same motif in different themes. The first beat of the bar is always empty, and it is then followed by three crotchets that repetitively complete the bar, which gives the piece a sense of urgency. It becomes like a mantra or the ticking of a clock. Bach forces this restlessness much more than Kuhnau. Only at the very end Bach accepts this caesurum, the last pause with an accord full of tension, and afterwards the mantra disappears and the wind instruments join the choir and the whole thing is resolved into what the motet wants to leave us with at the end: namely that we rest in our chambers and are redeemed from our worldly pressures.