The Crucifixion of Christ

Audio transcription

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

The moon hovers above and you can see it is a sphere with patches, they’re called maria. This depiction of the maria by Jan van Eyck is the very first one. The maria is visible by the naked eye, everyone can confirm they’re there and still they hadn’t been painted before, which is strange. But Jan van Eyck did. Interestingly it took another 20 to 30 years until an astronomer described them in a text. Isn’t that strange? Nobody had ever thought about them, which is of course wonderful. For Easter, the moon plays an important role. Christ died on Good Friday and rose from the dead on Easter Sunday, which is the first Sunday after the first full moon in spring. So here, we’ve obviously got the decrescent or waning moon that determines Easter, and it’s quite logical that the moon appears in this depiction, although it’s a novelty.

Audio transcription

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

After all the hardship and suffering of the Passion, so much blood and sweat drips off Jesus on the cross, out of his side wound down his legs and feet all the way to the floor. There’s such great drama with all this blood that has been shed and still flows. It drips off his hand wounds and arms, oozes in thick, viscous, sticky trickles and practically falls onto Maria and John. This is actually a motif that existed before in several examples. In some paintings, Maria’s headscarf shows blood spots, yet here she’s depicted in a very credible way. Van Eyck observes quite well that blood is thicker than water, it is thick and viscous. It is almost uncomfortable to look at it closely, the way it oozes.

Audio transcription

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

It is quite irritating that John tilts so greatly over to the side and we don’t know why of course, but what it tells us is clear. He almost dances with his feet, and his posture is really awkward. Are his legs actually crossed? He’s obviously in the process of turning away and that means he can’t stand it anymore, he can’t bear it. Something like that. This turning movement, by the way, that puzzles everyone, together with these grimacing faces are the essential reasons for art historians to argue that it can’t be a real Jan van Eyck; the painting might actually be by someone else.

The fact that the two bereaved don’t look up at Jesus builds a bridge to the composition by Pau Casals who was a famous solo cellist and every now and then also composed. He got incredibly old, almost 100 years. This composition plays with the theme of pain in a twofold manner. The piece starts off incredibly deeply. A male choir offour voices sets off in painful key of c minor and it ends in c minor with a contra C in the second bass, so it is really very low. However, we also reach an incredibly high note for the first soprano, technically a B-two, or one note from the C two octaves above middle C. We’ve got a scope of four octaves, which is quite unusual for choir music.

[Music.]