The St. John Passion

I’ve been terribly slow at editing all the pictures from our North Dakota trip.  One of the main reasons is that in addition to recovering from traveling (can we say laundry? suitcases to be unpacked? grouchy kids?) and getting everyone back into their school routine, I was gone for several hours each day last week rehearsing and performing J. S. Bach’s St. John Passion. Thankfully we had an awesome babysitter who held down the fort here.

Preparing for and singing the St. John Passion was really an terrific experience.  Bach has always been one of my favorite composers, an amazing and brilliant genius, as far as I’m concerned.  His music just never gets old, to play or to hear.  The St. John Passion solidified how much I enamor Bach.  The piece is 2.5 hours long, and every bit of it stunning:  soloists, orchestra, 2 organs, and in our case, several choirs to create a surround sound effect at the church where we performed.  The music gave me chills . . . it tells the Good Friday story so well, you almost feel like you’ve been dropped right into the action.

All 2.5 hours were sung in German, (the audience could read a translation projected on a screen as the story unfolded) and I am so very grateful that I took diction class in college.  When I was in college, I knew I was going to need to understand how the International Phonetic Alphabet works and how to sing correctly in multiple languages to teach and for my own personal musical experiences.  I didn’t expect for diction to become as important as it has in my life.  I use it to teach voice, and I have used it in every choral ensemble I’ve been a part of.  It’s so helpful to be able to quickly and accurately  notate all the sounds a conductor is spewing at 47.3 miles per hour as he gives the pronunciation  to the choir.  I think I use the information and reference materials from that little old diction class more than I have used my experiences from any of my other college classes.

Even though our last performance of the St. John Passion was Sunday afternoon, the music is still ringing around in my head.  It was worth paying a babysitter a lot of money to have the experience.  All of the singers from the Arrowhead Chorale and the choirs at UMD had a great time experiencing such a massive, difficult work of music come together.