What's There to Do in a Eugene July?
Eugene, Oregon Travel Guide
By
Anthony St. Clair
Oregon Bach Festival
Water Passion After St. Matthew
I'm not exactly a music aficionado, much in the same way, I hate to say, that in a blind taste test I probably couldn't tell the difference between a Swisher-Sweet and a Cuban cigar. I'm not up on the classical music scene of today. I've heard of guys like John Cage, but I certainly couldn't rattle off a list of his musical accomplishments. Hell, when I hear the word "opus" the first thought that still comes to my mind is the penguin from the Bloome County comic strip.
So when I attended the performance of Tan Dun's Water Passion After St. Matthew, I was pretty damn confused, and surprised, and in pain, and delighted, and completely blooming blown away. I'm assuming, well, hoping, that much of the audience was right there with me; this was, after all, the Water Passion's U.S. premiere, after being debuted in Stuttgart, Germany. The Water Passion was the result of a commission Tan Dun received: to compose music based on J.S. Bach's Passion After St. Matthew, in honor of the 250th anniversary of the composer's death (3 other composers received similar commissions).
Tan Dun... well, Tan Dun. Tan Dun ain't exactly your rich grandma's pretty parlor-boy tune-writer. A comparison to John Woo comes to mind, and that might and might not be apt; I'm not sure because I don't know enough about either man, other than that what they each do has a certain haunting quality, and a dramatic overtone that listener and viewer each winds up following with, as if jumping in a river, simply because you want to flow with it and see where it all turns up.
On the official biography side, Tan Dun grew up in an educated family in China. Unfortunately that was also during the Communist Cultural Revolution, and Tan Dun and his family were assigned, like many people of that time, to be "re-educated" amongst peasants. Tan Dun's affinity to music did not necessarily find much fruition as a rice farmer, but he did organize folk song rituals, sing-alongs, etc., and later, when changing political tides allowed for the reopening of the Chinese national music conservatory, he was one of the first students to go there – for his next re-education.
By 1985 he had received a fellowship from Columbia University in New York City; he relocated – and it has all been downhill from there. Tan Dun is now one of the world's top composers; his music has wide respect and following; as such it also entertains much criticism, a great deal of which seems to stem from Tan Dun writing music that has the audacity not to be snobby. A modern-day classical composer, he is nonetheless fairly well-known in the world outside the realm of classical music, mainly for his Academy Award-winning work on the soundtrack for Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.
So after taking a highlighter to my program so that I could pad out the notes for this article, I sat back in my chair in the Hult Center's Silva Hall as the lights dimmed. I had a feeling that I was in for something very different from the Bach Mass in B Minor, which I had experienced a week before. I just had no idea what I was really in for.
The Water Passion incorporates a choir, an orchestra, a soprano soloist, a bass-baritone soloist, and a solo cellist. In addition, 17 large, clear plastic bowls of water are set up, down and across the stage, in the shape of a cross. The water – in addition to symbolizing birth, rebirth, baptism, etc., to wax symbolic for a moment – also is one of the prime musical elements throughout the Water Passion. The bowls would be "played" by three percussionists, who would alternate between playing gongs and bowls submersed in the water, to simply running their hands through and shaking water and letting it drip back into the bowl in rhythm.
Rocks and stones themselves, even, sing in the Water Passion. The choir bangs rocks; the percussionists shake them and strike rocks they hold in their hands. The turning of pages becomes part of the music. Different-colored lights further combine concert hall with theater – a stated goal of Tan Dun, to take down the barrier between performers and audience members, to help return music, even that of the performance hall, back to its roots in folk music: interactive, and engaging far more of the senses than just that of sound.
Like the Mass in B Minor, I will not attempt the vanity and futility of rendering in font what is best left for flute. The Water Passion is to me a much more disturbing piece of music – not every song is pretty, of course – and for most of the Water Passion I could not shake a sense of unease, a sense of impending pain and suffering, which, well, is much of the Christ story: betrayal, torture, humiliation and suffering, as the story goes.
Then, in the last moments and movements of the piece, the feeling abated. In the score and libretto, Jesus died, and accordingly the orchestra and choir shook the hall with a vocal, instrumental earthquake – in accordance with a section called, for the death of Jesus, "Death and Earthquake". When the ground finished shaking, the sense of dread was gone, as if swallowed up in a final, earthly catharsis. Softer music began to play. Members of the choir and orchestra got up, left their chairs, and walked to the 17 bowls, all but three of which had been untouched until now. They ran their fingers through the water; one woman, in accordance to part of a story from the Bible, wet her hair. The sense of suffering and pain was gone, the disturbed feeling, replaced by a sense of release, and serenity, and sheer relief that all would turn out well.
It was a performance of a piece of music, and I go at length of a long heart to relay its effect on me. It was haunting, like a moonless night in an unfamiliar, foreboding place; its lingering memory, when recalled, calls up smiles, like dawns and new days. I'm not enough of a music aficionado to explain why. It's just been that way.
The Water Passion after St. Matthew, I hope, is a work Rilling, for commissioning it, and Tan Dun, for composing it, and for the performers, for singing and playing it, are proud of. For this man, from the audience, I am only glad to have heard it, and while I may not be an aficionado, I do know something amazing when it crosses my way.
Questions?
If you want more information about this area you can email the author or check out our North America Insiders page.
