Passion Concert in Kamionek

At the end of the 1970s, Noki, believed to be the last surviving crested ibis, died in captivity. This most Japanese of birds (Nipponia nippon) was a symbol of the entire country, whose flag seems to imitate its characteristic white plumage and bright red head. Its great trust in humans led the entire species to the brink of extinction. Yoshimatsu considers his 1980 Threnody to Toki to be his debut as a composer. Since then, his fascination with birds has never left him – not a year has gone by without him writing a piece dedicated to these animals. He finds in them beauty abandoned by the music of his time and declares himself an evangelist of “new lyricism.”

The piece and birds are still... is similar to Threnody in its emotional expression. This short elegy for strings evokes the image of birds gathered around a deceased friend. Dissonances grate on the ears here: both those resulting from the overlapping delays of individual instruments’ melodic lines and those resulting from polyrhythms – the layering of sequences with different rhythmic bases, broken up into even shorter motifs throughout the piece. Yoshimatsu endows the birds with subjectivity and human-like feelings, which is undoubtedly close to the Franciscan sensibility that places respect for nature and a sense of brotherhood with the world on a pedestal.

***

Pergolesi’s sudden death at the age of 26 played a vital role in creating a romantic legend of the composer as a genius who was underappreciated during his lifetime. He composed for only six years, but during that time he managed to leave a distinct mark on the history of music. His La serva padrona – a half-hour humorous operatic intermezzo, intended to be performed “for relaxation” between more serious works – in the 1750s became the spark of a major dispute about the future of music drama. Rousseau, who was still pursuing a career as a composer himself, proclaimed Pergolesi “the first-rate composer of his and our times,” and described the first part of Stabat Mater as “the most perfect and touching work that ever flowed from the pen of any musician.” Supporters of the new style, known in Enlightenment Europe as galant, set Pergolesi’s works as an example for both secular and religious music.

Like Mozart’s Requiem, Stabat Mater is Pergolesi’s swan song, his last and greatest masterpiece. After the cool reception of his opera L’Olimpiade in Rome, at the end of 1735 the composer went to a Franciscan monastery in Pozzuoli near Naples to recover from a debilitating lung disease in a retreat famous for its good air. It was also an opportunity to complete his pending commissions. For many years, the powerful Neapolitan Archconfraternity of the Knights of the Virgin of Sorrows had presented the musical Stabat Mater, dedicated to Mary’s suffering on the day of her son Jesus’s crucifixion, on Fridays during Lent in the Church of St. Louis at the Royal Palace. Alessandro Scarlatti’s decade-old arrangement had become somewhat “stale,” so the confreres asked Pergolesi to refresh the text and compose a piece in a more modern style.

Stabat Mater is an excellent example of versified medieval confessional poetry with a distinctly sentimental tone. It dates back to the 13th century, and its author most likely came from Franciscan circles. The poem is clearly divided into three parts: a description of Mary’s suffering on Golgotha, a request to her to share in her pain, and finally a call to Christ himself, so that the penitent may be united with him after death.

Pergolesi’s version is based on Scarlatti’s model – to the cast of soprano and contralto, two violins and basso continuo (organ) he adds only a viola. Pergolesi approached the text quite freely, combining a scholarly ecclesiastical style with operatic interludes, mixing poignant lament with cheerful, even joyful passages. This shocked audiences of his time. Pergolesi's contemporary, the venerable Padre Martini, commented with disgust: “Why should music created to express funny and silly feelings – such as that written for La serva padrona – be suitable for expressing pious, holy, and penitential emotions?” Pergolesi was accused of not knowing Latin, and it was pointed out that the rhythmic accent of the music did not always correspond to the accented syllables of the text.

Pergolesi did not live to experience fame and triumph – he died on March 17, 1736. Almost immediately, Stabat Mater began to be widely recognized as a masterpiece. It was copied throughout Europe, performed in London and Paris, where the first prints of the work (from 1749 and 1753) come from. Around 1745, Bach arranged the music of the cantata in his motet Tilge, Höchster, meine Sünden (Cancel, Highest, my sins), expanding the instrumentation of the work and adding a German paraphrase of the biblical Psalm 51.

The timeless charm of Pergolesi’s work stems from the universalism of its musical language. It relies on simple means, bringing the melody to the fore. According to canonical accounts, during the passion and crucifixion of Jesus, Mary silently accepts the ultimate sacrifice of her son. She believes in his mission and accepts it. Pergolesi externalizes her feelings, evocatively imitating sobbing, weeping, and loud wailing in his music. We share in her suffering; we cannot remain its indifferent observers.

***

The values inherent in the teachings of St. Francis – praise of poverty and respect for God’s creation – were what prompted one of the key proponents of empiricism in Western science to study nature. What Thomas Aquinas was to the Dominicans, Roger Bacon was to the followers of Francis of Assisi. This is an excellent example that deep faith can harmonize wonderfully with rationalism and scientific caution. Similarly, the work of Ralph Vaughan Williams is an excellent proof that even staunch agnostics can be characterized by deep spirituality and create religious music that is so uplifting in faith. His Fantasia draws its theme from a chorale based on Psalm no. 2, Why fum’th in sight (Why do the nations so furiously rage together), from Archbishop Parker’s Psalter of 1567. Vaughan Williams became acquainted with this music as editor of the 1906 English Hymnal. This psalm was arranged for the Anglican liturgy by Thomas Tallis, a composer so highly regarded that, despite holding high office at the court of the rigorously anti-Catholic Tudors, he was not forced to renounce his membership of the Roman Church.

Fantasia is a key work in Vaughan Williams’s journey as a composer – a stylistic turning point that would earn him a leading place among the architects of the English music revival in the 20th century. The nearly forty-year-old artist had just completed a short course under Ravel in Paris, where he became fascinated with impressionistic harmony, freely using colorful sound effects and ancient musical scales.

In his Fantasia, Vaughan Williams uses simple but equally effective means as Pergolesi. He divides the ensemble into three groups: the main orchestra, soloists occupying its first desks, and a distant choir of a second, smaller orchestra. This spaciousness makes the organ seem to resound in the temple’s reverberation. To what spiritual heights did this atheist rise, who in the work transcended his own agnosticism towards all eschatology!

***

Exploration work carried out in the early 1980s discovered wild populations of crested ibises in mainland China. This gave hope that they could be restored to their rightful place in the ecosystem, and for us – that we could end our mourning. For another two decades, the number of observed individuals remained in the dozens. Thanks to the commitment of scientists, the population has been partially restored and now consists of several thousand specimens. Despite efforts to reproduce the species in Japan itself, all living ibises currently come from Chinese breeding programs.

– Jakub Strużyński