Ritualizing the Passion by Zen Kuriyama

Ritualizing the Passion: Hermeneutics, Theology, and Religious Affect in Peter Sellars’s 2010 St Matthew Passion Zen Kuriyama In 2010, American opera director Peter Sellars mounted a production in Salzburg of the famed St Matthew Passion, which later reached a global audience when the production was transferred and live streamed/video recorded with the Berlin Philharmonic. Known for his unconventional interpretations, Sellars has for decades been a controversial figure. Some have, for example, denounced his stage directions as both New-Age spiritual and “grossly real.”1 Given the stark and sometimes offensive interpretations in staging both canonic and contemporary works, a ‘Peter Sellars Bach Passion’ was surely to have been greatly anticipated.2 Indeed, given the reverence afforded both to the Passion genre and Bach himself, reception history has not been kind toward attempts to stage this musical depiction of Christ’s suffering and death. The most scathing response was perhaps saved for the English National Opera’s 2000 production of Bach’s St John Passion, where a real, living lamb was brought out on stage by the Evangelist during the final scene and loudly bleated throughout the closing moments of the work. What was surely meant to be an avant-garde directorial choice resulted in a reaction that was the polar opposite of what one would expect at the death of the Redeemer of the World: “peals of laughter” emanating throughout the hall.3 One reviewer called the production “an apotheosis of kitsch,” all-but accusing director 1 David Littlejohn, “Reflections on Peter Sellars’s Mozart”, Opera Quarterly 7 (1990), 34. 2

Tom Service, “Ligeti’s Riot Through History”, The Guardian, August 27 2009. <www.theguardian.com/music/2009/aug/27/le-grand-macabre-gyorgy-ligeti>

Alexa Woolf, “J. S. Bach St John Passion, English National Opera”, April 2000. <www.musicweb1

Deborah Warner of making Bach’s masterpiece a theatrical joke.4 Sellars’s St Matthew Passion, on the other hand, was hailed as an “Easter miracle,” and apparently elicited cathartic responses from the audience, whose tearful reactions suggested they played a part in nailing the Son of God to the Tree.5 Why was this production so powerful? How did Sellars succeed where other attempts to stage the Passion failed? This paper will examine the critical reception of this lauded interpretation and explain the differences between staging and ritualizing the Passion. Using Donovan Schaefer’s religious affect theory, an exploration and analysis of ritualization will establish that theological, hermeneutical, and emotional/spiritual meaning reached their zenith in Sellars’s St Matthew Passion.

Passion as Liturgy and Ritual In order to effectively analyze the critical reception of Sellars’s 2010 adaptation, it is imperative to understand the Passion genre’s peculiar place within eighteenth-century musical genres. There were, essentially, four types of Passion settings in the 1700s: the outdated a cappella setting (a carry over from the Renaissance and Roman Catholic tradition), the oratorio Passion (more artistic, usually with instruments, strict adherence to biblical text), the Passion oratorio (more operatic in style with original, devotional text), and

international.com/SandH/2000/apr00/bachstjohn.htm> 4

Oliver Reynolds, “Truth’s Death by Cellophane”, Times Literary Supplement, April 21 2000, 20.

Ulrich Weinzierl, “Simon Rattles Osterwunder mit Bachs ‘Matthaüspassion’”, Die Welt, March 30 2010. <www.welt.de/welt_print/kultur/article6982153/Simon-Rattles-Osterwunder-mit-BachsMatthaeuspassion.html>

the ‘lyrical Passion’ (set as a meditation without direct dialogue).6 With original libretti (yet closely adhering to a single Gospel text), Bach’s Passions belong to the Passion oratorio genre, and met the devotional and instructive purposes of Lutheran orthodoxy and Pietism. Bach’s theology meant that his Passions were intended as both liturgical and instructive; or, more specifically, theologically and devotionally instructive within the confines of a Good Friday liturgy. Nineteenth-century Lutheran Pietism called for stringent personal piety and living a vigorous Christian life. The trend of concertizing canonic works and the dissolution of liturgical prominence in secular society has meant that Bach’s Passions have been removed from their originally-intended medium. This impacts Bach’s Passions in a grave way, more so than other sacred works like Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli. While both were intended for liturgy, the Pope Marcellus Mass differs from Bach’s St Matthew Passion in that the latter was the liturgy, whereas the former was supplemental, adorning the text of the Roman Missal. Due to the heavy musico-theological essence of Bach’s works, secular concertizing of the Passion does the work an injustice by removing it from liturgy, thereby watering down its relevance, potency, and liveness as a liturgical work.7 Aidan Kavanaugh’s seminal work On Liturgical Theology asserts that when liturgy is altered, theology becomes skewed.8 If we take Eric Chafe John Eliot Gardiner’s assertion that music and theology are 6 Werner Braun. 2001 “Passion.” Grove Music Online. April 19, 2019. 7

Eric Chafe’s scholarship on musico-theological analysis in the vocal works of Bach has been pivotal in understanding this relationship [Tonal Allegory in the Vocal Music of J.S. Bach. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991]. Bettina Varwig has written on the “performativity, presence, and liveliness” in staging Bach’s Passions [“Beware the Lamb: Staging Bach’s Passions.” Twentiethcentury music, 11 (2) (Sept. 2014)].

Aidan Kavanagh and Frank Kacmarcik. On Liturgical Theology: The Hale Memorial Lectures of SeaburyWestern Theological Seminary 1981, (Collegeville, [Minnesota]: Liturgical Press, 1992), 60.

inextricably linked in Bach’s Passions, we can begin to make the argument that, outside of liturgy, Bach’s Passions lose potency and meaning.9 How does Sellars avoid the watering down of the Passion’s theology? How does “an apotheosis of kitsch” suddenly become “emotionally charged truthfulness” and “heartwrenching immediacy and intimacy”?10 The answer lies in what Sellars calls ritualization. Ritualizations of sacred vocal works—such as oratorios and Passions—have been a trademark of Sellars’s career. As Carmen-Helena Téllez puts it, ritualization involves engaging the audience by appealing to their own sense of ritual: Peter Sellars describes his manner of staging an oratorio as a ritualization, i.e., an emulation of a ritual. Rituals exist in all cultures and at all levels of human activity, from the highest to the prosaic. Rituals represent the values of a community by enacting them through several techniques of shared embodiment of said values, such as gesturalization, processionals, traditional music, and various symbolic representations through diverse artistic techniques. In actual rituals, these devices are repeated regularly over time during community celebrations, and in so doing, they reinforce the value system. In a classical music performance, Sellars aspires for the staging to gain the solemnity and depth of the meaning of a ritual through the artful

9 [John Eliot Gardiner, Music in the Castle of Heaven. First American ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013] 10

Andre Sokolowski, “Bach: H-Moll Messe/Matthaüs-Passion”, Kultura Extra, April 12, 2010, <www.kultura-extra.de/musik/feull/bach_europachorakademie_berliner_philharmoniker.php>; Zachary Woolfe, “Video Preserves Hints of Future For a Director”, The New York Times, June 10, 2012, AR12.

choice of movement, gesture, blocking, costumes, etc., to reveal universal or at least central spiritual values or social issues he deems are embedded in the work.11

How effective have these ritualizations been? Why is “ritualizing” these sacred works (instead of “staging” them) so effective to the modern audience? One answer might lie in the work’s spiritual component, and the transformative nature of the sacred. In the program notes for the St Matthew Passion, Sellars writes: Bach wrote his masterpiece, the ‘St. Matthew’ Passion, not as a concert work, and not as a work of theater, but as a transformative ritual reaching across time and space, uniting disparate, and dispirited communities…The ritual ‘staging’ for these performances is primarily focused on Bach’s spatial imagination and the moral energies that his [rhetorical] dialogues and juxtapositions release. 12

In other words, Sellars is re-contextualizing the ritualistic element of the Passion, making it liturgical once again. When this is done, the full arsenal of Bach’s theological, musical, and rhetorical prowess reaches fruition, and the audience is affected in a real and—sometimes— indiscernible way. To help us digest Sellars’s ritualization approach, Bettina Varwig believes it serves to achieve “a keen sense of theatrical conviction by asking his performers to ‘embody’ the musical affect, to let their gestures and physical interactions project the narrative

11 Carmen-Helena Téllez, “An Analysis of the Ritualization of J.S. Bach’s Matthäus-Passion by Peter Sellars and Simon Rattle: A Guide to the Appreciation of Interdisciplinary Presentations.” Lecture Handout, November 9, 2017, University of Notre Dame. 12

Jeffery Baxter, “Webcast review: Peter Sellars directs Bach’s “St. Matthew” Passion with Berlin Philharmonic.” Arts Atlanta, 19 April 2010.

intensity.”13 While theatrical conviction and ritual may seem at odds with each other, any ritual contains innate performative aspects, thus having it bleed over into the realm of the theatrical. It is this “narrative intensity” that provides an unshakeable cornerstone to the efficacy of ritualizing Passions and oratorios. The staging is, ideally, born from deeply spiritual and theological contemplation of both the music and text (or, at the least, a recognition of this relationship). Moreover, ritualizations allow every production to be cogent and relatable, as each generation interprets past works to meet the societal and cultural demands of the present; Bach’s music will always provide the sonic substance, but physical presentation offers audiences immediate context and gives them tools to dissect and analyze the work for themselves. In line with Lutheran Pietism, the function of the Passion oratorio is to elicit a powerful response from the congregation by forcing them to confront their personal role in the suffering and death of Jesus Christ. This onus of guilt presents spiritual and psychological demands that are unique to the Passion genre, and is a spiritual modus operandi that has taken a backseat since Bach’s time. Twenty-first century Christianity keeps its gaze fixed on the Resurrection, echoing ad nauseam the Augustinian refrain, “we are the Easter People and Alleluia is our song!” instead of Johann Heermann’s quintessentially Lutheran mantra, “‘twas I, Dear Jesus…I crucified you.”14 The Passions are so thematically removed from the consciousness of modern society that they almost seem antithetical. The Passion of 13 Bettina Varwig, “Beware the Lamb: Staging Bach’s Passions.” Twentieth-century music, 11 (2) (Sept. 2014), 263. 14

Heermann’s text (c. 1630) was set to Johann Crüger’s Herzliebster Jesu tune (1640), and remains the most popular Good Friday hymn in Western Christianity.

Jesus is linked to the notion that humanity needs the Cross for salvation. Contemporary society, however, is self-saving, making manifest their own destiny through monetary selfishness and technological façades. Through contemporary and stark symbolism, ritualized Bach Passions suddenly become relevant, fully immersing the audience in the experience. Presented ritualistically and quasi-liturgically (like the Medieval Passion plays) with living dramatis personae, the violence of slaying the Lamb becomes shocking in ways that enlivens and invigorates their theological meaning for the present-day.

Religious Affect But how does this pietistic guilt shaming work with secular audiences? To a nonbeliever, is this connection completely inert? According to Donovan Schaefer’s writing on the religious affective experience, no. The Salzburg premiere was not targeted at a Christian audience, yet the critic Reinhard Kreichbaum wrote, “never in my fifty-five years of concert going did I see so many wet handkerchiefs and teary eyes,” remarking that the audience sat in rapture and shock, “fascinated and transfixed.”15 “Fascinated” and “transfixed” at the experience of the Passion can be found in mystical writings from St John of the Cross to Thérèse of Lisieux, so it is crucial to have a theory that can translate this phenomenon. Schaefer’s work analyzes this mystical experience in anthropological and phenomenological

15 Reinhard Kriechbaum, ‘Musikalischer Wandertag’, Wiener Zeitung, 29 March 2010, <www.wienerzeitung.at/ themen_channel/musik/klassik_oper/227676_MusikalischerWandertag.html>.

terms, and challenges the notion that religion is inextricably linked to language and belief, proposing instead that it is primarily driven by affects.16 Religious Affects is a truly interdisciplinary work because it holistically synthesizes a range of social and critical theory, phenomenology, and religious studies material in order to affectively theorize religion beyond the confines of certain of canonic religious studies theory and methods. Schaefer does this by framing his discourse with a question often neglected in religious studies: “is it possible for an animal to have religion?”17 This primal focus on the “animality of religion” goes to the heart of religious practice: the ritual. Through ritualization, Sellars uses the “affective” experience to lead the audience into a deeper, more meaningful understanding of hermeneutics and Lutheran theology; that is, the essence of Pietism, which transcends the constructs of language into the metaphysical. Schaefer attempts to tear down the concrete walls that keep religion a sole practice of the intellectual, linguistically-adept human being. Schaefer references the work of Jane Goodall, the primatologist, and her lifelong observation of the chimpanzees, particularly how their waterfall dances seem to elicit an emotional or even phenomenological response. Essentially, a ritual around something perceived to be “special”—like the waterfall dances for chimpanzees—seems to solidify a certain group experience akin to what religion achieves in humans, but with the absence of language. Central to Schaefer’s discourse is that which is undeniably solid as the dividing line in 16 [Donovan Schaefer, Religious Affects: Animality, Evolution, and Power. Durham/London: Duke University Press, 2015] 17

Donovan Schaefer, Religious Affects: Animality, Evolution, and Power (Durham/London: Duke University Press, 2015), 2.

the animal-human binary: language. In discussions of religion, and therefore more specifically topical fields like theology and hermeneutics, it has been widely accepted in scholarship that since animals do not possess the tools of advanced linguistic constructs like humans, they cannot have religion or go through a “religiously affective experience” in the way humans can.18 What makes Schaefer’s study so poignant for use in analyzing Sellars’s 2010 ritualization is his analysis of aesthetics in affect theory. What is “affect” in the vernacular of this theory? According to Schaefer, “affect or affects can be understood as the propulsive elements of experience, thought, sensation, feeling and action that are not necessarily captured or capturable by language or selfsovereign ‘consciousness.’”19 Schaefer links affective experience to power, and it is ultimately this power that has given religion its affluence in every civilization throughout history. Schaefer’s book—written as a religio-anthropological summa—is complex, with many analyses alluding to the metaphysical rather than the practical. For the purposes of Sellars’s ritualization, however, Schaefer discusses one aspect of religious ritual that is immediately relevant: gestures. Within a ritual, gestures are physical movements imbued with meaning and representation, generally known both to the one doing the gesture and to those observing it. According to Schaefer and several other case studies, gestures are highly animalistic, since they are non-verbal in essence.20 They are seen in various organized manifestations within kingdom animalia, such as—again—the chimpanzee waterfall dances. In 18 Schaefer, Religious Affects, 4. 19

Schaefer, Religious Affects, 23.

Ibid., 37.

a way that scientists have still not been able to explain, chimpanzees perform highly idiosyncratic movements—almost prescribed gestures—at waterfalls and sometimes during rainstorms, in what looks like a religious ritual. There is collective focus and intention from both participant and observer, thus blurring the lines between the other; in other words, they become a collective unit. The chimpanzees seem to gain energy from these dances, moving with great intensity in an almost possessed frenzy. This collective, affective, ritualistic experience proves the linguistic fallacy through phenomenology (that is, sensory and emotional experience). How can we use Schaefer’s gestural affect theory for “staging” a Bach Passion?21 If, as argued by Kavanagh, non-liturgical presentations of the Passion can often water down the ritual, we can apply Schaefer’s discourse to explore the opposite. More specifically, a ritualization, which attempts to “re-ritualize” concertized Bach Passions. Stealing a phrase from liturgical history, this ‘authentic worship’ through an embodiment of the text and music by meaningful yet prescribed gestures and movement seeks to reinsert the potent theological content Bach so meticulously fleshed out in his tonal plan and motivic themes.22

21 While this paper is focused on ritualization, it is important for the reader to understand that this concept is unique to Sellars’s interpretation. The more commonly-used expression is “staging,” which is not incorrect in discussion, since that is what is literally happening when a director physically mounts the Passion oratorio. 22

See Eric Chafe’s Tonal Allegory in the Vocal Music of J.S. Bach (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).

Example 1 Ritualized gesture; open-hand, offertory position, symbolic of Christ offering his life for humanity (Photo courtesy of Berlin Philharmonic website)

A broad argument can be made, then, about how physical staging can lead people to hermeneutic meaning, using the tenets of this religious affective experience. Staging the passion can actually serve to enhance and intensify the theological content, making it newly perceptible/relevant to modern audiences. Schaefer’s integration of affect theory and religious practices expands upon already-established notions of primitivism in performance. Audiences respond to non-verbal communication—i.e. gestures—in a primal, animalistic way, which ultimately means in the most powerful of ways. The easiest way to understand this is the “fight-or-flight” reaction that every human experiences in various degrees several times throughout the day. The flight-or-flight response we have to danger is not intellectual

or cerebral; it is primal. Bodily movement—the most primal act of homo sapiens—is the most direct way, according to Schaefer, of transmitting meaning and power, especially when developed from other extremely sensitive aesthetic pulls, such as Bach’s sonic world in the Passions.23 While musicologists and theologians have long decreed that the text of the Passions are the foundation for musico-theological analysis, what if the best way to transmit Bach’s Lutheran theology is to marry his music with that which is most primal: gesture.

Example 2 The Sacrificial Lamb slain at the altar; chorus and orchestra (and Rattle, acting as a sort of celebrant) pay homage like a congregation at a Good Friday liturgy (Photo courtesy of Berlin Philharmonic website) At this juncture, it is necessary to highlight that Sellars’s 2010 “liturgical staging” was not infallible just because it was ritualized and not staged. As with any live performance, if the musical and dramatic cast were sub-par, the efficacy of the performance (and transmission of Lutheran orthodoxy) would have no doubt been negatively affected, if not 23 Schaefer, Religious Affects, 66.

failed. Herein lies the inherent fallacy when analyzing Sellars’s approach as primus inter pares directorial brilliance: it is still a professional performance, where the musicians and stagehands are paid and the audience purchases tickets. Scholars must feel comfortable with this, however, and realize that circumstances around performance can and often is subservient to transmission of affect in performance. In any liturgy or ritual, recreation and performativity are inherent, and it is equally the responsibility of the audience to engage as active participants. Sellars was aware of this, and placed members of the ensemble throughout the audience, encouraging eighteenth-century congregational practice. The complex history of the relationship between art and spiritual practice is an inevitable problem; two mediums that once functioned in tandem have devolved into autonomous, often antithetical, modes of expression. Yet, in a beautiful way, this comingling of two forms is congruent with liturgical theology, just as the priest breaks off a piece of the consecrated host into the chalice right before communion, representing the consubstantiation for two physical essences. Sellars’s ritualistic device achieved what other stagings did not: an “expression of spontaneity, immediacy, and freedom, of feeling and breathing, of conviction and commitment” which is only truly attained when focused intention on stage meets with receptiveness and spiritual thirst from the audience.24 In 1996, Peter Sellars debuted a staged adaptation of Handel’s dramatic oratorio Theodora at Glyndebourne that was met with “rapturous reception,” and the production was hailed as “one of the best things he [Sellars] has ever put on stage here [Glyndebourne] and 24 Lydia Goehr, The Quest for Voice: Music, Politics, and the Limits of Philosophy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 148.

the production…is already a classic.”25 What made Theodora different from the oeuvre of opera stagings in Sellars’s repertory was a wholly different approach to interpretation, called a ritualization. As a baroque Christian oratorio, Theodora was not conceived with staging in mind, and Sellars capitalized on this by making the secular presentation of the work a quasireligious ritual. What resulted was an affective experience that was fresh, daring, gripping, and relevant. Until the Berlin St Matthew Passion in 2010 “‘Theodora’ was seen by many as Sellars’ most memorable production.”26 How was St Matthew different than Theodora, and why did it trump the latter in its reception? Eighteenth-century Passion oratorios—of which St Matthew was in the style—were meant to be used in liturgy, and were composed in the vein of Lutheran Pietism that sought to instruct the faithful on their personal relationship with Christ. Given Bach’s masterful command of theology, his music has an unparalleled synthesis of music, theology, and liturgy. When the Passions are performed outside a liturgical context, they lose not only their potency and liveness, but also their originallyintended medium. Given that liturgy is a ritual, Sellars drew upon this mutual, inextricable relationship to make his ritualization a liturgy. When this is done, the audience perceives the work in a disarming way, engaging in the presentation like a religious service instead of a form of entertainment. No matter how are obstinately modern society tries to avoid the spiritual, Bach did not, and Sellars has offered us a medium to once again experience the sacred, thereby fully experiencing Bach.

25 Martin Kettle, “Handel/Theodora.” "Reviews." The Guardian (1959-2003), Aug 06, 1997. 26

Ibid. 14

Bibliography Baxter, Jeffery. “Webcast review: Peter Sellars directs Bach’s “St. Matthew” Passion with Berlin Philharmonic.” Arts Atlanta, 19 April 2010. Braun, Werner. “Passion.” (2001) Grove Music Online. April 19, 2019. Goehr, Lydia. The Quest for Voice: Music, Politics, and the Limits of Philosophy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Kavanagh, Aidan and Frank Kacmarcik. On Liturgical Theology: The Hale Memorial Lectures of Seabury-Western Theological Seminary 1981. Collegeville, [Minnesota]: Liturgical Press, 1992. Kettle, Martin. “Handel/Theodora.” "Reviews." The Guardian (1959-2003), Aug 06, 1997. Kriechbaum, Reinhard. ‘Musikalischer Wandertag’. Wiener Zeitung, 29 March 2010. <www.wienerzeitung.at/themen_channel/musik/klassik_oper/227676_Musikalische r-Wandertag.html>. Littlejohn, David. ‘Reflections on Peter Sellars’s Mozart’. Opera Quarterly 7 (1990), 6–36. Reynolds, Oliver. ‘Truth’s Death by Cellophane’. Times Literary Supplement, 21 April 2000, 20. Service, Tom. “Ligeti’s Riot Through History”. The Guardian, August 27 2009. <www.theguardian.com/music/2009/aug/27/le-grand-macabre-gyorgy-ligeti> Schaefer, Donovan. Religious Affects: Animality, Evolution, and Power. Durham/London: Duke University Press, 2015. Sokolowski, Andre. ‘Bach: H-Moll Messe/Mattha ̈us-Passion’. Kultura Extra, 12 April 2010. <www.kulturaextra.de/musik/feull/bach_europachorakademie_berliner_philharmon iker.php>. Téllez, Carmen-Helena. “An Analysis of the Ritualization of J.S. Bach’s Matthäus-Passion by Peter Sellars and Simon Rattle: A Guide to the Appreciation of Interdisciplinary Presentations.” Lecture Handout, November 9, 2017. University of Notre Dame. Varwig, Bettina. “Beware the Lamb: Staging Bach’s Passions.” Twentieth-century music, 11 (2) (Sept. 2014), 245-274. Weinzierl, Ulrich. ‘Simon Rattles Osterwunder mit Bachs ‘‘Mattha ̈uspassion’’’. Die Welt, 30 March 2010.<www.welt.de/welt_print/kultur/article6982153/Simon-RattlesOsterwunder-mit-Bachs-Matthaeuspas-sion.html>.

Woolf, Alexa. ‘J. S. Bach St John Passion, English National Opera’. April 2000. <www.musicweb-international.com/SandH/2000/apr00/bachstjohn.htm>.