St Mark’s Passion – Paweł Mykietyn | #music

St Mark’s Passion – Paweł Mykietyn

‘Passion’ tells the story of Christ in five parts, but in a way never seen before in the history of music: starting from the end.

Paweł Mykietyn’s St Mark’s Passion, dedicated to Andrzej Kosendiak, was written between 2007 and 2008 on commission from the City of Wrocław. It was first performed on 8th September 2008 at the Witold Lutosławski Philharmonic in Wrocław during the 43rd Wratislavia Cantans Festival. Amongst the performers were Urszula Kryger (mezzo-soprano), Katarzyna Moś (vocals), Maciej Stuhr (recitation), the choir Cantores Minores Wratislavienses prepared by Piotr Karpeta and the AUKSO Chamber Orchestra of the City of Tychy under the baton of Marek Moś. In 2009, the piece was nominated for the Opus Public Media Award.

The cast is intimate: apart from the reciter (Pilate), the mezzo-soprano (Jesus) and the white voice (commentator) participating in the events described, it includes the voices of three boys symbolising the crowd, a chamber choir modelled on ancient tragedies (informing about and presenting the origins of Jesus Christ), and an instrumental ensemble consisting of saxophones, tuba, two electric guitars, percussion and strings in a particular tune, different from the other instruments.

The Passion was written to the text of St Mark’s Gospel and excerpts from the Book of Isaiah in the Hebrew translation by Franz Delitzsch from 1877. The use of the original text is decisive for the composition – it emphasises the historical and cultural context of the presented events and brings them closer to listeners, as if they were direct observers. Only the part of Pilate (the reciter) is performed in the local language, which also has a symbolic meaning – it is disturbing, as only those words can be understood by the audience.

The content of the work is the story of Christ, told in five parts, but in a way unprecedented in the history of music, namely from the end – from Jesus' death on the cross to his origin. The Passion begins with Christ’s vocalisation (mezzo-soprano) – at first in the form of static, repeated notes, growing to melancholic, wide glissandos and interval leaps, with the moving words ‘It is finished!’. The work ends, however, with a vision of the capture leading to passion and death, told in parallel with the genealogy of Christ. Jesus’ last words in the composition are ‘Rise, let us go! See, My betrayer is approaching!!’, after which we hear only the white voice intoning: ‘rabbi, rabbi!’. This is what the composer himself said about the concept of the composition:

Text

This first entrance [mezzo-soprano-Christ] has its own background. At the beginning, after a short introduction, there is a series of images separated by saxophone, like a slapstick montage. There are several dozen of these images. I don’t want to interpret the music, because everyone will perceive it in their own way. But... Before we die, we supposedly see our whole life in some kind of unrealistic abbreviation, it flashes before our eyes. And these images are just such a symbol of all those past moments. They are purely instrumental in ‘Passion’, divided by a falling saxophone phrase, a few singular notes. Everything starts to speed up, like in a slideshow or a fast-forwarded DVD. And suddenly, as in Antonioni’s ‘Blow-Up’, there is a detail in one of these images that makes you return to your senses. The choir begins to sing the genealogy of Christ, the saxophone plays faster and faster, in some kind of loop. We fast-forward, more, more, and suddenly a human voice is heard. We look at the dozens of images and among them one, precisely this one, we want to zoom into.

At first, nothing in this music indicates the genre of the story, nothing points to The Passion. And just like in Antonioni’s work, by chance, watching a film or browsing through photographs, we come across an intriguing detail. We look at it and we uncover the mystery: it turns out that it is the voice of the dying Jesus.

Author

Dwutygodnik 2009, No. 13

The first part is filled with the aforementioned vocalisation of the mezzo-soprano (Christ), full of expression – fear and despair, accompanied by the measured sounds of instruments. There also appears the characteristic motif of the tuba, enhancing the impression and symbolising Jesus’ suffering. The second link is the image of the Stations of the Cross in the rocking rhythm of a march. The part of Christ this time brings to mind Baroque arias, accompanied by the boys’ choir reporting the events. The third and culminating part brings a mixture of different, striking ‘frames’, emotions and reflections. It is an image of the interrogation of Jesus by Pilate, in which the lament of the mezzo-soprano (Christ) clashes with the brutal, rock-like sound of the reciter’s voice (Pilate) and the singer singing in a white voice.

In musical terms, the most characteristic feature of Paweł Mykietyn’s work is the enormous power of internal expression achieved with an almost minimal set of means. It is also distinguished by a specific kind of sound language, resulting directly from a number of factors: apart from the peculiar colouristic properties of the text itself, also from the piano dynamics prevailing in the work, which are interrupted only a few times by brutal rock hits, from microtonal harmony juxtaposed with tonal fragments, and from melodic motifs of oriental character, at times reminiscent of Jewish music. Purely sonoristic effects, achieved by juxtaposing the sounds of instruments with specific articulation, but also from unusual sound sources (for example, crushed beer cans), also play an important role in building the sound aura. The texture in Passion is predominantly openwork, delicate and light, composed of single sounds and musical gestures.

In his commentary on the work, published in connection with its performance at the 2009 Warsaw Autumn Festival, the musicologist Andrzej Chłopecki wrote these significant words:

Text

This piece is disturbing. In an extraordinary way it provokes reflection on ourselves, our faith, our condition; it raises questions of existential nature. Paweł Mykietyn’s ‘St Mark’s Passion’ for voices and instruments may become for us a musical discourse on Jesus and us. With his work, Paweł Mykietyn has struck a great bell. I suppose that its sound will also ring in our senses, our hearts and our thoughts.

Author

Programme book of the 2009 Warsaw Autumn Festival

Written by Anna Iwanicka-Nijakowska, December 2009, translated to English by PG, April 2022, edited by AZ

paweł mykietyn

sacral music