LF 26: Bach and Blood

St Mary's Church, Whitekirk 16/9/25

Scottish Ensemble, Jonathan Morton (director, violin)

NYCOS Chamber Choir, Christopher Bell (director)

St Mary's Church in Whitekirk was the venue for the afternoon programme of 16th September in this year’s Lammermuir Festival, with the provocative title ‘Bach and Blood’. The ‘Bach’ was the monumental Chaconne from the D-minor Partita for solo violin, played by the director of the Scottish Ensemble, Jonathan Morton, but with a difference. Female voices from the National Youth Choir of Scotland’s Chamber Choir adumbrated the original with fragments of chorales on the topics of death and resurrection, believed to be quoted by Bach in the variations. ‘Blood’ for solo violin, strings and voices is a recent composition by Irish composer David Fennessy, based on a vocal melody by the 12th-century composer Hildegard of Bingen. Jonathan and the choristers were joined by the rest of the Scottish Ensemble. In between the headline works, the Ensemble performed Arvo Pärt’s ‘Greater Antiphons’ for strings.

Over the years, the D-minor Partita is a piece I have returned to to play (in private). I find it surprisingly playable and immensely therapeutic, though I must admit never successfully fully scaling the peak that is the Chaconne. I rarely play now, so I suppose I have admitted defeat and find my therapy instead as a listener. In this respect, Jonathan Morton was a skilled therapist, catching the rawness of the stages of grief, the serenity of healing and joy of hope, contained in the music, to perfection. The voices added a consolatory layer to what is thought to represent an elegy for Bach’s first wife, Maria Barbara. This year’s Festival had already delivered sensitive informed readings of Bach’s cantata ‘Ich habe genug’ and Brahms’ First Violin Sonata which took the listener through similar journeys. There are more polished readings of the Chaconne. Jonathan’s was laudable for its unvarnished candour. Christopher Bell directed the voices.

Pärt’s ‘Greater Antiphons’ is a complete 2016 reworking for strings only of a 1988 piece for a cappella choir, setting the 7 liturgical ‘O-Antiphons’ to the Magnificat, sung on the 7 days preceding Christmas Eve, a standard exercise for composers of liturgical music, as my friend the Irish composer Ephrem Feeley can attest – what I have seen of his ‘O-Antiphons’ are wee gems. Pärt’s customary tintinnabuli style, a sound world with a uniquely radiant approach to limpidly layered harmony, pervades the music from the first antiphon. Jonathan directed from the lead violin. The second antiphon shifted to sonorous low strings, simple but satisfying , increasing in volume, with perhaps a hint of the Vaughan Williams ‘Tallis Fantasia’ stripped of ornamentation. The third started pizzicato and rhythmic, building to a huge arco sound, halting before any resolution. In the fourth, muted idyllic sound shifted slowly through transient discords towards and through exquisite “found” harmonies. The fifth, very brief, had repeated note patterns overlaying a lilting rhythm. In the sixth, alternating bass and treble notes, the latter accentuated, rocked for a while. Then radiant tutti chording moved to huge climax. The final antiphon recalled the mood of the opening, with shifting chords in small groups, ending calmly. A first hearing for me of a gorgeous piece. The glowing acoustic of St Mary's seemed perfect for such music.

In March 2025, I caught the UK premiere of Fennessy’s ‘Bog Cantata’ in Greyfriars in Edinburgh, with the Dunedin Consort and a stellar cast of vocalists, a programme which included Bach’s ‘Actus Tragicus’, and both were stunning. So I had high hopes for ‘Blood’. These were rapidly undermined by some features of the writing. Others, I acknowledge, were surpassingly beautiful, so I feel I should try to tease out some analysis of my mixed reaction. In much of the concertante writing for the solo violin, there is a requirement for what I will call, for want of better words, screeching and scraping, noises which learners of the instrument succeed in exorcising from their sound. Evoking the visceral from a “Hammer Horror” viewpoint is all very well, but the kindest thing I can say is that I can’t love it. Looking at the vocal effects, many of these were magical, such as the rushing of air, the shifting of resonance on one note to produce a tonally satisfying ‘meow’-like sound, and beats produced by microtonal pitch-bending. However, Hildegard’s beautiful poetic Latin text has had many of its consonants removed. As the president of a choral society, I cannot condone vandalism to consonants. Of the seven movements, the first three and the sixth were marred by the screeching. The fourth and the fifth could have belonged to a different piece, with harmonies recognisable as such and a Pärt-like radiance. The tender words “Tu flos es” (you are a flower) even floated in translation. The final movement, to my personal taste, suffered from the ill that Stravinsky termed “music continuing long after it was finished”. In conclusion, then, nowhere near “nul points”, but also a good league away from a stamp of approval. Disappointing.

Weblink: https://www.lammermuirfestival.co.uk/event/bach-and-blood/