Rivers, Cleve's Bach Sublime: Earthshine to Break Dancing

Earl Rivers

   How do you like your Bach?

   German filmmaker Bastian Cleve likes his with visual accompaniment, and who doesn’t experience feelings and images when they hear Bach's music, no matter how cerebral?

   Earl Rivers, director of choral studies at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music decided to make common cause with eminent Bach scholar and conductor Helmut Rilling by getting on the cutting edge of Bach experientia Friday night (Nov. 22) at Knox Presbyterian Church in Hyde Park.

   Rivers, who as director of music at Knox heads one of the finest church music programs in the area, presented Bach’s Mass in B Minor with the CCM Chamber Choir, five excellent soloists and the CCM Philharmonia Orchestra as part of a multi-media event featuring live performance of the Mass to Cleve’s film.

   The film, “The Sound of Eternity” is an anthology of 27 short films inspired by Bach’s magnum opus, which comprises 27 movements corresponding to portions of the Roman Catholic Mass (never mind that Bach was a Lutheran – Bach became a welcome member of the Catholic church music pantheon long ago).

   Cleve was there to introduce his film, which was given its world premiere at the Bach Oregon Festival in 2006 in a performance of the Mass led by Rilling.  It was controversial then and probably remains so – does Bach’s music need visual interpretation?  But Cleve, who heads the film production department at the Film Academy Baden-Württemberg in Ludwigsburg, Germany, admits that this is his personal response to the Mass, a “luxury” he could afford to indulge after enjoying a successful career in filmmaking.  The Knox performance is the first to utilize the film (now available on DVD with the Mass conducted by Rilling) since its introduction in 2006.  The free event was sponsored by CCM’s Tangeman Sacred Music Center.

   The church was full to see and hear what this new Bach adventure would entail.

   Of course, it is hard to fully process both visual and the aural stimuli simultaneously, especially when one’s own feelings and images are evoked by the music.  But it was fascinating to try to reference them against what Cleve felt and saw.

   It was a grab bag of impressions, from high art to kitsch, including live action such as the birth of a baby (presumably Bach) in a snow-covered village and a love-laced wedding reception, to computer-enhanced ones (most often with birds).  There are Breughelesque paintings, lavish Renaissance cathedrals, gorgeous landscapes (including a soaring eagle) as well as grim street scenes and images of war.  There is a lot of comic-book style fancy mixed in.  Even the Winged Lion of Venice came to life and perched here and there during the film (once on a telephone pole wire).

    Cleve calls his project “a celebration of life” in harmony with Bach’s great (and only fully completed) Mass.  Each film tries in some way to capture the essence of the text to which it corresponds.  It begins with a voyage to Earth, as it were, the blue planet appearing as it rises over the Moon.  Scenes were shot in Germany, Morocco, India and San Francisco (Cleve spent some time working in Hollywood, he said). 

   Some of the episodes are obvious – an image of a bloody crucifix during “Crucifixus,” celebratory crowds at the Brandenburg Gate when the Berlin Wall came down (“Hosanna”),  images of death, including Bach on his deathbed as pages of his manuscripts blow away and become notes).  There are interconnections, not only concerning Bach, but other characters in the films.  The most poignant is of a little girl who toddles down to a riverbank in a joyful scene of children playing (“Et expecto”), only to be seen later floating face down in the water (“Agnus Dei”).

   The films stresses universality, with images of the poor, the crippled and bathers in the Ganges River.  The political dimension is vividly captured in “Et in Sanctum Spiritum," where photos of smiling World War I-era soldiers are contrasted with images of ruins, hospitals and graves. In a nod, perhaps, to Stanley Kubrick (“2001”), a space-walking cosmonaut (Soviet) appears alongside images from the Renaissance near the end (“Hosanna”).

   There is a recurring theme of wandering in the desert – pilgrims, refugees toting suitcases, even a spectacular “Three Kings” camel caravan where a burning bush appears behind them – that gave Cleve’s theme of the journey of life its most meaningful expression.  However, for on-target content, my favorite film of all was three break dancers spinning and gyrating to “Et resurrexit.”

   Some of the films are abstract with shifting, shimmering colors and patterns.  In one, textures like green amber morph into leaves (“Et in unum Dominum”).  One of the most striking films of all is set to the “Gloria” where a pop-style portrait gallery of the human race changes faces to the beat of the music, from old age to childhood and back, ending with Bach.

   And how was the music?  Exceptional.  The 37-voice Chamber Choir brought passion and precision to the work’s big choral episodes.  Soloists Nicole Yazolino and Jamie Leigh Medina (sopranos I and II), alto Catherine Martin, tenor Cameo Humes and baritone Noel Bouley all sang with great beauty and refinement.  (A different set of soloists will sing for the Nov. 23 repeat.)

   The 40-piece Philharmonia played in fine baroque style with vibrato-less strings and precisely tailored rhythms, from festive piccolo trumpet-and-drum movements like “Cum Sancto Spiritu” (to aerial views of San Francisco and the Pacific Ocean),  to deeply affecting arias where principal players on obbligato parts complimented the vocalists exquisitely, such as “Qui tollis peccata,” “Et in Spiritum Sanctum” and “Benedictus.”  Jennifer Jill Araya and Jason McNeel on cello and double bass and organist Albert Mühlbock provided a strong continuo accompaniment throughout.  Rivers, always extremely effective in his self-effacing way, led with authority and feeling.

    The concert repeats, but without the film, at 3 p.m. Nov. 23 at Knox Presbyterian Church, Michigan and Observatory Avenues in Hyde Park.  Admission is free.