Sat, Jan 19, 2019 page14

• Bilingual Music: the origin of the Passion 雙語音樂：受難曲的起源

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  In Christian music, a passion refers to the musical setting recounting the sufferings endured by Jesus Christ as recorded in the Bible. Traditionally, passions were mostly performed in Holy Week — also known as Passion Week — being the week leading up to Easter, or Resurrection Sunday, and are part of the liturgy. Renowned passions include Johann Sebastian Bach’s highly acclaimed work the St. Matthew Passion.

  The origins of the passion can be traced all the way back to the fourth century, at a time when the Church would, as part of the liturgy during Holy Week, recite the passages of Christ’s sufferings as described in the four gospels of the New Testament. During the Middle Ages, the priest started to apply different intonations when reciting the biblical account, gradually building up into a form of interpretive chant. At that time, a range of 11 notes were divided into three parts: the lowest four notes were reserved for the words of Jesus Christ in the gospels, the middle notes were given to the Evangelists intoning the story, and the highest four notes represented the crowd, known as the turba. During the 13th to 15th centuries, the story of the passion went from being recited by a single priest to the addition of three to four other voices, all of whom would take on different roles, until it gradually morphed into an early theatrical performance. At this point, a hymn would sometimes be inserted between chants, performed by the church choir, in the polyphonic musical style that was popular at the time, to give us the earliest form of the passion.

  When Martin Luther initiated the Reformation, he also promoted the theological doctrine of sola scriptura, which emphasized the importance of each individual reading the scriptures, and not relying solely on the interpretation of priests. For this purpose, he translated the entire New Testament from the original Greek into vernacular German, thereby circumventing the Latin version used by the Roman Catholic Church.

  

  Christ Crowned with Thorns, an oil painting dated to around 1622 to 1639 and painted by Dutch golden age painter Matthias Stom, depicting Jesus’ Passion story, when he was mocked by Roman soldiers with a crown of thorns and a reed as scepter. 荷蘭黃金時期的巴洛克畫家馬蒂亞斯‧斯托姆油畫作品《戴上荊棘冠冕的基督》，完成於一六三三到一六三九年間，描繪耶穌（右）的受難過程，被羅馬士兵用荊棘編作冠冕戴在頭上，再以蘆葦的莖作成權杖戲弄他。

  Photo: Wikimedia Commons
  照片：維基共享資源

  Following the Reformation, the passion performed during Holy Week developed along two lines. Composers belonging to the Roman Catholic Church, such as Italy’s Alessandro Scarlatti and France’s Marc-Antoine Charpentier and Francois Couperin, based their compositons on the Latin text of the Book of Lamentations from the Old Testament of the Bible and wrote Responsories for Holy Week and Lecons de tenebres (lessons of darkness) that would have accompanied the tenebrae services in the three days preceding Easter. German composers following Protestantism, on the other hand, used Luther’s German translation of the Bible, combining this with the expansive oratorio style, to create passions on a much larger scale.

  (Translated by Paul Cooper)

  在基督教音樂中，「受難曲」指的是根據聖經記錄的耶穌受難過程，譜成的音樂作品。傳統上，受難曲大多於「聖週」──或稱「受難週」，亦即復活節的前一週──演出，屬於禮拜儀式的一部分。著名的作品包括巴赫的扛鼎之作「馬太受難曲」。

  受難曲的起源最早可追溯到四世紀時，教會於聖週期間的禮拜儀式中，朗誦聖經《新約》四福音書中關於耶穌的受難紀錄。中世紀時期，神職人員在朗誦時開始加入抑揚頓挫的聲調，逐漸發展出歌唱般的吟詠方式。在當時，一組十一個音符會被分成三個部分：最低的四個音符表現福音書中耶穌所述，中間的音域安排予福音史家(the Evangelist)朗誦聖經記載的情節，最高的四個音則留給包含其他角色的「群眾」(turba)。及至十三到十五世紀之間，受難故事朗誦由單一神職人員獨挑大樑，增加為三到四名，分別負責不同角色，遂出現戲劇的雛形。此時，朗誦的段落之間有時亦會加入讚美詩，由教堂中的合唱團演唱，並以當時盛行的複調音樂風格呈現，形成「受難曲」最早期的樣貌。

  隨著馬丁路德推動宗教改革，提倡「唯獨聖經」的理念，強調每個人親自閱讀聖經的重要性，而非完全仰賴神職人員的解釋，遂將整本《新約聖經》由希臘文直譯成通俗的德文，跳過羅馬天主教廷使用的拉丁文版本。

  在宗教改革後，於聖週演奏的受難曲逐漸演變成兩種派別。屬於羅馬天主教的作曲家，例如義大利的亞歷山大‧史卡拉第，以及法國的馬克-安東尼‧夏龐蒂埃和法蘭梭瓦‧庫普蘭，以《舊約聖經》的《耶利米哀歌》拉丁經文為本，分別寫下《聖週應答文》和配合熄燈禮拜儀式的《受難週黑夜日課經》。另一方面，信奉新教的德國作曲家，則使用馬丁路德翻譯的德文聖經，結合大規模的神劇風格，寫出篇幅較大的受難曲。

  (台北時報章厚明撰)
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