Latest in the Catholic Herald: ‘Truly this was the Son of God’ (Guttenberg's Passion)

‘Truly this was the Son of God’

Jens F Laurson

 4 April, 2019

The Crucifixion (1635-1665), by Alonso Cano

I was moved to tears by a visionary approach to Bach's great Passion, says Jens F Laurson

It was a little before Easter 2008, and I had only just begun to grasp that my life in the United States, where I had spent the previous dozen years, had come to an end. Back in my native but estranged Munich I was: lonely, though still writing for Washington’s Classical Music radio station.

It was then that my boss at WETA 90.9FM reached out and asked if I wanted to join him on a cross-European train trip. The goal was to see in performance as many of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Matthew Passions and productions of Richard Wagner’s Parsifal – traditionally an Easter opera for its prominent Good Friday music episode – as possible; all within the space of a fortnight. It turned into two of the most memorable and cherished weeks of my life. Fascinating in its own right, this is not that story.

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In the US Catholic Herald: When a Protestant powerhouse turned to Catholic music

When a Protestant powerhouse turned to Catholic music

Jens F Laurson

 21 March, 2019

The Frauenkirche stands beside the Elbe in Dresden, the capital of Saxony (Getty)

Dresden, 1650. The Thirty Years’ War, officially over for only two years, hadn’t just decimated the population of Saxony – which, technically, would suggest a reduction by 10 per cent. Between disease, famine and murder, it had wiped out a gruesomely unimaginable two thirds.

Death was more present than life – a fact that did not spare the great court ensembles of the Saxon Elector, Johann Georg I and that of his eldest (surviving) son, the future Johann Georg II... continue reading

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In the US Catholic Herald: Sonatas to help you pray the rosary

Sonatas to help you pray the rosary

Jens Laurson

 7 March, 2019

Whether you listen to this as absolute music or as the background to deliberate contemplation, you have a
choice of some excellent recordings

Catholics who love the rosary may be unaware of an extraordinary aid to their prayer: the Rosary Sonatas, by the Bohemian composer and violinist Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber.

Biber was employed in the Austrian and Moravian towns of Graz and Kroměříž before entering his service in Salzburg, where he would compose the grand and glorious Missa Salisburgensis on the occasion of the 1,100th anniversary of the Salzburgian archbishopric in 1682. The great 18th-century musicologist Charles Burney wrote that “of all the violin players of the last century Biber seems to have been the best, and his solos are the most difficult and fanciful of any music I have seen of the same period”. [continue reading]

In the US Catholic Herald: Grand motets worthy of a king

Grand motets worthy of a king

Jens Laurson

 21 February, 2019

Louis XIV Gate at Versailles (Max Pixel)

Michel-Richard de Lalande (1657-1726) succeeded Jean-Baptiste Lully at the court of Louis XIV and was in charge of dinner music, where he provided oodles of deliciously entertaining baroque muzak. Good as that music is, if you want to turn it up a notch, go seek out de Lalande’s Grand Motets, where you will notice that greater things come of praising the Lord than trying to accompany roast pheasant with candied bacon-apples on a purée-of-gooseberry sauce velouté. [continue reading]