It was in those years of the 60s until even now when you might hear someone say, “If Bach were here he would have approved of that.” I think that most overstimate that dour Lutheran. I have jazz trumpet man Dizzy Gillespie playing the mouth-harp but I am happy to state here that Bach would not have to approve any of his compositions interpreted on the mouth harp. I have not found any.

What made the work viscerally immediate was the collaboration between the musicians, Marc Destrubé, violin, Linda Melsted, violin, Stephen Creswell, viola and Tanya Tomkins, cello with the poet duo (husband and wife) Robert Bringhurst and Jan Zwicky.

 

There were intense days of planning between the quartet and the duo at the duo’s home on Quadra Island. The result was an exquisite evening of very intimate music with poems written just for the occasion that were based in spirit to Christ’s last words on the cross. Bringhurst and Zwicky shifted the focus from the crucifixion of one man to the current, (in their words) crucifixion of the earth.

The concert, a Haydn concert changed my silly and most personal opinions on the composer. I may have shared them with a strong donor to the early music movement in Vancouver how cuts off all music after the death of Bach. I was most surprised to see this donor at a November concert of the Pacific Baroque Orchestra smile and sway to the music of a String Quartet in F major by Roman Hofstetter (1742-1815). It seems that this lovely quartet with an immensely popular second movement (of four) Serenata (andante cantabile) was all until recently attributed to Joseph Haydn and known as his Op3. no 5.


 

My conversion to Haydn came about by two CDs that I treasure. Until I heard these two, the Zukerman on CBC Radio, for me (how wrong I was!) Haydn was the bombastic and loud composer of symphonies that seemed to overuse (to this idiot) the tympani. It was the third movement, very quiet it is, Menuetto of the 22^nd Symphony that transported me (paradoxically, but I am not sure now) to the repetitive (but appealing to me) music of Steve Reich. The Menuetto seems to end here to begin there all over again, and it goes, on and on and is most lovely. The 7 movements (not the Introduzione or Conclusion) of Haydn’s Seven Last Words had lots of these almost endings and soft beginnings in a row.

 

The Destrubé/Pacific Baroque Orchestra (a smaller orchestra not a big symphonic one) CD introduced me to the quiet and more intimate Haydn. I am now a fan. If I had the money to donate to Early Music Vancouver I would with the stipulation of perhaps presenting the Missa in Angustiis ("Mass for troubled times") or "Nelson Mass" (Hob. XXII:11).

That there is no written record of the Bringhurst/Zwicky poems is a shame. My chances of ever hearing this work live again (but then I did hear it on Thursday at Green College!) are next to none. The same applies to all the baroque classics that Early Music Vancouver has brought to our Vancouver. Like Vancouver modern dance and the music of local new music composers it is stuff that will remain in my memory for a long time (in what remains in my 72 years of existence).

Robert Bringhurst

The concert was special for another reason. The instruments used were used in the manner of the 18th century. They had gut strings (sheathed more modernly in metal). You might have noticed that the violinists and the violist had no chin rests. These instruments, usually played in the smaller venues of the 18th century (the private chambers of kings and princes) were less loud than the beefed up instruments that followed in the 19th century and into our times. Many would say that the sound of baroque string instruments is warmer and more subtle. The difference between the baroque violins and the ones used for 19th to contemporary times are so different that Marc Destrubé told me that if he went to a Microcosmos String Quartet concert (he heads it) to play Britten and found himself with the baroque violin he would have to return home for the modern one.



I wondered about the metal endpin (I call it a spike) of Tanya Tomkins's cello. Usually to this amateur enthusiast this is how I discern the difference between the modern cello with endpin and the baroque without. I asked violist Stephen Creswell who explained that my idea that baroque cellos do not have endpins is not entirely correct. The endpin was known by the beginning of the 19th century. Tomkins's cello is indeed a baroque cello (Lockey Hill, London 1798) but she has the endpin (which Creswell said was usually ivory or wood) because of the added strain of not playing with an endpin if you have either a bad back or neck pains. It would seem that Tomkins's busy schedule has forced her to go with that endpin.


The harmonics that I heard Marc Destrubé play were explained thusly by Creswell:

As for harmonics, I perused the score frequently over the last week and never saw any indications from Haydn. I think Marc was performing in the moment, ad libitum.

Many years ago my friend, writer Les Wiseman told me, "Write about that which you know. And if you don't ask someone who knows." Stephen Creswell has weighed in why I may find links between that fave of mine Haydn's Symphony No 22 called the Philosopher the Last Seven Words:

Haydn’s Symphony No 22 in E-Flat major and his Opus 51 Seven Last words don't seem related by melody or any fragment of motive to me--but what is interesting is the timbre of the English horns and natural horns as scored in the minuet, with strings below in quarter notes, is something we seem to have replicated in Sonata II, with Marc's violin sounding a little like those English horns, as Tanya's cello anchored the sound with possibly some horn overtones, and the bow-stroke we were using, very dry and articulate, contributing as well.

The first movement of "Philosopher" is scored with muted violins, and Sonata VII is likewise. Sonata VII also features the violins playing like two natural horns. So that may increase a listener's affinity to link the two works.

At this time of the year there is a lot of coughing at concerts. I have a chronic one because of my arthritis medicine. For the last three years I have depended on Fisherman's Friends (lemon flavour). Because Lemon-Flavoured Fisherman's Friends (light yellow packaging) does not contain sugar or is as strong as the classic one you can have one of these (I choose to halve them) in your mouth without heartburn. They are most effective at concerts and the theatre. Without a tin (a Lee Valley Fridge Super Magnet container) of these I could not have enjoyed Haydn's Seven Last Words with confidence.