Membra Jesu nostri SPAM – Spandau macht Alte Musik

It doesn’t happen very often that a city promotes its marketing with an organist. That’s what happened in Lübeck, however, as one can read in a city guidebook from 1697 in which Dieterich Buxtehude is praised as a “world-famous organist and composer”: his Abendmusiken (“evening music”) are events “that do not happen anywhere else”.

For almost four decades, Buxtehude as the organist of the Marienkirche practically defined the musical life of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck, influencing an entire generation of musicians with his compositional style. The seven-part cantata cycle Membra Jesu nostri stands out among his sacred works – a meditative contemplation of the crucified Christ. The textual basis is poems by the Cistercian monk Arnulf of Leuven from the 13th century. In a manner both poetic and intimate, these verses are dedicated to the “membra”, the limbs of Christ, namely to his feet, knees and hands, to his side and his breast, and finally to his heart and his face. These texts are supplemented by short Bible quotations from the Old Testament, including passages from the Song of Songs. Buxtehude succeeds in furnishing these very personal texts with music that is unbelievably gentle, performed by solo and choral vocal voices and a few string instruments. Listening thus resembles a focused, loving look to the suffering Christ. The high point of the composition is the sixth cantata, which is devoted to the heart of Jesus. In an associative way, Buxtehude expands the instrumentation to a dense five-voice gamba movement; in its soft, elegant beauty, it can hardly be surpassed.

That excellently fits the “music of the heart” theme that the Festival SPAM – Spandau macht Alte Musik 2027 has selected as programmatic guiding principle. This is the third time that the RIAS Kammerchor concludes the festival; this time the choir will perform jointly with the Collegium Musicum ’23 and will be conducted by the Norwegian conductor Grete Pedersen, who has enjoyed great successes with Det Norske Solistkor Oslo, which she founded, as well as with the Swedish Radio Choir and the Netherlands Chamber Choir.

The concert will be recorded by Deutschlandfunk Kultur.