FULL Membra Jesu nostri (Buxtehude) Zurich 2024 Ensemble Polyharmonique
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: Membra Jesu nostri patientis sanctissima
- Composer: Buxtehude Dietrich
- Libretto: The text of the work combines Bible verses with verses from a medieval devotional poem known in Buxtehude's time as Domini Bernhardi Oratio Rhythmica, believed to be the work of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, but now attributed to Arnulf of Louvain
- Venue & Opera Company: St.Peter, Zürich, Switzerland
- Recorded: March 17, 2024
- Type: Concert Live
- Singers: Magdalene Harer, Alice Foccroulle, Alexander Schneider, Johannes Gaubitz, Matthias Lutze
- Conductor: Alexander Schneider
- Orchestra: Cellini Consort
- Chorus: Ensemble Polyharmonique
- Stage Director:
- Costume Designer:
Information about the Recording
- Published by: ARTE
- Date Published: 2024
- Format: Streaming
- Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
- Subtitles: nosubs
- Video Recording from: ARTE FULL VIDEO
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
Membra Jesu nostri, with the full title: Membra Jesu nostri patientis sanctissima (Latin, “The most holy limbs of our suffering Jesus”) is a cycle of seven passion cantatas by the Danish-German Baroque composer Dieterich Buxtehude (BuxWV 75).
Buxtehude wrote the work in 1680. It has come down to us in an autograph tablature manuscript that has been preserved in the collection of the Stockholm court music director and organist Gustav Düben. He was a friend of Buxtehude and also the work’s dedicatee.
The text of the work combines Bible verses with verses from a medieval devotional poem known in Buxtehude’s time as Domini Bernhardi Oratio Rhythmica (Mr. Bernhard’s Rhyming Prayer), believed to be the work of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, but now attributed to Arnulf of Louvain. This poem consists of seven parts dedicated in ascending order to a part of the body of the crucified Christ: feet, knees, hands, side, chest, heart, face. Each part has five stanzas of ten lines (seven in the part dedicated to the heart), each of which is again divided into two half-stanzas of five lines. The seventh part, Salve caput cruentatum, had already served Paul Gerhardt as a model for the hymn O Haupt, full of blood and wounds, which became the ultimate passion chorale and was also used by Johann Sebastian Bach in the St Matthew Passion. Paul Gerhardt’s songs Be my thousand greetings and O heart of the king of the world are also transmissions of the first and sixth parts of this cycle. A Latin-German edition by Joseph Wilhelmi, which first appeared in 1633, is considered a possible source of the text for Buxtehude.
From the ten or fourteen half-stanzas of each part of the Rhythmica Oratio, the compiler (Buxtehude himself is presumed) chose three for each part of the body. As a framework for the three half-stanzas, he chose suitable passages from the Bible that related to the respective body part.
Quote from Wikipedia