Arts & Events

Celebrated Belgian choral ensemble Vox Luminis returned to the Berkeley Early Music Festival on Thursday, June 9, for the first of two concerts at First Congregational Church, where they performed Dietrich Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu Nostra. Buxtehude (1637-1707) was a renowned organist and composer in Lübeck, Germany, where he served as organist at the Marienkirche for 39 years. Younger composers such as Handel, Telemann, and Johann Sebastian Bach all made visits to Buxtehude in Lübeck. At the age of 20, Bach obtained a month’s leave of absence from his post as organist in Amstadt, Germany, to pay a visit to Buxtehude. Bach walked on foot from Amstadt to Lübeck, a distance of 250 miles, and then stayed nearly three months there so captivated was he by hearing Buxtehude’s music and conferring with the then 68 year-old composer. 

Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu Nostra, roughly translated as The Body Parts of Our Jesus, is set to a Latin text that to any modern thinker seems morbid in the extreme. Each body part of Jesus is apostrophised in turn, beginning with his feet and ending with his face. Out of prudery, no mention is made of Jesus’s genitalia, although many churches in Europe claimed to have a holy relic in the circumcised foreskin of Jesus, called in Italian il santissimo prepuzio. Indeed, one is astonished that so much barely sublimated sexual energy is poured into this adoration of every body part of Jesus in this text. There are even two different passages from the highly erotic Song of Solomon, where Jesus is addressed as “my beautiful one” and “my sister, my bride.” 

As bizarrely morbid as we modern thinkers may find this text, we cannot fail to recognise the beauty of Buxtehude’s musical setting of this work, especially when it is so wonderfully sung by the Belgian choral ensemble Vox Luminis under the direction of its leader, Lionel Meunier. Mention must also be made of the excellent instrumental ensemble accompanying this group of singers, which was made up of violinists Elizabeth Blumenstock and Kati Kyme from Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, Steven Lehring on violone, and David Belkovski on organ, with additional accompaniment on some passages from viola da gambists Elisabeth Reed, David Morris, and William Skeen. 

Vocal highlights included, among others, two different groupings of only three voices. The first of these came in the section Ad pectus (To the breast), in which three male voices alternated, two tenors and a bass. The second came in the section Ad cor (To the heart), which included a soprano, an alto, and a bass. This bass part was beautifully sung by Lionel Meunier. At the close of this work, a jaunty Amen with elaborate coloratura was sung by the full coterie of Vox Luminis singers. 

On Sunday afternoon at 4:00 pm, First Congregational Church will again host Vox Luminis who will give this Berkeley Early Music Festival’s final concert, which features JS Bach’s Magnificat as well as the Magnificat of Bach’s predecessor at Leipzig Johann Kuhnau.