Bonfire-lit Beauty: Carlene Gadapee reviews Gjertrud Schnackenberg’s St. Matthew Passion

St. Matthew Passion
Gjertrud Schnackenberg
Arrowsmith Press, 2024
100 pp.

Gjertrud Schnackenberg’s St. Matthew Passion is a tour de force, a personal and introspective reflection on and with Bach’s sacred oratorio of the same title. At times musical commentary, and at others, musings on concerns of a more intimate nature, the text follows much of the libretto and musical movements in Bach’s famous work from 1727.

I was initially struck by the structural choices Schnackenberg made; the entire text is presented in centered stanzas of three lines each. Sonically, the stanzas are nearly tercets, in that there are sometimes slant rhymes, but more often, there is the resonance of sounds that are repeated: from the start, “can’t- back” and “aslant-set” immediately set the pattern in a gentle, musical way. This is not a long poem built on obvious or hard rhymes; instead, like the music that informs this piece, sound is woven deftly into the poems. Sound, especially the use of assonance and consonance, are central to the poems throughout the entire text.

In the first section, “A Rising Minor Sixth,” the prevalence of darkness imagery connects us immediately to the subject matter, the Passion of Christ, of the oratorio: “bonfire-lit” and “haunted in the dark,” “darkest beauty” and “gone dark” provide the repetition, again, following Bach. This interweaving of the oratorio, the libretto, and Schnackenberg’s poems provides a framework that makes contemplating the Passion alongside the lived experiences of the poet-speaker an intimate experience. The repetition of the word “dark” and similar phrases runs throughout the entire text; it would be reasonable to state that it is the connecting thread, linking poet to speaker, speaker to reader, and section to section. In this way, the text almost mirrors the way the oratorio is connected: movement to movement, the arias, recitatives, choir and orchestral sections all become one seamless work of musical art paired with the poetic text.

Is this text ekphrastic? In a way, I think so. While technically a tone poem, because the work is reflecting on a piece of music, it also relies on starkly evocative visual images from the Passion as well. The poet-speaker is not only musing on the oratorio but is also asking the reader to connect to a story that is both rooted in Western cultural traditions and in visual art as well. The descriptions of the events leading to the Crucifixion are pulled from the libretto and from a shared cultural “image bank” that many readers would already have in their memory and imagination. In this way, Schnackenberg’s work is truly a reflection and commentary on the Bach, but also on culturally recognized imagery.

Some sections of the text step away from the oratorio as well; these provide us with information about instruments, about Bach, and about the period and location that surround the music, its creation, and its performance. As a reader, I found these parts particularly engaging; the tone of these sections is less introspective and more informative, and they provide context that serves to humanize Bach as well. He is a giant in the world of classical music, and it is enjoyable to read the parts where he is seen as more like people we might know.

If one is not all that familiar with Bach’s St. Matthew Passion, as I was not, it is quite useful to find a reputable recording to listen to; the specific recording is noted at the end of the text. I found the Picander libretto online as well; being generally unfamiliar with the work made understanding the poems difficult. However, after doing my “homework,” I was able to understand the nuances and references much better. The text is the poet’s love-letter to a specific work of classical music and to musical scholarship; I can appreciate her fervor and depth of personal passion for the music and how her poems reflect that. Her work, coupled with the oratorio itself, becomes an amplified experience for the reader. She is irrevocably pulled into the music, again and again, and she invites us to experience it as well, to “[acknowledge] / music beyond the reach of ritual.”

A poet-teacher both by vocation and by trade, Carlene M. Gadapee’s poetry and critical reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in many publications, including English Journal, Waterwheel Review, Gyroscope Review, Smoky Quartz, Think, Allium, Vox Populi, and MicroLit Almanac. Carlene also received a “Best of the Net” nomination in 2023. Her chapbook, What to Keep, will be released by Finishing Line Press in early 2025. Carlene lives and works in northern New Hampshire.