Karfreitag
The city is astonishingly quiet today, there is almost no traffic and the streetcars are running roughly half of the holiday schedule. Luminous grey skies, but neither wind nor rain.
I sat for ten minutes this morning, then did the Heart Chakra for the first time in weeks, and am now reading e-mail and blogs. And indeed blogging. The soundtrack to this is Arvo Pärt's Passio, a beautifully grim setting-to-music of John 18/19 (in Latin), which changes in the final seconds into a glorious (triumphant, one might say) major-chord chorale. Jesus is sung as a bass, Pilate a tenor, the Evangelist is a four part SATB chorus, and all other voices are given by a massed choir. Very moving, highly recommended - but listen before you buy, because it's quite slow and there are no tunes that you might hum in the shower.
Later this afternoon, I'm going to a performance of CPE Bach's "Matthew Passion" in a local church.
I've also been listening to the Kol Nidre, chosen on a whim after finding it in the music library. Well, not exactly a whim, more like recognizing the long arm of serendipity at work when an unseen finger taps me on the shoulder: why should I have found this particular CD at this particular time of year? It's also a fine piece of music, this non-Hebrew-speaker found it as beautiful and moving as the same non-Latin-speaker found the Passio.
posted by Udge @ 13:41
12 Comments:
What does "kar" mean as in Karwoche and karfreitag?
J.S. Bach's St Matthew Passion first turned me on to religious music. Kol Nidre came much later. And finally came Dudu Fisher's performance/arrangement of Kol Nidre on his CD Never on Friday. You can hear a too-short clip of it at
http://www.mostlymusic.com/dudu-fisher-never-friday-p-617.html
Well, I'm very glad you asked.
According to the German Wikipedia, the "kar" in Karfreitag comes from the Althochdeutsch (Middle Ages old high German) "kara" which means lamenting or sorrowing.
Kehrwoche is something entirely different, semantically quite involved. The verb "kehren" has two entirely different sets of meanings. The first sense of "kehren" conjugates with "to be" and means to turn, literally or metaphorically; to turn aside, or to abandon your journey and return home, or to turn your back on someone, or to turn over the bedsheets. The "Kehrseite" is the backside (of a coin) or the unpleasant side (of something otherwise good, like the loss of privacy that attends fame, or side-effects of a drug). "Wiederkehr" is something that returns, e.g. your birthday or a traveller to distant lands.
The second sense of "kehren" (conjugated with "to have") is more common in southern Germany, and means to clean up, sort out, impose order on. The word "Kehricht" means stuff which has been swept into a heap prior to finally disposing of it; the perceived need to create this word speaks volumes about the (southern!) German soul.
"Kehrwoche" neatly combines both meanings: All apartment-dwellers take it in turns to sweep the staircase and entry hall, and in winter to shovel snow from the sidewalk in front of the building.
That picture is gorgeous. Very nice.
I saw the picture on Flickr earlier and smiled. It is very beautiful.
I'm glad you're getting to experience such great music. How was the show at the church?
I must check out Part's Passio.
Hey Udge, we miss you in Another Place.
Hi udge,
it's your ramon fernandez friend from some time back. at easter lunch with my 96 year old mother, she asked me what a blog was. i explained as well as i could, but told her that the only way to really understand was to look at one. i told her how i had found your blog, after you had referred to ramon fernandez, a reference that i picked up on google, and then i told her that not all blogs are created equal, some are well written and interesting, and others are deadly dull. i told her that yours was definitely in the former category, so here we are reading your latest. then my mother asked how people went about making a comment, so that explains THIS. so you have become the instantiation of the perfect blog and blogger....
thought that you should know...
ich find deinen blog auch cool
das mit Karfreitag hab ich mich auch schon oefter gefragt, warum das so heisst.......
Thank you all for the kind comments! I hope your holidays are progressing well?
Anonymous #1, I owe you an apology. There is indeed such a word as "Karwoche", which is the week before Easter; same root as Karfreitag. It is presumably a northern German (predominantly Protestant) usage, as I've never heard it during 11 years here in the South (predominantly Catholic). My bad, I should have checked before sounding off.
Brooksba, I'll post about the Bach piece and other matters separately.
Jean, I haven't been sitting much the last weeks, but will make a new start after Easter.
Anonymous #2, welcome back and thanks for the heady praise. Extend my best wishes to your mother, and tell her that I look forward to reading her Easter comment next year.
Arvo Paart is amazing! It might be repeatitive but his themes move strongly through you, strings scraping at your psyche, intensifying and building more and more until you feel you are experiencing something ethereal -so sorrowful but redemptive. I feel like that guy had strong emotional experiences. Thanks for reminding me of this artist.
Nice post! :)
Sounds beautiful.
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