Grand bourgeois and poet - Barthold Heinrich Brockes
Barthold Heinrich Brockes (1680-1747), who came from a Hamburg patrician family, is one of the main figures of late Baroque German poetry. In 1712, the passion poem Jesus Suffering and Dying for the Sin of the World established the literary fame of Brockes, who was always independent due to his wealth. With the highly emotional text, he met the taste of his contemporaries as well as with his main work, the immense nine-volume collection of poems Irdisches Vergnügen in Gott. Soon after his death, criticism arose against his sprawling poetic language, and thus his giant work quickly fell into oblivion among posterity.

Brocke's life path followed the tracks intended for the sons of burghers from wealthy homes, which were also followed two generations later by Johann Wolfgang Goethe: After completing his secondary education at the Akademisches Gymnasium in his hometown of Hamburg, Brockes first went to Dresden to complete his knowledge of Latin. There he befriended a young nobleman, with whom he made a side trip to Prague, before returning home to perfect himself in the noble arts of fencing, riding and the French language. Thus equipped with the skills of a young nobleman, he went to study law at the University of Halle to attend lectures from 1700 to 1702 with the jurist Christian Thomasius, who made a name for himself with a conception of law committed to the new spirit of the Enlightenment. In Halle he also met Georg Friedrich Händel, five years his junior, who undoubtedly took part in the musical entertainments that Brockes organized in his apartment. His legal training was followed by a six-month internship at the Imperial Chamber Court in Wetzlar; a trip abroad, in the manner of the cavalier tour of young noblemen, then took him to Geneva, and via Italy and France to the University of Leiden, where he received his doctorate in law in 1704.

Returning to Hamburg, and by now completely financially independent due to the death of both parents, he could have lived off his fortune in the future and devoted himself solely to his growing family and his literary interests - in 1714 he had married Anna Ilsabe Lehmann, who was also wealthy, and to whom he remained united in a happy marriage blessed with twelve children until her death in 1741. in 1720, he finally gave in to the urging of his fellow citizens and had himself elected to the Senate; his diplomatic skills brought considerable benefit to Hamburg on various missions. From 1735 to 1740, Brockes resided at Ritzbüttel Castle (now a district of Cuxhaven) as bailiff of the Hamburg estates at the mouth of the Elbe. After the death of his wife, he returned to Hamburg. There he remained tirelessly active in literature and in various official functions in his father city until he died in 1747 after an illness of only three weeks.

No fewer than 13 verifiable settings of the passion poem Der für die Sünde der Welt leidende und sterbende Jesus - in addition to this one by Telemann, also by Handel, Fasch, and the Hamburgers Keiser and Mattheson, among others - attest to its immense popularity; it has also left traces in the libretto to Bach's St. John Passion. In a poetic language that is hardly comprehensible to today's contemporaries, the work was intended to trigger a profound shock in the listeners that would allow them to experience firsthand, as it were, in their religious sensibilities, the suffering of Jesus, who died for their salvation. To this end, the Passion accounts of the New Testament are dramatically charged by the poet and composer with musical means of affectation otherwise found only in baroque opera. "The blood flows in streams!" is how René Jacobs described this process of translating the Passion story into a scenic sequence in an interview.

Reviews

FonoForum 06/09: "And it is precisely this theatrical approach that René Jacobs pursues in his recording. Right from the first chords, with the very savoring of the harmony, wrapped in brittle string sound, he draws the listener directly into the drama of Jesus' passion The musicianship is pictorially eloquent, rhetorically insistent, as for example the solo oboe in the opening Sinfonia jacobs encourages his musicians to play in such a full-voiced manner that the listener associates real floods of images. The impeccable ensemble of soloists follows Jacobs without follows Jacobs' lead without ifs or buts."