The full eight-part chorus takes over the Evangelist’s role for the conclusion, encompassing the
announcement of Christ’s death and the general prayer (Ex. 18-11), where antiphony seems to strengthen
the idea of generality (the lower choir “seconding” and joining in with the pleas of the higher). The triple
Amen, mandated by the length of the piece it concludes and the need for an appropriate peroration, shows
the composer’s high awareness of himself as orator and rhetorician—that is, a persuader. If such a music
proclaims it, we may very well believe that what seems to us white is black.
AUGENMUSIK
Compared with the sheer sonic magnitude of this Passion setting, the inherent drama of the choral
characterizations, and the composer’s self-dramatization at the end, the use of “madrigalisms” like those
in Mirabile mysterium is secondary and sporadic. There is a spectacular one at the very beginning of the