(Jesus and

Nicodemus Nicodemus (; ; ; ; ) is a New Testament figure venerated as a saint in a number of Christian traditions. He is depicted as a Pharisee and a member of the Sanhedrin who is drawn to hear Jesus's teachings. Like Lazarus of Bethany, Lazarus, Nicode ...

) is a sacred

motet In Western classical music, a motet is mainly a vocal musical composition, of highly diverse form and style, from high medieval music to the present. The motet was one of the preeminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music. According to the Eng ...

Ernst Pepping Ernst Pepping (12 September 1901 – 1 February 1981) was a German composer of classical music and academic teacher. He is regarded as an important composer of Protestant sacred music in the 20th century. Pepping taught at the and the . His mus ...

, a setting of a passage from the

Gospel of John The Gospel of John () is the fourth of the New Testament's four canonical Gospels. It contains a highly schematic account of the ministry of Jesus, with seven "Book of Signs, signs" culminating in the raising of Lazarus (foreshadowing the ...

. Pepping composed in 1937 an '' Evangelienmotette für vierstimmigen Chor a cappella'', a

on gospel text for four-part choir

a cappella Music performed a cappella ( , , ; ), less commonly spelled acapella in English, is music performed by a singer or a singing group without instrumental accompaniment. The term ''a cappella'' was originally intended to differentiate between Rena ...

Topic

The topic is the meeting of Jesus and

at night (

John 3 John 3 is the third chapter of the Gospel of John in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It deals with Jesus' conversation with Nicodemus, one of the Jewish pharisees, and John the Baptist's continued testimony regarding Jesus. Baptist pre ...

, ). While some believe that Nicodemus, a member of the

Sanhedrin The Sanhedrin (Hebrew and Middle Aramaic , a loanword from , 'assembly,' 'sitting together,' hence ' assembly' or 'council') was a Jewish legislative and judicial assembly of either 23 or 70 elders, existing at both a local and central level i ...

who will later contribute to the funeral of Jesus, came to meet Jesus at night because he wanted not to be seen with him, others think that he wanted to concentrate in the silence of the night. The two men discuss the necessity to be born again in the Spirit.

Background and music

Pepping was a composer who relied on

Baroque The Baroque ( , , ) is a Western Style (visual arts), style of Baroque architecture, architecture, Baroque music, music, Baroque dance, dance, Baroque painting, painting, Baroque sculpture, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished from ...

models but wrote severe works with "uncompromising dissonance" in the 1920s. An able teacher with ties to the

Confessing Church The Confessing Church (, ) was a movement within German Protestantism in Nazi Germany that arose in opposition to government-sponsored efforts to unify all of the Protestant churches into a single pro-Nazi German Evangelical Church. See dro ...

, he wrote more compromising music in the 1930s and was "left alone" by the Nazis. Afterwards, he was first regarded as a composer who had not distanced himself enough from the Nazis, as also

Johann Nepomuk David Johann Nepomuk David (30 November 1895 – 22 December 1977) was an Austrian composer. Life and career David was born in Eferding. He was a choirboy in the monastery of Sankt Florian and studied at an episcopal teacher training college in Linz, ...

and

Hugo Distler August Hugo Distler (24 June 1908 – 1 November 1942)Slonimsky & Kuhn, ''Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians'', v. 2, p. 889 was a German organist, choral conductor, teacher and composer. Life and career Born in Nuremberg, Distler att ...

. Their importance for musical innovations was neglected for a long time, as a 2013 concert program showed, "Von Kaminski bis Pepping / Kirchenmusik im Spannungsfeld der 1930er Jahre" (From Kaminski to Pepping / Church music in the area of tension of the 1930s). It presented the motet in the context of other works by Pepping and compositions by

Igor Stravinsky Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ( – 6 April 1971) was a Russian composer and conductor with French citizenship (from 1934) and American citizenship (from 1945). He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century c ...

Ernest Bloch Ernest Bloch (; ; July 24, 1880 – July 15, 1959) was a Swiss-born American composer. Bloch was a preeminent artist in his day, and left a lasting legacy. He is recognized as one of the greatest Swiss composers in history. Several of his most no ...

Erich Wolfgang Korngold Erich Wolfgang Korngold (; May 29, 1897 – November 29, 1957) was an Austrian composer and conductor, who fled Europe in the mid-1930s and later adopted US nationality. A child prodigy, he became one of the most important and influential comp ...

Paul Ben-Haim Paul Ben-Haim (or Paul Ben-Chaim, ; 5 July 1897 – 14 January 1984) was an Israeli composer. Born Paul Frankenburger in Munich, Germany, he studied composition with Friedrich Klose and he was assistant conductor to Bruno Walter and Hans Knapp ...

and

Heinrich Kaminski Heinrich Kaminski (4 July 1886 - 21 June 1946) was a German composer. Life Kaminski was born in Tiengen in the Schwarzwald, the son of an Old Catholic priest of Jewish parentage. After a short period working in a bank in Offenbach, he moved ...

. Pepping set the biblical text in German, showing "by musical means the sensuality and the expressive emotion of the gospel text ("mit musikalischen Mitteln zugleich die hohe Sinnlichkeit und die expressive Emotionalität des Evangeliumtextes"). The narration is given to the

bass Bass or Basses may refer to: Fish * Bass (fish), various saltwater and freshwater species Wood * Bass or basswood, the wood of the tilia americana tree Music * Bass (sound), describing low-frequency sound or one of several instruments in th ...

, the words of Nicodemus to

tenor A tenor is a type of male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the countertenor and baritone voice types. It is the highest male chest voice type. Composers typically write music for this voice in the range from the second B below m ...

and bass, the words of Jesus are sung by the full choir. In a time of oppression, Pepping's music offers "the reality of a different, heavenly world" (die Wirklichkeit einer anderen, himmlischen Welt).

Publication and recordings

The motet was published by Schott in 1938. It is No. 1 of ''Drei Evangelien-Motetten'' (Three Gospel Motets), the others being No. 2 ''Gleichnis vom Unkraut "Das Himmelreich gleicht einem Menschen"'' ( Parable of the Weeds) and ''Gleichnis von der königlichen Hochzeit "Saget den Gästen"'' ( Parable of the royal wedding) for mixed choir ( SSATTB). The motet was recorded in 2006, along with and with other motets, by Berliner Vokalensemble conducted by . It is in the repertory of the

Dresdner Kreuzchor The Dresdner Kreuzchor is the boys' choir of the Kreuzkirche in Dresden, Germany. It has a seven-century history and a world-wide reputation. Today, the choir has about 150 members between the ages of 9 and 19, from Dresden and the surroundin ...

, typically performed in vesper services and recorded in 2010 on a collection of works related to the Holy Spirit () from the Renaissance to contemporary, conducted by

Roderich Kreile Roderich Kreile (born 1956) is a German Lutheran church musician, choir director and university teacher. He had been the director of the Dresdner Kreuzchor at the Kreuzkirche, Dresden, as the 28th Kreuzkantor since the Reformation from 1997 until ...

References

Sources

Pepping Collection
Pepping Society
Jesus und Nikodemus
WorldCat {{Authority control Motets 1937 compositions Nicodemus Works based on the New Testament