Buxtehude’s Membra Jesu Nostri serves to remind us that pain can be exquisite.

 ‘I think, therefore I am.’ Five simple words with which French philosopher Rene Descartes excised and elevated the mind up and away from quotidian needs and desires of the body in the 17th century, leaving the human form behind in the dust as a disgusting and lesser thing.

Modern neuroscience is slowly winding back the duality of Descartes’ first principle – thank goodness – but closer to his own time, Danish-German composer Dieterich Buxtehude led the way in casting aside the notion that the human body was but a vehicle for the mind. His exquisite Membra Jesu Nostri – a cycle of seven cantatas that serve as a meditation upon the body of Christ on the cross – ‘is transcendent,’ says Erin Helyard, Artistic Director of Pinchgut Opera. ‘A contemplation that serves as a devotional exercise, based on some really visceral imagery.’

The dedication on the original autograph score says it all:

The most holy limbs of Our Lord Jesus in his Passion, sung with the most humble and wholehearted devotion, and dedicated to Gustav Düben, gentleman of the first rank, most noble and most honoured friend, director of music to His Most Gracious Majesty the King of Sweden, by Dieterich Buxtehude, organist of the church of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Lübeck, 1680.)

The carefully chosen largely biblical text focuses in on the body of Christ, each cantata corresponding to a different body part. It’s as though the audience and performers alike are gazing up at the cross from the beneath, from feet, to knees, hands, sides, breast, heart, and finally, the face. The images in the text of the final cantata Ad faciem are cruel, and yet they’re sung to jubilant music. Buxtehude is speaking directly to our senses and immerses us in the sufferings of Christ: we believe we can literally feel the wounds, the hammer blows, the heart that stops beating.

It's music that is replete with symbolism and rhetorical figures. For example, whenever the concept of divinity, symbolised by the number three, appears in the text, Buxtehude does one of three things: moves into a triple meter, repeats the phrase threefold, or sets the text for three voices. Similarly, the entire cycle of cantatas is built on the sacred number seven.

Buxtehude left us with no hint as to the cycle’s true purpose, but as a Passion meditation, Eastertide is the most appropriate time of year for the piece, one that Erin describes as a ‘bucket list work.’ Of all the north German composers, Buxtehude was the most open to the lyrical and mellifluous Italianate style, he says. ‘I fell in love with the beauty of this music before I knew and understood the text. And I absolutely love the scoring of this work – the instruments play a really big part. I cannot wait to share this work with our audiences!’