The Great Passion
by James Runcie
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 – 1750) is a key figure in the history of Western classical music, and his St Matthew Passion, a setting of the story of the passion and death of Jesus according to the Gospel of St Matthew, is one of the composer’s crowning achievements. I am, of course, aware that at a time when the ‘classical canon’ is being queried and challenged, such a bald statement may sound rather provocative. Also, JSB’s hallowed place in history was not always obvious – not least to his immediate successors, who considered his music old-fashioned (although his works were held in respect by both Mozart and Beethoven). That said, ever since its revival by Felix Mendelssohn in the first half of the 19th Century, the St Matthew Passion has been regularly performed and admired, and its subsequent popularity was central to a wider rediscovery and reassessment of Bach’s works.
It may therefore appear surprising that we do not really know much about the composition and first performance of the Passion. We know that Bach wrote it for St Thomas Church, Leipzig, where he served as Kapellmeister or Thomascantor from 1723 to his death. We know that, as with many of the other sacred works, mostly cantatas, that Bach composed for the edification of the Leipzig congregation, the Passion was an artistic collaboration between Bach and Christian Friedrich Henrici, known as Picander, who provided poetic meditations to complement extracts from the Gospel of St Matthew. Most sources agree that the Passion was probably first performed at St Thomas Church, 11 April (Good Friday), 1727 although the year might also have been 1729. We can hazard a guess as to the identity of the musicians who performed for the Cantor – including the oboists Caspar Gleditsch and Gottfried Kornagel who, judging by the difficulty of the oboe parts, were great players indeed. Apart from these bare facts, we do not know much else.
In The Great Passion, James Runcie makes up for this historical vacuum with a bold imagining of the months leading up to the first performance of Bach’s masterpiece. Runcie’s narrator is Stefan Silbermann, a scion of the (real-life) German organ-building family. In 1750, Stefan, now in his late thirties, learns of the death of the Cantor, which leads him to reminisce about the year he spent as a student of the St Thomas Church in his early teens. At the time, still grieving following the death of his mother, bullied by the other schoolboys for his red hair, yet showing great promise as a singer and organist, Stefan is taken in by the cantor and his wife Anna Magdalena, and practically becomes a member of the Bach household. He witnesses at first hand the composer at his work, and unwittingly contributes to the creation of what would become known as the St Matthew Passion.
Runcie adopts a traditional and direct narrative style, free of experimental flourishes, and yet particularly appropriate for the voice of the earnest Stefan. The story skilfully interweaves fictional characters with plenty of historical ones – Johann Sebastian Bach and his wife Anna Magdalena, Bach’s children including Catharina (Stefan’s ‘love interest’ in this novel), Picander, oboists Gleditsch and Kornagel, and Bach’s rivals including composer Georg Philipp Telemann. In each case, Runcie takes what we know about these historical individuals and fleshes them out into real-life characters who speak through the pages of his novel. His portrayal of the cantor is particularly convincing. Despite Stefan’s awestruck respect for his mentor, we are still shown Sebastian’s very human characteristics. JSB is a workaholic with a deeply spiritual vein, but can also be jealous, short-tempered and, on occasion, arrogant. Both the historical and musical background are well-researched, and the recreation of the the atmosphere of church and school in 18th Century Leipzig has an authentic feel to it.
But where Runcie really triumphs is in his depiction of music. Writing about music is notoriously difficult – “like dancing about architecture”, to use a much-bandied phrase. Yet, in language which largely eschews technical terms, Runcie still manages to describe several of Bach’s works uncannily well, not least the Great Passion of the title. He also expresses the excitement of a first performance, the tension of the musicians, the expectations of the audience and that sense of satisfaction and release following a successful concert which performers know very well.
Runcie’s novel is one in which tragedy, suffering and death are all-pervasive. Yet, Runcie suggests, music – like faith – can accompany us in grief, leading us on a journey of healing. This is, ultimately, the message beautifully conveyed in this novel:
Love and sorrow came together in the same word, passion. I remembered my mother and my grief and it seemed that all the suffering of the world was now being taken up in this music and lifted on to Christ's shoulders; and that, after this, I would feel exhausted but inspired, cleansed of sin and grief, purified, elevated and released from pain.
Bloomsbury Publishing, Kindle Edition, 272 pages
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| A copy, in Bach's own hand, of the Passion score, likely the manuscript referred to in the final pages of the novel. |
The St Matthew Passion: A Musical Postscript
There are plenty of recordings of the St Matthew Passion to choose from, ranging from the large-scale, old-fashioned Romantic performances of the likes of Furtwängler and Otto Klemperer to the more intimate, historically informed renditions by the likes of Paul McCreesh and John Eliot Gardiner, from recordings of Bach specialists and completists, such as Masaaki Suzuki, to conductors not particularly known for Baroque recordings, such as Leonard Bernstein and Herbert von Karajan.
However, for an “authentic” touch, I would like to start this brief playlist with a recording by the Leipzig St Thomas Choir, the artistic descendants of the boys described in Runcie’s novel. This is the opening chorus, with lyrics by Picander: Kommt ihr Töchter, hilft mir klagen.
The centrality of Bach’s St Matthew Passion is confirmed in its continuing influence on later (and contemporary) composers. The Little Match Girl Passion by David Lang (b. 1957) sets Hans Christian Andersen’s story The Little Match Girl, in the format of Bach’s work, with the composer’s versions of the crowd and character responses from Bach’s Passion. Lang observes:
The text is by me, after texts by Han Christian Andersen, H. P. Paulli (the first translator of the story into English, in 1872), Picander (the nom de plume of Christian Friedrich Henrici, the librettist of Bach's Saint Matthew Passion), and the Gospel according to Saint Matthew. The word passion comes from the Latin word for suffering. There is no Bach in my piece and there is no Jesus—rather the suffering of the Little Match Girl has been substituted for Jesus's, elevating (I hope) her sorrow to a higher plane.
This last comment may sound shocking – blasphemous even – but it does speak of the relevance of the Passion story even in a post-Christian, secular(ist) world. It also echoes one of the themes of Runcie’s novel in which we see Bach marrying the well-known events of Jesus’s death with the personal suffering and experiences of his performers and the congregation:
I looked down at the congregation below and tried to imagine each and every one of their lives: the magistrate who worried that he was losing his mind; the blind man who spouted nonsense that rhymed; the society lady with the expensive hat; the alcoholic wondering how long the service was going to last and when he could buy his next beer; the boy who had been David Stolle's last victim of bullying and whose voice had just broken; the child who had become an orphan last month and was not sure if anyone was going to take him in or where he was going to live... it felt as if all Leipzig was in attendance: saints and sinners, old and young, contents and malcontents, the newly in love and the recently rejected; the disappointed, the forlorn and the forgiving: all God's creatures, alone and together, hoping that, by listening to this music and being present at this service, they would allay the fear of death and be forgiven their sins and failings...
David Lang’s Passion exists in two
versions, the original one for a quartet of soloists and a later arrangement for choir, both
featuring percussion instruments. The Damask vocal quartet perform the opening movement, “Come, daughter”, an obvious tip-of-the-hat to
Picander’s “Come, Ye Daughters”.
In 2000, on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of Bach’s death, several classical music labels embarked on complete recordings of Bach’s works. One of the more interesting projects was led by conductor Helmut Rilling for Hänssler Classics. Apart from performances of new editions of the Bach oeuvre, the project was complemented by the premieres of four new Passion settings, commissioned by Rilling’s Bachakademie Stuttgart from four contemporary composers from disparate musical cultures. The Matthew Passion was assigned to Chinese composer Tan Dun, who responded with a “Water Passion after St Matthew”. Very theatrical in its use of water percussion, Tan Dun’s Passion is divorced of its Western context and reframes the well-known story the Eastern tradition. The result is a mesmerising performance which should be seen, not just heard:
Runcie’s novel alludes to the rivalry between Bach and other composers. In truth, however, Bach was quick to recognise the qualities of other composers, so much so that he often wrote arrangements and transcriptions of the works of his contemporaries such as Arcangelo Corelli and Antonio Vivaldi. Bach’s own music lends itself well to transcription, remaining surprisingly convincing and effective even in the most outre of arrangements, whether for synthesizer, steelpans or the lovely "Arabian Passion" arrangement by Sarband. Another example is Max Richter’s adaptation of Erbarme Dich from St Matthew Passion for his soundtrack to the 2019 movie Ad Astra. The aria is memorable in its original version, but equally haunting in electronic garb.
To close,
a full performance of the St Matthew Passion by the Nederlands Bach
Society. Part of all its “All of Bach”
endeavour, this splendid recording is accompanied by a webpage which gives some
greater background to the work.
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