8/31/2023 0 Comments Bach compositions for choirsThe speeches of various characters – Commentator (soprano), Evangelist (tenor), Christ (bass), Peter (bass), Judas (bass), and so forth – are represented by various solo singers. A local Lutheran preacher, Salomon Deyling, supervised the writing of the text, using the 26th and 27th chapters of St Matthew’s Gospel (in his manuscript, Bach underlined the words of the Scripture with red ink). The story was arranged by Christian Friedrich Henrici, a postal official in the city who wrote verses using the pseudonym of Picander. Thus, the score is laid out for Chorus 1 and Orchestra 1, Chorus 2 and Orchestra 2.īach did not act as his own librettist for the St Matthew Passion. Bach wrote his Passion to use both these performance spaces. In Bach’s time, St Thomas’s had two organ lofts – the larger of the two accommodating the musicians for Sunday services throughout the year, the smaller loft used for the additional numbers needed for the music at Christmas and Easter. For instance, whereas the St John Passion had a mere continuo accompaniment (harpsichord or organ), its successor had an orchestra with Christ’s words accompanied by strings (an effect that has been compared to a halo around the Saviour’s head). What followed two years later was an altogether grander, more magnificent setting. Thomas’s, he wrote the Passion According To St. In 1725, two years after he took up his appointment of cantor at St. We know Bach wrote an earlier setting when he was the ducal concertmeister in Weimar (1714-1717) though this has not survived. These performances would mark the high point of the church’s year.Ĭlick to load video Features two orchestras and two choruses (‘Passion’ is derived from the Latin verb ‘patior’ meaning ‘to suffer’ or ‘endure’, from which we also get ‘patience’ and ‘patient’.) Every year for Good Friday Vespers, a Passion would be performed in one of Leipzig’s two principal (Lutheran) churches, St. There had already been a long history of Passion music – that is musical settings telling the story of the final, short period in the life of Jesus. Bach’s ‘St Matthew Passion’: A Guide To The Sacred Masterpiece Listen to John Eliot Gardiner’s benchmark recording of Bach’s St Matthew Passion on Apple Music and Spotify and scroll down to discover the story behind the sacred masterpiece. These led directly to a complete reassessment and revival of interest in all of Bach’s music for, baffling as it seems nowadays, Johann Sebastian Bach had fallen into near obscurity since his death nearly 80 years earlier. This Easter-time Berlin presentation was a stunning success and was followed by others. In April 1829, despite strong opposition from some quarters, the twenty-year-old Mendelssohn, with the help of Zelter and his friend the actor Eduard Devrient, mounted the work’s first modern performance, albeit in an abbreviated form, given to mark what was then thought to be the centenary of its first performance. By great good fortune, two of his singers were Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn. In the early 1820s, the director of the Berlin Singakademie, Carl Zelter, got hold of a copy of Bach’s St Matthew Passion and rehearsed some of the choral movements in private.
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