Anselm Hartinger, translation by Alice Noger-Gradon

Bach’s st matthew passion bwv 244 – Compositional background, musical conception and legacy of a masterpiece

“the entire work is born of such a deep union of the heart and art that it is an equally high testament to christian piety and humility as it is to the creative genius and innate power of man.” (ludwig rellstab, 1830)

I.
The double-choir St Matthew Passion, already termed the “grosse Bassion” (great Passion) in an early posthumous tribute by the Bach family, is one of Bach’s most comprehensive and significant sacred compositions. Indeed, since its spectacular reperformance by Mendellsohn and Zelter in 1829 (albeit of a substantially abridged version), it is the work that has most lastingly shaped modern perceptions of the great composer. One key to the Passion’s enduring success lies in its use of text: while the libretto primarily draws on Luther’s bible translation and chorales from the reformed church, the baroque verses so vilified by the Romantics as “abominable German church texts” and rancorous “religious hot air” (Carl Friedrich Zelter) are reserved for the contemplative arias and choruses. It was, how ever, precisely these highly stylised verses that were particularly appreciated by the congregations of Bach’s time, mainly because they lent the biblical narrative a contemporary quality and transported its message to their daily lives. This interplay between contrasting textual levels, listener expectations and compositional tradition not only explains the contentious reception of this monumental work over the past 300 years, it also allows us to grasp the complexity of attempting such a composition, and to fully appreciate the distinction of Bach’s achievement.
Although the St Matthew Passion is today considered an archetypal example of Bach’s art – and of baroque sacred music in general – in Bach’s time, composing a dramatic setting of Jesus’ hour of suffering represented a highly controversial undertaking. It was not without reason that many theologians were highly sceptical of a panoramic musical setting, replete with drastic baroque poetry and musical speech, of the redemptive yet vitriolic events of the crucifixion. The composition, however, also had numerous advocates, including the poet Erdmann Neumeister, a founder of the “sacred cantata” (whose work Bach had already set to music) and the Lutheran superintendent and Pastor Primarius in Weissenfels and Hamburg. And only two years before Bach’s appointment as Thomascantor in Leipzig, a controversial pamphlet (Johann Ephraim Scheibel, Zufällige Gedancken von der Kirchenmusik (General Thoughts on Church Music)) was published in that city, arguing passionately for a dynamic interpretation of the biblical word using a modern “theatrical” style. It was a sign of the times that Bach, upon being sworn in as Thomascantor, was required to confirm that he would refrain from an excessively operatic compositional style. This was not a mere nicety, but evidence of the grave controversy surrounding the place of concerted music in church services. Although a modern musical setting of the Passion (Georg Philipp Telemann’s “Brockespassion”) had already been performed in 1717 in Leipzig’s Neukirche, the Lutheran Orthodoxy remained so dominant that it was not until 1721 that an oratorio setting of the Passion was officially introduced into the city’s church music calendar. This performance was scheduled for the vesper service on Good Friday, and alternated between the two main churches, St Nikolai and St Thomas, from year to year. Evidently, the wishes of Leipzig’s mondaine bourgeoisie for an elegant church music in courtly style could no longer be resisted, and it is to this new zeitgeist that Bach, at that time Kappelmeister in Köthen, partially owed his appointment to Leipzig. With a sermon of at least one hour situated between the two parts of the Passion, these Good Friday vespers would have been protracted under any circumstances. When the composer’s name was Bach, the services expanded into a veritable marathon, demanding exceptional endurance from performers and congregation alike.
Despite its seminal place in sacred music, the compositional history of the St Matthew Passion is less certain than the work’s popularity would suggest. After Bach had performed two highly contrasting versions of his St John Passion in 1724 and 1725, and a St Mark Passion (long attributed to Reinhard Keiser) in 1726, the first version of his St Matthew Passion (known as the early version BWV 244b) was probably performed on Good Friday in 1727. It is this version – most likely based on older versions – that Andreas Glöckner reconstructed in a single volume for the publication of the Neuen Bachausgabe (New Bach Edition).
The text for the St Matthew Passion was written by Bach’s trusted librettist Christian Friedrich Henrici, known as Picander, who was able to draw on the Passion verses of Barthold Hinrich Brockes and Johann Friedrich Hunold, among others, as well as a cycle of sermons by the Rostock theologian Heinrich Müller. In March and April of 1729, Bach was faced with the dual burden of writing the funeral music for his former employer Leopold von Anhalt- Köthen (“Klagt, Kinder, klagt es aller Welt” BWV 244a) and preparing the regular Passion performance. Although there is no clear evidence that these worldly events affected Bach’s perception of spiritual matters, he appears to have revised his composition so extensively – from a single choir to a double choir, double orchestra work – that, since the 19th century, 1729 has been considered the actual composition year of the St Matthew Passion. It wasn’t until 1736 that Bach had performance parts for this “new” version prepared; these parts survive to this day. According to a report of the sacristan Johann Christoph Rost, the 1736 performance took place with both organs of the St Thomas church – including the instrument above the choir, the so-called schwalbennest, which had been restored in 1727 – and thus with two separately positioned continuo ensembles. In this version, Bach also integrated the opening movement of the second version of his St John Passion from 1725, the chorale “O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde gross”, into the heart of the work. It was during preparations for this performance that Bach completed his famous fair copy of the score. Written entirely in his own hand with distinctive red ink for the part of the Evangelist, it has since been elevated to a symbol of Bach’s devoutness and musical theology. The fact that Bach himself restored the manuscript when it was later damaged is further testimony to the value he placed on it. In contrast, a definitive score for the St John Passion, which Bach began in 1739, was abandoned after only a few movements. Indeed, considering that a final version of the St John Passion never materialised during Bach’s entire Leipzig period, it is possible that the early appreciation given to the St Matthew Passion was in part owing to its largely complete character.
Bach later added other parts, including one for harpsichord, presumably for the Passion’s reperformance in 1742. As an interesting development, the tradition of including a boy’s choir for the chorale “O Lamb of God, unspotted” goes back to the performance practice of the 19th century, when musicians sought to render the baroque school-choir sound using the mixed vocal ensembles of the day. It appears that music directors of the Romantic period felt the purity of boys’ voices lent a more ecclesiastical touch to Bach’s music, which was still often perceived as unchurchlike and too naturalistic. In this sense, Bach’s St Matthew Passion as we know it today is a gesamtkunstwerk that has evolved over the centuries through the fascinating connection between the conceptual work of the composer and its interpretation by musicians and audiences.

II.
The overarching unity of the St Matthew Passion easily belies the keen sense of detail Bach applied to its composition. Of particular note is his handling of the double-choir scoring: instead of allowing it to dominate the work, Bach reserves the contrasting effect of the dual vocal ensemble for pivotal scenes that require a call-and-answer effect to secure the dramatic realisation of the narrative. These include the introductory movement in which choir II responds fearfully to the summons of choir I (“Come ye daughters, share my mourning, See ye! – Whom?”) and the “thunder and lightning” chorus, in which the choirs invoke natural disasters as punishment for the torture of God’s son. In most other ensemble movements, however, the choirs are either melded in quasi-unison or appear individually, primarily because the main figures of the bible and the later sympathisers represent different spheres. Nonetheless, the expansive introductory chorus incorporates both dimensions of the early Christian Passion and the later reflection thereon, thereby endowing the brutal events of Christ’s suffering with both distance and a critical perspective that may well influence how it is experienced by performers and audiences. Considering the movement is structured as a concertante arrangement of “O Lamb of God, unspotted”, these stark contrasts are reconciled by the stabilising dimension of the chorale and justified in the tradition of the Lutheran church song.
The recitatives of the St Matthew Passion possess a particularly expressive power. In light of the narrative’s scope – the work sets no less than two full chapters of the gospel according to St Matthew to music – these passages required exceptional compositional finesse to prevent the work from deteriorating into a torturous repetition of musical formulas. While the chorale passions of the 16th and 17th centuries escaped this dilemma through the use of liturgical chant, a more individual and differentiated approach was required to suit listener expectations in the 18th century. Notably, Bach set all of Christ’s words in an arioso style with string accompaniment. This approach can be interpreted as a musical solution to a theological paradox: while Jesus is a (fellow) sufferer in the eyes of Matthew, the radiant holiness of the strings’ sound underscores his sublime divinity. A lively performance in the tradition of baroque rhetorical flourishes and accents succeeds in lending the Evangelist’s part an inherent vitality – it is thus unsurprising that a concert critique from 1847 noted that the part demanded “not only an accomplished, but also a thinking singer”. This may well explain why the Evangelist in Mendelssohn’s seminal reperformance in 1829 was played by his friend Eduard Devrient, an actor, whose performance tended more to the declamatory than the belcanto.
By including twelve simple chorales in the work, Bach may have intended to enhance its relation to the church service and provide the congregation with points of reference in the vast composition. At the same time, these exquisitely harmonised verses also act as an impassioned commentary on the narrative’s events and the exemplary process of realisation it describes. Interestingly, this “process of realisation” is perhaps even better expressed by the former East German concept of “ideale Miterlebende” (idealogical companions) – although this nuance could hardly have been intended by the term’s secularist proponents. When Jesus prophesises that all his disciples will abandon him and the chorists stubbornly answer “I will here by thee stand now”, and when the mockery and illtreatment of the saviour provokes them to utter an angry “Who hath thee thus so smitten?”, culminating in the damning realisation “I, I and my transgressions”, then an elementary need breaks forth to intervene in the shocking events, although they promise to lead to redemption, and to change the course of history by force. This dialogue recurs not only in the chorales, but also in moments such as the interjections of choir II of “Free him, hold off, bind him not!” and represents an active call for benevolence and the prevention of suffering, distress and injustice that transcends both the narrative and time. The finesse with which Bach interprets such developments is particularly evident in the chorale movement “I will here by thee stand now; O put me not to scorn!”, which he set to exactly the same music as an earlier movement “Acknowledge me, my keeper, My shepherd, make me thine!” albeit in E-flat major, rather than the original E major. This harmonic “degradation” – a distance of no less than seven perfect fifths – can only be ascribed to the denial of Peter and the disciples that occurred between these two movements. It is difficult to conceive of more subtle means to evoke the shame and lowliness of these actions.
The underlying lyrical tone of the St Matthew Passion consistently embraces new possibilities. This is evident as early as the introductory choir, which, in contrast to the bleakly majestic “Lord, thou our master” of the St John Passion, evokes a poignant atmosphere of mourning. The work then proceeds with a patience and calm that permeates not just the scene at the Mount of Olives, but also Bach’s rendering of Jesus’ emotions, including his despondency. The fact that St Matthew’s symbol is a man (in contrast to the eagle of St John) is captured sensitively by Bach and Picander throughout the work. It is thus fitting that in the second part of the Passion, the lament of the faithful Christian heart (“Ah, now is my Jesus gone!”) is answered with a passage from the Song of Solomon (“Where has your beloved gone, most beautiful of women?”). Unlike the valiant Christ of the St John Passion – a man who fights amidst the raging crowd for his rights, his life and earthly salvation – the Jesus of the St Matthew Passion disarmingly wins over his enemies through his magnanimous silence and unconditional love. Scored for a fragile wind section of transverse flute and two oboes da caccia (with no basso continuo), the bewildered yet ethereal soprano aria “For love now would my saviour perish” inimitably instils this core message in the listeners’ mind. And it is no doubt this noble composure in the face of abandonment, rather than Jesus’ resurrection (which Bach treats with restraint), that precipitated the guards’ sudden revelation, declared by both choirs in unison: “Truly, this man was God’s own Son”. Were there a single moment in the Passion that epitomised the substance and quality of the composition, it would be these two bars of sublime beauty. Unlike the St John Passion, the St Matthew Passion doesn’t culminate in relief when the suffering ceases (“Rest well, ye holy bones and members”), but in a pain-filled choir of lament in C minor. This final movement seems to unify everyone involved in the work across time – from the distraught disciples of the New Testament, the boys of the St Thomas Choir in Bach’s own time, the grieving friends at Mendelssohn’s funeral in Leipzig, to today’s musicians and audiences – in the concluding proclamation: “Wir setzen uns mit Tränen nieder.” (We lay ourselves with weeping prostrate).