Program Notes for Bach's St John's Passion, 29th March 2008.
J. S. Bach’s St John Passion was first performed at a Lutheran Good Friday service in 1724 at St Thomas Church, Leipzig. Bach directed an orchestra of 14-19 players, and an all-male chorus of around 12 singers (boys singing soprano and alto were joined by adult male falsettists). The soloists were probably selected from the choir.
In the early church, it was customary for a clerk to intone each of the gospels in the week before Easter, culminating with St John’s on Good Friday. In Medieval Good Friday services, St John’s gospel was presented by a group of singers, each representing a different character. This performance ensemble innovation helped worshippers feel more emotionally involved with the passion rather than merely contemplating the story as in the earlier church services. By the late Middle Ages composers were writing music for specific performances of the gospels year by year.
Over the centuries the presentation of the gospel became a highly developed artform. By the Baroque period (17th to mid-18th centuries), composers related the gospel text in an almost operatic recitative style, interspersed with chorales and specifically written poetic texts set as arias. Typical of the Baroque period, each musical item explores only one affection, or emotional state. The role and number of accompanying instruments increased and it became customary to print and distribute copies of the libretto to the congregation so that they could sing along with the chorales.
Bach’s St John Passion is set in two acts, originally separated by the pastor’s hour long sermon (we, however, will have a social tea break). The first act tells of Jesus’ arrest in the garden, and Peter’s denial of his discipleship. The second act details Jesus’ interrogation, flagellation and condemnation, his crucifixion, death and burial. Please refer to the libretto and translation below. Bach performed the St John Passion four times over twenty five years in Leipzig, slightly altering his composition each time. In other years he presented Passions based on the gospels of St Mathew, St Mark and St Luke. Only the St John and St Mathew survive.
The St John Passion focuses on Jesus’ divinity and homecoming rather than the pain and conflict of his mortal life. He has foreknowledge and welcomes his fate. The crucifixion (not the resurrection) is therefore the climax of the gospel. It is through death that Jesus returns, victorious, to God his father. Bach doesn’t set Jesus’ resurrection in the St John Passion.
From the very beginning of the passion, Bach illustrates this Johannine belief that glorification is inextricably linked with abasement, pitting the wind instruments’ sustained, tortured dissonances (representing crucifixion) against the rapid-movement rising figure in the strings (symbolising the glorification of God). Bach develops these musical and conceptual themes throughout the Passion, transferring both motives to the choir in the "kreutzige!" movements.
Bach was hired by the Leipzig town council ‘to incite the listeners to devotion’. He himself believed that ‘the aim and final reason of all music should be the honour of God and the refreshing of the mind’. Enjoy the concert.
© March 2008, Sarah Myerson