Program Notes: Bach St. John Passion

JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH 
Saint John Passion, BWV 245 
BORN: March 21, 1685, in Eisenach, Thuringia (presently central Germany) 
DIED: July 28, 1750, in Leipzig, Germany 
COMPOSED: 1724, though Bach may have adapted portions of the music from earlier works. 
WORLD PREMIERE: April 7, 1724, in Leipzig, under the composer’s direction. 

What to Listen For:

• The narration of the Evangelist, performed by a tenor soloist, relates the story in recitative, a style of declamatory singing closely following the rhythms of speech.
  

• Spoken dialogue falls to other singers representing the characters in question, with Jesus portrayed by the deepest of these, the bass, and his utterances accompanied by a harmonic “halo” via a small organ. The chorus takes the part of the attendant crowd.

This weekend’s performances of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Passio secundum Joannem — his Saint John Passion, as it is usually called in English — are the first ever given by the Seattle Symphony and mark the 300th anniversary of the work’s premiere. This is one of two extant Passion oratorios by Bach; he composed at least one other, of which the text but not the music has survived, and possibly two others early in his career, which are entirely lost to us.   

Unlike Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion, which has enjoyed high esteem and frequent performances over the last two centuries, the Saint John Passion is only rarely heard and little known. And yet, it is a work of great expressive beauty and was a significant milestone in Bach’s development as a composer. To more fully appreciate these virtues requires some historical and musical context. 

On May 5, 1723, Bach signed an agreement accepting the position of Kantor (choirmaster and organist) — or as he later preferred to call it, “Director Musices” — for the municipality of Leipzig. Although technically an employee of the city, his salary authorized and paid for by the town council, Bach had been hired as a church musician. His duties entailed organizing and conducting the musical activities of the Thomaskirche (Saint Thomas’s Church) and three other congregations that formed the pillars of spiritual life in a town that was then a bastion of Lutheran piety. In addition to playing the organ at major services, Bach had to train singers, recruit an orchestra of musically capable townsfolk, and with these forces, rehearse and perform a repertory of demanding music to enhance the experience of worship. Moreover, Bach was expected to compose the bulk of that music himself. Amid all this, the post of Kantor presented Bach with an opportunity to fulfill a professional goal he had stated many years previously: “to advance the music in the Divine Service towards its true end and purpose, a well-regulated Church music in honor of God.” 

Bach clearly sought to impress the Leipzig parishioners during the initial year of his tenure. Less than two weeks after accepting the Kantorate, he directed a performance of an elaborate church cantata, the first of hundreds he would present in Leipzig over the next quarter-century. His first Christmas there brought a particularly splendid work, a festive setting of the Magnificat for solo voices, chorus and a large orchestra featuring trumpets and drums. But as much as they might take heart in the glad tidings of Christmas, the congregations of 18th-century Leipzig understood that the focal point of the Church year came in the spring. Christ’s death and resurrection, not His birth, provided hope of human redemption. Accordingly, the events surrounding the crucifixion assumed greater importance, and commanded greater attention, in Lutheran theology of the day. And so, Bach’s major offering during his inaugural year in Leipzig was a large dramatic oratorio built around the account of Christ’s Passion, his trial and execution. 

Musical representation of the Passion story had been a tradition in Germany for centuries before Bach’s time, but it had acquired particular importance following the Reformation. From simple chanting of Biblical verses recounting Christ’s last days, Passion settings began to incorporate choral hymns that the congregation might join in singing. During the 17th century, texts were expanded to include commentary or meditations on the Biblical verses. (Of course, all the words were in German, in accordance with Luther’s precept of preaching in the language of the worshippers.) With this came a gradual enlargement of the musical resources used to convey such texts. Solo singers might pronounce the words of particular persons in the story, including Jesus; the shouting of the crowd could be conveyed through dramatic choruses; commentary and reflection was delivered through arias as well as choral numbers; and instruments were used with increasing sophistication. 

Bach evidently assembled the text for this Passion setting himself, taking the account of Jesus’ final days set forth in Saint John’s gospel, with a few interpolations from that of Saint Matthew and from commentary drawn from several other sources. The most important was a retelling of the Passion story by Barthold Heinrich Brockes, a city councilor and amateur poet in Hamburg. Bach borrowed Brockes’ words and those of several other poets, altering them freely and sometimes using them as models for his own verses, which he also used. 

The different types of text included in the libretto Bach compiled from these disparate sources naturally called for different kinds of music. Bach followed established practice in assigning the narration to a tenor soloist, the Evangelist, who relates the thread of the story in recitative, a style of declamatory singing closely following the rhythms of speech. This is accompanied by a “continuo” unit of harpsichord and cello, which provides harmonic color without impairing the clarity of the words. But the Evangelist does not recount the entire story, for Bach’s work unfolds as a drama as well as a narrative. Spoken dialogue, when it appears in the Biblical text, generally falls to singers representing the characters in question. The most important of these is, of course, Jesus. In accordance with tradition, He is portrayed by a bass, and His utterances are surrounded with a harmonic halo provided by a small organ. The chorus also plays a role in the drama, taking the part of the attendant crowd. Bach skillfully exploited this latter resource, endowing his choruses with considerable dramatic power and periodically recalling the music of certain numbers as a means of imparting cohesion to the lengthy composition. 

The arias interspersed among the Gospel verses offer reflections upon the events of the story. Here, as in his cantatas, Bach makes extensive use of featured, or obbligato, instrumental solos to accompany the singers. Those solos, like those in Bach’s cantatas and other major vocal compositions, provide some of the most substantial and beautiful passages available to orchestral players. Periodically punctuating the arias and dramatic choruses are simple hymns, or chorales. Just as the arias present very personal meditations on the Passion narrative, so the chorales express the collective reaction of the community of worshipers. They provided Bach’s parishioners their most accessible entry into the work, and they were chosen and placed with considerable care to allow the congregation to join in mourning the events of the story. 

Throughout the work, Bach employs music to heighten the impact of the text, adding emotional resonance through specific harmonic or melodic touches. When the Evangelist first mentions both Judas and Barbaras, for example, the names take on an ominous tone through their coloration by intensely altered chords. The account of Peter’s weeping is set to an anguished melisma. But Bach goes beyond simply achieving emotional congruence between text and music. Frequently he uses melodic figures that can only be called pictorial to illustrate key words and phrases. In the alto aria Von den Stricken meiner Sünden (No. 11), the textual idea of being bound finds graphic representation in the obbligato accompaniment by two oboes, whose close-knit lines seem to wrap tightly around those of the singer. Similar instances of aural suggestion occur throughout the work; a full appreciation of the music requires careful attention to the text. 

Bach first presented his Saint John Passion on Good Friday (April 7) of 1724. For subsequent performances in 1725 and 1730, he made various changes to the score, adding large choral movements at the start and close and arias at several points. In 1749, for the final presentation during his lifetime, Bach undid those amendments and restored the work to very nearly its initial state. This program’s performance returns to the original 1724 version. Compared with the Saint Matthew Passion, the Saint John Passion approaches its subject in a less meditative, more outgoing manner. The poetic reflections on the text that play such a crucial role in the more familiar work are less numerous and less important in this one. Here Bach emphasizes the drama of the Passion story, and in the tension and tumult of the crowd scenes, suggests what he might have done in the field of opera had his career taken a different path. 

The more conservative Leipzig parishioners criticized Bach for the “theatrical” quality of his church music, which some deemed all but profane. Knowing what we do of the composer, there no longer seems to be any contradiction between his “theatrical” invention and his sincere devotion. From all evidence, Bach was a worldly person and would have easily accepted the idea that the central event of his faith occurred in the very real world of government officials, soldiers and mob action. To portray this in a vivid manner, to allow his listeners to feel deeply the violence and sorrow of the Passion, was no blasphemy but a means of religious communion. Bach, an innately dramatic composer, did this with consummate skill, and it is for its dramatic power as much as for the sheer beauty of his music that the Saint John Passion remains absorbing and affecting today. 

Paul Schiavo © 2024