Written for the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra for a 300th anniversary performance of St. John Passion. Not to be reprinted without permission.
Citizens of Leipzig who attended the Good Friday Vespers service on April 7, 1724, at St. Nicholas Church would have heard the first performance of St. John Passion, written by the town’s new director of religious music, Johann Sebastian Bach. The previous year he was the third choice for the position of Thomaskantor—overseeing music at Leipzig’s four main churches—after Georg Philipp Telemann and Christoph Graupner turned down the job. The St. John Passion would be his largest work yet.
The piece formed the majority of the service with a sermon placed between Parts I and II. The idea of a lavish musical Passion was relatively new in conservative Leipzig, which had stuck with a simpler settings until 1721, when Bach’s predecessor, Johann Kuhnau, was finally permitted to write a modern “concerted style” St. Mark Passion. The orchestra was a particular draw for parishioners who had been denied instrumental music for almost six weeks of Lent. Bach went all out for St. John, including colorful, old-fashioned instruments like the viola d’amore and viola da gamba.
One stipulation was that biblical passages had to be used verbatim—no paraphrasing or rewriting of scripture allowed (in this case, John, chapters 18–19, with two brief interjections of Matthew 26:75 and 27:51–52). But so long as chapter and verse were intact, he was allowed to add a sort of collage, interspersing Lutheran chorales as well as freely-written choruses that reflect on the story.
The primary characters include the Evangelist (the narrator), Jesus, and Pilatus—all sung in recitative and backed by the basso continuo group (organ, harpsichord, archlute, cello, and bass). Though declamatory in style, the melodic shape and harmonic underpinning Bach gives to these lines is extremely precise and expressive—just hear in Part I how Peter “wept bitterly” (weinete bitterlich), and in Part II, how stinging is the vinegar (Essig) given to Jesus on the cross.
Part I depicts Jesus’s arrest in the garden and Peter’s sudden fear and embarrassment over it, leading him to deny being a disciple. The opening chorus, “Herr, unser Herrscher” (Lord, our ruler), cries out in a roiling fantasia. The first pair of arias—for alto and soprano—show a heaviness and a lightness in turn. After Jesus is struck by a servant at the priest’s palace, the chorale “Wer hat dich so geschlagen” establishes the idea that his suffering is brought on by the sins of humankind.
Part II introduces Pontius Pilatus, the Roman governor of Judea, who parleys with Jesus, skeptical but faintly curious. Twice he declares, “I find no fault in him” (ich keine Schuld an ihm finde), but the crowd has other ideas. Bach portrays the growing mob in two seething turba choruses, where they demand to “crucify him!” (Kreuzige!).
But what is supposed to be ugly in the music can seem uglier in the world today—as the mob is repeatedly identified simply as “the Jews” (die Jüden). This is intrinsic to the Gospel of John, which paints them as an undifferentiated group in a way the other gospels do not. Of course, Jesus and his disciples were Jews themselves, part of a multifarious society, and their primary conflict was with the religious authorities of the Temple. Scholars suppose such distinctions weren’t relevant in the conjectural first-century community for which the gospel was written—but they are relevant when Jews are a minority in modern Christian societies that have often inflicted violence on them. Bach’s writing is unfortunate in this light, but also provocative, thrilling, even tempting—it asks us to consider if we too could be swept up in a crucifying mob.
Jesus is condemned and taken to Golgotha, the place of execution on the outskirts of Jerusalem. An urgent bass solo, “Eilt, ihr angefochten Seelen” (Hurry, you tormented souls) spreads the news with rhythmic verve. As Jesus dies, he whispers “It is accomplished!” (Es ist vollbracht!), echoed in an alto aria accompanied by the viola da gamba, whose wheezy timbre already sounded archaic in Bach’s day. Suddenly, this mournful song reveals a joyous flipside that looks forward to the resurrection.
At this point, the Passion begins to turn soothing and cathartic. “Mein teurer Heiland” (My beloved Saviour) is a lilting bass aria with gentle choral embellishments, while the soprano aria “Zerfließe, mein Herze” (Dissolve, my heart), with flute and oboe da caccia, has a silvery sorrow. The spiritual community comes together in the last chorus, “Ruht wohl” (Rest in peace), capped by a closing chorale. The parishioners left changed.
