Fuel Up on Faith with Bach's St Mattews Passion
The Backstory
St Matthew Passion (Matthäus-Passion), BWV 244
I'm Johann Sebastian Bach, and this is the backstory of my St Matthew's Passion. Here you'll discover how this Passion went unplayed for almost a hundred years, until a twenty-year-old conductor brought it back to life in Berlin in 1829. Whenever you like, come and meet the Trainer , where my fellow composers and I teach you to recognize our pieces the moment they begin, and see how you do.
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A Man With a Day Job
By the time I wrote this piece I had been the Thomaskantor in Leipzig since 1723, which meant I was in charge of the church music there. I was born in Eisenach in 1685, so I wasn't exactly a beginner by then. The job came with endless duties, like teaching the choirboys, writing new music for the church year and keeping the whole machine running. The Passion was one more thing on the list, though it turned into the one people still talk about.Picander Holds the Pen
I didn't write the words myself, because a poet who called himself Picander (his real name was Christian Friedrich Henrici) wrote the libretto. The story itself comes straight from chapters 26 and 27 of the Gospel of Matthew, which cover the last days of Jesus. Picander added the free poetry for the arias and the big choruses, so the text is not simply the Bible set to music. Those poetic moments act like a pause in the story, when a singer steps forward and says what everyone in the church is feeling.The Date Nobody Can Pin Down
People usually say the first performance was on Good Friday in 1727, and the story goes that it took place in the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig. The honest truth is that nobody knows for certain. Some older sources put it as late as Good Friday 1729, and the Netherlands Bach Society says only that it was somewhere between 1725 and 1728 or 1729. I suppose it says something that a piece this big could slip into the world without anyone writing down exactly when.A Very Crowded Stage
I asked for a lot of instruments, including two transverse flutes, two oboes, violins, a viola and a viola da gamba, with a basso continuo underneath. In some places the oboes switch to the oboe d'amore or the oboe da caccia, which have a slightly darker and warmer voice. Soloists step out of the choirs to sing the arias and the story roles, so there is always someone new to listen to. All of that gives me a whole palette of colors to paint with, and I used nearly every one of them.The Storyteller in the Tenor Seat
Someone has to tell the story, and I gave that job to the Evangelist, who is a tenor. He sings the narration almost like speech, moving the plot forward one scene at a time. Whenever a crowd shouts or the disciples speak up, the choir jumps in and the tenor steps back. That back and forth keeps you inside the events, as if you were standing in the square watching them happen.Sixty-Eight Little Chapters
If you don't know what a movement is, think of the scenes in a play or the tracks on an album, where one long work is cut into separate pieces that each have their own mood. The Passion has 68 of these movements in the modern numbering, split into two parts, one of 29 and one of 39. The opening chorus is movement 1, the alto aria "Erbarme dich, mein Gott" is movement 39, the bass aria "Komm, süßes Kreuz" is movement 57, and the closing chorus is movement 68. Between those landmarks you get narration, the plain congregational hymns we call chorales, and one aria or chorus after another, each one a short scene with its own feeling.The Gamba Gets Its Moment
In "Komm, süßes Kreuz" I gave a bass singer the viola da gamba as a partner, and the piece is in D minor. The gamba is a bowed string instrument in its own right, not a cousin who couldn't decide between two families. Its sound is soft-edged and intimate, which suits a singer who is thinking out loud about carrying a cross. It is one of the places where the whole work gets very quiet and personal.Second, Third and Fourth Helpings
I didn't just perform the Passion once and move on, because there were further performances on 15 April 1729, 30 March 1736 and 23 March 1742. I kept returning to the score and polishing it, like a cook who can't leave a favorite recipe alone. My manuscript from 1736 has survived, so we can still look at how I wrote it all out. I find it comforting that a bundle of pages from that time is still around for people to study.Twenty Years Old and Not Afraid
After I died in 1750, the Passion more or less went quiet, and almost a hundred years passed after its last performance. Then a twenty-year-old named Felix Mendelssohn conducted it at the Berlin Singakademie on 11 March 1829. Carl Friedrich Zelter backed the plan, and Eduard Devrient helped Mendelssohn with the arrangement and the conducting. It was repeated on 21 March and again on Good Friday, 17 April, and many people see it as the central event in the revival of my music.Trimmed, But Not Forgotten
I have to admit that Mendelssohn's version was a shortened one, since he cut ten arias, four accompanied recitatives and six chorales. That may sound like a lot, but it got the music back in front of an audience, and I can't complain about that. The work still ends the way I meant it to, with the closing chorus "Wir setzen uns mit Tränen nieder", which means "We sit down in tears". It is in C minor in 3/4, and it sounds like the whole crowd settling down at the grave, tired and sad but together.---