Bach Passions by Justin Lee

The practice of re-enacting the events that led to the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ has two connected origins both dating back at least to the 4th century.

The first is the custom of teaching Bible stories by means of sacred dramas, or Miracle plays. These were later called ‘Mysteries’ or ‘Mystery plays’ and were similar in character to ‘Moralities’ which taught moral lessons through the personification of virtues and vices. There are records of Miracle plays associated with many religious centres and they continue to be staged in Europe in cathedral cities such as Chester and York (England) and every ten years in the southern German town of Oberammergau.

The second and more direct origin is the dramatic recitation of the Passion story in the days leading up to Easter, Holy Week. In its earliest form, the priest would recite in Latin the story from one of the Gospels. By the 8th century, the words of Christ were sung to plainchant. Soon, special lesson tones (plainchant) were developed for the entire story and, by the 12th century, it became usual to divide the story between three singers: a ‘middle’ voice (tenor) for the narrator or evangelist, a ‘low’ voice (bass) to portray Christ and a ‘high’ voice (alto) to represent the crowd or ‘turba’.

Gradually the musical settings became more elaborate. By the 15th century, composers were given greater freedom to compose new music for the crowd sections while retaining the ‘traditional’ chant for the narrator, Christ and other characters. By the 16th century, composers such as Lassus, Victoria and Byrd were employing increasingly complex choral polyphony for the crowd scenes and Christ’s words until settings by Ruffo and de Rore were setting all the text polyphonically.

Up to this point, passion music had been solely vocal and had retained a central place for plainchant, either in the stylised declamation of the narrative or as a ‘cantus firmus’ or melodic thread running within more complex choral polyphony.

The most important developments of the passion in 17th and 18th centuries, largely in Germany, were to take the form away from its purely vocal, plainchant and Latin origins. First, the German Lutheran church, acting on its belief that the people should be able to follow the liturgy, adapted it to the German language. Then the plainchant narrations were gradually replaced with ‘recitative’ drawing on opera and the Italian style, instrumental accompaniment and continuo were introduced, purely instrumental sinfonias were added, and non-Biblical texts usually in the form of hymns and arias were incorporated. It was the passion in this form that Bach brought to a stylistic peak with his passions according to St John (1724) and St Matthew (1727/29), drawing immense dramatic effect from the interplay of recitative (narrative), aria (commentary), choruses (representing the crowd) and the chorales sung by the congregation.