»Do you not find it far bolder, more powerful, and more poetic than the one based on Matthew? The latter seems to me to be somewhat rambling and excessively long – the former, on the other hand, seems condensed, thoroughly ingenious, and of such artistry!« When Robert Schumann, as the new music director in Düsseldorf, performed Johann Sebastian Bach’s St John Passion at his new post in 1851, he was building on the groundbreaking revival of the St Matthew Passion in Leipzig in 1829 by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. It was Mendelssohn who had brought about the rediscovery of the Thomaskantor and ushered in the Bach Renaissance. After Bach’s death, both works had remained neglected for decades. It was not until 1830 that the score of the St John Passion was printed by the Berlin publisher Trautwein and performed for the first time in 1832 at Bremen Cathedral. From 1848, Schumann performed choral movements from the St John Passion in Dresden with the mixed-voice choir he had founded; following his appointment as music director in Düsseldorf, he staged a performance of the work, which had never before been heard there. Incidentally, both Mendelssohn and Schumann performed their own arrangements with modified instrumentation – in effect, compositional »interpretations«.

Johann Sebastian Bach’s Passio secundum Johannem is the first of his two surviving major Passion compositions. It was first performed on Good Friday 1724 at St Nicholas’ Church in Leipzig and was certainly regarded at the time as a bold undertaking. The new Thomaskantor had taken up his post in Leipzig at the end of May 1723.

His letter of appointment from 1723 stipulated that he should ‘arrange the music in such a way as to maintain good order in the churches, ensuring that it is not too long and that it is composed in such a manner that it does not sound like an opera, but rather encourages the congregation to devotion.’ This had been preceded by a theological examination in Latin conducted by a university professor.

Upon taking up his post in Leipzig, Bach began to reform church music at his new place of work, not least through his cantatas, which were performed every Sunday and on public holidays and were newly composed for each occasion. With his Passion music based on the Gospel of John, Bach created a musical highlight of unprecedented intensity following the Lent of 1724, during which, as is well known, music-making was forbidden. Incidentally, it was not until 1721 that Bach’s predecessor, Johann Kuhnau, was able to introduce the tradition of performing a Passion oratorio with instruments, choir and soloists during the Good Friday Vespers service in Leipzig.

Rich in imagery and deeply moving

For his St John Passion, Bach combined the text of the Gospel with poetic, reflective and explanatory passages, presumably in collaboration with an unknown librettist. The main source of the narrative was chapters 18 and 19 of the Gospel of John. Bach inserted two short quotations from the Gospel of Matthew into his version, which served to heighten the emotion and drama: Peter’s remorse after his threefold denial – »... and wept bitterly« is one of the most moving melismas in the history of music – and the tearing of the temple curtain after Jesus’ death on the cross, accompanied by a vivid depiction of the earthquake and the opening of the tombs. Another important textual source is the Passion meditation »Der für die Sünde der Welt gemarterte und sterbende Jesus« (Jesus, tortured and dying for the sins of the world), written by Barthold Heinrich Brockes in 1712 (known simply as the Brockes Passion). Its sensitive, vivid text was extremely popular and was set to music by numerous composers, including Reinhard Keiser, Georg Philipp Telemann, George Frideric Handel and Johann Mattheson.

A Sublime Death

The Gospel of John is the latest account of the Passion of Christ, in which his suffering is portrayed differently from the three earlier Gospels. It was written at the beginning of the 2nd century, by which time early Christianity had already taken shape and Jesus was undoubtedly worshipped as the Son of God and the Ruler. The Passion is accordingly told as the story of God made man, and Jesus is portrayed more as God than as a human being. Jesus appears self-assured during his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane, as described at the beginning, and likewise during his interrogation by Pilate; in the crucifixion scene, he speaks only briefly: »It is finished.« Whilst in the St Matthew Passion, premiered in 1736, one can also experience Jesus’ fear and suffering, here his death is presented as a sublime act.
From the following scene onwards, the action unfolds through dramatised recitatives, narrated in dialogue form by the Evangelist and the characters, as well as through contemplative chorales and expressive arias. These weave in the emotional or theological context of the events, as it were, through the voice of the devout soul and its devotion.

Tension-filled sequences

Following the opening chorus, Bach thus moves straight to the heart of the drama, when Jesus (as a majestic bass), his disciples and Judas encounter the servants of the high priests and Pharisees in the Garden of Gethsemane. Their responses, in the form of urgent choral interjections, vividly illustrate the menace of the situation. The principle of dramatic alternation and contemplation ensures a fast-paced, suspenseful flow throughout the entire work. The composition aims for the greatest possible variety, with different solo instruments accompanying the singing in each aria through sophisticated tonal combinations. The first aria, following Jesus’ arrest, speaks of the »snares of my sins«; two oboes intertwine with the solo alto voice in seemingly endless, meandering figures. In the work’s final aria, »Zerfließe, mein Herze, in Fluten der Zähren« (»Melt away, my heart, in floods of tears«), the solo soprano, transverse flute and oboe da caccia soar to luminous heights.

The expression of emotion is evident not only in the instrumental combinations, but above all in the range of musical figures. Bach was a master of »music as spoken language«, as the conductor and musicologist Nikolaus Harnoncourt called this expressive principle of musical composition. Baroque affect theory envisaged a whole, highly complex system of musical symbols, featuring highly pictorial figures such as ascending and descending, wave-like or lashing, tremulous movements, or even numerical symbols. All of this served to enhance the rhetorical expressiveness and the nuanced interpretation of the texts within the musical structure.

Bach ensures the comprehensibility of this momentous narrative, with its diverse musical forms, through meticulously executed symmetries. The musical structure follows a sophisticated formal concept. At its centre lies the chorale »Through your imprisonment, Son of God, freedom has come to us«, which forms the heart of the entire work. Choruses are grouped symmetrically around this, forming a sequence of movements that weaves together the dramatic narrative of the condemnation and the interwoven lyrical passages. The sober biblical narrative thus fits into a sequence of dramatic climaxes interspersed with moments of devotion. Bach concludes his Passion – once again forming a circle back to the beginning – with a two-part final chorus (‘Ruht wohl’). It begins in a minor key, yet its text radiates comforting confidence. This confidence becomes certainty in the final chorale (‘Ach Herr, lass dein lieb Engelein’), now in a major key.

A varied performance history

Work on the St John Passion spanned the entire duration of Bach’s time in Leipzig. He performed the work at least four times, revising it on each occasion—partly in response to changing performance practices—with the result that several versions have survived. As late as 1749, the year before Bach’s death, there was yet another revised version, which, however, largely resembled the original from 1724. Unlike with the St Matthew Passion, there is no complete autograph fair copy that would serve as the final authoritative document of a definitive version. The performance history of the St John Passion is therefore particularly diverse, as it brings the various variants to life. Since the performance material from the first performance has not been preserved in its entirety, the editor Anton Mendel presented a version in the New Bach Edition in 1973 that was reconstructed and therefore hypothetical.

No accounts of the reactions to the first performance have survived, but the report by the pastor Christian Gerber documents that many a contemporary was taken by surprise: ‘When this theatrical music began, everyone was utterly astonished; they looked at one another and said: »What on earth is this to become? An elderly noble widow said: God forbid, my children! It is as if we were in an opera or a comedy.«

Marie Luise Maintz

Marie Luise Maintz is a musicologist and dramaturg. She studied and obtained her doctorate in Bonn. As an opera and concert dramaturg, she has worked at the Stuttgart State Opera, the Alte Oper Frankfurt, and in Darmstadt, Bonn and Aachen, amongst other places. She is Head of Stage and Orchestra Publications at Bärenreiter Verlag / Alkor-Edition Kassel and works as an author and dramaturg. From 2017 to 2023, she conceived and curated the ‘Diskurs Bayreuth’ programme of events at the Bayreuth Festival.