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Holy Week in Bach's Leipzig: Musical Passion Accounts |
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William L. Hoffman wrote (April 15, 2025):
As with Protestant German Passion Musical accounts, Holy Week in Leipzig in Bach's time produced a plethora of Passion versions which he realized through all four gospel accounts with multiple versions of the three according to John (BWV 245), Matthew (BWV 244), and Mark (BWV 247), as well as extensive use of Passion chorales primarily in the format of the Oratorio Passion form with the full gospel versions, as well as the Passion Oratorio form of a poetic paraphrase, best known in the development of the Brockes Passion (BCW), as well as similar poetic forms such as Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel's Gotha Passion, "Ein Lämmlein geht und trägt die Schuld" (Wikipedia which Bach premiered on Good Friday, 23 April 1734, in the St. Thomas Church. A third distinct form was the Passions-Pasticcio developed by Bach in the 1740s, a mixture of various Passion-style music involving the "Keiser"/Handel Pasticcio, BWV 1166.3, 31 March 1747 (Carus-Media), and the "Beiträge (Contributions) zur Passionsmusik" of Carl Heinrich Graun's "Kleiner Passion," ?12 April 1748, BWV 1167 (BCW).
Before these three forms were developed in the 18th century, the Lutheran Tradition established the gospel readings of the Passion accounts as follows: Palm Sunday, St. Matthew, Chapters 26 and 27; Tuesday, St. Mark, Chapters 14 and 15; Wednesday, St. Luke, Chapters 22 and 23; and Good Friday, St. John, Chapters 18 and 19. In Leipzig in Bach's favored chorale book, the Gottfried Vopelius' Passion chorales in Das Neu Leipziger Gesangbuch (NLGB) of 1682 (Wikipedia), Johann Walther's setting of Matthew (NLGB 83) was presented on Palm Sunday (Google Books) and John (NLGB 84) on Good Friday (Google Books).
Lutheran tradition built on this with congregational chorales that emphasized both the theology and the biblical accounts, most notably in the multi-stanza settings Passion Gospel harmony of Siebald Heyden's 23-stanza 1530 "O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde groß" (O man, weep for your great sins, Wikipedia), emphasizing the Stations of the Cross, as ell as the satisfaction atonement sacrificial model, Paul Stockmann's 34-stanza 1633 "Jesu Leiden, Pein und Tod" (Jesus suffering, pain, and death, BCW), the Johannine Christus Victor concept. Bach favorite composer Paul Gerhardt (BCW) composed two extended Passion chorale narratives: the 10-stanza ""Ein Lämmlein geht und trägt die Schuld" (BCW), and the 16-stanza, "O Welt, sieh hier dein Leben" (BCW). By Bach's time, Passion musical settings ranged from the Brockes poetic oratorio Passion gospel harmony versions, beginning in Hamburg in 1712 and popular throughout Germany, to various municipal liturgical Passion settings of chorales, similar to Johann Kuhnau's 1722 Leipzig St. Mark Passion and the Bach apocryphal St. Luke Passion.
While Bach composed music only for the Good Friday services in Leipzig, his vocal music is appropriate for the other days of Holy Week, using the gospel of John, as found in John S. Sutterlund's study of the current three-year Revised Common Lectionary.1 Liturgically in Bach's time, the Gospel readings for Monday to Thursday were: Monday, John 12:1-11 (Mary annoints Jesus, Bible Gateway); Tuesday, John 12:20-36 (Jesus speaks of his death, Bible Gateway); Wednesday, John 13:21-32 (Jesus foretells his betrayal, Bible Gateway); Maundy Thursday, John 13:1-17, 31b-35 (Jesus washes disciples feet, Bible Gateway); Good Friday, John 18:1-19:42 (Jesus arrest, trials, crucifixion). The single gospel readings in today's lectionary are virtually the same, except for Wednesday in Holy Week, where Luke's gospel is replaced today by John 13:21-32 (Jesus predicts his betrayal). Manudy Thursday in Bach's Leipzig was a unique day when a full communion service with music was presented with the Hymn of the Day being Martin Luther's "Jesus Christus, unser Heiland, der von uns." Setterlund's Holy Week suggestions are as follows: Monday in Holy Week, preferred Motet BWV 227, "Jesu, meine Freude" (Carus-Media, BCW: scroll down to "Discussions in the Week of June 19, 2016 (4th round); alternate Cantata BWV 39, “Brich dem Hungrigen dein Brot” (1st Sunday after Trinity, Carus-Media, IOPN Library Illinois); Tuesday in Holy Week, preferred Cantata BWV 22 (Quinquagesima Estomihi, Carus-Media, IOPN Library Illinois); alternate Cantata BWV 159 (Quinquagesima Estomihi, Carus-Media, IOPN Library Illinois); Wednesday in Holy Week, preferred Cantata BWV 12 (Jubilate Sunday, Carus-Media, IOPN Library Illinois); and alternate Cantata BWV 44, "Sie werden euch in den Bann tun I" (Exaudi Sunday, Carus-Media, IOPN Library Illinois); Mundy Thursday, preferred Cantata BWV 180 (20th Sunday after Trinity, Carus-Media, IOPN Library Illinois), alternate Cantata BWV 184.2 (3rd Day of Pentecost, Carus-Media, Carus-Media); Good Friday, preferred BWV 245.2 John Passion (BCW), alternate Cantata BWV 159 (Quinquagesima Estomihi, Carus-Media, IOPN Library Illinois).
ENDNOTES
1 John S. Sutterlund, Bach Through the Year: The Church Music of Johann Sebastian Bach and the Revised Common Lectionary (Minneapolis MN: Lutheran University Press, 2013: 47ff). |
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David Stancliffe wrote (April 15, 2025):
Unpeeling Bach
What have we learned over the past 50 years about how Bach performed his sacred vocal music, and how has our performance practice changed?
by David Stancliffe, The Real Press, April 2025
My book on what we've learned about how Bach performed his vocal music has just been published, and you can find it on Amazon.
Here are some commendations. I researched and wrote it in the lockdown, when we couldn't perform live and I had time to read the research articles and books, and was encouraged that much of what I had discovered by trial and error was indeed how JSB had most likely performed his work himself.
Praise for this book:
“David Stancliffe peels Bach with an almost unrivalled combination of musical and theological experience. He looks forward to Bach from the practices of his predecessors as well as backwards, from our own assumptions. And he mines his own developing practice throughout the last fifty years, together with many of the major new discoveries in Bach scholarship and performance..” John Butt, director of the Dunedin Consort, and Gardiner Professor of Music at Glasgow.
“How we perform Bach has changed radically in the last half century, and continues to change as we better understand the musical world he took for granted. David Stancliffe‘s fresh and challenging study opens all kinds of new possibilities for recovering what Bach was aiming to do. Combining the best of musicological scholarship with the experience of a seasoned practitioner, it will be a vital and welcome addition to the bookshelf of any musician or musical enthusiast...”Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury and then Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge.
“This book is a treasure trove of information about Bach, brilliantly illuminated throughout by the author’s long experience and special insight interpreting his music and his religious beliefs. The combination makes this work an invaluable resource for all those who love Bach and his genius...” Nic McGegan, flautist, harpsichordist and renowned conductor of the baroque.
It was in the late-1950s when David Stancliffe - a future bishop of Salisbury, but then still a schoolboy - was caught breaking into the organ loft in St Martin’s, Ludgate Hill to play the organ by the organ-builder himself, Noel Mander. But Mander wasn’t cross. He approved his means of entry - which left no traces - and put David and his bike in the back of his Volvo and drove him straight off to look around his organ works in Bethnal Green.
So began a lifetime’s involvement with historic organs and period instruments and, above all, with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach - and the furious debate, which has raged now for half a century, about what that music sounded like to him and his eighteenth-century contemporaries.
Since leaving Salisbury in 2010, David has devoted his energies to conducting every one of those Bach vocal works he never had the chance to perform before. That makes this book not just an inspirational guide to the debate, it is also a comprehensive companion to Bach’s sacred vocal works and how to perform them, by an enthusiast and expert who has himself wrestled with practical issues like where performers should stand and how many there should be.
Living in Upper Weardale, David is a Fellow of St Chad’s College, Durham, and directs small groups of singers and period instruments not only in the Durham area but abroad under the name of The Bishop's Consort.
He has a passion for historically informed performance practice and in Bristol in the early 1970s he founded The Westron Wynd, a small singing group working with the first generation of period instrument players, with whom he gave the first performance of the B minor Mass by an English group on period instruments.
That group performed Bach’s St John Passion, the Christmas Oratorio and the Magnificat together with a number of cantatas and his own edition of the Monteverdi Vespers in the early 1970s. Over the years, he has now conducted all of the Bach church cantatas, performing a Bach Passion each Passiontide since the early 1980s, and the ten-year project to play the as yet unperformed (by them) Bach cantatas is now complete. Research into pitch, scoring and instrumentation, plus live performances, continues.
The Rt Revd David Stancliffe, DD DLitt FRSCM
15, The Butts, Stanhope
Bishop Auckland
Co Durham DL13 2UQ
Fellow of St Chad's College, Durham
Hon Assistant Bishop in the Dioceses of Europe and Durham
Director of The Bishop's Consort
President of The Ecclesiological Society
Hon Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford |
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Melissa Raven wrote (April 15, 2025):
Unpeeling Bach
[To David Sancliffe] Thanks, David, this sounds like a very interesting and useful book - and very reasonably priced! |
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To Come: Holy Week (Monday to Friday) appropriate cantatas in today''s Revised Common Lectionary. |
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