This piece was originally written for Holy Week 2020, to give Ascension Parishioners a small gift of sacred music even though we had to be apart on Good Friday.
Portrait of J.S. Bach (1746) by Elias Gottlob Haussmann
J.S. Bach (1685-1750) wrote his St. Matthew Passion in 1727 for the Good Friday service at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, where he was Kapellmeister (Director of Music). Scored for two orchestras, two choirs, and soloists, this piece tells the story of Christ’s passion in the manner of an oratorio or unstaged opera, with different singers representing different characters in the Passion narrative—much like we do when we read the Passion together on Good Friday here at Ascension.
Musical Passion stories had been a Lutheran tradition for generations by Bach’s time, but his listeners weren’t quite prepared for the scale of his St. Matthew Passion. Setting the entire Passion narrative from the Gospel of Matthew to music, plus a libretto of commentary poetry by Bach’s friend Christian Friedrich Henrici, the whole thing takes almost three hours to perform. At Bach’s church, it would have been performed in two parts, before and after the Good Friday sermon.
A page from Bach’s manuscript for the St. Matthew Passion. See the text written in red ink? Bach copied all of the texts taken directly from Scripture in red, to differentiate them from the original poetry of his librettist, Christian Friedrich Henrici (better known by his pen name, Picander.)
18th-century Lutheran audiences were used to long services, but they were less used to the dramatic, operatic treatment Bach used in this Passion setting. One scandalized church lady is said to have exclaimed, “I feel as though I were at the opera-comedy!” If you want to understand just how out-of-the-box this was, imagine me inserting an entire performance of Jesus Christ Superstar into our Rite I Ascension service. (But imagine it with much better theology and much better music.)
In the St. Matthew Passion, Bach does some fascinating things to bring the story to life. For example, whenever Jesus speaks, he’s accompanied by orchestral strings, which many have compared to a sonic “halo.”
Evangelist:
When Jesus had finished this speech, he said to His disciples:
Jesus:
You know that in two days it will be Passover, and the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified.
Whenever a group speaks in the narrative, whether it’s the disciples, the Roman soldiers, or the crowds shouting “Crucify Him,” Bach uses the whole choir to express their emotions. Here’s a clip of one of these choruses. At the Last Supper, Christ has just announced that one disciple will betray him, and the disciples respond, “Is it I, Lord?” Bach has the choristers speak over each other in haste and fear, but if you listen very carefully, you can hear that they repeat “Herr, bin ich’s” (Lord, is it I?) exactly eleven times—once for everybody but Judas, who presumably already knew the answer.
The turba (“crowd”) choruses of the people crying “Crucify him!” (Lasst ihn kreuzigen!) are justly famous, managing to be in equal parts passionate and terrifying.
Punctuating the Passion narrative are choruses and solo arias in which time stops for the believer to reflect on the story. The St. Matthew Passion opens with a dramatic chorus that illustrates Christ’s via dolorosa, as he carries his cross to Calvary. In this chorus, Bach takes full advantage of his double-choir scoring: imagine two small choirs, each with its own orchestra, standing on opposite sides of the altar, singing antiphonally to each other, asking, “See Him: the Bridegroom!” and responding, “So like a Lamb.” In fact, for this chorus only, Bach adds a third choir: a group of children’s voices singing a chorale (or hymn) about Christ as the sinless Lamb of God, which floats in a heavenly manner over the other choirs’ anguished antiphonal responses.
Bach uses soloists to offer more intimate reflections on the Passion narrative. My favorite example is a soprano aria that appears at the work’s halfway point. At Christ’s trial, Pilate has just asked, “Why, what evil has he done?,” and the soloist tries to answer the question. After reciting Christ’s many acts of love, the soloist concludes that Christ’s only crime is love: “Aus Liebe will mein Heiland sterben” (Because of love my Savior is willing to die”).
To help his congregation connect the Passion story with their own lives, Bach inserted twelve chorales, or hymns, into the St. Matthew Passion. Whenever one of these chorales appeared, the congregation would join in to sing with the choirs. The familiar arrangement of “O Sacred Head, Sore Wounded” from our Episcopal Hymnal 1982 is one of these chorales from the St. Matthew Passion. Bach used this tune five times as a structural device throughout the Passion, each time with different words and a different harmonization to match.
Acknowledge me, my Guardian,
my Shepherd, take me in!
From you, source of all goodness,
much good has come to me.
Your mouth has nourished me
with milk and sweet sustenance;
your spirit has lavished upon me
much heavenly joy.
The St. Matthew Passion ends with a majestic lullaby to the entombed Christ, which includes some of the oratorio’s most beautiful lines, reflecting that with Christ’s death, we receive rest, and salvation from sin.
We sit down with tears
and call to you in the grave:
rest gently, gently rest!
Rest, you exhausted limbs!
- Rest gently, rest well. -
Your grave and headstone
shall, for the anxious conscience,
be a comfortable pillow
and the resting place for the soul.
- Rest gently, gently rest! -
Highly contented,
there the eyes fall asleep.
If you’d like to take a deep dive into the Passion narrative with Bach, you can watch and listen to the whole St. Matthew Pasion at this link, with English subtitles. If you want to follow along with the German words too, here’s an interlinear translation. The first time I listened to the St. Matthew Passion, it felt long. Now when I listen, it feels much too short. If you have the time and energy to enter the world of this piece, it’s a powerful, rewarding experience.
For Further Reading
A guide from the Netherlands Bach Society
An overview from Encyclopaedia Brittanica
A guide from the Bach Choir of Bethlehem