An ancient liturgical form

“The Passions have the deepest liturgical roots of all Bach’s works. Tangible evidence for this form goes all the way back to the fourth century, when a Spanish nun named Egeria went on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. She kept a journal for the benefit of the sisters back home in Spain. Prominent in her account are descriptions of the liturgical observances she participated in while in Jerusalem. Her account of the services held during Holy Week includes the earliest surviving reference to the chanting of the Passion story. Not much later, in the late fourth or early fifth century, St. Augustine referred to the same practice, and by the middle of the fifth century Pope Leo the Great had decreed that the Passion story as told by St. Matthew should be chanted during the Masses for Palm Sunday and Wednesday in Holy Week, while the Passion according to St. John should be chanted on Good Friday. Some two hundred years later the St. Luke Passion replaced the St. Matthew Passion during the Wednesday Mass, and during the tenth century it became the custom in the Roman Church to sing the Passion according to St. Mark on the Tuesday of Holy Week.

“At different times, in different places, and in different liturgical traditions, specifications varied as to which Passion accounts were to be chanted on which liturgical days during Lent and Holy Week. But the liturgical practice of chanting the entire Passion account as the Gospel reading for the day was common throughout Christendom from very early times, and it continued unabated for centuries. In the eighteenth century, Bach’s Passion settings were still part of the tradition we first hear of from Sister Egeria in the fourth century.

“Throughout the Middle Ages the Passion was performed in a chant style consisting mainly of simple recitation formulas. During the Renaissance, composers started to set the Passion story in parts, sometimes setting the entire account in parts but more usually leaving the narrative in chant while reserving part-singing for the words spoken by the groups of people and, sometimes, also for the words of individuals, such as Jesus, Pilate, and Peter.

“After the Reformation the Lutherans retained the ancient practice. Both monophonic and polyphonic Passions were sung on specified days during Lent and Holy Week. Luther’s friend, the composer Johann Walter, provided simple models for singing the Passion. In them the Evangelist and the individual characters chant their words while the groups of people sing their words to a simple recitation formula in four parts.

“About the middle of the seventeenth century, musical settings of the Passion became much more elaborate. Under the influence of the new musical styles coming out of opera, Passion settings began taking on both musical and textual accretions. Instruments were added, and the continuity of the Gospel narrative was broken up by the insertion of chorales and musical settings of newly written poetry. During the eighteenth century this development went in two directions, producing two rather distinct types of Passion settings. The key difference between the two lies in what they did with the biblical narrative.

“The first type, which can be called the ‘oratorio Passion,’ retained the Gospel narrative intact, even though the story was frequently interrupted by the insertion of chorales and newly written meditative poetry. Because the Gospel narrative remained intact, ‘oratorio Passions’ retained their liturgical function as Gospel lesson.

“The second type, which can be called the ‘Passion oratorio,’ lost its connection to the liturgy because it abandoned the literal Gospel narrative in favor of a new poetic retelling of the story and did not include chorales. ‘Passion oratorios’ became popular in concert settings. Many of the big names of early eighteenth-century music, Bach excluded, set their hand to writing them. Especially popular was a text by B. H. Brockes, which was set to music by Handel, Telemann, Mattheson, and Stölzel among others.

“Although the concert-style ‘Passion oratorio’ became the norm during the first half of the eighteenth century, Bach’s Passions adhere to the liturgical type by retaining the Gospel narrative without cuts or para-phrases. As if to emphasize his adherence to the liturgical type and to highlight the centrality of the Gospel narrative, in the fair copy he made of the score of the St. Matthew Passion Bach wrote the words of the Gospel in red ink.”

— from Calvin R. Stapert, My Only Comfort: Death, Deliverance, and Discipleship in the Music of Bach (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000)