The Great Passion, James Runcie
This book was recommended by cornflower and as it deals with the writing of Bach’s St Matthew Passion, I was keen to read it. I consider the Passion to be the greatest musical work ever written (hardly an original view, I know), so I got stuck in. The story is told from the point of view of a boy, Stefan Silbermann, who comes from a famous family of organ makers. When his mother dies, he is sent away to school in Leipzig, to study music. The school is awful and he's bullied so unmercifully that he runs away. He has to go back but by a stroke of luck his voice and musicality have been noticed by the Cantor, as he always calls J S Bach. He becomes the principal soprano at the church, a cause of jealousy and more bullying. For a while, he moves into the Bach household: crowded and a place of constant music making. The Cantor helps him with his singing and organ playing and he learns the great man’s theories: work, work, work; get the fingering right and all else follows; breathe in the right places; praise God always in all that you play and sing. Bach’s work ethic was extraordinary and the descriptions of the menage, of the stern Lutheran faith of the people of Leipzig and daily life in the city are totally empathetic.
I was slightly disappointed that we didn’t get to the Passion until about two thirds of the way through the book but without what went before, we wouldn’t understand the writing of it so well. For instance, there’s a description of a botched public execution which seems gratuitous at first, until you see the parallels with the suffering of Christ and the theme of ‘blut’ which infuses the Passion. The music is difficult but the Cantor says it has to be, that all the musicians must be stretched by it. Nothing should be easy. In those days, women were allowed to sing opera but not church music, so the lead women’s roles were performed by boy sopranos like Stefan. It is first performed on Good Friday. When it ends, there is silence in the church; no one has ever heard anything like it. Imagine hearing it for the first time! Soon afterwards, Stefan’s year at the school is over and he returns home, leaving Bach’s daughter Catharina, with whom he’s in love. That’s all we know about Stefan until twenty-three years later, when he returns to Leipzig for the Cantor’s funeral and meets Anna Magdalena and Catharina again.
This is a brilliant book, which can be enjoyed by people who are neither musical nor religious, although it helps to be both.
Many years ago, my late husband and I went to a performance of The St John Passion in Blandford parish church, because we knew someone who was singing in it. I already knew the work and had heard it performed at a Prom, conducted by Benjamin Britten, with Peter Pears as the Evangelist. Yet it was in this small Georgian church, with the Evangelist in the pulpit that I got for the first time (duh) that it wasn’t just beautiful music but was telling a story for people to follow and be moved by. The St Matthew is even better at doing this. I can’t hear this opening chorus without tears.
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