St John Passion Research Articles

Intercultural musical dialogue in St John Passion by Sofia Gubaidulina

Sofia Gubaidulina is one of the most important composers living today. Among her many works acknowledged and awarded prizes on the international forum, the diptych St John Passion and St John Easter [The Resurrection of Christ according to St John], the opus magnum of that outstanding Russian composer, occupies a special place. This work focuses the most important features of her music, such as a profound theological message based on a compilation of fragments from the Old Testament, Gospels and the Apocalypse of St John, as well as her musical rootedness in the cultural tradition of the churches of both East and West. Gubaidulina adapts the achievements of the artistic avant-garde in new and original ways, while at the same time she is an ardent champion of traditional universal values grounded in the message of the Bible and Christian cultural tradition. This paper presents St John Passion by Sofia Gubaidulina in the context of its theological and intercultural dialogue, as well as attempting to characterise the phenomenon represented by this composer, who raises anew reflection on the fate of humankind in the context of existential questions, while remaining faithful to the idea of high art, exquisite and open to various understandings of the idea of beauty.

4. Passion in the Work of Johann Sebastian Bach

Abstract Passions are exceptionally important in the works of Johann Sebastian Bach. His passion compositions are based particularly on Luther’s reformation, chiefly on developmental tendency which is based on the works of Johann Walter, Hans Leo Hassler and Michael Praetorius. The most significant forerunner of J. S. Bach was Heinrich Schütz. J. S. Bach’s textual aspect is aimed at the model of passion oratorio the main representative of which was a librettist Heinrich Brockes who worked in Hamburg. The interesting fact is that before the arrival of J. S. Bach, in 1723, there was no long tradition of passions in Leipzig. They were performed there in 1721 for the first time. J. S. Bach is demonstrably the author of the two passions: St Matthew Passion BWV 244 and St John Passion BWV 245. The authorship of Johann Sebastian Bach in St. Lukas Passion BWV 246 is strongly called into question and from St Mark Passion BWV 24 only the text was preserved.

Johann Sebastian Bach's ‘St John Passion’ (BWV 245). A theological commentary. With a new study translation by Katherine Firth and a foreword by N. T. Wright. By Andreas Loewe. (Studies in the History of Christian Traditions, 168.) Pp. xxi + 329 incl. 10 tables and 11 figs. Leiden–Boston: Brill, 2014. €129. 978 90 04 26547 9; 1573 5664

Johann Sebastian Bach's ‘St John Passion’ (BWV 245). A theological commentary. With a new study translation by Katherine Firth and a foreword by N. T. Wright. By Andreas Loewe. (Studies in the History of Christian Traditions, 168.) Pp. xxi + 329 incl. 10 tables and 11 figs. Leiden–Boston: Brill, 2014. €129. 978 90 04 26547 9; 1573 5664

Johann Sebastian Bach’s St John Passion (BWV 245): A Theological Commentary. By Andreas Loewe. With a new Study Translation by Katherine Firth.

Johann Sebastian Bach’s St John Passion (BWV 245): A Theological Commentary. By Andreas Loewe. With a new Study Translation by Katherine Firth.

Szukając tożsamości na styku kultur. "Pasja wg św. Jana" Sofii Gubajduliny

Szukając tożsamości na styku kultur. "Pasja wg św. Jana" Sofii Gubajduliny

Bach's St John Passions

There are few pieces that can illustrate the vital differences between our own musical culture and that of Bach’s time more strikingly than the St John Passion. Whereas Bach’s audiences at Leipzig’s main churches primarily would have sought to contemplate the Passion of Christ, for example, today’s listeners are more likely to engage with the music on account of a passion for Bach. Even the well-known fact that Bach’s music originally formed part of a liturgical sound-world can seem surprising today, as John Butt and the Dunedin Consort have so powerfully illustrated in their widely acclaimed new recording of the John Passion (Linn Records, ckd419, rec 2012, 139′). The set reunites the Passion with a reconstructed Good Friday liturgy, and contrasting the controlled formality of organ preludes and congregational singing with Bach’s concerted movements achieves a remarkable effect: it not only intensifies a sense of drama and tension...

IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF BACH'S ST. MATTHEW PASSION: THE PASSION SETTINGS OF DAVID LANG AND JAMES MACMILLAN

AbstractIn 2007, two high-profile musical responses to the Christian Passion narrative were written: the little match girl passion, by American composer David Lang, and Scottish composer James MacMillan's St John Passion. A devout Catholic, MacMillan's faith has influenced almost every work he has written to date, and a passion setting therefore seemed inevitable. Lang, on the other hand, has Jewish roots, and is relatively secular in his choice of extra-musical themes in his works: even when using sacred texts, he usually sets them in a secular context. Unsurprisingly, MacMillan's and Lang's contrasting approaches towards the Christian Passion resulted in fundamentally different works, yet both composers cite Bach as a key inspiration in their settings. This study examines the extent to which the influence of Bach's St Matthew Passion, in particular, is present in this pair of 21st-century passions, with regard to both their music and their theology.

The Early Enlightenment, Jews, and Bach

The question of possible anti-Judaism/anti-Semitism in the music of Bach has been a sensitive issue in Bach scholarship in recent years, especially in the US. I, like many who are conscious of the long tradition of Christian persecution of Jews and the enormity of the Holocaust, was first drawn to this subject by disturbingly powerful performances of the choruses of the St John Passion. But now, without denying history in any way, and without forgetting the antagonisms towards, and oppression of, Jews in Bach’s milieu, but also recognising that without explicit information from Bach himself we cannot really know what he thought in his heart of hearts, I have come to believe that the case for anti-Judaic attacks in the music of Bach remains unproven. At the same time, it is self-evident that all Christian texts are perforce anti-Judaic, since belief in Christ as Messiah involves a rejection of Judaism. But what is at issue here is whether or not works by J. S. Bach contain specific and intentional assaults on Jews beyond simple disagreements on matters of belief. The evidence for this is both positive and negative, and can only be summarily cited here. On the positive side, we have Bach’s marginal comments in his Calov Bible indicating that he saw the ancient Jewish musicians as models for himself and founders of a tradition he, as a church musician, sought to further in his own career.1 But evidence is stronger on the negative side, such as no documented utterances by Bach against Jews, a lack of explicit anti-Judaic texts in the surviving cantatas and passions (whereas explicit anti-Catholic and anti-Muslim

RECONCILING OPPOSING FORCES: THE YOUNG JAMES MACMILLAN – A PERFORMANCE HISTORY

James MacMillan was 50 years old on 16 July 2009 and his birthday was celebrated by musical institutions not just in Britain, but internationally. As a composer and conductor in residence for the BBC Philharmonic he led performances of his Symphony No.3: Silence and The World's Ransoming. The Royal Northern College of Music staged a three-day celebration of his work while The Sixteen toured his music under conductor Harry Christophers. His recent St John Passion was performed in Berlin and Amsterdam by the London Symphony Orchestra and in Rotterdam concerts of his music were given by the Rotterdam Philharmonic, Rotterdam Chamber Orchestra and the Hilliard Ensemble. The widespread regard for MacMillan's music evidenced by these performances is the culmination of a steady rise in popularity, undisputedly catalyzed by the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra première of The Confession of Isobel Gowdie. In a 1993 Tempo article on MacMillan, music critic Stephen Johnson describes the premiere thus: ‘there have been warm receptions for other new works at Promenade Concerts, but the thunderous, ecstatic welcome given to James MacMillan's The Confession of Isobel Gowdie at the 1990 Proms was unprecedented’.

Bach's protean Passions: Daniel R. Melamed, Hearing Bach's passions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 15.50 * Johann Sebastian Bach, Matthaus-Passion, Fruhfassung, BWV244b, ed. Andreas Glockner, Neue Bach Ausgabe series II, vol.5b (Kassel: Barenreiter, 2004), 160

What does a title like Hearing Bach's passions suggest? Surely such a book would concentrate on listening culture, so it might conceivably begin with a close study of the cultural and religious presuppositions of Bach's hearers, of several different backgrounds and with different degrees of exposure to music. Then there might be a close study of how this broad culture feeds into the way Bach wrote the music, as an active listener in his own right. The study could then go on to ask how later listeners heard this music, depending on their nationality, background and era—then to questions of how listeners today might hear this, as Christians or Jews, believers or unbelievers. (There is, after all, a great deal of material showing the variety of responses to the issue of anti-Semitism and the St John Passion in recent years.) Reception theory, some brand of semiotic theory, perhaps psychology too, might all come into play to give an idea of how Bach's passions are constructed by different forms of listenership, ending with the thorny issue of what is actually ‘there’ in the music. Is there something essential that travels from one age or culture to the next? Does the complex intertwining of religious and musical belief (together with the archetypes of sacrifice and atonement) tell us anything about the human condition in general, or is it more a question of the specific, historically conditioned, environment of western modernity?

Bach's chorus: a ‘brief yet highly necessary’ reappraisal

Journal Article Bach's chorus: a ‘brief yet highly necessary’ reappraisal Get access Andrew Parrott Andrew Parrott Andrew Parrott's various Bach recordings, mostly with his own Tavemer Consort & Players and for EMI, include the St John Passion, the Mass in B minor, the Easter and Ascension Oratorios, the Magnificat, Cantatas 4, 50, 82 and 202, the Brandenburg Concertos, the Suites (Ouvertures) and various sinfonias. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Early Music, Volume XXIV, Issue 4, November 1996, Pages 551–582, https://doi.org/10.1093/earlyj/XXIV.4.551 Published: 01 November 1996

St John Passion

St John Passion

Bach: St John Passion

Bach: St John Passion

RECORDINGS

RECORDINGS Get access Johann Sebastian Bach ST JOHN PASSION Anthony Rolfe Johnson(tenor), Stephen Varcoe(bass), Cornelius Hauptmann(bass). The Monteverdi Choir, The English Baroque Soloists, conducted by John Eliot Gardiner Archiv 419 324-1 (two records, rec 1986) Malcolm Boyd Malcolm Boyd Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Early Music, Volume XV, Issue 3, August 1987, Pages 424-b–427, https://doi.org/10.1093/earlyj/XV.3.424-b Published: 01 August 1987

St John Passion

St John Passion

Tribute to Arthur Mendel

On 14 October 1979, aged 74, Arthur Mendel died of leukemia at Beth Israel Medical Center in Newark. Six years earlier, he had retired from active teaching at Princeton as Henry Putnam University Professor of Music Emeritus, having served on the Princeton faculty for 21 years. The world of professional musicians hardly needs to be reminded of Arthur Mendel's achievements. They know him as a world authority on Bach, editor with Hans David of the Bach Reader and sole editor of the critical edition of the St John Passion for the Neue Bach Ausgabe. They know him as a pioneering scholar in the history of musical pitch (most recently visible in Acta Musicologica, 1978) and as a leader in the international committee for a new Josquin edition, along with his work towards the use of' the computer as a tool for musicology. They know him too for his masterly translations, his editions, his performances and recordings of Schiitz and Bach, his trenchant articles and reviews. Direct reflections of his wide interests were brought together in 1974 in the festschrift, Studies in Renaissance and Baroque Music in Honor of Arthur Mendel, edited by Robert Marshall; with contributions by 24 scholars, it was a festschrift of truly international character. Although this is not the forum in which to dwell on his influence as a teacher, there are many who are well aware of what his teaching has meant to them, personally and professionally. They know what I mean when I speak of Arthur's taste for candour, his wit, his marvellous ear for language, his unflinching critical intelligence. Having been one of his graduate students myself, I am sure I speak also for others when I say that no one of'my acquaintance has more vitally exemplified the questioning attitude to knowledge that underlies scholarship. I almost feel a sense of poignant irony in saying these things, not that I do not believe them deeply; but Arthur, who wanted no eulogy yet must have one, would have been the first to cock his head back with a quizzical smile and shatter the target with a few well-aimed questions: How do you know? What makes you think so? How can we be so sure? No one ever loved an argument more; and, as a distinguished member of this Society put it to me, no one was ever more delightful to disagree with, yet no one was more open to new convictions or more gracious in confessing the limits of his own knowledge. His contributions to the American Musicological Society (from 1939) form a long and distinguished record. His influence on the publication activities of* the Society was profound, and his sharp editorial sense must always have been felt in what was done and what was decided upon. In 1961, when the Eighth Congress of the International Musicological Society was held in New York, for the first time ever in the United States, its plenary sessions had three major addresses-one each by a German, French, and an American scholar. The American was Arthur Mendel. His opening paper, given at Columbia before the largest group of musicologists that had ever assembled in this country, dealt with the central topic, 'Evidence and Explanation'. He gave the field and its practitioners a brilliant exposition of* basic problems in the nature of* historical knowledge, applying current thought on the philosophy of history to music-historical issues and procedures. Nothing could be more characteristic of* the Mendelian style than these brief excerpts firom that paper:

St John Passion

St John Passion

The St John Passion and the Performer

The St John Passion and the Performer

Authenticity and the St John Passion

Authenticity and the St John Passion