chapter 4 Bach’s

Bach employed the same compositional processes he used to write his Cantatas for his St John and St Matthew , though both were clearly written for significantly augmented musical forces.1 A key difference between the libretti for his Passions and those of his Cantatas is that the Passion libretti made use of a single consecutive source of Scripture for their narrative, rather than a selection of thematically related Bible texts or poetical paraphrases of Scrip- ture as was the case with most of his Cantatas.2 However, the musical build- ing blocks—Scriptural recitatives and choruses, poetical arias and ariosos and chorales—were the same elements that make up his Cantatas, though on a grander scale. The use of the same underlying structural principles as those employed in writing a Cantata suggest that Bach’s St John Passion was devel- oped from a combination of the Lutheran responsorial Passion tradition and Bach’s own Cantatas, rather than the popular contemporary Passion . The Passion Oratorio, popularised on the cusp of the eighteenth century in Lutheran Germany by dramatists such as Barthold Heinrich Brockes and his contemporaries, derived directly from the late-sixteenth-century Lutheran dramatisation of Scripture. Gospel harmonies such as the influential History of the Passion and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from the four Gospels (1526) by the reformer of Northern Germany and Denmark Johannes Bugenhagen, furnished the genre with its Latin name: Summa Passionis, ‘gleaned from all four Passions’.3 From the 1530s onwards, the proclamation of Scripture through

1 NBR, no. 115, BD 2, no. 179, documents how in an exchange with the Town Council Bach argued for a performance of his St John Passion at St Thomas’ rather than St Nikolai on the grounds ‘that there was no room available’, requesting that ‘additional room be provided in the choir loft, so that he could place the persons needed for the music’. 2 The consecutive Scriptural source, rather than a summa Passionis poetical paraphrase, ap- pears to have been a requirement by the Leipzig consistory who, together with the Town Council, had final control of the libretto, see: NBR, no. 208, BD 2, no. 439, documenting the Council’s direction that the performance of a Bach Passion on Good Friday 1739 was ‘to be omitted until regular permission for the same is received’. On that occasion, Bach declined performing his own work, and instead performed a Telemann Passion, Andreas Glöckler, ‘Johann Sebastian Bachs Aufführungen zeitgenössischer Passionsmusiken’, Bach-Jahrbuch 66 (1977), pp. 75–119, p. 118, suggests. 3 Johannes Bugenhagen, Die Historia des leydens vnd der Aufferstehung vnsers Herrn Jhesu

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi: 10.1163/9789004272361_006 bach’s stjohnpassion 69 the arts had been developed and intentionally fostered in Lutheran principali- ties, in particular in electoral Saxony and Brunswick.4 Biblically-based dramas, including some Passion and Resurrection plays, often made use of Biblically- paraphrased free verse drama coupled with audience interaction to further reformation doctrine. Key to the new genre was the presentation of the newly- translated Scriptures in a variety of vernacular forms of communication— declamation, drama and hymn—which, in combination, ensured the success- ful promotion of Lutheran doctrine and teaching beyond the heartlands of Luther’s reformation.5 One of the first, and most prolific dramatists of Luther’s Reformation, Joachim Greff, explained this principle in the prologue of his Tragedy of the Book of Judith in German Rhyme (1536):

[God’s word] is written/ read/ and sung for us/ It’s painted on our neigh- bours’ doors/ it’s heard in sermons everywhere/ And often is performed for us/ That we delight therein may gain.6

The step from a Passion and Resurrection play such as Greff’s Sacred New Play for Easter (1542) or the Lutheran Passion plays of the Meistersinger Guilds in Free Imperial Cities in the 1550s and 1560s to Brockes’DerfürdieSündenderWelt Gemarterte und Sterbende Jesus (Jesus, Suffering and Dying for the Sins of the World) was a comparatively small one.7 Like Brockes’ Passion some 150 years

Christi aus den vier Evangelien, durch Johannem Bugenhagen Pomer vleyssig zusammen bracht (Wittenberg: Hans Weiß, 1526). For Bugenhagen’s Passion Harmony, and its later poetic adap- tations, see: Andreas Loewe, ‘Proclaiming the Passion: Popular Drama and the Passion Tra- dition in Luther’s Germany’, Reformation and Renaissance Review 12.2/3 (2010), pp. 235–282, pp. 255–256. 4 For the development of a specifically Lutheran genre of Biblical drama, see: Loewe (2010), pp. 235–282. 5 For the success of Lutheran drama in spreading Lutheran doctrine to areas where reformation writings were banned, see: Loewe (2010), pp. 263–264. 6 Joachim Greff, Tragoedia des Buchs Iudith jnn Deudsche Reim verfasset durch Joachim Greff von Zwickaw nützlich zu lesen (Wittenberg: Georg Rhaw, 1536), Prologus, p. A 7r: ‘Man schreibts/ man lists/ man singt vns fur/ Man sihts gemalt an jdermans thür/ Es wird gepredigt vberall/ Man spilts vns auch fur zum offtermal/ Das wir solten lust darzu/ Gewinnen’. For the inten- tional involvement of Greff’s audience through brief homiletic reflections, explanations or questions, see: Loewe (2010), pp. 256–259. 7 Joachim Greff, Ein Geistliches schönes newes spil auff das heilige Osterfest gestellet (Magde- burg: Michael Lotter, 1542). For examples of the Lutheran Meistersinger Passions, see: Hans Sachs, Die ganz Passio, in idem, Sehr herrliche schöne und warhaffte Gedicht geistlich unnd weltlich allerley Art (Nürnberg: Christoff Heußler, 1558) and Sebastian Wild, Die Passion und