Introduction

The performance of the St John Passion at St Nikolai Leipzig in Lent 1724 is the first surviving example of Bach’s new Passion genre, making the St John Passion and its longer successor, the St Matthew Passion, milestones for later composers of Passions.1 In spite of the significance of Bach’s St John Passion as the principal textual model and musical inspiration for numerous later Passion compositions, there is currently no comprehensive single work in English that examines both the development of the new genre and provides a sustained analysis of the words and the music of Bach’s St John Passion. This volume documents the genesis of Bach’s Passion genre and provides a thorough interpretation of the libretto and music of his first surviving Passion. The first part of this volume examines the development of Bach’s StJohnPassion as a principally Lutheran art form by considering the composer’s own thorough Lutheran upbringing and his self-understanding as a Lutheran church musi- cian, while the second part presents a theological and musical commentary of the work in order to show how Bach communicated and anchored the Chris- tian Passion narrative in the devotional story of his community through his music.2 Those familiar with the life and education of Bach, the development of the Lutheran Passion tradition in general and Bach’s work in particular, may wish to move directly to the second part of the volume, and the close reading and musico-theological analysis of Bach’s St John Passion.

1 Drawing on Bach’s necrologue in: Werner Neumann and Hans Joachim Schulze, eds., Bach- Dokumente, 3 vols (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1963–1972) [cited as BD], 3, no. 666, Philipp Spitta, Johann Sebastian Bach, 2 vols (Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel, 1873–1880), 2, p. 333f., suggests that in 1717 Bach may well have written a now lost ‘Weimar Passion’,a number of arias he used for his 1725 revision of the St John Passion (Version II), see Table 6, below, page 86. For other potential Passions by Bach, see: Daniel Melamed, Hearing Bach’s Passions (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 78–130. 2 Two previous studies reflect in detail on Bach’s StJohn Passion: Martin Geck, JohannSebastian Bach: Johannespassion BWV 245, Meisterwerke der Musik: Werkmonographien 7, Musikge- schichte 55 (München: Wilhem Fink Verlag, 1991) centres on a number of selected move- ments, while Alfred Dürr, Johann Sebastian Bach’s St John Passion: Genesis, Transmission and Meaning (Oxford: University Press, 2000) and Eric Chafe, Tonal Allegory in the Vocal Music of J.S. Bach (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991) primarily reflect on the meaning inherent in the musical structure of the work. Both works select only a number of movements, rather than comment on the entire Passion.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi: 10.1163/9789004272361_002 2 introduction

Central to this interpretation of Bach’s St John Passion is a new annotated translation of the libretto by Dr Katherine Firth. Making use of the Neue Bach- ausgabe score as its German textual base, Firth’s translation provides an accu- rate modern English study text that will enable English-speakers with little or no knowledge of German to understand the poetic, linguistic and theological richness of the original libretto. The translation eschews the Cranmerian idiom first introduced by John Troutbeck in his adaptation of the work for the 1872 Novello edition of Bach’s work.3 Because Troutbeck’s translation served as a model for almost all subsequent translators, the use of this outdated idiom has persevered well into the twenty-first-century.4 Although Peter Pears’ collabo- ration with Imogen Holst in producing an English language performance text for Benjamin Britten’s 1971 recording of the work resulted in a highly innova- tive and dynamic English paraphrase of the libretto, it still used the English of the reformation.5 Even relatively recent translations, such as Alfred Clayton’s 2000 translation in Dürr’s examination of the St John Passion, still rendered the text into archaic English.6 A notable exception to the rule is the literal annotated translation of the libretto in Michael Marissen’s 1998 Lutheranism, Anti-Judaism, and Bach’s St John Passion which, like the present translation, was also intended as a study rather than a performance text.7

3 Johann Sebastian Bach, tr. and adapted by John Troutbeck, St John Passion (London: Novello, Ewer and Co., 1872). 4 Inspiring for instance Henry S. Drinker’s translation in Johann Sebastian Bach, Arthur Mendel, ed., St John Passion: Vocal Score (New York: Schirmer, 1951), reused, with slight vari- ants, for the 1981 Neue Bachausgabe piano reduction, St John Passion: Vocal Score with Piano Reduction by Walter Heinz Bernstein (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1981), as well as the performance score commissioned for David Willcocks’ 1973 Decca recording of the St John Passion by Peter Pears and Andrew Raeburn: Johann Sebastian Bach, The Passion of our Lord accord- ing to St John, tr. Peter Pears and Andrew Raeburn, Ace of Diamonds GOS628–630 (London: Decca, 1973). Z. Philip Ambrose, J.S. Bach: The Vocal Texts in English Translation with Com- mentary (Bloomington: Xlibris, 2005) still renders the text into a now outdated Cranmerian idiom. 5 The innovative nature of Pears’ and Holst’s paraphrase is apparent from the very beginning of the work: Johann Sebastian Bach, tr. Peter Pears and Imogen Holst, St John Passion, BWV 245, SET531–533 (London: Decca, 1971), ‘Sire, Lord and Master/ unto thee be praise and glory evermore./ Ah, by thy loving sacrifice/ thou, Lord, the only Son of God/ art risen on high/ from deepest woe and bitter pain/ triumphant over death’. 6 Alfred Clayton’s translation of the libretto in Dürr (2000), pp. 132–177. 7 Michael Marissen, Lutheranism, Anti-Judaism, and Bach’s St John Passion: With an annotated literal translation of the Libretto (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).