About Bach’s St. John’s Passion

In the St John Passion, Bach sets the Passion of Christ to music as the story is told in the Gospel of John. He first performed the piece at Vespers on Good Friday (the Friday before Easter), in Leipzig. It was the first Passion music he had written as cantor in Leipzig.

Libretto
The thread running through the St John Passion is the biblical passage traditionally read on Good Friday, John 18 and 19. Jesus was captured, led before Kaiphas and Pontius Pilate, judged, crucified and put to death. The biblical passage is presented by the solo tenor (the Evangelist), and the various roles (Jesus, Pilate, the disciples and the people) are taken by the other singers. At key moments, Bach added well-known hymns, which are sung and played by the whole ensemble. For the solo arias, he used poetry from popular Passion anthologies by Barthold Heinrich Brockes, Christian Weise and Christian Heinrich Postel.

Less human
The Passion story as told in the Gospel of John is different from that told by the other three evangelists – Matthew, Luke and Mark. John’s version places the emphasis on Christ’s divine origin. Throughout his suffering, this divine origin still plays a role and nowhere is Jesus as human as in the other gospels. He is not afraid and knows everything that will happen – so also that the crucifixion will not be the end of him. This is immediately apparent in the opening chorus, where Christ is invoked as ‘Herrscher dessen Ruhm in allen Landen herrlich ist’. This contrasts with the opening chorus in the St Matthew Passion, which is about the lamb being led to the slaughter.

Symbolism
Bach often adds an extra dimension to the words through his music. A fairly direct expression of the words is to be found in many of the recitatives, for instance when the Evangelist tells how Jesus is flogged. The flogging is clearly heard, both in the singing and in the accompanying continuo. In the aria ‘Ach mein Sinn’, Peter’s disquiet and remorse is supported by the strings. The accompaniment is turbulent and restless, and the aria ends abruptly. The short choir sections contain a lot of shouting, screaming and cursing. Bach underlines the shouting and jeering with his music. In the chorus ‘Bist du nicht’, for example, the voices enter in increasingly rapid succession and at shorter intervals, so that it seems almost as if more and more people join in the shouting.

Symmetry
The chorale ‘Durch dein Gefängnis Gottes Sohn’ is seen as the heart of the Passion. Many of the fast tutti choruses sung before this chorale return after it, but then with different words and in reverse order (like, for example, ‘Wir haben ein Gesetz’ – ‘Lässest du diesen los’ of ‘Sei gegrüßet’ – ‘Schreibe nicht’). Furthermore, the chorale summarises the essence of the Passion once again: ‘Durch dein Gefängnis Gottes Sohn, muss uns die Freiheit kommen’.