Why So Many Love J.S. Bach and the St Matthew Passion - by SC Skillman

My father gave me my love of music. He played violin and piano for pleasure, he sang in choirs, his father and other family members were musical throughout their lives. He used to say to me of my grandfather, “He could get a tune out of most instruments.”

Armonico Consort Programme and two scores for Bach's St Matthew Passion, with yellow flowers. (photo credit SC Skillman)

For many years Dad sang in a local mixed-voice adult choir in Orpington, Kent, where I was born and brought up. When I was nine he encouraged me to join the children’s choir led by the same chorus director. Throughout my life since then I’ve always joined a choir wherever I’ve lived (including Australia). Dad and I have shared many funny stories of colourful characters in the music world, especially chorus directors and conductors we've worked under.

Dad had a great sense of humour, and he favoured dry wit and irony. We both loved The Bluffers' Guides series of books and our favourite was Bluff your Way in Music. The scenario: a soiree where you find yourself socialising with several music buffs.  You have to somehow make conversation and not sound like a total ignoramus. The book suggests all sorts of useful phrases for you to use with an expert when the subject of a major composer comes up. The book goes though Beethoven, Mozart, Delius, Wagner…

Then the author reaches J.S. Bach. And this is the advice he gives:

If you meet a real Bach fanatic, and you are only bluffing your way, there is nothing you can say or do to acquit yourself well whilst pretending you know more than you do. In that case, there is only one way out. I advise saying “Ah! Bach...” Leave a pregnant pause, then pretend you have to get back home for the babysitter.

St Mary's Church, Warwick (photo credit SC Skillman)

Today, my mind is on one Bach work in particular, which I heard performed on 30th March 2023 at St Mary’s Church, Warwick by the Armonico Consort and Baroque Players. Of all major choral works, Bach’s St Matthew Passion is widely considered to be the most sublime: Bach’s masterpiece. Apparently the municipal authorities in Leipzig, where he served as Civic Director of Music for the city from 1723, stated in their contract with him that as this was a religious work, Bach should on no account write an opera, and neither should it be too long. What did Bach do? Disobey him and write the most operatic piece of his life, which lasted three hours. Note: the original intention was that it should form PART OF the Good Friday Service, and with a break for a Sermon!!

St Thomas's Church Leipzig (Pixabay free image)

It was first performed on Good Friday 1727 in St Thomas’s Church Leipzig, and Bach gave further performances of it two, nine, and seventeen years later. After that it was ignored. Bach’s music went out of fashion. He had some bad reviews, (and we all know about them!) and for eighty years after his death in 1750 he fell into obscurity.  That was until the nineteen year old Felix Mendelssohn rediscovered and gave a performance of it in Berlin in 1829. It was a huge success and led directly to a complete reassessment and renewal of interest in all Bach’s music.

Not only is it highly coloured, emotional and dramatic, it puts a number of individual musicians through their paces in the most extraordinary way. For violin, flute and double bass, Bach demands a virtuoso solo. Musical performance can be incredibly physical and demanding. This was taken quite fast, and I watched the solo violinist in awe and wondered how she could possibly get through all those notes within the time allotted!

This Passion has been part of my life since I was twelve years old and in the children’ choir singing the Ripieno (the chorale melody sailing over the top of the two adult choirs).

For me, it’s bound up with so many poignant memories of much-loved people who are no longer with us. My father and my friend Alison (herself a lovely singer) came with me to the Easter performance of the Passion at the Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank. It began at five, stopped for supper at seven which we thoroughly enjoyed, and then went on till the finish. All three of us followed in our scores. Throughout the years I have never wanted to ‘drag’ anybody with me to the St Matthew Passion. I go with someone else who loves it, or I go by myself. Not that there’s anything wrong with dragging someone along. They might thereby be opened up to a new experience and a new love.

My own score has been with me since age twelve and comes out every time the particular choir I’m currently singing with takes it on. I have two scruffy, much-handled scores, my father’s and my own. As I listen to the performance and follow through, I love seeing the pencilled notes.

Don’t lose energy! Watch this.

Be ready!

Turn the Page now!

Watch the conductor!

The entire rehearsal schedule of several weeks can be very intense. I remember all the chorus directors, the overwrought things some said at the last rehearsal before the performance, and how on edge we could be. It was electrifying; through the three hours of the performance you need to be on full alert (with only a slight relaxation when you sit for the soloists to sing their recitatives and arias). When the choir is involved, every fibre of your being is in a state of readiness to come in at the right place.

Every emotion is covered in this story and Bach wrings it out of each performer with his music – the vicious crowds, the religious fanaticism, the cruel mockery, the heartbroken friends and the grief-stricken men and women who loved Jesus, the reflections through the centuries of the Christian faithful, the awed responses of those who stood nearby: Truly this was the Son of God. The sadistic taunts of the crowd - he trusted in God to deliver him, let Him deliver him now! He saved others. Himself he cannot save. If he be the king of Israel let him now come down from the cross. Throughout it all, the dignity and forbearance shown by Jesus is hugely powerful. The music itself provides an ‘aura’ or ‘halo’ of string chords each time Jesus himself speaks, except, tellingly, in that moment when he loses faith – My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Atheists and religious people alike have loved this Passion. It was among Sir Jonathan Miller’s favourites. He was an opera director and polymath, immensely gifted in numerous fields, and he addressed this question directly. His love for the St Matthew Passion was unaffected by his own personal lack of religious faith. So many can identify with the heart-breaking drama of a good, innocent man being unjustly accused, dealing with it all with the most astonishing forbearance, and being sadistically tortured and executed, to the anguish of the many who loved him.

As a Christian though, fully immersed in the emotions and the drama of this story how can you think anything else of the person at the centre of it other than: Thank the Lord he rose from the dead!

SC Skillman Author

Sheila lives in Warwickshire and writes psychological, paranormal and mystery fiction and historical non-fiction under the pen name SC Skillman. She is a member of the Society of Authors and the Association of Christian Writers. Her non-fiction books on local history are published by Amberley and include Paranormal Warwickshire and Illustrated Tales of Warwickshire.  Her next book, A-Z of Warwick, is now on pre-order and will be published on 15 November 2023. Her new novel is with publishers, and she is working on the sequel. She was born and brought up in Orpington, Kent and has loved writing most of her life. She studied English Literature at Lancaster University and her first permanent job was as a production secretary with the BBC in London. Later she lived for nearly five years in Australia before returning to the UK. She has now settled in Warwick with her husband and son and her daughter currently lives and works in Australia.