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The Great Passion

The Great Passion

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As you read my review I encourage you to listen to excerpts from Bach's St. Matthew's Passion. Here are some excerpts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxNQl... It is important to celebrate each day. It doesn’t matter how small a pleasure was or how long it lasted but each simple pleasure needs to be marked. It can be the sight of a flower or a smile of a friend or the silence at the end of a piece of music. But somehow, out of the extremely difficult living conditions in the 18th century, incredible beauty erupted that still resonates 3 centuries later. Why? After reading the novel, I listened to the St Matthew Passion on Youtube, following with the choral music score my husband used when he sang it in college. As I listened to the singers and read the music, I understood the challenges of performing the music, so eloquently described in the novel. I understood the lessons Stefan had to learn about supporting the music, phrasing, where to take a breath.

The Cantor expects much. Too much. But in the process and in the living realities, all are gifted with inspiration, aspiration, and ultimate joy. Those that perform, those that listen, those that exist in now. Everyone. We may travel through the valley of the shadow of death, but how we live is what matters, don’t you think? We have to make full use of the opportunities and talents that God has given us. Do not forget the Parable of the Talents. It commands us to work.The story of music engaging a grieving people and pointing the way toward hope is particularly meaningful today when so many have been lost. What does it mean to be alive? How do we live with our grief? Can we find the “advancing light” when we are blinded by loss and anguish? How can love save us? The characters in the book grapple with these big questions. As do we. Bach’s family was enormous, and his genius is large-scale, too. In every genre, his melodies are driven by an unerring sense of the moment when some harmonic shift or new rhythmic pattern transforms everything into a kind of heartbreak that is also, inexplicably, consoling. To conjure him as a man, a writer needs to focus very sharply, and, whether in his bestselling Grantchester ­stories or award-winning documen­taries, Runcie is expert at focus. For his portrait of the great composer, he has chosen three refining filters. First, we see Bach only through the eyes of a young boy. Second, the plot concerns the making of only one of his many masterpieces. Finally, every­thing happens in a single year, 1726-27, in which Bach’s three-year-old daughter dies. The Cantor let the idea take hold. ‘An opening exordium. A funeral tombeau. Write this down, Monsieur Silbermann. Two choirs. The Old and New Testament.’

Given the important place Bach's music has in my life, I approached this novel with a little trepidation: would it do justice to his stature as a composer, while also breathing life into him as a human being? I soon realised I was in safe hands. Runcie's Bach has the boundless energy, inventiveness and intellect that we hear in his music, but we also see how all this is rooted in his compassion, his faith, and most particularly, the grief he carries around at the loss of his first wife and several of his children. Grief is shown to be the inevitable companion of love, and out of both love and grief come the emotional range and depth of Bach's music. Although I found the content of the novel interesting, I struggled with its style. Dialogue-heavy, it initially conveyed an appropriate sense of rushed urgency, but became tedious to read as it persisted and, I felt, served to dimish character development. I could also imagine that, like myself, many readers might struggle to make sense of many of the Latin phrases and German song titles that are not always translated, or inadequately so. This begins as Stefan Silbermann hears of the death of Sebastian Bach, the news coming to him when he receives a letter in his workshop where he makes organs, assisted by other men. He asks the five men for a moment of silence, and recognizing the solemnity of the moment, they clap their hands in preparation of prayer. They all knew Bach, even if not as closely associated as Stefan Silbermann had been. The final part of the book culminates in the composing and performing of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion on Good Friday and explores Jesus as “a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief” and the part that grieving boys and men have in bringing the music to glorious life. It is so moving to read.

The torments of the world are nothing compared with the glory that God will reveal. Your suffering will reap glory. The Passion of the title is Bach's St. Matthew Passion—a massive, ground-breaking choral work that explores the depths and commonalities of grief. The St. Matthew Passion employs two choirs and two orchestras and runs for just under three hours. In the latter half of the book, Bach begins composing this work and Stefan is there as a singer, as a copyist, and as a boy witnessing an exceptional moment in Western music. The Great Passion is a finely crafted mystery of life itself and how one can be transformed through grief, music and love. With profound exploration of characters, bringing remarkably authentic and compelling depiction of musically talented family; and how their music transforms not only them, but also the others, by giving people comfort through music.

Sudden death was all too common. Maybe the pandemic gave us a clue to what it was like to live with mortality on a scale familiar to the 18th century. Bach lost both his parents before he was 10, and then his first wife. He eventually fathered 20 children – and buried 10. But the death of this particular little girl seems to have distilled all his experience of loss. According to Runcie’s novel, he poured it into the St Matthew Passion and his sorrow for that child powers the Passion’s extraordinary blend of human tragedy and the divine consolations of faith. We have to remember that the reverse is true. We are living as long as we are dying. We should not continue in dread. No one can thrive in the shadows. We concentrate on what the story means at the same time as telling it. We develop the themes of sacrifice, sorrow and loss, extracting all the pain and all the love so that, when it comes to the end, the congregation understands that there is nothing left to give. Nothing more can be said or sung.’

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Runcie’s novel is one in which tragedy, suffering and death are all-pervasive. Yet, Runcie suggests, music – like faith – can accompany us in grief, leading us on a journey of healing. This is, ultimately, the message beautifully conveyed in this novel. You must love the Lord as boldly as you can,’ he told her. ‘Then you will have no fear. Remember Luther. “The smaller the love the greater the fear.” The year is 1727. Thirteen-year-old Stefan Silbermann’s mother has recently died, and his father decides to send him to boarding school in Leipzig. At school, the other boys bully Stefan for his red hair. Immediately, a knife that his father gave him is stolen. Another boy named Stolle is especially unkind. What a horrendous environment to live in. And yet, this culture promoted virtue, love, forgiveness (only if you were a member of the Protestant faith), and weirdly, excellence in music. Who knew?

In our American culture we are overindulgent, have a generally sloppy work ethic, and a comfortable, entertaining life. We eat too much, drink too much, and complain about anything difficult about our lives. The horrendous things in our American culture are hidden away (executions, Guantanamo, the outrageous abuse of families trying to immigrate to the U.S., racism, child abuse, misogyny) and so en masse we are not challenged with the painful inequities that the people of Leipzig had to endure in the 18th century. We simply just switch the channel, and all is good. We live in a bubble of opulence. But where Runcie really triumphs is in his depiction of music. Writing about music is notoriously difficult – “like dancing about architecture”, to use a much-bandied phrase. Yet, in language which largely eschews technical terms, Runcie still manages to describe several of Bach’s works uncannily well, not least the Great Passion of the title. He also expresses the excitement of a first performance, the tension of the musicians, the expectations of the audience and that sense of satisfaction and release following a successful concert which performers know very well. Considering that J.S. Bach's "St Matthew Passion" is widely regarded as a pillar of the Western musical canon, it may appear surprising that we do not really know much about the composition and first performance of the Passion. We know that Bach wrote it for St Thomas Church, Leipzig, where he served as Kapellmeister or Thomascantor from 1723 to his death. We know that, as with many of the other sacred works, mostly cantatas, that Bach composed for the edification of the Leipzig congregation, the Passion was an artistic collaboration between Bach and Christian Friedrich Henrici, known as Picander, who provided poetic meditations to complement extracts from the Gospel of St Matthew. Most sources agree that the Passion was probably first performed at St Thomas Church, 11 April (Good Friday), 1727 although the year might also have been 1729. We can hazard a guess as to the identity of the musicians who performed for the Cantor – including the oboists Caspar Gleditsch and Gottfried Kornagel who, judging by the difficulty of the oboe parts, were great players indeed. Apart from these bare facts, we do not know much else. That said, I thought the account of the composition, preparation and performance of the Passion itself was excellent. I am no Bach expert, but I have loved his music for decades and know a bit about it; this seemed to me to be a very knowledgeable, moving and heartfelt exploration of one of music’s greatest achievements. If the joy provided by the birth of our Lord is infinite, then so must be the variations, Monsieur Silbermann! There is so much pain and misery in the world that people forget the joy: the sure and certain hope that our sorrows will one day end. Always remember that this is so much greater than the anxieties we face on earth!’

I think maybe I was just expecting too much of this book, or hoping for it to be something different from what it actually turned out to be, but most of this really wasn’t good. The other students, jealous of his favored treatment and private tutelage, bully him. Bach takes him into his home where his wife and he are kind. Anna, who is very kind and loving and reminds him of his own mother. Under Bach’s teaching, Stefan’s musical ability and skill improve greatly. And Bach always uses music as a metaphor for God’s love and grace; beautiful lessons abound throughout the book. Bach’s 3 year old daughter died of a fever and Bach thinks it best for Stefan to return to school so his family can grieve alone. Stefan blames himself since he had the fever first and may have infected little Etta. There is nothing like a novel to make a historical character alive. Truly in my mind Bach was a stout old guy in an elaborate wig. His music was somehow detached from his actual personhood. But wow, this book brings Bach to life. I don’t know much about this time period in Europe so it took me a bit to get my bearings in Stefan and Bach’s world. Bach’s role as Cantor had him composing music for worship services and he took church music Seriously. I love how this novel shows Bach as a devout man of faith who tries with his music to proclaim the glory of God. There is a LOT about music in this book (of course) and a lot of it went over my head, I’m sure, but it is also beautifully woven into the story. The local church and its very Scripturally based music is very much at the heart of the story. Stefan is taken in by J.S. Bach and his family and he is provided guidance in keyboard, organ, composition and above all sacred vocals. He is a fine boy soprano with carrot red hair who is grieving, bullied and trying to find meaning in the world, himself and God. We are taken by the hand into the world of sacred music, Lutheran wisdom (and platitudes), platonic and romantic love, deep everyday spirituality and the roles of the artist, the student, the woman.



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