St. Matthew Passion

Leslie Olive

For those of us who have known and loved this great work for many years, it occupies a special place in our lives. But for the newcomer it can be daunting, lasting a full three hours in its unabridged form. For this performance I have abridged it slightly, making it just that little bit more manageable as an evening’s listening.

Bach takes the entire story of Christ’s Passion from St Matthew’s Gospel and sets every word of it to music. This narrative is sung by The Evangelist in recitative - a type of solo singing which keeps many of the natural rhythms of speech. It has a freedom which offers the singer immense expressive scope, while rapidly moving the story forward. This kind of recitative with a very minimal accompaniment is known as secco (dry) recitative. When Jesus himself speaks (a bass voice to contrast with the tenor Evangelist), he is surrounded by a halo of strings. Other characters appear briefly - Judas, Peter, Pilate, Pilate’s Wife, two False Witnesses, sung mainly by members of the choirs. Sometimes the choir appears as a character in the drama, representing the crowd.

Punctuating the narrative, there are reflections upon it expressing the responses of a Christian worshipper, rather in the way that some Christians meditate on the “Stations of the Cross” - simple images of key moments in the Good Friday story. Where these are the responses of an individual worshipper, they take the musical form of a recitative and aria, sung by the other four vocal soloists - one each of soprano, counter-tenor, tenor, and bass. These are accompanied recitatives, with a fuller texture and more regular rhythm than the secco recitative of the Evangelist, and they contain some of the most emotionally intense music of the whole work. They sometimes have one or more woodwind instruments playing a kind of duet or trio with the soloist, giving the music great character and intensity.