St. John Passion

Intense and dramatic, Bach’s St John Passion is the alter ego of his more lyrical and refined St. Matthew Passion. Bach left four different versions of the work reflecting his performances between 1724 and 1749. The most radical of his revisions were made for the second performance in 1725, when he changed the opening and closing choruses and added three new arias. Bach carefully designed the Passion to operate on several interlocking levels. The starting point is the narrative: the story of Christ’s arrest, trial, crucifixion and burial, related in the words of St John’s Gospel itself—sung by a tenor Evangelist, named characters (such as Jesus), and the chorus representing the Jewish people. At arm’s length from this are the eight arias (in the 1724 version) which have specially written poetic texts and allow the listener to reflect on the biblical events. This reflective level broadens out to encompass a communal level provided by the chorales: the traditional hymns of Bach’s time, whose texts crystallise each stage of the drama in familiar terms. In addition to these three expressive levels, the St John Passion also unfolds on two different timescales: that of the Biblical events, and that of the present day. Although the events recounted are historical, the reactions to them (encapsulated in the arias) are contemporary, as powerful now as they were in Bach’s time.