- Passion music
Passion music are musical compositions reflecting the suffering of
Jesus leading up to theCrucifixion .History
The reading of the Passion during
Holy Week dates back at least to the fourth century [CathEncy|wstitle=Passion Music] and is described byEgeria . In the fifth centuryPope Leo the Great specified that the gospel of Matthew be used onPalm Sunday and the following Wednesday and that of John onGood Friday ; by the tenth century Luke replaced Matthew on Wednesday and Mark was added on Tuesday.The passion began to be intoned (rather than just spoken) in the Middle Ages, at least as early at the 8th century. 9th-century manuscripts have "litterae significativae" indicating interpretive chant, and later manuscript begin to specify exact notes to be sung. By the 1200s different singers were used for different characters in the narrative, a practice which became fairly universal by the 15th century, when
polyphonic settings of theturba passages began to appear also. ("Turba", while literally meaning "crowd," is used in this case to mean any passage in which more than one speaker speaks simultaneously.)In the later fifteenth century a number of new styles began to emerge:
* Responsorial Passions in which the narration is chanted but the turba parts and sometimes Christ's words are set polyphonically.
* Through-composed Passions" , also called motet Passions", in which all text is set polyphonically. The earliest extant example of this type is sometimes attributed toJacob Obrecht .
* Summa Passionis settings, drawing on all four Gospels, such as the"Brockes Passion " and Stainer's "The Crucifixion". These were discouraged for church use but circulated widely nonetheless. TheSeven Last Words (a text later set by Haydn andThéodore Dubois ) are included in this category.In the sixteenth century many settings, chiefly of the responsorial type, were written by
William Byrd (St. John, 3vv),Jacobus Gallus , Francisco Guerrero (five including second St. John, mostly 5vv),Orlando di Lasso (all four, 4vv),Cypriano de Rore (St John) and Victoria.Protestant Views
Martin Luther wrote, "The Passion of Christ should not be acted out in words and pretense, but in real life." Despite this, sung Passion performances were common in Lutheran churches right from the start, in both Latin and German, beginning as early asLaetare Sunday (three weeks before Easter) and continuing through Holy Week. Luther’s friend and collaborator Johann Walther wrote responsorial Passions which were used as models by Lutheran composers for centuries, and “summa Passionis” versions continued to circulate, despite Luther’s express disapproval. Later sixteenth-century passions included choral “exordium” (introduction) and “conclusio” sections with additional texts. In the seventeenth century came the development of “oratorio ” passions which led to J.S. Bach’s passions, accompanied by instruments, with interpolated texts (then called “madrigal” movements) such assinfonia s, other Scripture passages, Latinmotet s, chorale arias, and more. Such settings were created by Bartholomeus Gesius andHeinrich Schütz . Thomas Strutz wrote a passion (1664) with arias for Jesus himself, pointing to the standardoratorio tradition of Schütz, Carissimi, and (later) Handel, although these composers seem to have thought that putting words in Jesus’ mouth was beyond the pale. The practice of usingrecitative for the Evangelist (rather than plainsong) was a development of court composers in northern Germany and only crept into church compositions at the end of the 17th century.The best known Protestant musical settings of the Passion are by
Johann Sebastian Bach , who wrote two Passions which have survived intact to the present day, one based on theGospel of John (the "St John Passion"), the other on theGospel of Matthew (the "St Matthew Passion"). The Passion continued to be very popular in Protestant Germany in the 18th century, with Bach's second son Carl Philipp Emanuel composing over twenty settings. In the nineteenth century, with the exception ofJohn Stainer 's" The Crucifixion" (1887), Passion settings were less popular, but in the twentieth century, they have again come into fashion. Two notable settings are the "St. Luke Passion" (1965) by Polish composerKrzysztof Penderecki and the "St. John Passion" (1982) by Estonian composerArvo Pärt .Examples of Passion Music
Recent examples include "
The Passion According to St. Matthew " (1997), byMark Alburger , and "The Passion According to the Four Evangelists ," by Scott King.Andrew Lloyd Webber 's "Jesus Christ Superstar " (book and lyrics byTim Rice ), and Stephen Schwartz's "Godspell " both contain elements of the traditional passion accounts. See alsoPassion cantata .A relative of the musical Passion is the custom of setting the text of "
Stabat Mater " to music.* St. John Passion by
Johann Sebastian Bach
* St. Matthew Passion by Johann Sebastian BachReferences
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