Passion (Christianity) - Music

Music

The main traditional types of church music sung during Holy Week are "Passions", musical settings of the Gospel narratives, both a Catholic and Lutheran tradition, and settings of the readings and responses from the Catholic Tenebrae services, especially those of the Lamentations of Jeremiah the Prophet. The many settings of the Stabat Mater or The Seven Last Words of Christ are also commonly performed.

The reading of the Passion section of one of the Gospels during Holy Week dates back to the 4th century. It began to be intoned (rather than just spoken) in the Middle Ages, at least as early as 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 13th century different singers were used for different characters in the narrative, a practice which became fairly universal by the 15th century, when polyphonic settings of the turba 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 speak simultaneously.)

In the later 15th century a number of new styles began to emerge:

• Responsorial Passions set all of Christ's words and the turba parts polyphonically
• Through-composed Passions were entirely polyphonic (also called motet Passions). Jacob Obrecht wrote the earliest extant example of this type.
• Summa Passionis settings were a synopsis of all four Gospels, including the Seven Last Words (a text later set by Haydn and Théodore Dubois). These were discouraged for church use but circulated widely nonetheless.

In the 16th century, settings like these, and further developments, were created for the Catholic Church by Victoria, William Byrd, Jacobus Gallus, Francisco Guerrero, Orlando di Lasso, and Cypriano de Rore.

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 as Laetare 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 16th-century passions included choral "exordium" (introduction) and "conclusio" sections with additional texts. In the 17th 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 as sinfonias, other Scripture passages, Latin motets, chorale arias, and more. Such settings were created by Bartholomeus Gesius and Heinrich Schütz. Thomas Strutz wrote a passion (1664) with arias for Jesus himself, pointing to the standard oratorio tradition of Schütz, Carissimi, and others, although these composers seem to have thought that putting words in Jesus’ mouth was beyond the pale. The practice of using recitative 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. A famous musical reflection on the Passion is Part II of Messiah, an oratorio by George Frideric Handel, though the text here draws from Old Testament prophecies rather than from the Gospels themselves.

The best known Protestant musical settings of the Passion are by Johann Sebastian Bach, who wrote several Passions, of which two have survived, one based on the Gospel of John (the St John Passion), the other on the Gospel of Matthew (the St Matthew Passion). His St Mark Passion was reconstructed in various ways. 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 19th century, with the exception of John Stainer's The Crucifixion (1887), Passion settings were less popular, but in the 20th century, they have again come into fashion. Two notable settings are the St. Luke Passion (1965) by Polish composer Krzysztof Penderecki and the Passio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi secundum Joannem (1982) by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. Recent examples include The Passion According to St. Matthew (1997), by Mark Alburger, and The Passion According to the Four Evangelists, by Scott King. Andrew Lloyd Webber's Jesus Christ Superstar (book and lyrics by Tim Rice), and Stephen Schwartz's Godspell both contain elements of the traditional passion accounts. See also Passion cantata.