Bach, J.S.: St. Matthew Passion

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Cat No: 8553198

Release Date: 12 January 1999

Label: Naxos - Nxc / Naxos Classics

Packaging Type: Jewel Case

No of Units: 1

Barcode: 730099419826

Genres: Classical

Composer/Series: BACH, J.S.

Description
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685 - 1750) St. Matthew Passion (Highlights)The career of Johann Sebastian Bach, the most illustrious of a prolific musical family, falls neatly into three unequal parts. Born in 1685 in Eisenach, from the age of ten Bach lived and studied music with his elder brother in Ohrdruf, after the death of both his parents. After a series of appointments as organist and briefly as a court musician, he became, in 1708, court organist and chamber musician to Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Weimar, the elder of the two brothers who jointly ruled the duchy. In 1714 he was promoted to the position of Konzertmeister to the Duke, but in 1717, after a brief period of imprisonment for his temerity in seeking to leave the Duke's service, he abandoned Weimar to become Court Kapellmeister to Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen, a position he held until 1723. From then until his death in 1750 he lived in Leipzig, where he was Thomaskantor, with responsibility for the music of the five principal city churches, in 1729 assuming direction of the university collegium musicum, founded by Telemann in 1702. At Weimar Bach had been principally employed as an organist, and his compositions of the period include a considerable amount written for the instrument on which he was recognised as a virtuoso performer. At Cöthen, where Pietist traditions dominated the court, he had no church duties, and was responsible rather for court music. The period brought the composition of a number of instrumental works. The final 27 years of Bach's life brought a variety of preoccupations, and while his official employment necessitated the provision of church music, he was able, among other things, to provide music for the university collegium musicum and to write or re-arrange a number of important works for the keyboard. Traditional Roman liturgy involves the singing of the accounts of the suffering and crucifixion of Christ on four days preceding Easter. On Palm Sunday the first account, from the Gospel of St. Matthew, is sung, followed on the Wednesday of Holy Week by the narrative of St. Luke, with that of St. Mark on Maundy Thursday and that of St. John on Good Friday. The accounts of the Passion as found in the four Gospels naturally lend themselves to performance by more than one singer, with the words of Christ, Pilate and other individuals given to different singers. This seems to have become the practice by the thirteenth century, when an element of drama had already become a regular part of Easter and Christmas ceremonies. By the early sixteenth century an element of polyphony had been introduced as a possible elaboration of the liturgical tradition. Various forms of sung Passion were taken over by Martin Luther, and by the early eighteenth century German Lutherans had elaborated these earlier types of Passion. The form used by Bach was that of the oratorio Passion, as developed in North Germany in the middle of the seventeenth century. Here the biblical text is
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