Passion Blogging

David Griggs-Janower is passionately blogging about Bach's passions.

He's got three four posts so far about them, entitled

What is a Bach Passion?
Bach's Passions #2
Bach's St. John Passion
Updated: Conducting the Passions

A snippet of the first blog:

At its heart, a "Passion" is a musical setting of the story of Jesus's crucifixion, taken from one of the four Gospels, or sometimes from an amalgam of the four. Originally intoned by the priest in mediaeval times, eventually lines of chant began to be taken by individuals to represent characters. The evolution of the musical Passion led to a more or less complete musical characterization; a distinct individual took each speaking/singing role such as Jesus, Pilate, Peter, and so on, and a narrator (called Evangelist) sang the rest of the story. The chorus represented the crowd.

That's simple enough. But by Bach's time the Passions were not limited to the words of the scriptures. Contemporary poetry was added to comment upon the Biblical story, to reflect, to react. These were usually sung by soloists. And congregational hymns (which the Germans call chorales) were added as well. Thus an entire libretto had to be devised to incorporate all of these elements.

There were also Passions that were all contemporary poetry combined with contemporary paraphrasing of the scriptures, such as Handel's Brockes' Passion, but Bach always had as his basis the literal words of the Bible, in Martin Luther's German translation.

There is interesting reading in the comments section as well. Check it out!