Passion music

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Passion music are musical compositions reflecting the suffering of Jesus leading up to the Crucifixion.

1 History
2 Protestant Views
3 Examples of Passion Music
4 References

[edit] History

The reading of the Passion during Holy Week dates back at least to the fourth century^[1] and is described by Egeria. In the fifth century Pope Leo the Great specified that the gospel of Matthew be used on Palm Sunday and the following Wednesday and that of John on Good 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 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 speaks simultaneously.)

Testamony (in parallel fifth's!) of the false witnesses from Guerrero's responsorial Matthew's Passion (1585).

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 to Jacob 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. The Seven Last Words (a text later set by Haydn and Théodore 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.

[edit] 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 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 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 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 (later) Handel, 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.

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 the Gospel of John (the St John Passion), the other on the Gospel 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 of John 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 composer Krzysztof Penderecki and the St. John Passion (1982) by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt.

[edit] Examples of Passion Music

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.

A relative of the musical Passion is the custom of setting the text of Stabat Mater to music.