St Luke Passion (Bach)

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The St Luke Passion is a musical composition formerly attributed to Johann Sebastian Bach. It was included in the BWV catalog under the number 246. Now appears in the catalogs under the epigraph of apocryphal[1] or anonymous.

[edit] History

There survives a manuscript of the St Luke Passion from about 1730 that is partly in Bach's hand, though the academics believe that the music is certainly not his own. Presumably Bach performed it, or intended to perform it, in Leipzig. C. P. E. Bach and Agricola may have mistaken it for a work of Bach's and thus included it in their census. Of course, given his delight in exhaustive cycles, Bach should have composed a St Luke Passion. Apparently J. S. Bach took the anonymous St Luke Passion and arranged it for four voices, chorus, orchestra, and continuo to meet an urgent deadline for Good Friday in 1730.