PROGRAM NOTES

Though often mentioned in connection with the first performance of the St. Matthew Passion, this passage cannot refer directly to the work; there are points of obvious incongruity. But it remains a striking document in its description of the attitude with which the St. Matthew Passion must have been met. The autograph score of the work, written in two different inks, is one of the most beautiful manuscripts that has come down to us from Bach’s pen. The pride and matchless care of the craftsman guided the hand of genius in every detail. Having given his best, Bach must have realized irrevocable severance from his audience.

Thus the St. Matthew Passion marks a turning point in Bach’s career.Three years after its first performance followed one of the most eloquent testimonies of Bach’s life, the letter written to a friend from school days asking for assistance in Bach’s search for another position, and as we know, Bach later applied unsuccessfully to the royal court in Dresden for the office of Court Kapellmeister, submitting the manuscript of his Missa in B Minor

It remains one of the most remarkable facts in cultural history that Bach sustained the level of his achievement and rose to new heights in the face of disillusionment and isolation. Abandoning the cantata as the principal form of his work and abandoning, in fact, the steady pace by which his writing was geared to the challenge of each new Sunday, Bach turned his interest to the forms of Mass and Oratorio. The last two decades of Bach’s life form a history of their own, which led to culminating points in almost all aspects of his music. Unmistakably, the beckoning of drama continued to be a strong influence in Bach’s work, even in its last and most remote phases. When eventually Bach singled out the Missa written for Dresden and widened it to a complete setting of the Mass text, he was apparently guided by the thought of creating a final monumental work of his choral art. Adding the text of the Catholic Credo, Bach encountered in its central section once more the drama of the Crucifixion.

Dr. Alfred Mann (1917-2006) Professor Emeritus of Musicology, Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester Rochester, New York