Description

“I have never experienced such silence or seen an audience moved in this way.” Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy

Up to the present day there has scarcely been a work in the history of music which has fascinated listeners and performers more than Bach’s “St Matthew Passion”. Originally composed for Vespers on Good Friday, and even longer in duration than the “St John Passion”, it reconstructs the story of Christ’s Passion with immense musical, emotional and spiritual intensity.

And so, this monumental and complex composition has come to rank amongst the high points of Western culture. For good reason the “rediscovery” of Johann Sebastian Bach’s music began in 1829 with the performance of this work by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and the Berlin Singakademie.

The autograph manuscript is regarded as one of Bach’s most beautiful – the fair copy demonstrates the importance he attached to the careful preservation of the work for posterity. A further spezial feature is the coloured ink with which he wrote the biblical text and the music of the chorale “O Lamm Gottes, unschuldig”.

This facsimile edition reproduces the autograph score of the “St Matthew Passion” for the first time in high-quality colour printing. The Bach specialist Christoph Wolff introduces the background to the work’s composition and the characteristics of the manuscript.

Barbara Schneider-Kempf and Martina Rebmann (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin) provide further details regarding the history of the autograph manuscript.

Description

– BA 5038-90 replaces the previous vocal score but retains its longstanding article number.

– The pagination has been adopted from the previous edition.

– This means that you can rehearse and perform this work with some singers using this new edition and some the old Bärenreiter edition.

– The vocal score is fully compatible with all existing performance material (BA 5038).

– The vocal score now contains a revised piano reduction. The reliable Alfred Dürr piano reduction has been maintained but it has been revised and uncluttered; it is now easier to read and to play.

– The text appears in slightly larger type size and a more legible font.

– A more exact placing of underlaid words has been included in the vocal parts.

– Apart from corrections, the musical text remains unchanged.

– The recommended retail price remains unchanged.

Description

Bach’s St. Matthew Passion as we know it today evidently had a long history dating back before 1727. It is unclear whether the work performed at the Thomaskirche , Leipzig on Good Friday 1729 was based on a still earlier version. Whatever the case, the surviving version of 1729 presents the work in a form strikingly different from its later incarnation. For example, the opening section ends with the chorale ‘ Jesum lass ich nicht von mir ’ which was replaced by the large-scale cantus firmus chorus ‘O Mensch , bewein dein Sünde gross’ for the 1736 performance.

The well-known alto aria ‘Ach! Nun ist mein Jesus hin ’ is still assigned to a bass in the earlier version, and the aria ‘ Komm süsses Kreuz ’ calls for a lute instead of the later viola da gamba . Moreover, the pieces for double chorus only require a single continuo group. Other differences can be found in the instrumental scoring and voice leading. The early version of the St. Matthew Passion is thus a most interesting addition to the great concert repertoire.