Tuesday 03 April 2012 6.30pm
JS Bach's St Matthew Passion
Event details
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6.30pm.
King's College Chapel, Cambridge, UK
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2pm
Discussion with Professor John Butt, tenor James Gilchrist and bass David Wilson-Johnson
Programme
Tickets
Sighted seats sold out; £5 unsighted seats now available
Phone 01223 769341 for returns
About this concert
The first 45 years of JS Bach’s musical life culminated in the St Matthew Passion. He had mastered instrumental writing during his time in Cöthen; since his arrival in Leipzig he had composed a collection of church cantatasof astounding invention. Both skills, and much more besides, were brought together with ingenious coherence in the in this new work — his most ambitious yet.
Employing a choir and orchestra of unprecedented size, Bach conjured brilliant musical expression in the work’s majestic climaxes and smallest details. Little wonder, then, that he returned to the St Matthew Passion throughout his life: no other work contains so much of his musical essence.
In context: The European tradition
For a while after his death in 1750, it seemed that JS Bach’s work would be championed only by his sons. But gradually his fame spread until, on 11 March 1829, Mendelssohn conducted the first performance of the St Matthew Passion since the composer’s lifetime. Churches around Germany quickly followed suit; and by the time that the London Bach Society had been founded in 1849 to introduce the work to the British public, the St Matthew Passion had become firmly rooted in Europe’s musical consciousness.