passion music

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Passion Music. The practice of setting to mus. the Passion of Christ, for perf. during Holy Week, has 2 connected origins—the old mysteries (see Miracle Plays) and (a more direct and obvious source) a very ancient Holy Week practice of reading or reciting in church, in a more or less dramatic fashion, the story of the Passion of Christ. It is known to have existed in the 4th cent.; by the 8th its character was determined as follows: a priest recited, in Lat., the story of the Passion from one of the Gospels, in a speaking voice except for the words of Christ, which he gave out to a traditional plainsong. By the 12th cent. 3 of the clergy took part, a ten. as Narrator, a bass as Christ, and an alto as the Crowd (Turba). By the 15th cent. Passions of more musically elaborate character became common. The Reformation brought a further development. The Ger. (Lutheran) reformers, acting on their principle that the people should be able to follow the words of the service, adapted it to the Ger. language.

In the 16th cent., unacc. polyphonic settings of the complete Lat. text of the Passion were based on a plainchant cantus firmus. Among many such settings were those of Obrecht, Daser, Ruffo, Lassus, Victoria, and Byrd. One of the earliest settings by an Eng. composer was that by Richard Davy.

Outstanding examples of the Ger. type of Passion are the settings of Schütz (1585–1672). He adopted a type of recit. derived from the new It. style but which also had considerable affinity with the old plainsong. The 4-part chs. are acc. by str. The various characters are allotted to different vocal soloists and the works can be designated as ‘oratorio Passions’. In the 17th cent. the ‘Passion oratorio’ developed, in which the biblical text was replaced by a metrical paraphrase, as in Keiser's Der blutige und sterbende Jesus (1704). But Bach, in his great St John and St Matthew Passions, combined both types of setting, making use of biblical text, paraphrases, chorales, arias, and imparting to the mus. a startlingly dramatic quality. In the 19th cent. oratorios on biblical subjects replaced the strict Passion settings, but Penderecki in the 20th cent. had remarkable success with his St Luke Passion (1963–6), leading to Passions by Pärt and others.

passion music choral music whose text depicts events immediately surrounding the crucifixion of Jesus. The earliest passions, composed from the 9th to the 14th cent., were monophonic and employed the actual biblical text of one of the four Evangelists. Polyphonic passions originated in England in the 15th cent. After the Reformation, free poetry was added to passion texts. Orchestral accompaniment was used during the baroque period. The genre reached its peak in the baroque period with such works as Schütz's three Dresden passions (1665–66) and J. S. Bach's St. John Passion (1723) and St. Matthew Passion (1729). Not well represented in the 19th and early 20th cent., the genre underwent a revival in the late 20th cent., notably with K. Penderecki's Passio et mors domini nostri Jesu Christi secundum Lucam [Passion according to St. Luke] (1965) and Arvo Pärt's Passio Domini nostri Jesu Christi secundum Joannem [Passion according to St. John] (1982).

Bibliography: See B. Smallman, The Background of Passion Music (2d ed. 1970).

Passion, musical settings for the. From about the end of the 4th cent., Scriptural readings were recited to musical tones in church; the Gospel narratives of the Passion were thus recited in Holy Week. The characters were early differentiated by changes of pitch, and by the 13th cent. at the latest this was emphasized by dividing the narrative between three or more singers; from the 15th cent. parts or all began to be composed polyphonically. From the end of the 17th cent. lyric poems were sung in comment and chorales were added to be sung by the congregation; an orchestra was also introduced. J. S. Bach excelled in this oratoria type of Passion.