St Matthew Passion, BWV 244

E repeats in the bass beneath groups of three notes. Two orchestras play together, each with flutes, oboes, strings and continuo. The instruments play alone for sixteen bars in E minor before the voices enter.

Picander, the pen name of Christian Friedrich Henrici, assigned this chorus to the Daughters of Zion and the faithful. One group calls and the other asks questions. Bach gave each group its own choir and orchestra, so the dialogue passes between two bodies of singers.

“Kommt, ihr Töchter, helft mir klagen” — “Come, daughters, help me mourn.” The first choir enters in four parts. The second choir and its orchestra rest, and the first orchestra accompanies the voices over the repeated bass.

Karl Richter recorded the Passion in stereo, then a new process, over twenty-two sessions between 23 June and 21 August 1958, some of them running late into the night. Critics first remarked on his speed. One wrote that Klemperer’s recording lasted about forty minutes longer.

The ripieno sopranos enter with “O Lamm Gottes, unschuldig” — “O Lamb of God, innocent”. Their hymn in G major moves in long notes above the two choirs and the instruments. Beneath it the first choir starts “Kommt, ihr Töchter” again, and the second choir goes on with its short questions.

The boys sing “O Lamm Gottes, unschuldig”, a German version of the Agnus Dei by Nikolaus Decius, a monastery provost who left his cloister for the Reformation in 1522. It was first printed in 1531, in a Low German hymnbook from Rostock. The tune is set in long notes above both choirs.

In 1736 Bach prepared a careful new score of the Passion, now in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, and wrote the words of the Gospel in red ink. He also wrote the words and notes of this opening hymn in red, above the two choirs.

In March 1729 Bach wrote funeral music for his former employer, Prince Leopold. Ten of its movements were derived from, or served as models for, music in the Passion. Picander wrote the words for both.

On Good Friday, 11 April 1727, Bach performed the St Matthew Passion at vespers in St Thomas’s Church, Leipzig. He had been the city’s Thomaskantor for four years. Leipzig had heard his St John Passion in 1724.

The two choirs sing of Jesus carrying the wood of the cross himself, “aus Lieb und Huld” (“out of love and grace”). After the short questions, they now set the words in longer groups. Above them, the chorale reaches its final line: “Have mercy on us, O Jesus.”

On 11 March 1829 the twenty-year-old Felix Mendelssohn conducted the Passion with the Berlin Singakademie, with Eduard Devrient singing Christ. Most of the arias were left out. A second performance on 21 March was as crowded as the first, and the takings went to a sewing school for poor girls.

After the hymn, the two main choirs sing “Kommt, ihr Töchter” again (bars 82–⁠90). A B pedal in the bass holds the music on the dominant of E minor. Both choirs join on “als wie ein Lamm” — “like a lamb” — before the cadence in E minor.

The solo violin plays long phrases over the bass in 12/8. Bach marks the accompanying strings piano sempre — softly throughout — and the bass pizzicato, plucked. The voice enters after eight bars of this B minor music.

“Erbarme dich, mein Gott” (“Have mercy, my God”). The alto enters after the fermata that ends the introduction. Her phrases break off between appeals, and the solo violin rests before each of its own phrases.

In the preceding recitative, Peter denies Jesus three times. The cock crows, and Peter remembers the warning and goes out weeping. Picander’s aria takes the last word of that account, “bitterlich” (bitterly), into its own poem.

In 1703, at the age of eighteen, Bach spent half a year as a violinist in Duke Johann Ernst’s private orchestra at Weimar. His next post was as organist at Arnstadt. In this aria, written years later, a solo violin plays the introduction and, through the Dal Segno, the close.

The alto ends “um meiner Zähren willen” (“for the sake of my tears”) and rests. Above the continuing bass, the violin plays a short interlude in F♯ minor. The alto then enters on “Schaue hier”, which begins the second part of the poem, in which heart and eyes weep before God.

In May 1959 the critic Heinrich Sievers reviewed Richter’s four stereo LPs. Of the arias with solo instruments he wrote that “the music is no longer projected but stands alive in the room”. Here Hertha Töpper sings, with Otto Büchner on solo violin.

After “bitterlich”, the alto sings “Erbarme dich” again. The harmony moves back to B minor, and the solo violin continues its figuration beside the voice. Bach repeats these few words many times.

The aria survives in Bach’s own handwriting. His score of the revised Passion, written out between 1736 and 1740, is held by the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin as Mus. ms. Bach P 25.

After the alto finishes “for the sake of my tears”, a Dal Segno sends the instruments back to the eight-bar violin introduction, and the voice is silent. These eight bars end the aria at the final fermata.