The most important (only) information we have about how and where the Leipzig Passion (recited first, music later) was performanced, comes from a register kept by a sexton of St Thomas, Johann Christoph Rost (1716-1739). He first refers to ‘the other church’ (Neue Kirche, Where Telemann had begun experimenting with a music-passion, 1716), then to inform when St. Thomas also started (because ‘of the success of the Neue Kirche’) with a musicierte Passion. Johann Kuhnau is cantor.
»In der Neuen Kirche wird am Charfreytage auch eine Vesper gehalten, welche Hor. 3. [um 3 Uhr] angehet. Anno 1721 ward am Charfreytag in der vesper die Passion zum 1stmahl musicirt, 1 Viertel auf 2. wurde gelautet mit dem gantz gelaute, als ausgelautet, wurd auf dem Chor das Lied gesungen ›Da Jesus an dem Creutze stund‹. Dann ging gleich die Musicirt Passion an und ward vor der Predigt halb gesungen, die Helfte schloß sich mit dem verß ›O Lamb gottes unschuldig‹, damit ging der Prister auf die Cantzel. Auf d. Cantzel ward a. H. ›Jesu Christ dich zu uns wend‹ gesungen. Dann ging die andre Helffte d. Music an, als solche aus, ward die Motete ›Ecce quomodo moritur justus‹ gesungen, als dann der Passions vers intoniret und Collect gesprochen. Als dann ›Nun dancket alle gott gesungen‹. 1722 eben also.
Anno 1723 ward zum ersten mahl die Vesper zu St. Nicolai gehalten, die Predigt hielt d. H. Superintendent H. D. Deyling, welche Fr. Koppin gestiftet.
Anno 1724 wurd die Passion zu St. Nicolai zum ersten mahl Musiciret. Zu St. Thom. aber wurden nur Lieder gesungen, wie vor diesem gebräuchlich.
… [1725-1738, nur Andeutung der Kirche, ausser:]
1736. St. Thomae mit beyden orgeln.«
English Translation
In the New Church (University) there was also a Vesper on Good Friday, which began at Three o’clock. Anno 1721 for the first time the Passion was performed with musict. A Quarter to two the bell started to toll (full sound) and when it stopped the hymn Da Jesus an dem Kreuze stund (When Jesus stood at the cross) was sung from the choir gallery. Then the concerted Passion began immediately, half of which was performed before the sermon. This half was completed wi th the hymn verse, 0 Lamm Gottes tmschuldig (0 innocent Lamb of God) during which the priest made his way to the pulpit. After he reached the pulpit, Herr ]esu Christ, dich zu uns wend (Turn to us, Lord Jesus Christ) was sung. After the sermon, the other half of the music began. When it was finished [.Jakob Handl’s] motet Ecce quomodo moritur iustus (Behold how the Righteous dies) was sung. Then the Passion verse [Thanks be to the LORD/ who has redeemed us/ from hell by his suffering] was intoned, a collect prayed, and the hymn Nun danket alle Gott (Now thank we all our God) sung.
This performance of a concerted Passion at St Thomas’ in the last year of Kuhnau’s canto rate clearly emulated the successful performances of concerted Passions in Leipzig’s New Church since 1717. From 1723 onwards both the Passion sermons and the associated performance costs at St Thomas’ and St Nikolai were funded by ‘a legacy made by the widow of the goldleaf-merchant and jeweller Koppy’ (Frau Koppin in the German text). Financially underwritten in this way, from 1724 onwards, the performance of an annual concerted Passion alternated between St Thomas’ and St Nikolai. In the church in which there was no performance of a concerted Passion that year, a traditional Passion service, ‘as was the custom before [i.e. before 1721)’, that is either a performance of Johann Walter’s Passion, or the singing of a long Passion hymn.
When Bach came to write his first Leipzig Passion for performance on Good Friday
1724, Bach drew on the structural model developed at the principal Leipzig Churches in the final year of Kuhnau’s cantorate. Kuhnau’s model for the Leipzig Passion was itself developed from both the ‘accustomed’ (gebräuchlich) tradition of perfonning Waiter’s responsorial Passion at St Thomas and St Nikolai, and in response to the successful performances of a summa Passion at the New Church from 1717. However, in keeping with the ‘far greater commitment to the conservation of the old and tested at the two principal
Churches’, Kuhnau did not set to music a summa Passion, such as Brockes’ popular Der für die Sünden der Welt Gemarterte und Sterbende Jesus (Jesus, Suffering and Dying for the Sins of the World), as was the case at the New Church.
Kuhnau’s successor, Johann Sebastian Bach, followed suit: for his St John Passion, Bach developed the mid-seventeenth-century responsorial Passion with its chanted and polyphonic setting of a single source Gospel narrative and choral intermedi. The resulting Passion libretto makes excellent use of the structural flexibility offered by his Church Cantatas, conveying John’s Passion narrative through the medium of recitatives and choruses, reflective arias and ariosos, and chorales. Even though the structure of his St Jhn Passion is very different from the fashionable contemporary summa Passion, Bach’s libretto does acknowledge the popularity of the genre: six of his arias are adapted from
Brockes’ summa Passion.