The Great Passion: James Runcie

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This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Stefan played and sang at not just weddings and funerals but also at an execution, described in all its gore. Runcie is brilliant at chronicling Bach's mission to take the messiness of grief and love and turn them into something beautiful and sacred. Even readers as tone-deaf as I am will be enriched by this novel and its glimpse at genius

The Great Passion | CBC Books The Great Passion | CBC Books

Runcie’s exceptional seventh novel featuring Sidney Chambers (after 2017’s Sidney Chambers and the Persistence of Love), a prequel, opens with an extended section set during WWII. In 1943, Continue reading » The Great Passion' is a tribute to Bach, clad in the touching story of a grieving, bullied boy, who finds refuge in the composer's home. As its reader I became acquainted with Bach's prolific genius and life in the early 1700s in Germany. The author successfully depicts the circumstances of a large and blended family, headed by a benign despot and genius. The novel's protagonist, Stefan Silbermann, recently bereaved of his mother and cruelly bullied at the boarding school for his red hair, becomes a protégé of Bach's due to his angelic soprano and willingness to work hard. Enriched and matured, Stefan leaves Leipzig and the Bachs at the end of the school year, but not before the St. Matthew passion is completed and performed. The Cantor expects much. Too much. But in the process and in the living realities, all are gifted with inspiration, aspiration, and ultimate joy. Those that perform, those that listen, those that exist in now. Everyone. For perhaps we can only appreciate what it is to be alive by recognising what it means when that life is removed from us. We are ravaged by absence. The void opens around us…Then, afterwards, when life forces us to continue, and we resume what is left of our time on earth, we listen to music as survivors…We grow to understand that our wounds give life its richness… Runcie’s Grantchester Mysteries series, which opened in the 1950s, has reached the ’70s in the superior sixth entry (after 2016’s Sidney Chambers and the Dangers of Temptation). Sidney is Continue reading »We have to remember that the reverse is true. We are living as long as we are dying. We should not continue in dread. No one can thrive in the shadows.

James Runcie | The Great Passion

Brilliant ... Readers will be enriched by this novel and its glimpse at genius' The Times, Historical Fiction of the Month That said, I thought the account of the composition, preparation and performance of the Passion itself was excellent. I am no Bach expert, but I have loved his music for decades and know a bit about it; this seemed to me to be a very knowledgeable, moving and heartfelt exploration of one of music’s greatest achievements. Find sources: "Bach: The Great Passion"– news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR ( June 2017) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) There are gaps of time into which we sometimes fall, when the pattern of our days is suspended. It happens when there is a birth or a death, an arrival or a departure, the moments either side of it becoming forms of descent and recovery, when we do not know quite what to do or how long this unexpected bewilderment will last.We cannot understand light without darkness, joy without pain, peace without war, love without hatred, beauty without ugliness or youth without age. We only know the best by experiencing the worst. We understand life because of death. We can only be reborn once we die.

The Great Passion by James Runcie - The Church Times The Great Passion by James Runcie - The Church Times

The Passion of the title is Bach's St. Matthew Passion—a massive, ground-breaking choral work that explores the depths and commonalities of grief. The St. Matthew Passion employs two choirs and two orchestras and runs for just under three hours. In the latter half of the book, Bach begins composing this work and Stefan is there as a singer, as a copyist, and as a boy witnessing an exceptional moment in Western music. The Great Passion is a wonderfully rich, audacious and, to me, surprising novel; surprising because all I have previously read of James Runcie’s work are his Granchester detective novels... On the evidence of these books, I would never have expected anything on the scale and magnificence of The Great Passion…This is a delightful novel, also one which reveals a Germany foreign or, I would think, unknown to most of us. It is a novel which deserves to last and will surely do so. It is surely James Runcie’s masterwork, a novel written with love and understanding. Allan Massie: The ScotsmanThe other students, jealous of his favored treatment and private tutelage, bully him. Bach takes him into his home where his wife and he are kind. Anna, who is very kind and loving and reminds him of his own mother. Under Bach’s teaching, Stefan’s musical ability and skill improve greatly. And Bach always uses music as a metaphor for God’s love and grace; beautiful lessons abound throughout the book. Bach’s 3 year old daughter died of a fever and Bach thinks it best for Stefan to return to school so his family can grieve alone. Stefan blames himself since he had the fever first and may have infected little Etta.