The Great Passion: James Runcie

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Like the St Matthew Passion, this is a novel filled not just with loss and lamentation but with transcendent joy. Runcie’s prose sings. Soli Deo gloria! Saga Magazine Brilliant ... Readers will be enriched by this novel and its glimpse at genius’ The Times, Historical Fiction of the Month Bach takes him into his home, where he is looked after by Anna Magdalena. His musical talent grows under Bach’s tutoring, and he begins to fall in love. But tragedy overwhelms the household with the death of Bach’s three-year-old daughter, Etta. Faith is tested. Is untimely death a punishment? Why do the innocent suffer? Bach’s faith and obsessive brilliance dominate the narrative, but he is touchingly human in his failings. Stefan received much good advice. Even with the first hint from the oboist of "I will not be threatened". But the Cantor, his kin, and his chorus helped the motherless down the lonely path. Warmly, reverently, Runcie brings alive what it is like to take part, for the very first time, in one of the most extraordinary pieces of music ever written’ Daily Telegraph

In The Great Passion, James Runcie makes up for this historical vacuum with a bold imagining of the months leading up to the first performance of Bach’s masterpiece. Runcie’s narrator is Stefan Silbermann, a scion of the (real-life) German organ-building family. In 1750, Stefan, now in his late thirties, learns of the death of the Cantor, which leads him to reminisce about the year he spent as a student of the St Thomas Church in his early teens. At the time, still grieving following the death of his mother, bullied by the other schoolboys for his red hair, yet showing great promise as a singer and organist, Stefan is taken in by the cantor and his wife Anna Magdalena, and practically becomes a member of the Bach household. He witnesses at first hand the composer at his work, and unwittingly contributes to the creation of what would become known as the St Matthew Passion.The final part of the book culminates in the composing and performing of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion on Good Friday and explores Jesus as “a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief” and the part that grieving boys and men have in bringing the music to glorious life. It is so moving to read.

We concentrate on what the story means at the same time as telling it. We develop the themes of sacrifice, sorrow and loss, extracting all the pain and all the love so that, when it comes to the end, the congregation understands that there is nothing left to give. Nothing more can be said or sung.’ Set in Leipzig, Germany, in 1727/28, The Great Passion is a historical novel about Johann Sebastian Bach's writing of St. Matthew's Passion. The protagonist is a young musician, Stefan Silbermann, who is studying under the Cantor (aka Bach). The book chronicles his time at school--for better or worse. He's mourning the loss of his mother and struggling to make friends with his classmates. But his time with Bach and his family help him make peace and find his voice. Sudden death was all too common. Maybe the pandemic gave us a clue to what it was like to live with mortality on a scale familiar to the 18th century. Bach lost both his parents before he was 10, and then his first wife. He eventually fathered 20 children – and buried 10. But the death of this particular little girl seems to have distilled all his experience of loss. According to Runcie’s novel, he poured it into the St Matthew Passion and his sorrow for that child powers the Passion’s extraordinary blend of human tragedy and the divine consolations of faith. The story of music engaging a grieving people and pointing the way toward hope is particularly meaningful today when so many have been lost. What does it mean to be alive? How do we live with our grief? Can we find the “advancing light” when we are blinded by loss and anguish? How can love save us? The characters in the book grapple with these big questions. As do we. 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.A masterclass in writing about the power of music and grief' THE TIMES, 100 best books for summer 2022 The Great Passion is a novel revering the life and work of JS Bach, as told by a young boy soprano in Leipzig' - Irish Independent Beautiful exploration of grief and love as a young boy gifted with an extraordinary singing voice, deeply feels the loss of his mother. He sees the world without his mother “so much more raw, exposed and frightening, with so much less protection and solace from the fearful enormities of what lay ahead.” He misses his mother’s vivacity, a taste for adventure and surprise. But under the tutelage of Bach, he learns to be resilient. Stefan’s talent draws the attention of the Cantor – Johann Sebastian Bach. Eccentric, obsessive and kind, he rescues Stefan from the miseries of school by bringing him into his home as an apprentice. Soon Stefan feels that this ferociously clever, chaotic family is his own. But when tragedy strikes, Stefan’s period of sanctuary in their household comes to a close.