The Great Passion: James Runcie

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This is Runcie’s starting point for the Bach who will bring the Man of Sorrows to musical life in the St Matthew Passion. Bach discovers that he also has a beautiful soprano voice and so Stefan begins to sing in the church choir.

The Great Passion: : James Runcie: Bloomsbury Publishing The Great Passion: : James Runcie: Bloomsbury Publishing

The Great Passion shows—without a trace of glibness—how timeless art grows out of 'fragile, flawed and human' lives shadowed by fear, guilt and grief. We know that, as with many of the other sacred works, mostly cantatas, that Bach composed for the edification of the Leipzig congregation, the Passion was an artistic collaboration between Bach and Christian Friedrich Henrici, known as Picander, who provided poetic meditations to complement extracts from the Gospel of St Matthew. the cantor of the school, Johann Sebastian Bach, takes notice of his talent as a soloist and invites Stefan to stay with him and his family and tutor him.

Stefan is told that no matter how deep the grief is, the suffering is not to dwell on it, but to learn and grow from it. S. Bach's "St Matthew Passion" is widely regarded as a pillar of the Western musical canon, it may appear surprising that we do not really know much about the composition and first performance of the Passion.

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As someone whose primary occupation was to set biblical texts to music, Bach's life revolved around the Lutheran Church. The story of music engaging a grieving people and pointing the way toward hope is particularly meaningful today when so many have been lost.

The keyboard is constantly at work, and the new wife, the motherly young soprano Anna Magdalena, mothers Stefan, too. His new novel The Great Passion takes us back to Bach and Leipzig in 1727, experienced through a prepubescent boy sent to study music before his voice breaks and he begins his career as a master organ maker, as is his father and his father was before him.

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I especially liked the characterization of J S Bach and Anna Magdalena and their relationship and family. After reading the novel, I listened to the St Matthew Passion on Youtube, following with the choral music score my husband used when he sang it in college. This school helps you anticipate the unexpected and be ready for anything” Bach tells him from experience since he lost his first wife and many children. In each case, Runcie takes what we know about these historical individuals and fleshes them out into real-life characters who speak through the pages of his novel. The Great Passion is the story of Stefan Silbermann who comes from a family who makes organs in 18th century Saxony in Germany.

Stefan Silbermann, a former pupil of Bach’s, learns of the composer’s death in 1750, before Runcie flashes back to Silbermann and Bach’s time together. Johann Sebastion Bach is Cantor and Stefan’s talent for singing is recognized; he learns from Bach not only singing but lessons of life from a Biblical perspective.