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. There is nothing like a novel to make a historical character alive. Truly in my mind Bach was a stout old guy in an elaborate wig. His music was somehow detached from his actual personhood. But wow, this book brings Bach to life. I don’t know much about this time period in Europe so it took me a bit to get my bearings in Stefan and Bach’s world. Bach’s role as Cantor had him composing music for worship services and he took church music Seriously. I love how this novel shows Bach as a devout man of faith who tries with his music to proclaim the glory of God. There is a LOT about music in this book (of course) and a lot of it went over my head, I’m sure, but it is also beautifully woven into the story. The local church and its very Scripturally based music is very much at the heart of the story.

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

What I think this book does so well is explore the connection between grief and music. Stefan is grieving his mother’s death. Bach, his sister-in-law, and his older four children are grieving Maria Barbara’s death. Later in the story, Bach’s young child from his marriage with Anna Magdalena dies of fever. There is another musical family in town that loses its wife and mother. Death was such a constant part of life for so many years of history. Until COVID, we moderns have largely been insulated from the kind of relentless grief that people in Bach’s day experienced. And yet grief is universal. Every human is touched by it multiple times throughout life. I read about the author on Wikipedia and he lost his wife in 2020. Art and music and story are powerful mediums for expressing and exploring grief and this book fleshes out the connections between these in many ways. Too many to name. All the stars for this profoundly moving and lovely reflection on life, love, loss, and the beauty found in both music and silence. This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by Set in Leipzig in 1726, it is written as the memoir of Stefan Silberman, an 11-year-old chorister who is studying music at St Thomas’s choir school and encounters Johann Sebastian Bach as “The Cantor”. Stefan is talented, but traumatised by the recent death of his mother, and he is cruelly bullied.

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.’ The year is 1727. Thirteen-year-old Stefan Silbermann’s mother has recently died, and his father decides to send him to boarding school in Leipzig. At school, the other boys bully Stefan for his red hair. Immediately, a knife that his father gave him is stolen. Another boy named Stolle is especially unkind. Bach, throughout the book, repeats that the CHIEF PURPOSE OF MUSIC IS TO HONOR THE GLORY OF GOD ALONE. 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. As I listened to the singers and read the music, I understood the challenges of performing the music, so eloquently described in the novel. I understood the lessons Stefan had to learn about supporting the music, phrasing, where to take a breath. I think maybe I was just expecting too much of this book, or hoping for it to be something different from what it actually turned out to be, but most of this really wasn’t good.

THE GREAT PASSION | Kirkus Reviews THE GREAT PASSION | Kirkus Reviews

It should’ve been a short story or novella, and then for me it would have been perfect. But it was padded out to novel length, which for me did nothing whatsoever for the actual good parts of this story.You must love the Lord as boldly as you can,’ he told her. ‘Then you will have no fear. Remember Luther. “The smaller the love the greater the fear.” This is Runcie’s starting point for the Bach who will bring the Man of Sorrows to musical life in the St Matthew Passion. We meet a warm ­family man, whose response to a bereaved child is to comfort him by universalising grief and turning to religion to do it.

The Great Passion by James Runcie - Goodreads Editions of The Great Passion by James Runcie - Goodreads

What he has achieved is to draw together a major musical creation and its celebrated composer with a carefully crafted setting in Leipzig in 1726-7. ‘The Great Passion’, what we know as ’the St Matthew Passion’, Johann Sebastian Bach’s great offering to the world is depicted amidst a complex storyline which involves a young man from an organ-building family, with some musical understanding, being introduced to the challenging context of a school, of which Bach is the Cantor. But Bach believes in this boy, and not just his voice. Bach wants to deter Stefan from leaving the school, and thus the choir. Recognizing the talent in him, he invites him to live with his family, where he won’t be bullied quite as often, or blamed for things he hasn’t done. It is there that Stefan finds a place he can call home and becomes part of their family. Anna, Bach’s wife, is kind to him, and Catharina Bach’s daughter, befriends him. Catharina, whose obsession with collecting butterflies that frequent this story, if only briefly. A first love.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. 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. As they prepare for the performance of the Passion, the true meaning of passion comes touchingly through the story. When a tragedy strikes the Bach’s family, Stefan witnesses someone else’s grief and the solace of religion and music. 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. You draw a moral lesson from the tragedy, and even when you morn, you still need to carry on with your life. Being an example for all to see is exactly what Passion is about.

The Great Passion, by James Runcie - The Scotsman Book review: The Great Passion, by James Runcie - The Scotsman

Everyone who has since listened in awe and wonder to the “St. Matthew Passion” and sensed (in James Runcie’s words) that “nothing matters as much as this” owes a debt not just to Bach but to Mendelssohn’s visionary labor of rebirth. Musicians, conductors and directors have re-created it time and again. The ponderous massed-choir pieties of the Victorian era later yielded to the lighter, swifter mood of period-instrument versions and the semi-operatic stagings of directors such as Jonathan Miller and Peter Sellars. Faithful and faith-less agree that Bach’s layered blend of musical storytelling, commentary and reflection, as the final acts of Jesus’ life move from betrayal to crucifixion to entombment, can, Mr. Runcie writes, “give a particular voice to universal feelings.” The work itself offers no triumphant resurrection. That’s for us to find. Runcie’s father was Archbishop of Canterbury. I am the wife of a retired minister, well versed in Christian thought and liturgy. (I even audited classes when my husband was in seminary.) I had to consider if a non-Christian could read this book, could respond to Bach’s music? Bach does amazing things in the music. I did some online research and learned that “the only recorded review of the St. Matthew Passion in Bach’s lifetime was from an aged widow in the congregation: “God help us! It’s an opera-comedy!’ I personally don’t know which part was the ‘comedy,’ but there is such drama to be found, arias of grief that speak to the common human experience: we die; we grieve.

Bach: The Great Passion is a 2017 biographical radio play by the English writer James Runcie, dealing with the inception and premiere of the St Matthew Passion. [1] It premiered on BBC Radio 4 on 15 April 2017, with Simon Russell Beale in the title role, directed by Eoin O'Callaghan and produced by Marilyn Imrie. But somehow, out of the extremely difficult living conditions in the 18th century, incredible beauty erupted that still resonates 3 centuries later. Why? As someone whose primary occupation was to set biblical texts to music, Bach's life revolved around the Lutheran Church. But Runcie goes beyond historical necessity to embed quiet religious wisdom in certain passages, particularly those concerning grief. While some are specific to Christian theology, most of these sections are more generic, applicable to any faith. I found this aspect to be moving, and a major highlight of the narrative. The Great Passion is an exceptionally well-written historical novel... continued This is as beautifully composed as the music it refers to, and although the time period it is set in is nearly 300 years ago, there is so much that hasn’t changed. The school-boy bullying of a new student, the heartbreak of loss, unrequited love. A striving for the beauty in this world, and the desire to hold onto that beauty. The way that an opinion of a person is often based on one impression, or one flaw - as though we don’t all have flaws. From acclaimed bestselling author James Runcie, a meditation on grief and music, told through the story of Bach's writing of the St. Matthew Passion.