The Great Passion

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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. 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. This is a beautifully written, wise, humorous and very deep book on both the frailties and strength of the human spirit during 18th century Germany. We meet silly pastors and even sillier opera singers. We meet not only JS Bach but his second wife and children. We are amused by Telemann and Picander. Most of all we fall in love with Stefan and his struggles as he masters not only difficult vocal lines but his grief, his heart and how all this brings him closer to nature, to love, and to God. The music has to do more than support the language, Monsieur Silbermann. It must take it to a place it could not get to on its own.

In our American culture we are overindulgent, have a generally sloppy work ethic, and a comfortable, entertaining life. We eat too much, drink too much, and complain about anything difficult about our lives. The horrendous things in our American culture are hidden away (executions, Guantanamo, the outrageous abuse of families trying to immigrate to the U.S., racism, child abuse, misogyny) and so en masse we are not challenged with the painful inequities that the people of Leipzig had to endure in the 18th century. We simply just switch the channel, and all is good. We live in a bubble of opulence. What is clear to me is that James Runcie has used both his actual skills and knowledge of musical composition but also of organ construction to give his story very considerable additional substance. 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. 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.

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But where Runcie really triumphs is in his depiction of music. Writing about music is notoriously difficult – “like dancing about architecture”, to use a much-bandied phrase. Yet, in language which largely eschews technical terms, Runcie still manages to describe several of Bach’s works uncannily well, not least the Great Passion of the title. He also expresses the excitement of a first performance, the tension of the musicians, the expectations of the audience and that sense of satisfaction and release following a successful concert which performers know very well.

Runcie’s novel is one in which tragedy, suffering and death are all-pervasive. Yet, Runcie suggests, music – like faith – can accompany us in grief, leading us on a journey of healing. This is, ultimately, the message beautifully conveyed in this novel. As you read my review I encourage you to listen to excerpts from Bach's St. Matthew's Passion. Here are some excerpts https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxNQl... Leipzig, 1726. Eleven-year-old Stefan Silbermann, a humble organ-maker’s son, has just lost his mother. Sent to Leipzig to train as a singer in the St Thomas Church choir, he struggles to stay afloat in a school where the teachers are as casually cruel as the students. 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.Stefan is still grieving for his mother when he arrives at the school. Harsh discipline and bullying make the adjustment hard. The cantor, Johann Sebastian Bach, notes the boy’s beautiful singing voice and ability on the organ. The rival soprano seethes at losing his place of favor with the cantor. I was impressed by the author's detailed research into and knowledge of Bach's work, and the manner in which he brought the era to life. The latter is well illustrated by the hollow, but realistic consequence of Bach's death: the family no longer has a home, has to disperse, and must find a means to survive. This Bach is no saint. His superhuman work ethic and determination to push himself - and others - beyond the frontiers of what seems possible make him difficult to live with at times. Patience is not one of his virtues. Yet rather than dwell on the human cost of Bach's achievement, as another author might have chosen to do, Runcie instead shows him as an inspirational figure, pushing his performers beyond what they thought were the limits of their abilities, exhorting them to share his vision and in doing so, to grasp their full potential. I’ll tell you a secret, Monsieur Silbermann. Everyone, no matter who they are in life, feels alone. We are on our own and we are all afraid.’ 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.

Deeply moving characters bring depth and wisdom as they question the greatest mystery – the life itself. John Sebastian Bach, through the eyes of the children, isn’t always easy to live with, but the children know that they are loved, and that’s the best legacy to leave your children.

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A wise, refreshing novel, and a touching human story ... Runcie has an expert imagination' HILARY MANTEL 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.