Matthäus-Passion

Last year, the sounds of Handel’s “Messiah”, marvellously performed by our festival ensemble Company of Music, filled the Klangraum of the Minorite Church. This year, the soloist choir under the direction of Johannes Hiemetsberger will present what is probably Johann Sebastian Bach’s most important passion and holds a unique position in music history.

On Good Friday, the Christian world commemorates the suffering and death of Jesus Christ. It was Good Friday 1727 when Bach’s St. Matthew Passion first resounded in Leipzig’s St. Thomas Church. The story of the Passion is told using three different literary elements: the biblical text (1st century AD) in Martin Luther’s translation, notes and reflections by Bach’s contemporary Picander, and chants stemming from the 16th century.

Bach set these texts to music as a dialogue between the different epochs. As the musicologist Gottfried Scholz writes so aptly, “his textual and musical heterogeneity achieves a religious-aesthetic homogeneity, creating an opus magnum whose impact – regardless of the temporal distance to the present day and the ecclesiastical or if even Christian mindset of the respective modern listener – will never cease”.

Ensemble MONISMO
Company of Music
Johannes Hiemetsberger—director