The "John" Passion and the "Matthew" Passion of Bach are as little
alike as two works dealing with the same subject, and intended for
performance under somewhat similar conditions, could possibly be; and
since the "Matthew" version appeals to the modern heart and
imagination as an ideal setting of the tale of the death of the Man of
Sorrows, one is apt to follow Spitta in his curious mistake of
regarding the differences between the two as altogether to the
disadvantage of the "John." Spitta, indeed, goes further than this. So
bent is he on proving the superiority of the "Matthew" that what he
sees as a masterstroke in that work is in the "John" a gross blunder;
and, on the whole, the pages on the "John" Passion are precisely the
most fatuous of the many fatuous pages he wrote when he plunged into
artistic criticism, leaving his own proper element of technical or
historical criticism. This is a pity, for Spitta really had a very
good case to spoil. The "Matthew" is without doubt a vaster,
profounder, more moving and lovelier piece of art than the "John."
Indeed, being the later work of a composer whose power grew steadily
from the first until the last time he put pen to paper, it could not
be otherwise. But the critic who, like Spitta, sees in it only a
successful attempt at what was attempted unsuccessfully in the
"John," seems to me to mistake the aim both of the "John" and the
"Matthew." The "John" is not in any sense unsuccessful, but a
complete, consistent and masterly achievement; and if it stands a
little lower than the "Matthew," if the "Matthew" is mightier, more
impressive, more overwhelming in its great tenderness, this is not
because the Bach who wrote in 1722-23 was a bungler or an incomplete
artist, but because the Bach who wrote in 1729 was inspired by a
loftier idea than had come to the Bach of 1723. It was only necessary
to compare the impression one received when the "John" Passion was
sung by the Bach Choir in 1896 with that received at the "Matthew"
performance in St. Paul's in the same year, to realise that it is in
idea, not in power of realising the idea, that the two works
differ--differ more widely than might seem possible, seeing that the
subject is the same, and that the same musical forms--chorus, chorale,
song and recitative--are used in each.
Waking on the morrow of the "John" performance, my memory was
principally filled with those hoarse, stormy, passionate roarings of
an enraged mob. A careless reckoning shows that whereas the people's
choruses in the "Matthew" Passion occupy about ninety bars, in the
"John" they fill about two hundred and fifty. "Barabbas" in the
"Matthew" is a single yell; in the "John" it takes up four bars. "Let
Him be crucified" in the "Matthew" is eighteen bars long, counting
the repetition, while "Crucify" and "Away with Him" in the "John"
amount to fifty bars. Moreover, the people's choruses are written in a
much more violent and tempestuous style in the earlier than in the
later setting. In the "Matthew" there is nothing like those terrific
ascending and descending chromatic passages in "Wäre dieser nicht ein
Ubelthäter" and "Wir dürfen Niemand töden," or the short breathless
shouts near the finish of the former chorus, as though the infuriated
rabble had nearly exhausted itself, or, again, the excited chattering
of the soldiers when they get Christ's coat, "Lasst uns den nicht
zertheilen." Considering these things, one sees that the first
impression the "John" Passion gives is the true impression, and that
Bach had deliberately set out to depict the preliminary scenes of the
crucifixion with greater fulness of detail and in more striking
colours than he afterwards attempted in the "Matthew" Passion. Then,
not only is the physical suffering of Christ insisted on in this way,
but the chorales, recitatives, and songs lay still greater stress upon
it, either directly, by actual description, or indirectly, by uttering
with unheard-of poignancy the remorse supposed to be felt by mankind
whose guilt occasioned that suffering. The central point in the two
Passions is the same, namely, the backsliding of Peter; and in each
the words, "He went out and wept bitterly," are given the greatest
prominence; but one need only contrast the acute agony expressed in
the song, "Ach mein Sinn," which follows the incident in the "John,"
with the sweetness of "Have mercy upon me," which follows it in the
"Matthew," to gain a fair notion of the spirit in which the one work,
and also the spirit in which the other, is written. The next point to
note is, that while the "Matthew" begins with lamentation and ends
with resignation, "John" begins and ends with hope and praise. In the
former there is no chorus like the opening "Herr, unser, Herrscher,"
no chorale so triumphant as "Ach grosser König," and certainly no
single passage so rapturous as "Alsdann vom Tod erwecke mich, Dass
meine Augen sehen dich, In aller Freud, O Gottes Sohn" (with the bass
mounting to the high E flat and rolling magnificently down again). So
in the "John" Passion Bach has given us, first, a vivid picture of the
turbulent crowd and of the suffering and death of Christ; second, an
expression of man's bitterest remorse; and, last and above all, an
expression of man's hope for the future and his thankfulness to Christ
who redeemed him. These are what one remembers after hearing the work
sung; and these, it may be remarked, are the things that the
seventeenth and eighteenth century mind chiefly saw in the sorrow and
death of Jesus of Nazareth.