Joy and sorrow were everyday occurrences in the household of the Bach family. That was certainly true when it came to the son Ernestus Andreas Bach. The little boy was born premature and hardly lived long enough to be baptised on 30 October 1727. In fact, he died two days later, on 1 November, and the entire Bach family had yet to suffer another funeral.
Statue of J.S. Bach
Concurrently, Bach was working on the “Trauer Ode” (Cantata No. 198) composed in response to the death of the Electress Christiane Eberhardine. She had remained a Protestant while her husband, August the Strong of Saxony, converted to Roman Catholicism. The commission to set a text by the Leipzig professor of poetry had been somewhat controversial, as the university director of music demanded the project for himself. Bach, however, retained the commission and directed the work from the harpsichord in the university church on 17 October 1727.
Johann Sebastian Bach: St. Matthew Passion, “Opening Chorus”
The other extremely important work of 1727 was the St. Matthew Passion.
Fair copy in Bach’s own hand of the revised version of the St Matthew Passion BWV 244
that is generally dated to the year 1743–46
The Pietism movement in the Lutheran Church influenced Bach’s setting, as it emphasised personal faith over doctrine and theology. One of the supreme monuments in Western music, it recounts the last days of Jesus leading to his Crucifixion. The words are treated with great importance, and the arias mediate and react to the events of the Passion story. Bach’s use of double chorus, boys choir, and double orchestra—and intersperse throughout with majestic four-part chorales—the Matthew Passion becomes an epic, almost operatic journey. In the midst of his own sorrows and troubles, Bach created a heartfelt and highly personal expression of his deep Christian faith. Although there were isolated performances during Bach’s lifetime, it took 100 years for the work to gain its rightful place. In 1829, the 20-year-old Felix Mendelsohn conducted the work in Berlin, and the influential critic A.B. Marx said that the event would “open the gates of a long-closed temple.”
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