Brockes Passion

The Brockes Passion, or Der für die Sünde der Welt gemarterte und sterbende Jesus (title in English: The Story of Jesus, Suffering and Dying for the Sins of the World), is a German oratorio libretto by Barthold Heinrich Brockes, first published in 1712 and going through 30 or so editions in the next 15 years.

Text

Barthold Heinrich Brockes was an influential German poet who re-worked the traditional form of a Passion oratorio, adding reflective and descriptive poetry, sometimes of a highly-wrought and emotional kind, into the texture of his Passion. The Brockes Passion was much admired and set to music numerous times in Baroque Germany, although to other ages and in other countries some of Brockes' poetry has seemed in poor taste. In Brockes' version of a passion, a tenor Evangelist narrates, in recitative passages, events from all four Gospels' accounts of Jesus' suffering and death. Persons of the Gospel story (Jesus, Peter, Pilate, etc.) have dialogue passages, also in recitative; a chorus sings passages depicting the declamation of crowds; and poetic texts, sometimes in the form of arias, sometimes that of chorales (hymn-like short choral pieces), reflect on the events. Some of the arias are for the persons of the Passion, Jesus himself, Peter, etc., but Mary the mother of Jesus, who does not appear in the Gospel accounts of the Passion, also has a singing part, and fictitious "characters", The Daughter of Zion, four solo Believing Souls, and A Chorus of Believing Souls, also observe and comment.

Brockes Passion (Handel)

The Brockes Passion, or Der für die Sünde der Welt gemarterte und sterbende Jesus (title in English: The Story of Jesus, Suffering and Dying for the Sins of the World), is a German oratorio libretto by Barthold Heinrich Brockes, first published in 1712 and going through 30 or so editions in the next 15 years.

The most famous musical setting of Brockes' text is that by George Frideric Handel, HWV 48. Other composers who set this text are Reinhard Keiser (1712), Georg Philipp Telemann (1716), Johann Mattheson (1718), Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel (1725), Johann Friedrich Fasch (1723) and several others.

Brockes' text

Barthold Heinrich Brockes was an influential German poet who re-worked the traditional form of a Passion oratorio, adding reflective and descriptive poetry, sometimes of a highly-wrought and emotional kind, into the texture of his Passion. The Brockes Passion was much admired and set to music numerous times in Baroque Germany, although to other ages and in other countries some of Brockes' poetry has seemed in poor taste. In Brockes' version of a passion, a tenor Evangelist narrates, in recitative passages, events from all four Gospels' accounts of Jesus' suffering and death. Persons of the Gospel story (Jesus, Peter, Pilate, etc.) have dialogue passages, also in recitative; a chorus sings passages depicting the declamation of crowds; and poetic texts, sometimes in the form of arias, sometimes that of chorales (hymn-like short choral pieces), reflect on the events. Some of the arias are for the persons of the Passion, Jesus himself, Peter, etc., but Mary the mother of Jesus, who does not appear in the Gospel accounts of the Passion, also has a singing part, and fictitious "characters", The Daughter of Zion, four solo Believing Souls, and A Chorus of Believing Souls, also observe and comment.

Passions (Telemann)

Between 1716 and 1767, Georg Philipp Telemann wrote a series of Passions, musical compositions reflecting on Christ's Passion – the physical, spiritual and mental suffering of Jesus from the hours prior to his trial through to his crucifixion. The works were written for performance in German churches in the days before Easter. A prolific composer, Telemann wrote over 40 Passions for the churches of Hamburg alone, of which 22 have survived according to the present state of research. He also wrote several Passion oratorios. Unlike the Passions intended for liturgical performance, they were not closely set to the literal text of the Gospels.

History

In his dissertation "The Rise of Lyricism and the Decline of Biblical Narration in the Late Liturgical Passions of Georg Philipp Telemann" (University of Pittsburgh, 2005), Jason Benjamin Grant describes the three basic periods of Telemann's Passion composition as follows:

Style

Stylistically, there are many differences between these works by Telemann and Johann Sebastian Bach's Passions), there are however more similarities with the Passions of C.P.E. Bach). The Telemann Passions were (unlike J. S. Bach's Leipzig Passions) not written for and used in the context of a separate Good Friday Vespers liturgical service, but rather in the regular church services for the five main churches in Hamburg for the Sundays of Lent (except for Oculi Sunday). In deference to Ulrich Leisinger, who states in the Passions Preface in the Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach Complete Works edition:

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