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Daniel R. Melamed
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Hearing Bach's Passions Updated Edition

by Daniel R. Melamed (Author)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 9 ratings
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Johann Sebastian Bach's two surviving passions--St. John and St. Matthew--are an essential part of the modern repertory, performed regularly both by professional ensembles and amateur groups. These large, complex pieces are well loved, but due to our distance from the original context in which they were performed, questions and problems emerge. Bach scholar Daniel Melamed examines the issues we encounter when we hear the passions performed today, and offers unique insight into Bach's passion settings.

Rather than providing a movement-by-movement analysis, Melamed uses the Bach repertory to introduce readers to some of the intriguing issues in the study and performance of older music, and explores what it means to listen to this music today. For instance, Bach wrote the passions for a particular liturgical event at a specific time and place; we hear them hundreds of years later, often a world away and usually in concert performances. They were performed with vocal and instrumental forces deployed according to early 18th-century conceptions; we usually hear them now as the pinnacle of the choral/orchestral repertory, adapted to modern forces and conventions. In Bach's time, passion settings were revised, altered, and tampered with both by their composers and by other musicians who used them; today we tend to regard them as having fixed texts to be treated mith respect. Their music was sometimes recycled from other compositions or reused itself for other purposes; we have trouble imagining the familiar material of Bach's passion settings in any other guise.

Melamed takes on these issues, exploring everything from the sources that transmit Bach's passion settings today to the issues surrounding performance practice (including the question of the size of Bach's ensemble). He delves into the passions as dramatic music, examines the problem of multiple versions of a work and the reconstruction of lost pieces, explores the other passions in Bach's performing repertory, and sifts through the puzzle of authorship.

Highly accessible to the non-specialist, the book assumes no technical musical knowledge and does not rely on printed musical examples. Based on the most recent scholarship and using lucid prose, the book opens up the debates surrounding this repertory to music lovers, choral singers, church musicians, and students of Bach's music.
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  1. ISBN-10
    0190490128
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0190490126
  3. Edition
    Updated
  4. Publisher
    Oxford University Press
  5. Publication date
    March 15, 2016
  6. Language
    English
  7. Dimensions
    5.5 x 0.6 x 8.1 inches
  8. Print length
    204 pages
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Reviews are of the original edition

"Melamed has a user-friendly prose stlye.... the picture he draws is a useful corrective, and there are apercus and helpful observations."--Peter Williams, imes Literary Supplement

"A very interesting book."--Robin A. Leaver, Eighteenth-Century Music

"A comprehensive introduction not only to the issues confronting scholars and performers of Bach's music in the early twenty-first century, but also to the wider field of musicology and its potential contribution to the experience of modern audiences. Daniel R. Melamed's engaging prose is at once concise and informative, and the often complex, esoteric ideas he tackles are made to appear accessible and even familiar. Hearing Bach's Passions will be engaging and though-provoking for specialists and non-specialists alike, and essential reading for anyone looking for an accessible introduction to Bach's sacred music and the issues surrounding its scholarly interpretation and performance."--Music and Letters

"A very readable, helpful book for any listener of Bach's music. It will be of great assistance to performers of that music as they make decisions that will affect their performance."--Cross Accent

Hearing Bach's Passions, a slim but rich volume, is at once scholarly and accessible. Richly detailed enough for the musicologist to appreciate, the book is aimed primarily at the non-specialist, and contains no systematic analysis of musical sources, no printed musical examples, and no footnotes or endnotes. Melamed's goal is threefold: first, to discuss how we hear these works in our own time; second, to explore how listeners in the eighteenth century might have heard them; and third, to suggest ways to bridge that temporal gulf."--Bach Notes

"Melamed's book belongs to that group of writings on Bach's Passions that are accessible to a general audience while at the same time offering valuable additions to scholarship. Moreover, Melamed constructs a sophisticated response to the many persistent and fiercely guarded myths surrounding the Passion repertory associated with Bach."--Notes

"An erudite and sophisticated examination of the passions. As pleasurable to read as the many insights into Bach and his world are absorbing. His concern is to enrich our understanding of these works by clarifying aspects of their original purpose and meaning, leaving us to wonder at how such artefacts from the past manage to transform themselves into works of the utmost importance to us today." --Early Music Performer

"Melamed provides illuminating summaries of central debates in Bach scholarship.... This book would richly reward anyone whose curiosity was arounsed by Melamed's GOLDBERG article."-Uri Golomb, Goldberg

"Daniel Melamed opens our eyes to all that separates us from Bach's Passions--and in so doing gives us new ways of getting closer to them. At once learned and approachable, this book belongs on the shelf of everyone who cares about these inexhaustible masterpieces."--Joshua Rifkin

"Hearing Bach's Passions is an invaluable resource that condenses into a single, readable volume an enormous amount of material. It is unique in approaching the famous St. John and St. Matthew Passions, as well as the less familiar passions according to St. Mark and St. Luke, as case studies illustrating significant problems, issues, and methodologies in current Bach research. Anyone seeking a scholarly yet accessible view of Bach's passions will want to read this book."--Stephen A. Crist, Emory University

"Melamed's study bridges the centuries-old gap between modern concert performances of Bach's passions and the composer's concept of them as liturgical presentations in eighteenth-century Leipzig. It provides new insights that will allow today's listeners and performers to come closer to a true understanding of the music as well as the size and role of Bach's performing forces."--Thomas Lancaster, Director, Bach Society of Minnesota

"An extremely useful and illuminating study of the issues at hand. It is indispensable to those interested in getting up to date with recent scholarship. This book will be an extremely valuable addition for those concerned with issues of performance practice, authenticity and scoring."--John Butt, Early Music

"The Introduction and Epilogue sections of this book should be required reading for any graduate level course in choral literature."--Choral Journal

"Recommended."--Choice

"This indispensible handbook for all interested in performing, exploring and listening to Bach's remaining Passions was first published in 2005. Now Daniel Melamed has revised and updated his handbook in the light of recent research and some new discoveries, as well as the changing fashions in historically informed performance practice...[P]erformers and listeners alike will learn something they did not know from this brief work, and the publishers should be congratulated on this revision and reprint."--Early Music Review

Book Description

Presenting the most recent scholarship, yet assuming no technical music knowledge, Bach scholar Daniel Melamed examines the issues we encounter when we hear the passions performed today, and offers unique insight into Bach's passion settings.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press; Updated edition (March 15, 2016)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 204 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0190490128
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0190490126
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.6 x 8.1 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars 9 ratings

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Top reviews from the United States

  • Paul Van de Water
    5.0 out of 5 stars Informative, Delightful, Essential
    Reviewed in the United States on May 19, 2011
    Verified Purchase
    In an essay accompanying his fine new recording of the Bach: St. Matthew Passion, Jos van Veldhoven explains how this book has influenced his perspective on that great work. Van Veldhoven's recommendation inspired me to read it, too, and I'm very glad I did.

    Daniel Melamed's overarching theme is that a 21st century listener can never experience Bach's passions in the same way as those who heard them in church in Leipzig on Good Friday during the 1720s, 30s, and 40s. Nevertheless, we can greatly benefit from learning more about the circumstances of their creation and original performance.

    Melamed brings the reader up to date with the latest Bach scholarship in a way that is completely accessible to the layperson (like me). The first four chapters discuss the performing forces that Bach used in his passions, the passions as narrative and meditative rather than dramatic works, the role of the two performing groups in the St. Matthew Passion, and the four versions of the St. John Passion. The final chapters are devoted to the three other passions associated with Bach: the anonymous St. Mark Passion (generally attributed to Reinhard Keiser or Friederich Nicolaus Brauns) that Bach performed at least twice, Bach's lost and probably irretrievable St. Mark Passion (assigned the catalog number BWV 247), and the anonymous St. Luke Passion (BWV 246) that Bach may or may not have written and may or may not have performed. Appendix tables provide the liturgy for Good Friday vespers in Leipzig, the passion scores in Bach's library, a calendar of Bach's passion performances, the vocal parts and performing forces for the passions, and lists of their movements.

    This short book is an absolute delight to read and is essential for anyone who wants to develop a deeper understanding of Bach's passions. It complements Christoph Wolff's outstanding musical biography Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician.
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  • Montague Whitsel
    5.0 out of 5 stars Deepening the Experience of Bach’s Passions
    Reviewed in the United States on January 20, 2019
    I am an amateur music enthusiast. I have been listening to or been involved with music in one way or another since I was a very young child. This book is a great read, if you are at all interested in going deeper into Bach’s Passions. I have read it twice, already, taken notes on it, and will probably read it again! More than merely ‘informative,’ it allows – even invites – you to engage the text and music of each work more deeply as you listen to it, watch or attend a performance.

    Melamed has opened my understanding of J. S. Bach’s Passions, taking me below the surface of the texts and the music, giving me a plethora of interesting questions to ponder that would not have occurred to me before reading Melamed’s wonderful interpretation and analysis.

    Melamed covers many of the differences between our own musical experience and the experience of those who first heard the Passions. He details the differences in instrumentation, musical ‘forces’ (i.e., the number of singers and instrumentalists assigned to each part), the social and cultural context in which people would have originally heard these works, and the ways in which these works were passed down. He then asks, throughout the book, what are we hearing today when we listen to these works? and how close are we – even with historically informed performances – to what Bach’s audiences would have heard? – with interesting possible answers.

    Familiar, before reading this book, with only the Matthew and the John Passions, I was amazed to discover that there was a Mark Passion and possibly a Luke Passion, whether or not Bach authored these works, though they have been attributed to him, at one time or another.

    The book seems very open to amateur enthusiasts. It does not rely heavily on musical examples (no images from scores that the reader is supposed to be able to understand) and very little technical terminology.

    I cannot recommend this more highly for people interested in a deeper understanding of Bach’s Passions.
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