The Great Passion: James Runcie

Product Information

A wise, refreshing novel, and a touching human story ... Runcie has an expert imagination' HILARY MANTEL The music has to do more than support the language, Monsieur Silbermann. It must take it to a place it could not get to on its own. Over the course of the next several months, and under Bach's careful tutelage, Stefan's musical skill progresses, and he is allowed to work as a copyist for Bach's many musical works. But mainly, drawn into Bach's family life and away from the cruelty in the dorms and the lonely hours of his mourning, Stefan begins to feel at home. When another tragedy strikes, this time in the Bach family, Stefan bears witness to the depths of grief, the horrors of death, the solace of religion, and the beauty that can spring from even the most profound losses. Could be my Covid brain right now but this just wasn’t The Great Passion for me. I was intrigued enough to take it to the end but relieved when it was over. I think I would have been more excited for a flogging rather than the slogging. The novel is particularly successful in extracting Bach from the ivory tower in which we might imagine him and rooting him firmly in his time and place. He is referred to mostly as "the Cantor", stressing his role as the leader of the singing in Leipzig's St Thomas Church, rather than our modern idea of him as a composer. He is surrounded by an adoring (and adored) family, including his musically talented and almost perpetually pregnant second wife, Anna Magdalena. He is fond of sermonising, but he also likes horseplay with his younger children. He is an exceptional human being, but he is still human.

The Great Passion | CBC Books The Great Passion | CBC Books

What I think this book does so well is explore the connection between grief and music. Stefan is grieving his mother’s death. Bach, his sister-in-law, and his older four children are grieving Maria Barbara’s death. Later in the story, Bach’s young child from his marriage with Anna Magdalena dies of fever. There is another musical family in town that loses its wife and mother. Death was such a constant part of life for so many years of history. Until COVID, we moderns have largely been insulated from the kind of relentless grief that people in Bach’s day experienced. And yet grief is universal. Every human is touched by it multiple times throughout life. I read about the author on Wikipedia and he lost his wife in 2020. Art and music and story are powerful mediums for expressing and exploring grief and this book fleshes out the connections between these in many ways. Too many to name. The year is 1727. Thirteen-year-old Stefan Silbermann’s mother has recently died, and his father decides to send him to boarding school in Leipzig. At school, the other boys bully Stefan for his red hair. Immediately, a knife that his father gave him is stolen. Another boy named Stolle is especially unkind. Over the course of almost a year, Stefan will fall in love, engage in rivalry with Stolle for the soprano parts in Bach’s chorales, and learn to stand up for himself with the help of a kind oboist. He will also take part in the debut performance of Bach’s Passion chorale. The kindly, brilliant Bach can seem almost a madman in his demands on his singers, but the sublime result is the climax of the book. Runcie is brilliant at chronicling Bach’s mission to take the messiness of grief and love and turn them into something beautiful and sacred. Even readers as tone-deaf as I am will be enriched by this novel and its glimpse at genius The Times, Historical Fiction of the Month Almost by accident, Bach, with the help of the librettist Picander, begins to compose a setting of the Passion based on Matthew 27 and 28. It would be unlike anything heard before: a musical version of the story which would compel congregations to engage with the death of Christ.WHAT might it have been like to sing at the first performance of Bach’s St Matthew Passion? Sometimes, a work of art emerges from asking a question that no one else has thought to ask. James Runcie’s novel is an extraordinary work of imagination. The final part of the book culminates in the composing and performing of Bach’s St. Matthew Passion on Good Friday and explores Jesus as “a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief” and the part that grieving boys and men have in bringing the music to glorious life. It is so moving to read.

Bach: The Great Passion - Wikipedia Bach: The Great Passion - Wikipedia

I particularly enjoyed this title for two reasons. First, I was fascinated by the author's exploration of Bach's spirituality. I assume I'm like many people in thinking of Bach primarily as a composer in the abstract, a man who produced music and about whom I know little else. I'd connected Bach's music more to the liturgical calendar and his day-to-day work demands rather than to his faith. Runcie's Bach is spiritually driven, and for him spirit and music are a single entity. This Bach is no saint. His superhuman work ethic and determination to push himself - and others - beyond the frontiers of what seems possible make him difficult to live with at times. Patience is not one of his virtues. Yet rather than dwell on the human cost of Bach's achievement, as another author might have chosen to do, Runcie instead shows him as an inspirational figure, pushing his performers beyond what they thought were the limits of their abilities, exhorting them to share his vision and in doing so, to grasp their full potential. But where Runcie really triumphs is in his depiction of music. Writing about music is notoriously difficult – “like dancing about architecture”, to use a much-bandied phrase. Yet, in language which largely eschews technical terms, Runcie still manages to describe several of Bach’s works uncannily well, not least the Great Passion of the title. He also expresses the excitement of a first performance, the tension of the musicians, the expectations of the audience and that sense of satisfaction and release following a successful concert which performers know very well. Runcie’s novel is one in which tragedy, suffering and death are all-pervasive. Yet, Runcie suggests, music – like faith – can accompany us in grief, leading us on a journey of healing. This is, ultimately, the message beautifully conveyed in this novel.

Runcie’s exceptional seventh novel featuring Sidney Chambers (after 2017’s Sidney Chambers and the Persistence of Love), a prequel, opens with an extended section set during WWII. In 1943, Continue reading » Something is happening, though. In the depths of his loss, the Cantor is writing a new work: the Saint Matthew Passion, to be performed for the first time on Good Friday. As Stefan watches the work rehearsed, he realises he is witness to the creation of one of the most extraordinary pieces of music that has ever been written.

THE GREAT PASSION | Kirkus Reviews THE GREAT PASSION | Kirkus Reviews

The Great Passion is a finely crafted mystery of life itself and how one can be transformed through grief, music and love. With profound exploration of characters, bringing remarkably authentic and compelling depiction of musically talented family; and how their music transforms not only them, but also the others, by giving people comfort through music. Don’t cry for me, I’m going where music is born,” the devout J S Bach supposedly said on his deathbed. But James Runcie’s new novel explores the place where Bach’s music was born in rather more earthly terms. The “father of Western music” is here the work-hassled father of a chaotic human family in all its joy and grief. In The Great Passion, James Runcie makes up for this historical vacuum with a bold imagining of the months leading up to the first performance of Bach’s masterpiece. Runcie’s narrator is Stefan Silbermann, a scion of the (real-life) German organ-building family. In 1750, Stefan, now in his late thirties, learns of the death of the Cantor, which leads him to reminisce about the year he spent as a student of the St Thomas Church in his early teens. At the time, still grieving following the death of his mother, bullied by the other schoolboys for his red hair, yet showing great promise as a singer and organist, Stefan is taken in by the cantor and his wife Anna Magdalena, and practically becomes a member of the Bach household. He witnesses at first hand the composer at his work, and unwittingly contributes to the creation of what would become known as the St Matthew Passion. As I read this deeply affecting and affective novel I was comforted, I was moved, my heart leapt with joy, tears often streamed down my cheeks and I cherished my faith, my loves and the entirety of my life experiences. This is a book that resonated deeply with my own soul strings and a novel that I will forever cherish. We must be grateful for each blessing God gives us rather than nurse every injustice. Unhappiness is a form of ingratitude.What he has achieved is to draw together a major musical creation and its celebrated composer with a carefully crafted setting in Leipzig in 1726-7. ‘The Great Passion’, what we know as ’the St Matthew Passion’, Johann Sebastian Bach’s great offering to the world is depicted amidst a complex storyline which involves a young man from an organ-building family, with some musical understanding, being introduced to the challenging context of a school, of which Bach is the Cantor. Bach, throughout the book, repeats that the CHIEF PURPOSE OF MUSIC IS TO HONOR THE GLORY OF GOD ALONE. The second part is solemn, ending with Jesus laid in the tomb. Bach leaves us contemplative and sorrowful, the chorus singing the universal cry of grief, “We sit down in tears/And call to thee in the tomb:/Rest softly, softly rest!” I wondered what music Bach presented three days later on Easter Sunday to speak of the joy of resurrection and the embodiment of hope? Bach emerges as an intense, flawed, deeply religious man, and through a poignant exploration of grief and love, Runcie brings his glorious music thrillingly to life. Mail on Sunday

The Great Passion: : James Runcie: Bloomsbury Publishing The Great Passion: : James Runcie: Bloomsbury Publishing

Beautiful exploration of grief and love as a young boy gifted with an extraordinary singing voice, deeply feels the loss of his mother. He sees the world without his mother “so much more raw, exposed and frightening, with so much less protection and solace from the fearful enormities of what lay ahead.�� He misses his mother’s vivacity, a taste for adventure and surprise. But under the tutelage of Bach, he learns to be resilient. I was a choral singer. I began singing alto in Third Grade, and continued through high school choirs and college and community choirs. I was in the Choral Arts Society when they sang the Bach B Minor Mass on the stage of the Academy of Music with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Reading the line “we were no longer individual singers or instrumentalists, our identities, hopes and fears had been subsumed into something greater than ourselves,” I recognized the feeling I had about choral singing. This is Runcie’s starting point for the Bach who will bring the Man of Sorrows to musical life in the St Matthew Passion. We meet a warm ­family man, whose response to a bereaved child is to comfort him by universalising grief and turning to religion to do it. If the joy provided by the birth of our Lord is infinite, then so must be the variations, Monsieur Silbermann! There is so much pain and misery in the world that people forget the joy: the sure and certain hope that our sorrows will one day end. Always remember that this is so much greater than the anxieties we face on earth!’

The other students, jealous of his favored treatment and private tutelage, bully him. Bach takes him into his home where his wife and he are kind. Anna, who is very kind and loving and reminds him of his own mother. Under Bach’s teaching, Stefan’s musical ability and skill improve greatly. And Bach always uses music as a metaphor for God’s love and grace; beautiful lessons abound throughout the book. Bach’s 3 year old daughter died of a fever and Bach thinks it best for Stefan to return to school so his family can grieve alone. Stefan blames himself since he had the fever first and may have infected little Etta. This is a powerful read IF you are in the right frame of mind AND you don’t mind a story that drags in places. Stefan is taken in by J.S. Bach and his family and he is provided guidance in keyboard, organ, composition and above all sacred vocals. He is a fine boy soprano with carrot red hair who is grieving, bullied and trying to find meaning in the world, himself and God. We are taken by the hand into the world of sacred music, Lutheran wisdom (and platitudes), platonic and romantic love, deep everyday spirituality and the roles of the artist, the student, the woman.