Bach
J. S. Bach's autograph manuscript, St Matthew Passion (BWV 244) — opening of Part Two, c. 1736
Bloomsbury · 2022
2027 marks the 300th anniversary of Bach's St Matthew Passion. I am making a documentary for BBC Radio 4 with Rosie Boulton to be broadcast over Easter in 2027, and will be taking part in the BachFest celebrations in Leipzig over the weekend of June 12/13, 2027.
Ten years ago, I wrote a play about the St Matthew Passion, which was broadcast on Radio 4, with Simon Russell Beale as Bach, Melody Grove as Anna Magdalena and with the Dunedin Consort conducted by John Butt. It was directed by Eoin O'Callaghan.
This then became a novel. It is about the work's composition, rehearsal and first performance. The Great Passion was published in 2022. The story is told from the point of view of a thirteen-year-old choirboy, Stefan Silbermann, and imagines what it might have been like to work with Bach, live amidst his family, and experience the work in all its complexity for the very first time.
Reviews
The Great Passion is a wonderfully rich, audacious and, to me, surprising novel; surprising because all I have previously read of James Runcie’s work are his Grantchester detective novels… On the evidence of these books, I would never have expected anything on the scale and magnificence of The Great Passion… This is a delightful novel, also one which reveals a Germany foreign or, I would think, unknown to most of us. It is a novel which deserves to last and will surely do so. It is surely James Runcie’s masterwork, a novel written with love and understanding.
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.
To conjure him as a man, a writer needs to focus very sharply, and, whether in his bestselling Grantchester stories or award-winning documentaries, Runcie is expert at focus… Warmly, reverently, Runcie brings alive what it is like to take part, for the very first time, in one of the most extraordinary pieces of music ever written.
It's a warm, tender novel, brimful of emotion and empathy, as the fascinating characters grapple with faith, feelings and fellowship. But it's Runcie's description of the music that is truly marvellous. Intoxicating, insightful and revelatory, he brilliantly tackles the difficult task of using words to capture the intricacies of Bach's fervent work on the beautiful, groundbreaking masterpiece, the St Matthew Passion.