This is a slow moving, character driven book. A bereaved young teenager, Stefan Silbermann, is sent off to boarding school in Leipzig. There he comes under the instruction of the school's demanding cantor, Johann Sebastian Bach. Silbermann is often bullied at school and through a variety of circumstances, ends up living in Bach's household. During that time, Silbermann befriends Bach's daughter, Catharina, who is also an outcast.

There are a lot of references to music terminology and the story is highly religious in tone. I wasn't completely put off by that but the story is often maudlin and did drag in a lot of places. I have no idea how much of this story is fact and how much is fiction.

I guess overall, I liked some aspects of the story and learned something of how Bach made his living as a composer. On the other hand, I really didn't connect with other aspects of the writing and was glad to finish the book.

Rating: 3 stars
Original Publication Date: 2022
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Considering that J.S. Bach's "St Matthew Passion" is widely regarded as a pillar of the Western musical canon, it may appear surprising that we do not really know much about the composition and first performance of the Passion. We know that Bach wrote it for St Thomas Church, Leipzig, where he served as Kapellmeister or Thomascantor from 1723 to his death. We know that, as with many of the other sacred works, mostly cantatas, that Bach composed for the edification of the Leipzig congregation, the Passion was an artistic collaboration between Bach and Christian Friedrich Henrici, known as Picander, who provided poetic meditations to complement extracts from the Gospel of St Matthew. Most sources agree that the Passion was probably first performed at St Thomas Church, 11 April (Good Friday), 1727 although the year might also have been 1729. We can hazard a guess as to the identity of the musicians who performed for the Cantor – including the oboists Caspar Gleditsch and Gottfried Kornagel who, judging by the difficulty of the oboe parts, were great players indeed. Apart from these bare facts, we do not know much else.

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.

Runcie adopts a traditional and direct narrative style, free of experimental flourishes, and yet particularly appropriate for the voice of the earnest Stefan. The story skilfully interweaves fictional characters with plenty of historical ones – Johann Sebastian Bach and his wife Anna Magdalena, Bach’s children including Catharina (Stefan’s ‘love interest’ in this novel), Picander, oboists Gleditsch and Kornagel, and Bach’s rivals including composer Georg Philipp Telemann. In each case, Runcie takes what we know about these historical individuals and fleshes them out into real-life characters who speak through the pages of his novel. His portrayal of the cantor is particularly convincing. Despite Stefan’s awestruck respect for his mentor, we are still shown Sebastian’s very human characteristics. JSB is a workaholic with a deeply spiritual vein, but can also be jealous, short-tempered and, on occasion, arrogant. Both the historical and musical background are well-researched, and the recreation of the the atmosphere of church and school in 18th Century Leipzig has an authentic feel to it.

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.

Full review, with a musical postscript at https://endsoftheword.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-great-passion-by-james-runcie.htm... ( )

I have not read any of Runcie's works before. This novel combines a coming of age theme centred around a pupil of Bach's with a depiction of the way Bach wrote and rehearsed his music, culminating in the first performance of the St Matthew Passion. The writing is quite engaging and the book moves along at a smart pace. There are good descriptions of the hardships faced in 18th century Leipzig at both an individual and collective level by the characters - cold weather, illness, bullying, hunger, early death and so on. The use of butterflies as a motif is a little weird. As the book moves to a climax there is more religion and music, the latter fairly understandable even by those with no technical knowledge. The combined use of English and some German for the sacred texts is handled convincingly.
I think that in the end, whether this book succeeds on what one might call a spiritual level depends on one's own beliefs. But it is certainly well reading as a piece of history reimagined for today. ( )

Bad enough that thirteen-year-old Stefan Silbermann’s mother has just died. His father, a well-known organ maker, insists that the boy spend a year at music school far from home, in Leipzig, as part of training in the family business.

The year is 1726, and eighteenth-century Leipzig seems a place where people take their Lutheranism neat, forever thinking about death, expecting to suffer, and—among the strictest believers—ready to condemn others for vivacity. Stefan’s school, run by clerics, fits this self-denying mold. But Stefan, though a grieving, serious child, has more to him. The rector seems to want to beat whatever that is out of him—and his classmates, who already pick on the new boy, seize their chance to persecute him even further.

But the saving grace to this school is its choral music director, or cantor, Johann Sebastian Bach. He hears Stefan’s soprano, as yet unbroken, and sweeps him into his house, where the boy must practice music constantly but also has the chance to escape his anxieties and grief a few hours at a time. The cantor, though a hard man to please, understands something of what the boy is going through, since he himself lost his beloved first wife several years before.

Also, since the cantor writes a cantata every week, to be performed at Sunday services, Stefan learns to sing music he believes too difficult for him, and to play keyboard better than he’d ever dreamed possible. The downside, of course, is that the school bullies resent him all the more for being the cantor’s favorite, especially since he’s displaced one of his chief tormentors in that role
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Bach’s legendary large family figures here, including his second wife, Anna Magdalena, as sweet and sensitive as her husband is brusque and self-centered. She becomes a kind of surrogate mother for Stefan, though he knows he’s not part of the family. More importantly, there’s seventeen-year-old Catharina, Bach’s daughter by his late wife, with whom Stefan strikes up a close friendship, not least because they each have a lost a mother. As you might expect, he comes to feel something more for her.

The Great Passion has much to say about mourning and faith, life and death, and music as a medium to express feelings about them—as well as the joy that seems so fleeting. Runcie, whose father was Archbishop of Canterbury, knows these themes inside out. I can’t help wonder too whether Stefan’s sadistic, competitive schoolmates derive from models in English public schools.

People have wondered for centuries how Bach managed to write so much music. This book gives a hint. The man never stops thinking about music, and he permits nobody at home to be idle. One child or other is always playing an instrument. They’re used to this constant practice, but Stefan isn’t; if he’s not singing or playing the clavichord, he’s copying scores for the cantor.

I like the characterizations, not just of the principals, but, for instance, of Georg Philipp Telemann, who makes Bach look like a humble wallflower. I also like the kind oboist who takes an interest in Stefan and tries to shield him from the school’s brutalities.

From time to time, Runcie uses his sharp prose to comment pithily on the human condition. Bach loves to sound off in impromptu sermons, a habit Anna Magdalena warns him about, but which often contain nuggets of wisdom. Stefan laments the human habit of summing up others in a phrase and never seeing past that capsule description, therefore never knowing another person, really. And the oboist urges Stefan to “take the music as quickly as you dare. There’s no point in playing a piece if it only needs to be obeyed.” I think that’s also true of writing; master the words, don’t let them master you.

The dreary, death-obsessed, stiff-necked Leipzigers who make others miserable, probably because they are themselves, are properly off-putting but likely true to time and place. The musicians, who share the same religious beliefs yet strive to create beauty in God’s service, come across vividly. Though I know nothing about choral music and have different ideas about religious faith, I enjoyed The Great Passion very much and highly recommend it. ( )

I do not have the words for this one. I will have to sum it up with this quote from the book: "The piece was determined to master music's every possibility, to recognise its ability to understand the depths of all our sorrows, to console us through our every desolation, and lift our hearts with unexpected joy." There is so much that is inspirational, world-building, tragic, sorrowful, and alive in these pages. And yet the whole point of the book is that there is so much joy to be found even through our suffering. Christ died for us so we can live. Runcie is in the mind of Bach as he writes his music for the sole glory of God. Each instrument was used to set the mood of the piece. Amazing. I will have to listen to Bach's music again with a new understanding. I shall read Mr. Runcie again. He has a way with words. ( )