Passion (music)

Latin passions continued in parallel with the style of Metastasio, often set by minor composers such as little known Carlo Sturla, music master at the Convent of Santa Brigida, who also set a Latin passion in 18th Century operatic style, Passio di Venerdì Santo, for the Oratory of St Philip Neri in Genoa in 1736.

Martin Luther wrote, "The Passion of Christ should not be acted out in words and pretense, but in real life."

Asola, Samuel Besler, William Byrd, Leonard Lechner, and Jakob Meiland included choral “exordium” (introduction) and “conclusio” sections with additional secular texts.

[3] Thomas Strutz wrote a passion (1664) with arias for Jesus himself, pointing to the standard oratorio tradition of Schütz and Carissimi.

The practice of using recitative for the Evangelist (rather than plainsong) was a development of court composers in northern Germany, such as Johann Meder and Schütz, and only crept into church compositions at the end of the 17th century.

The Passion continued to be very popular in Protestant Germany in the 18th century, with Bach's second son Carl Philipp Emanuel composing over twenty settings.

In 2000 Helmuth Rilling and the Internationale Bachakademie commissioned four modern composers to compose passions on the four Gospels; Matthew was allocated to Tan Dun - Water Passion After St Matthew, Mark to Osvaldo Golijov - La Pasión Según San Marcos, Luke to Wolfgang Rihm - Deus Passus, and John to Sofia Gubaidulina - St John Passion (Страсти по Иоанну).

Andrew Lloyd Webber's Jesus Christ Superstar (book and lyrics by Tim Rice), and Stephen Schwartz's Godspell both contain elements of the traditional passion accounts.

German Passion cantatas include Der Tod Jesu (1755), with text by Karl Wilhelm Ramler and music by Georg Philipp Telemann, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, and by Carl Heinrich Graun, and the Passion Cantatas Die letzten Leiden des Erlösers (1770), with text by various people and music by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (taken largely from his St Matthew Passion of 1769) and Gottfried August Homilius's cantata Ein Lämmlein geht und trägt die Schuld HoWV 12 (1775).

In Danish there are also passion cantatas with music by the Bach critic Johann Adolf Scheibe to the text, Vor Harpe er bleven til Sorrig by Johannes Ewald, and the Sørge-Cantata ved Christi Grav Herrens Salvede, som var vor Næses Aand by the same librettist and composer.

Stanzas of the medieval hymn Salve mundi salutare[4] – also known as the Rhythmica oratio –, a poem formerly ascribed to St. Bonaventure or Bernard of Clairvaux, but now thought more likely to have been written by medieval poet Arnulf of Leuven (died 1250) was arranged as a cycle of seven cantatas in 1680 by Dieterich Buxtehude, Membra Jesu Nostri.

A notable work in Latin is Arvo Pärt's Passio Domini Nostri Jesu Christi secundum Joannem (The Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ according to John) of 1982.