Bärenreiter is publishing Mendelssohn’s version of the St Matthew Passion, a fascinating work in music-historical terms. His cuts and arrangements constitute a stimulating alternative for present day concert programming.

Felix Mendelssohn performed Bach’s St Matthew Passion in Bellin in 1829 and 1841: on 11 March 1829, the Passion was heard again for the first time in 100 years. This performance marked the rediscovery of Bach as a composer, and a revival of his works began. As part of the “Historische Konzerte”, a performance of the Passion was given on 4 April 1841, Palm Sunday, in St Thomas’s Church, Leipzig, the place of its first performance.

The circumstances of the Berlin concert are exceptionally well documented. Felix Mendelssohn is said to have been given a copy of the score of the St Matthew Passion for Christmas 1823 or for his birthday on 3 February 1824 by his grandmother.

Rehearsals began on 2 February 1829 in the Singakademie. Orchestral rehearsals began on 6 March. The chorus comprised 158 singers. Mendelssohn conducted the performance from the grand piano with a baton. The performance was attended by the King with his court, the leading intellectuals of the day including Schleiermacher, Heine, Hegel, Spontini, Zelter and the best of Berlin society. On 21 March 1829, Bach’s birthday, a second performance took place. The work was heard a third time on Good Friday, 17 April 1829, conducted by Zelter.

The music used for both performances is equally well documented, and is preserved in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. As well as the copy of the score already mentioned, all the instrumental parts for the 1829 and 1841 performances, together with a set of choral parts for both choruses, have survived.

For the first performance, Mendelssohn made annotations in the score in pencil, and the few subsequent alterations for the second performance stand out in red coloured pencil and ordinary pencil as well as different handwriting styles.

Felix Mendelssohn shortened the St Matthew Passion for the Berlin performance by ten arias, four accompagnato recitatives and six chorales. For the 1841 performance he then reinstated five movements.

His basic idea with the arrangement was, on the one hand to produce a dramatic concentration of the content on the biblical text and, on the other hand, to stress the emotions in the sense of the romantic period, and to achieve this by omitting those parts which owed something to the baroque doctrine of affects and could barely be reconstructed a hundred years later.

The secco recitatives which Mendelssohn himself had accompanied at the piano in 1829, were allocated to two cellos (using double-stopping) and a double bass in the 1841 performance. It was precisely those recitatives which drive the content of the plot forward that Mendelssohn particularly arranged. As the copy of the score available to him contained no figuring, he entered the harmonisation of the recitatives which he desired in his own hand, his harmonisation differing fundamentally from Bach’s in many places. The occasional fermatas over individual notes, tempo indications, instructions regarding dynamics, articulation and accents, most notably in the part of Christus, also enhance the concentration of content. Mendelssohn’s arrangement is, in other words, designed with a view to bringing out the crucial moments, to give expression to human emotions in a heightened form.

Mendelssohn’s tempo instructions for the turba choruses should also be understood in this context. His aim was to portray the dramatic plot pointedly with people of “flesh and blood”. The opening and final choruses of the first part, “O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde groß”, contain most careful markings in the romantic style. 

Bach’s orchestral scoring has been altered in a few movements. The use of clarinets, replacing the low oboes (oboe d’amore and oboe da caccia), is striking. Mendelssohn no longer gave the organ a prominent function, as the secco recitatives were either accompanied by him at the piano, or by the cellos and double bass. The organ was used in the chorales and at selected points in a few arias and choruses as an additional tone colour.

The edition now published by Bärenreiter comprises:

• full score, including the two versions from 1829 and 1841; Critical Commentary, a list of variant readings and a concordance to facilitate the performance of both versions
• vocal score for soloists and choir 
• complete orchestral material

With Mendelssohn’s arrangement, a version is now available lasting just over two hours, which provides an interesting alternative for present day audiences.

Klaus Winkler
(translation: Elisabeth Robinson)
from: [t]akte 1/2009