The Great Passion

By James Runcie

A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR

'A masterpiece' SCOTSMAN

'A wise, refreshing novel, and a touching human story ... Runcie has an expert imagination' HILARY MANTEL

Love and Death.
Grief and Joy.
Music that lasts forever.

Leipzig, 1726. Eleven-year-old Stefan Silbermann, a humble organ-maker's son, has just lost his mother. Sent to Leipzig to train as a singer in the St Thomas Church choir, he struggles to stay afloat in a school where the teachers are as casually cruel as the students.

Stefan's talent draws the attention of the Cantor – Johann Sebastian Bach. Eccentric, obsessive and kind, he rescues Stefan from the miseries of school by bringing him into his home as an apprentice. Soon Stefan feels that this ferociously clever, chaotic family is his own. But when tragedy strikes, Stefan's period of sanctuary in their household comes to a close.

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.

'Brilliant ... Readers will be enriched by this novel and its glimpse at genius' The Times, Historical Fiction of the Month

'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' Daily Telegraph

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Mar 31, 2022
• ISBN: 9781408885529

James Runcie

James Runcie is an award – winning film-maker and writer. He is unashamedly forty-one and lives in St. Albans with his wife and two daughters. ‘The Discovery of Chocolate’ is his first novel, written because he finds the prospect of everlasting life far more frightening than death, and because, according to Vogue Magazine, “It’s official. People who eat chocolate live longer than those who do not.”

Reviews for The Great Passion

[khoyt-43756 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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.

[maryzee_1 · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Dumb and boring

[nancyadair-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

James Runcie is best known for his Grantchester novels and the television series based on them. His new novel The Great Passion takes us back to Bach and Leipzig in 1727, experienced through a prepubescent boy sent to study music before his voice breaks and he begins his career as a master organ maker, as is his father and his father was before him.Stefan is still grieving for his mother when he arrives at the school. Harsh discipline and bullying make the adjustment hard. The cantor, Johann Sebastian Bach, notes the boy’s beautiful singing voice and ability on the organ. The rival soprano seethes at losing his place of favor with the cantor.For a time, Stefan lives with Bach’s family, the house full of activity, music focused, but also joyful. Until the death of their infant daughter. Bach had lost his first, beloved wife, and although he happily found love again, the pain remains. Now his wife is grieving. Stefan’s rival’s mother also dies. The awareness of life’s brevity and pain pervades their lives.In the midst of so much sorrow and loss, Bach is inspired to write a Good Friday cantata that will take listeners into the passion of Christ, putting them in the place of those who caused Jesus’ death and benefited from that act of love. The St. Matthew Passion is considered a masterpiece.For perhaps we can only appreciate what it is to be alive by recognising what it means when that life is removed from us. We are ravaged by absence. The void opens around us…Then, afterwards, when life forces us to continue, and we resume what is left of our time on earth, we listen to music as survivors…We grow to understand that our wounds give life its richness…from The Great Passion by James RuncieI 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.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.from The Great Passion by James RuncieAfter reading the novel, I listened to the St Matthew Passion on Youtube, following with the choral music score my husband used when he sang it in college. As I listened to the singers and read the music, I understood the challenges of performing the music, so eloquently described in the novel. I understood the lessons Stefan had to learn about supporting the music, phrasing, where to take a breath.The Passion has two parts, and Runcie tells us the sermon was given between them. In the first part, the choir speaks of the guilt we all share, asking “Is it I” who betrayed Jesus, clamoring for Jesus to be punished for challenging the religious leaders. The music is dramatic.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?Runcie’s father was Archbishop of Canterbury. I am the wife of a retired minister, well versed in Christian thought and liturgy. (I even audited classes when my husband was in seminary.) I had to consider if a non-Christian could read this book, could respond to Bach’s music? Bach does amazing things in the music. I did some online research and learned that “the only recorded review of the St. Matthew Passion in Bach’s lifetime was from an aged widow in the congregation: “God help us! It’s an opera-comedy!’ I personally don’t know which part was the ‘comedy,’ but there is such drama to be found, arias of grief that speak to the common human experience: we die; we grieve.Runcie imagines Bach’s desire to transport his listeners into a total engagement with the message, through his music. When he asks a widower to sing the bass, he counters every excuse, for he knows that the performance will be cathartic and the richer for the singer’s knowledge of human frailty and all the questions that come with a death.The story of music engaging a grieving people and pointing the way toward hope is particularly meaningful today when so many have been lost. What does it mean to be alive? How do we live with our grief? Can we find the “advancing light” when we are blinded by loss and anguish? How can love save us? The characters in the book grapple with these big questions. As do we.I received a free egalley from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.