- nating with chorales or polyphonic numbers. Throughout the 16th
century expert composers undertook settings in full motet or part-song form, often with madrigal numbers. Experiments followed in more or less dramatic form, with some distinction of personages, after 1600 with recitatives and ariosos, and after about 1675 with true arias. Special texts for dramatic Passions began to be written with care soon after 1700, the most popular of them being that by Barthold Heinrich Brockes (d. 1747) of Hamburg (1712). The regular use of such texts with varying musical settings continued to be a feature of Good Friday services until late in the l8th century, and irregularly till much later.
Among the older polyphonic or motet Passions were those by Davy (before 1500), Obrecht (before 1505), Galliculus (1528), De Rore (1557), à Burck (1568-74), Daser (1578), Handl (1587), Gesius (1588), Machold (1593), Demantius (1623), Gluck (1660), and some others.
Of dramatic works, including more and more solo material and about 1700 tending to pass over fully into the style of the Italian oratorio, there were many, as by Walther (1530-52), Scandello (1550-70), Meiland (1568-70), Lassus (1573-82), Asola (c. 1580) Reiner (?), Victoria (1585), Vulpius (1613), Mancinus (1620), Harnisch (1621), Schütz (1623-66), Chr. Schultz (1653), Sebastiani (1672), Theile (1673), Funcke (1683, with the first true arias), Rothe (1697), Keiser (1704-12), Handel (1704-16), Telemann (1716-66), Mattheson (1717), Kuhnau (1721), and others.
In the German Passions there came to be a tendency to adhere to fixed plans of text and treatment that amounted almost to a liturgical formula. The use of chorales varied greatly, and towards 1700 their congregational rendering was largely replaced by solos.
Bach's treatment of the Passion-form was in a sense eclectic,
in that he combined elements from various styles, including chorales
of different degrees of elaboration, polyphonic choruses,
often of gigantic proportions, recitatives, both plain and accompanied,
arias in extended form, and dramatic choruses, with the
fullest use of instrumental resources for accompaniments and
even for independent movements. He approached the matter
from the liturgical or devotional side, rather than the purely
dramatic, but he was also ready to employ intensely dramatic
methods at certain points. With his five Passions proper belong
his festival oratorios for Christmas, Easter and Ascension,
the plan of which was analogous, though their emotional content
was different. In these works the liturgical oratorio
reached a culmination that has not since been surpassed.
The more famous of this group are the St. Matthew Passion (1729)
and the Christmas Oratorio (1734), both of which remain in the repertory
of competent choral societies.
