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semble of strings given much less virtuosic lines. The performing ma-
terial from 1736 shows how carefully Bach worked out the coverage of
the violin lines in these arias. (This was a challenge because one of his
violinists was busy with the solo line, leaving fewer for the orchestral
lines.) Bach s solution in 1736 depended on the fact that it was his prac-
tice to make two copies of the violin parts for his Leipzig church pieces,
for a total of four. The parts were evidently designed to be used by one
player each; this contrasts with the modern orchestral practice of shar-
ing a part between two people on a stand. (Like the use of vocal parts,
this has been much debated; as with the vocal parts discussed in chap-
ter 1, this answer is reached by looking at the design of the parts and
deducing their most likely use for one player each.)
In these arias Bach put one violinist on the solo line (placing his music
in the first copy of Violin 1), two players on the orchestral Violin 1
line (with their music entered in one copy of Violin 1 and one copy
of Violin 2) and one player on the orchestral Violin 2 line (in the other
copy of Violin 2). This meant that one  second violinist was actually
playing Violin 1, but this made no difference in practice. Bach clearly
wanted to cover the lines in this way one soloist, two first violins,
and one second violin and ensured this disposition by carefully choos-
ing what he copied into the various parts. (This is the kind of design
that suggests the use of each part by one player; a little reflection re-
veals that this is not how Bach would have distributed the lines in the
parts if each was meant for more than one player.)
In the early version of the St. Matthew Passion we find a curious thing:
the score clearly says that in the first of these solo violin arias, assigned
to a singer and the orchestra from Chorus 1, the solo line was played
by a violinist from Chorus 2. Similarly, in the other aria, the orchestra
62 Passions in Performance
of Chorus 2 apparently played along with a soloist from Chorus 1. That
is, each aria borrows a soloist from the other orchestra. Why? Com-
mentators have sometimes tried to explain this in symbolic terms as a
 cross-wise arrangement, with obvious meaning in a passion setting.
But this strikes me as strained, and we are better off looking for a prac-
tical explanation.
There is one. I suspect that for the St. Matthew Passion in 1727 Bach
did not count on twice his usual complement of violinists (twice four
for a total of eight) but rather used only one violinist on each line in
each orchestra instead of the typical two. This meant that any aria with
three violin lines had to borrow from the other chorus. Bach appears
to have distributed his typical four violinists among two instrumental
ensembles, much as he distributed the eight available qualified singers
among two choirs.
Bach s sudden ability to mount the St. Matthew Passion now begins
to look more plausible. If we compare the forces needed for the 1725
St. John Passion with the hypothetical requirements of a St. Matthew
Passion that used violinists in the way just proposed, the two line up
surprisingly well (see table 3 2). There are a few unknowns, including
in the small vocal parts. But almost any musician could presumably have
handled those, and overall the requirements of the two passions are
strikingly comparable. The St. Matthew Passion required a lute (needed
in the 1724 St. John but not in 1725) but not a viola da gamba. In fact,
the incremental number of instruments needed for the St. Matthew
Passion over the 1725 St. John is small: two additional flutes, two addi-
tional oboes, and one additional viola nothing to sneeze at, but ap-
parently manageable. Bach s achievement in his scoring of the
St. Matthew Passion lay less in an expansion of the number of perform-
ers involved than in his rethinking of the possible roles of the musi-
cians available to him for a passion performance; that is, in designing a
work with double-chorus features that used vocal and instrumental
forces that did not go far beyond those needed for an ordinary piece.
But even the early version requires a somewhat larger group than
was ordinary for Bach s concerted church music during most of the year.
Bach s ability to muster these forces and the particular demands he made
of singers and instrumentalists are both closely connected to the un-
even relationship of the two ensembles. The bulk of the work (the
material in Chorus 1) was presumably designed for Bach s first ensemble,
the one responsible for performing his own concerted pieces in alter-
nating churches on regular Sundays and feasts. But Good Friday Ves-
pers, the occasion for concerted passion performances in Leipzig, were
The Double Chorus in the St. Matthew Passion BWV 244 63
special in that Bach was expected to provide a passion in only one church
each year. That meant that his second ensemble (the one usually re-
sponsible for performances at whichever church the principal group did
not cover) was available as well.
This has long been understood to explain the larger-than-usual forces
(including ripieno singers) Bach could muster for passion performances,
but the nature of the second ensemble is also important to our analysis
of the St. Matthew Passion. We know that the second choir performed
concerted music but that the first choir s repertory mostly Bach s own
pieces was (in his words)  incomparably harder and more intricate.
That is, the second choir had to be able to perform cantatas but not at
the level of the first ensemble. This sounds exactly like Chorus 2 in the
St. Matthew Passion: a group capable of singing concerted ensemble
pieces and in a position to sing and play less demanding arias (and of
course able to serve as ripienists).
The St. Matthew Passion appears to have been designed with this kind
of asymmetrical distribution of forces in mind, keeping the work within
the reach of the forces available, not just in the number of musicians
but in their abilities as well. The principal burden of the Passion fell on [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]