It happens when there is a birth or a death, an arrival or departure, the moments either side of it becoming forms of descent and recovery, when we do not know quite what to do or how long this bewilderment will last. But Stefan is struggling with how to fit in with the other students, and the grief for his mother is at times overwhelming. rhythm in the music depicted the cross as it was painfully dragged up steps---it was truly heartbreaking. On the other hand, I really didn't connect with other aspects of the writing and was glad to finish the book.

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You don’t have to be well versed in music to respond to it, any more than you have to subscribe to the Pietistic faith – though no doubt it helps if you are and do. Yet, Runcie suggests, music – like faith – can accompany us in grief, leading us on a journey of healing. Given the important place Bach's music has in my life, I approached this novel with a little trepidation: would it do justice to his stature as a composer, while also breathing life into him as a human being? The novel's protagonist, Stefan Silbermann, recently bereaved of his mother and cruelly bullied at the boarding school for his red hair, becomes a protégé of Bach's due to his angelic soprano and willingness to work hard.

The tension remains between the precious moment that is charged with meaning and the years that slip through our fingers. S. Bach's "St Matthew Passion" is widely regarded as a pillar of the Western musical canon, it may appear surprising that we do not really know much about the composition and first performance of the Passion.

The Great Passion by James Runcie Book Marks reviews of The Great Passion by James Runcie

I am unmarried and live without children and it's often the only subject they ever want to ask me about. The “father of Western music” is here the work-hassled father of a chaotic human family in all its joy and grief. This is a delightful novel, also one which reveals a Germany foreign or, I would think, unknown to most of us. In general, I prefer not to talk of those years, now that my hair is thinned and grey, but once people discover how well I knew the family, they question what it must have been like to be amongst the first to sing Bach’s music.The other students bully Silbermann relentlessly, but his vocal talent attracts the attention of Bach, the school’s cantor, and Bach’s family offers the boy emotional support. The Great Passion’ Review: In Rehearsal With Bach The author of the ‘Grantchester’ mysteries takes readers on a fictional journey into the making of the composer’s soaring Easter masterpiece. Eventually taken in by the Bach family, there follows a study especially of Bach and his wife Ann Magdalena; of Bach’s deep, unshakeable faith and his expression of it through music, and the family’s response to a grief of their own.

The Great Passion by James Runcie review: how tragedy

I imagine there are sources that Runcie carefully explored, but clearly much of the novel's content is Runcie's creation.

On the evidence of these books I would never have expected anything on the scale and magnificence of The Great Passion. There he finds a warm welcome from Bach’s large and variously talented family, and, when domestic tragedy strikes, Runcie has us follow the course of the extraordinary creation of Bach’s masterpiece, one of the greatest works in all of classical music. The narrator, Stefan Silbermann, the son of an organ-maker, is sent, aged 11, after his mother’s death to the choir school of St Thomas’s church in Leipzig. We may travel through the valley of the shadow of death, but how we live is what matters, don’t you think? Until COVID, we moderns have largely been insulated from the kind of relentless grief that people in Bach’s day experienced.

The Great Passion, by James Runcie - The Scotsman Book review: The Great Passion, by James Runcie - The Scotsman

In 1750, Stefan, now in his late thirties, learns of the death of the Cantor, which leads him to reminisce about the year he spent as a student of the St Thomas Church in his early teens. And yet, this culture promoted virtue, love, forgiveness (only if you were a member of the Protestant faith), and weirdly, excellence in music. After Silbermann’s mother died when he was 13, he was sent by his father to Leipzig to study music; the elder Silbermann, who made and serviced church organs, believed that such an education would enhance his son’s ability to work for the family business. Matthew Passion (we were required to submit two pages, but I wrote 45 pages, because I was so in love with this thing), and the opening: the chorus inviting us to hear the story of Jesus' execution, still makes me cry.

After his mother's death, thirteen-year-old Stefan Silberman is sent to spend a year at the school—a year that will allow his father to mourn privately and is intended to "distract" Stefan from his loss. All the stars for this profoundly moving and lovely reflection on life, love, loss, and the beauty found in both music and silence.