The great passion A novel

Runcie, author of the popular Granchester Mysteries series, vividly imagines a young chorister as witness to the creation of J. S. Bach's renowned St. Matthew Passion. After Stefan's mother dies, his grieving father sends him away to the choir school of St. Thomas Church in Leipzig. Stefan's singing attracts the attention of Bach, the school cantor, who takes in the lonely, bullied boy. Stefan matures musically and emotionally in the embrace of Bach's large, loving household, where "singing [is] as familiar as speech." Until tragedy strikes. Variations on themes of love, loss, and grief run throughout the novel, culminating in the composition of a musical masterpiece that finds understanding in the certainty of "the fact of death and the love of God." Runcie beautifully renders each character's humanity and convincingly portrays a creative environment, grounded in faith, where "music-making [is] a mixture of rules and invention, discipline and playfulness." Knowledgeable readers will appreciate the author's extensive use of music history and technical detail balanced with notes of poetic imagery, such as a flute line "skipping and quicksilver."

Runcie, best known for his empathic Grantchester mystery series, displays the same gifts for characterization in this account of Johann Sebastian Bach's composition of the "St Matthew Passion" in 1727. Stefan Silbermann, a former pupil of Bach's, learns of the composer's death in 1750, before Runcie flashes back to Silbermann and Bach's time together. 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. 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 evolving relationship between teacher and student culminates in the composer's best-known vocal piece, inspired in part by witnessing a gory execution. Runcie pulls off an intricate and accessible description of the innovative piece and its composition, which was designed to make the death of Jesus feel immediate, so that listeners of the "Passion" would understand "how people crucify Christ every day." Runcie captures, as well as anyone could with words, how Bach realized his aim of making music accompanying lyrics about Christ's suffering "as shocking and unpredictable as grief itself." This is historical fiction of the highest order. (Mar.)

A young boy sings for Johann Sebastian Bach in this richly textured tale of music and life. After Bach's death in 1750, organ-maker Stefan Silbermann recalls a part of his boyhood in 1723, when his widowed father sends him to Leipzig to try out for a boys' choir under Bach, then a church cantor. Bach's goal is to set to music passages from the Bible, specifically the Passion according to Saint Matthew, for Good Friday. He accepts the carrot-haired Stefan, who has a beautiful voice that causes jealousy and prompts bullying from the other boys. Early on, Stefan learns that the boys must do their homework or their teacher (not Bach) will "smite" them with a cane. He runs away but returns and spends time in the school's prison for another's offense. Then Bach invites him to live for a while with his family in a home filled with musical instruments and people, "a place without privacy and a world without secrets." Meanwhile, Stefan finds favor with Anna Magdalena, Bach's second wife, and Catharina, his oldest child. Anna Magdalena has a wonderful singing voice and blue eyes that remind him of flowers. As a woman, she is not permitted to sing in church. Stefan and Catharina have a sweet friendship as they chase butterflies together and he begins to love her, but she only likes him back. Though demanding, Bach is a kind and deeply religious man. "Without charity we are nothing," he tells Stefan, "no more than a sounding brass or tinkling cymbal....We are all orphans before the Lord." Yet the great man has a sense of humor. "You know that Luther wrote 'Ein fest Burg' when he was sitting on the privy?" "No." "A musical prayer written mid-crap. You can't be proud when imagination strikes." The story is rich in its descriptions of music, devotion to God, and the daily hardships of 18th-century life. And finally, this is perhaps the author's best description: A man's face "had a tinge of waxen yellow to it, as if an embalmer had started work but left off for his lunch." A delightful novel filled with warmth, music, and an obvious love of Bach. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.