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matic than the other.
When Bach reperformed the St. Mark Passion in Leipzig in 1726 he
had new parts copied and distributed the character roles among more
than four parts. Once again the soprano sang the role of the Maid and
the bass Jesus, just as they had in the Weimar-era performance. In the
alto part we find the music for the Captain and for the Soldier, again as
in Weimar. But the music for Judas and for Caiphas, also present in the
Weimar alto part, was omitted. No part containing these roles survives
today, but we may assume that a separate part (or perhaps two) was
prepared. If Bach used ripienists in the St. Mark Passion (which seems
likely, though no parts for them survive today) these roles could have
been included in an alto ripieno part. Either way, Bach assigned these
characters to a separate singer, just as he did with several roles in his
own St. John and St. Matthew passions. Judas and Caiphas are relatively
important to the story compared to the Captain and the Soldier, who
make only passing comments; perhaps the more significant a character,
the more likely his words were to be delivered by a distinct singer.
Curiously, the names Judas and Caiphas appear in Bach s hand
in the alto concertist s part at the points where these characters sing,
even though their music was omitted from the part. Why? If the part
was intended for only one singer, why did he need to know that these
roles (which were not his responsibility) sang in these places? And if
more than one singer read from this part, why did Bach remove the
music for Judas and Caiphas? These markings are probably the residue
of two performances of the Passion: one in 1726 in which Bach assigned
the music for Judas and for Caiphas to another singer, and a later per-
formance for which an additional alto was not available. The alto
concertist was instructed by the added cues in his part to sing as well
from the part for Judas and Caiphas, which functioned as an insert. This
resulted in a curious situation in which there were fewer singers than
performing parts.
This observation actually has some important consequences. Our
understanding of the intended use of Bach s original performing parts
rests on the deduction that they were not designed to be shared. One
of the arguments occasionally raised in objection is that singers could
easily have looked to another part to find music they needed to sing.
There are many problems with this hypothesis, but the most serious
is the absence of cues to tell them to do this. This alto part for the
St. Mark Passion shows that Bach did indeed provide a cue to look to
44 Performing Forces and Their Significance
another part when it was needed; in all but the most unusual circum-
stances, though, it was not.
The most difficult nut to crack in the materials for Bach s 1726 per-
formance of the St. Mark Passion is the tenor part, or rather two parts.
One is labeled Tenore Evang and contains most of the music for tenor,
including that for the Evangelist. In this respect it is much like the
Weimar-era tenor part and Bach s other tenor concertist parts in his
passions. The other, called Tenore Petrus et Pilatus, contains the music
for Peter, an aria Wein, ach wein itzt um die Wette ( Weep, o weep
now in competition ) and the music for Pilate. In his Leipzig perfor-
mances, Bach removed the music for these two characters from the
principal tenor part, a clear indication that he wished them to be sung
not by the Evangelist but by a different singer.
(The situation is actually a little more complicated: the copyist of
the Tenor Evangelist part started to enter Peter s music at a couple of
points, then erased it. He also entered the aria and Pilate s music, which
was then bracketed, but we do not know exactly when. We thus can-
not be certain that the distribution of tenor material I described earlier
dates from 1726, but at least at some performance under Bach, the music
for Peter and Pilate was indeed sung from the additional part. The re-
moval of Peter s music in 1726 is certain; the displacement of his aria
and of Pilate s music might also belong to that year.)
The separation of Peter and Pilate s music removed the ambiguity
connected with the Weimar-era part, in which it was not clear whether
one singer delivered all the lines. The new part follows Bach s Leipzig
practice of giving Peter and Pilate s words to distinct singers. But the
most striking feature of the new division of labor in the St. Mark Pas-
sion is not the removal of the recitatives for the two characters but the
assignment of Peter s crying aria just after his denial of Jesus not to the
tenor concertist, whom we would expect to sing all the reflective pieces,
but rather to a different singer.
There was a strong tradition in passion music of commentary in
exactly this place in the narrative. The aria Ach, mein Sinn ( Ah,
my disposition ), for example, appears at this moment in Bach s
St. John Passion, but in Bach s composition this aria (and its onetime
replacement in a later version) was not understood as being sung by
Peter himself. (The surest evidence is that the aria appears in the tenor
concertist s part, not in the bass ripieno part where Peter s words are
found.) In contrast, the aria Wein, ach wein ( Weep, ah weep ) in
Bach s Leipzig version of the St. Mark Passion, which expresses similar
Singers and Roles in Bach s Passions 45
sentiments, is entrusted to the same singer who sings Peter s words, and
we probably have to understand it as sung by Peter himself.
This was unusual for Bach, who otherwise did not cultivate the sort
of passion setting in which named characters sing arias. Bach s assign-
ment of this aria to the singer representing Peter is a clear step in the
direction of dramatic portrayal. What is more, the singing of an aria by
anyone other than a vocal concertist has no parallel in Bach s music
except in the St. Matthew Passion, where the singers of the second cho-
rus each present arias. Perhaps this experiment in the St. Mark Passion
in 1726 (if the transfer of the aria does date from then) got Bach think-
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