The Great Passion
by James Runcie
Bloomsbury, £16.99, 272 pages
This sublime novel about the domestic and spiritual genesis behind Johann Sebastian Bach’s writing of his St Matthew Passion – first performed in Leipzig on Good Friday, 1727 – is every bit as brilliantly dramatic as Peter Shaffer’s 1979 play Amadeus. I couldn’t put it down.
Both deal with young German musicians packed off by ambitious and overbearing musical fathers to improve their prospects. But while Shaffer used a controversial amount of dramatic license to mythologise the rivalry between the aging and jealous Antonio Salieri and Wolfgang Mozart (his insufferable, louche, much younger genius nemesis) Runcie isn’t interested in mythologising Bach for box-office effect.
