The Great Passion

James Runcie

Bloomsbury 272pp (hb) £16.99

Aaron Copland described Bach as the one musician ‘who came closest to composing without human flaw.’ But what of the man himself? Was Bach as orderly a character as his music? More recent studies have overturned any such notion, among them John Eliot Gardiner’s exuberant

2013 study which offered a ‘corrective to the old hagiolatry’. Written with clarity and beauty, James Runcie’s novel follows in these footsteps to explore Bach as a complex character, at once forbidding and warm-hearted.

The Great Passion is a fictionalised account of Bach’s creation of the

St Matthew Passion in 1727, narrated by one Stefan Silbermann, a talented chorister who finds himself lonely and adrift at Leipzig’s Saint Thomas School. ‘The Cantor’ takes Silbermann under his wing and invites him to live at the family home, so Silbermann witnesses first-hand both Bach’s extraordinary talent but also the tragedy that befalls the household that year.

Just as Bach’s music allows us ‘to understand the depths of all our sorrows… and lift our hearts with unexpected joy’, so The Great Passion offers an affecting exploration of the redemptive power of music and love. Kate Wakeling ★★★★★