Bach: St Mark Passion

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Stephen Johnson examines the sources of JS Bach's setting of the St. Mark Passion. Although his obituary tells us Bach wrote five Passions, only two of them, St. Matthew and St. John, have survived complete. It's thought the first performance of the St. Mark Passion took place on March 23rd in 1731, but subsequently the score of the music disappeared. Tantalisingly, all that remained was the text. However, after some keen detective work on Bach's music, there was enough evidence to make a reconstruction a possibility.