Breaking the Silence: Bach, Leipzig, and the Birth of the St. Matthew Passion

Join us for a pre-concert talk by Markus Rathey, the Robert S. Tangeman Professor of Musicology and Theory at the ISM and Yale Divinity School, prior to the performance of Bach's St. Matthew Passion by Yale Schola Cantorum and Juilliard415 on November 1. This lecture will presented in Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall (SSS), Room 114. Free and open to the public. Almost three hundred years ago, on Good Friday 1727, the congregation of the Thomas Church in Leipzig heard Johann Sebastian Bach's St. Matthew Passion for the very first time — and nothing in the world of music would ever quite be the same. The pre-concert talk will explore the remarkable story behind one of Bach’s most cherished compositions: why Bach composed it, what it meant to the people who first heard it, and how its powerful blend of drama, faith, and magnificent music continues to move audiences to this day. Contact: Katya Vetrov Speaker bio: Markus Rathey’s research interests include music of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries, Johann Sebastian Bach, and the relationship among music, religion, and politics during the Enlightenment. He has published several books in English, German, and Japanese, contributed articles to American and German music encyclopedias, and published numerous articles in American, British, and German scholarly journals on music by Bach, Schütz, Mendelssohn, Mozart, and their contemporaries. Rathey is past-president of the American Bach Society (2016-2020) and the Forum on Music and Christian Scholarship (2009-2011). He currently serves on the editorial board of the Yale Journal of Music & Religion.