Premiere of St John Passion
- When
- 1725–1749
- Where
- Leipzig
- Episodes
- 2
Johann Sebastian Bach premiered the St John Passion (BWV 245) at Good Friday Vespers in Leipzig on 7 April 1724. This work, composed during his first year as director of church music, was later revised multiple times, with the 1739–1749 version becoming the most familiar today.
Episodes
- 1725 Revisions
Bach revised the work in 1725, replacing choruses and adding arias.
- 1749 Revision
Bach reverted to the 1724 version in 1749 with minor orchestration changes.
Background and detail
Premiere Context. The St John Passion was written during Bach's first year as director of church music in Leipzig. It was intended for the vesper service on Good Friday of 1724, occurring shortly after Bach's 39th birthday. The work is the earliest of the surviving Passions by Bach.
Subsequent Revisions. Bach revised the oratorio in 1725, 1730, and 1749. In 1725, he replaced the opening and closing choruses and added three arias. By 1749, he reverted more or less to the original 1724 version, making slight orchestration changes, such as replacing the viola d'amore with muted violins.
People involved
- Johann Sebastian Bach · Composer and Performer
Sources
- St John Passion Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-14
Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.