compositions were furnished by Erdmann Neumeister of Hamburg, and after him by Salomo Franck in Weimar, Christian Friedrich Henrici and Mariane von Ziegler in Leipsic. They consisted, in their normal form, of passages from the Bible and stanzas of hymns, which were held together by a free style of versification. But in order that the chorals might acquire still greater influence than was possible under these conditions, Bach sometimes made compositions for each stanza of the poetic text, with an ever-varying employment of his melody, as in Luther's Easter hymn: "Christ lag in Todes Banden" ("Christ lay in bonds of darkness"). Again, since the stanza was not adapted to every kind of music, he occasionally substituted for it the madrigal, but in such a way that the original theme, now approaching nearer and now retreating into the distance, was easily recognized by those among the listeners who were familiar with the hymn. About forty cantatas of this description are still in existence. Among the evangelical histories should be included, besides Bach's Passion Music, his Christmas and Ascension oratorios. It is probable that this name was given to the works merely for the sake of brevity; the works are not oratorios such as Handel's, but church music, which was performed during the service, the Passions on Good Friday afternoon, before and after the sermon, the others on the respective festal days, before the morning sermon. The term "histories," however, seems appropriate, because in these works the narration of events in the words of the Bible constitutes as it were the thread which joins together the manifold parts. The old church custom of intoning passages from the Bible is the foundation upon which these works have been built up, during successive centuries of development. Since the intoning of long selections, such as the accounts of Christ's sufferings and death, was too fatiguing for a single clergyman, it was usual to distribute them among a number, and in such a way that one delivered the narrative portion, another the words of Christ, a third the utterances of all the other speaking persons introduced. From this custom proceeds the peculiar distribution of the text among the different singers, which is found in the Passion music of Bach. For the rest, their style is precisely the same as that of the church cantatas. Of the five Passions of Bach, only three are preserved. The St. Luke Passion, which has often been considered spurious, but upon insufficient grounds, belongs to his earliest youthful period, and may have been written in Arnstadt, perhaps even in Lüneburg. It can claim nothing more than a historical interest, in comparison with the other two. The St. John Passion was probably produced for the first time on the 17th of April, 1724--the Matthew Passion certainly on the 15th of April, 1729, both performances taking place in the St. Thomas's Church at Leipsic. They are undoubtedly the