In the formal arrangement of the St. Matthew Passion Bach had no option; he must perforce comply with church tradition. The narrative of the evangelist, taken without change from St. Matthew’s Gospel and sung in recitative by a tenor, is the thread upon which the successive divisions are strung. The words of Jesus, Peter, the high priest, and Pilate are given to a bass, and are also in recitative. The Jews and the disciples are represented by choruses. The “Protestant congregation” forms another group, singing appropriate chorals. A third element comprises the company of believers and the “daughter of Zion,” singing choruses and arias in comment upon the situations as described by the evangelist. It must be remembered that these chorus factors are not indicated by any division of singers into groups. The work is performed throughout by the same company of singers, in Bach’s day by the diminutive choir of the Leipsic Church, composed of boys and young men. Even in the chorals the congregation took no part. The idea of the whole is much the same as in a series of old Italian chapel frescoes. The disciple sits with Christ at the last supper, accompanies him to the garden of Gethsemane and to the procurator’s hall, witnesses his mockery and condemnation, and takes his station at the foot of the cross, lamenting alternately the sufferings of his Lord and the sin which demanded such a sacrifice. Upon this prescribed formula Bach has poured all the wealth of his experience, his imagination, and his piety. His science is not brought forward so prominently as in many of his works, and where he finds it necessary to employ it he subordinates it to the expression of feeling. Yet we cannot hear without amazement the gigantic opening movement in which the awful burden of the great tragedy is foreshadowed; where, as if organ, orchestra, and double chorus were not enough to sustain the composer’s conception, a ninth part, bearing a choral melody, floats above the surging mass of sound, holding the thought of the hearer to the significance of the coming scenes. The long chorus which closes the first part, which is constructed in the form of a figured choral, is also built upon a scale which Bach has seldom exceeded. But the structure of the work in general is comparatively open, and the expression direct and clear. An atmosphere of profoundest gloom pervades the work from beginning to end, ever growing darker as the scenes of the terrible drama advance and culminate, yet here and there relieved by gleams of divine tenderness and human pity. That Bach was able to carry a single mood, and that a depressing one, through a composition of three hours’ length without falling into monotony at any point is one of the miracles of musical creation.