Schütz was still much under the influence of the Gregorian modes and did not attempt to break away from them in passages of simple recitative, but he also employed for simple harmonized passages many of the chorale melodies that were so popular all over Protestant Germany. But after Schütz plain-song practically disappears from German Passion and oratorio music and the influence of the chorale becomes more distinct and insistent. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Passion music was extensively cultivated in Germany and all her best composers gave it marked attention. Johann Sebastiani in 1672 produced a Passion at Königsberg, in which the narration is set entirely to original music and in which chorales, simply and effectively harmonized, are given more prominence. Thenceforward German church-music, freed from its allegiance to the old modal system, struck out paths of its own, and rapid progress was made. In 1673 Theile’s _Deutsche Passion_ was performed at Lübeck with extraordinary success and Reinhard Keiser, the Hamburg opera-composer, created renewed interest in this form by his setting of the Passion in 1704, which contained an innovation followed by all subsequent German writers of Passion-music. This consisted in what he called _soliloquia_, which voiced devout reflections on the solemn events of the Gospel narrative. V Bach’s extraordinary and single-hearted devotion to the cause of church-music led him very naturally to the door of Passion-music and oratorio, and he brought to the composition of these elaborate forms an unequalled mastery over all the technical devices of contrapuntal writing and a marvellous fertility of invention. A deeply religious and devout nature enriched the natural nobility of his musical speech, and scattered through the four oratorios from his pen that are preserved to us are some of his sublimest thoughts. These four are a Christmas-oratorio and three Passion-oratories--St. Matthew, St. John, and St. Luke (now regarded as genuine, though for many years considered spurious). Through the carelessness of his son Friedemann a St. Mark Passion and probably still another have been lost, for he is known to have written five Passions.