With Bach’s ‘Matthew Passion’ the development of the Protestant Church music in this form came to an abrupt close for the simple reason that no one since Bach’s time has possessed the necessary technical and musical equipment for further progress. In this glorious work, which next to his own ‘B minor Mass’ is probably his most sublime utterance, he seems to have completely grasped the touching pathos and the poignant sorrow of the scenes unfolded in the Gospel narratives of the Passion and, in interpreting them through the religious experience of a devout believer, to have exhausted the vocabulary of music appropriate to the liturgy of which this Scriptural narrative forms an impressive part. However, other Passions were written after Bach’s settings were made and the most famous of them is Graun’s _Der Tod Jesu_, which is spoken of in some detail below. Handel made two settings of the Passion, one of which (‘The Passion of Christ’ to a poem by B. H. Brockes of Hamburg) is in existence. It was written probably about 1716 and the composer introduced no fewer than twenty of its numbers into later works, some altered, some transferred bodily. Haydn’s Passion (‘The Seven Words of Our Saviour’) has already been spoken of under cantatas (Chapter IV). An interesting example of later Passion music is Gounod’s unaccompanied Passion-motet, ‘The Seven Last Words of Our Saviour’ (_Filiæ Jerusalem_), written from the standpoint of the Roman Church service in the style of Palestrina. Karl Heinrich Graun (1701-1759), a contemporary of Bach, was the last great writer of Passion music. Indeed, the greatest of his works was the Passion-cantata ‘The Death of Jesus,’ text by Ramler, which met with the most monumental success and has been a favorite up to the present day. Performed for the first time on March 26th, 1763, in the Cathedral of Berlin (four years after the death of the composer), it was published immediately and both orchestral and piano scores passed through edition after edition, and the work obtained a very wide hearing. In many places an annual performance of it was given and it was as well known as the ‘Messiah,’ ‘The Creation’ and the Mozart _Requiem_. Although Graun was first of all a contrapuntist, his harmony was rich and expressive and his style often dramatic. As he was himself an opera singer of splendid attainments, he understood how to produce the best vocal effects. His melodies, if judged from the standpoint of the time in which they were written, are very expressive, though present-day standards would not pronounce them always forceful. This may be partly due to the text, which, though suited to the demands of the time, is not always pliable. Graun, like all German Passion composers of this period, made frequent use of the chorale, sometimes for purposes of narration and sometimes to express the thought of the people. The _dramatis personæ_ are not well defined in the text, hence it is difficult to discern who is speaking, since