The Role of the St. Matthew Passion in the 19th Century Revival of Bach’s Music

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-452-5_19How to use a DOI?

Keywords

J. S. Bach; St. Matthew Passion; musical revival; romanticism; religious music

Abstract

The St. Matthew Passion (BWV 244) is one of J. S. Bach’s most iconic religious works, and although it was not widely recognised during Bach’s lifetime, it became an important symbol of the revival of Bach’s music in the nineteenth century, especially driven by Felix Mendelssohn’s revivals. The aim of this paper is to explore the Bach musical revival in the 19th century based on the composition St. Matthew Passion. By analysing the historical background of the work, its musical characteristics, and the cultural and social impact of its revival, the paper illustrates how the Matthew Passion acquired new emotional and religious significance in Mendelssohn’s revival and contributed to the revival of Bach’s music. This article shows that the revival not only laid the foundation for the reappraisal and dissemination of Bach’s works in later generations, but also highlighted its importance within the development of the musical trends of romanticism and nationalism.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Fangge Du
AU  - Ruiyan Zhong
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/07/31
TI  - The Role of the St. Matthew Passion in the 19th Century Revival of Bach’s Music
BT  - Proceedings of the 2025 4th International Conference on Science Education and Art Appreciation (SEAA 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 147
EP  - 156
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-452-5_19
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-452-5_19
ID  - Du2025
ER  -