a very good case to spoil.  The “Matthew” is without doubt a vaster, profounder, more moving and lovelier piece of art than the “John.”  Indeed, being the later work of a composer whose power grew steadily from the first until the last time he put pen to paper, it could not be otherwise.  But the critic who, like Spitta, sees in it only a successful attempt at what was attempted unsuccessfully in the “John,” seems to me to mistake the aim both of the “John” and the “Matthew.”  The “John” is not in any sense unsuccessful, but a complete, consistent and masterly achievement; and if it stands a little lower than the “Matthew,” if the “Matthew” is mightier, more impressive, more overwhelming in its great tenderness, this is not because the Bach who wrote in 1722-23 was a bungler or an incomplete artist, but because the Bach who wrote in 1729 was inspired by a loftier idea than had come to the Bach of 1723.  It was only necessary to compare the impression one received when the “John” Passion was sung by the Bach Choir in 1896 with that received at the “Matthew” performance in St. Paul’s in the same year, to realise that it is in idea, not in power of realising the idea, that the two works differ—­differ more widely than might seem possible, seeing that the subject is the same, and that the same musical forms—­chorus, chorale, song and recitative—­are used in each.

Waking on the morrow of the “John” performance, my memory was principally filled with those hoarse, stormy, passionate roarings of an enraged mob.  A careless reckoning shows that whereas the people’s choruses in the “Matthew” Passion occupy about ninety bars, in the “John” they fill about two hundred and fifty.  “Barabbas” in the “Matthew” is a single yell; in the “John” it takes up four bars.  “Let Him be crucified” in the “Matthew” is eighteen bars long, counting the repetition, while “Crucify” and “Away with Him” in the “John” amount to fifty bars.  Moreover, the people’s choruses are written in a much more violent and tempestuous style in the earlier than in the later setting.  In the “Matthew” there is nothing like those terrific ascending and descending chromatic passages in “Waere dieser nicht ein Ubelthaeter” and “Wir duerfen Niemand toeden,” or the short breathless shouts near the finish of the former chorus, as though the infuriated rabble had nearly exhausted itself, or, again, the excited chattering of the soldiers when they get Christ’s coat, “Lasst uns den nicht zertheilen.”  Considering these things, one sees that the first impression the “John” Passion gives is the true impression, and that Bach had deliberately set out to depict the preliminary scenes of the crucifixion with greater fulness of detail and in more striking colours than he afterwards attempted in the “Matthew” Passion.  Then, not only is the physical suffering of Christ insisted on in this way, but the chorales, recitatives, and songs lay still greater stress upon it, either directly, by actual description, or indirectly, by