The score for Mendelssohn's 1829 recreation of Bach's “St. Matthew Passion” has a bass part for two solo cellos playing chords and the double bass sustaining the bass line.

Here is a seasonal post. Its Easter Monday and many musicians have just finished an onslaught of passions. In Holland it is a big tradition to go and see Bach's St. John or St. Matthew Passion in the days around Easter. I escaped with only 3 performances (two St. Johns on the gamba and a Matthew on the cello). Some of my colleagues will have just completed a tedious yet lucrative tour of 22 St. Matthew Passions!

The St. Matthew Passion is written for 2 orchestras and choirs sharing the same stage. Sitting quietly in the second orchestra, listening to the recitatives and arias that involve only the first orchestra I started thinking about how much more exciting life can be, at least in a passion. Let me explain. The score for Mendelssohn's 1829 recreation of Bach's “St. Matthew Passion” has a bass part for two solo cellos playing chords and the double bass sustaining the bass line. That provides an entirely different sonority, as well as giving the cellist of the second orchestra something exciting to do in the recits!


Wouldn't that be cool??? Ditch the organ, and have the two cellos and double-bass playing the recits. At least I would very much like to try it sometime. I'd love to get my hands on a score (anyone know where I can get it?). There is one recording of it that I have not heard, by Christoph Spering.

Perhaps this sounds like quite an odd way to accompany recits, but it was actually the normal way at that time. For around 40 years (1790 - 1830) the usual way to accompany recits was with a cello playing chords and a double-bass sustaining the written bass note, NOT with a cello playing the bass notes, and a keyboard instrument playing chords. It is strange that not many people know or practice this, since there are plent of instruction books about it - e.g. Baumgartner (1774), and the Paris Conservatoire cello method from 1805. Not to mention many contemporary reports of fellow Yorkshireman and cellist, Robert Lindley, providing astonishing accompaniments with Domenico Dragonetti on the bass!.