In Christian music, a Passion is a setting of the Passion of Christ. Liturgically, most Passions were intended to be performed as part of church services in the Holy Week.
Passion settings developed from Medieval intoned readings of the Gospel texts relating Christ's Passion, to which later polyphonic settings were added. Passion Plays, another tradition that originated in the Middle Ages, could be provided with music such as hymns, contributing to Passion as a genre in music.
While Passion music in Catholic countries had to compete with other devotions such as the Stations of the Cross, the Improperia and Tenebrae, in Protestant Germany settings of the Gospels became a focal point of Passiontide services, with Passion cantatas (and later Passions in oratorio format) performed on Passion Sunday, Palm Sunday and Good Friday. Its best known examples, the Bach Passions, date from the first half of the 18th century.
Later musical settings of the Passion of Christ, such as the Jesus Christ Superstar Rock opera, or Arvo Pärt's Passio refer to these earlier Christian traditions to varying degrees.
History
The reading of the Passion from one of the Gospels during Holy Week dates back at least to the 4th century and is described by Egeria. In the 5th century Pope Leo the Great specified that the gospel of Matthew be used on Palm Sunday and the following Wednesday and that of John on Good Friday; by the 10th century Luke replaced Matthew on Wednesday and Mark was added on Tuesday.
The passion began to be intoned (rather than just spoken) in the Middle Ages, at least as early at the 8th century. 9th-century manuscripts have "litterae significativae" indicating interpretive chant, and later manuscript begin to specify exact notes to be sung. By the 13th century different singers were used for different characters in the narrative, a practice which became fairly universal by the 15th century, when polyphonic settings of the turba passages began to appear also (Turba, while literally meaning "crowd," is used in this case to mean any passage in which more than one speaker speaks simultaneously). The formula of the present Graduale Romanum was the most widespread, with Christ singing in the lowest register and Synagogus (denoting not only the high priest but all characters besides Christ) singing higher than the evangelist/narrator. In Spain a Toledan tone with the evangelist's part recto tono (on a monotone) was used in Castile and a Saragossan tone with a bass evangelist and a florid tenor Christus was used in much of Aragon, where the Roman tone also had a foothold in Valencia.
In the later 15th century a number of new styles began to emerge: 'Responsorial Passions in which the narration is chanted but the turba parts and sometimes Christ's words are set polyphonically. Through-composed Passions, also called motet Passions, in which all text is set polyphonically. The earliest extant example of this type is sometimes attributed to Jacob Obrecht . Summa Passionis settings, drawing on all four Gospels. These were never incorporated into the liturgy of the church use but circulated widely nonetheless. The Seven Last Words (a text later set by Haydn and Théodore Dubois) are included in this category.
Roman Catholic music
In the 16th century many settings, chiefly of the responsorial type, were written by William Byrd (St. John, 3vv), Jacobus Gallus, Francisco Guerrero (five including second St. John, mostly 5vv), Orlando di Lasso (all four, 4vv), Cypriano de Rore (St John) and Victoria.
In Roman Catholicism settings of (parts of) the Tenebrae service however became the leading format for music to commemorate Christ's Passion and death during Holy Week, with for example Leçons de ténèbres, Tenebrae responsories, and settings of the Miserere psalm. Notable examples of such music, like Gesualdo's Tenebrae Responsoria, are sometimes characterized as "a Passion in all but name".
A later development of the Catholic passion was the reflective passion-oratorio such as Metastasio's Italian libretto La passione di Gesù Cristo set by Caldara, Salieri and many other composers between 1730 and 1812.
Latin passions continued in parallel with the style of Metastasio, often set by minor composers such as little known Carlo Sturla, music master at the Convent of Santa Brigida, who also set a Latin passion in 18th Century operatic style, Passio di Venerdì Santo, for the Oratory of St Philip Neri in Genoa in 1736.