Passion is a setting of the passion story from St. John's Gospel, with 6 interpolated poems. It is set for a 4-man a cappella vocal ensemble, (Alto, Tenor, Tenor, Bass).
Passion is was written for The Burgundian Cadence and so is designed for their forces. This means that the entire passion story is encompassed by four unaccompanied voices. Also, the work could not be to long, so it lasts about 40 minutes.
Why write a passion at all
The story of Christ's passion is one of the most influential and resonant in Western Culture. It has influenced
Christian's and non-Christian's alike for 2000 years. Within the story can be found echoes of
many other stories and myths from our culture. My desire was to reflect the resonance of the passion story
and to examine the dichotomy between past and present. This is done in two ways.
First, the text, based on St. John's Gospel, is interspersed by contemporary poems which provide a
modern reflection of and mediation on the main, ages old, narrative.
Secondy, by using the forces of The Burgundian Cadence and fitting Passion programmes alongside their existing repertoire we hoped to
examine how traditional forces can be used in contemporary pieces. Their performance of Passion inevitably
contained echoes of other earlier pieces from their repertoire. And by programming these pieces alongside Passion, the different aspects of the pieces were intended to interact.
Robert Hugill