There are many things that a book about Bach's Passions could attempt. Most obvious, perhaps, might be the sort of study that outlines the historical context of Passion settings and the role of Passions in Bach's career, followed by an exhaustive study of the Passions that Bach wrote and performed, their chronology and the details of each version and its performing forces. Readers requiring a book of this kind should, without hesitation, leave this one aside and acquire Daniel R. Melamed's Hearing Bach's Passions (Oxford University Press, 2005). Melamed also addresses larger questions about the identity of musical works in the light of the variability of their original texts and performing circumstances. Other readers might seek an interpretation of these works in terms of their theological implications and Bach's Lutheran context. Here, the list of possible books and articles is extremely extensive, but obvious places to start might be Eric T. Chafe's Tonal Allegory in the Vocal Music of J. S. Bach (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991) and Jaroslav Pelikan's Bach Among the Theologians (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986).

This book is hardly traditional Bach scholarship, although I would hope it will still be of interest to Bach specialists. Most important, I hope it will be a contribution to the debate about the culture of ‘classical music’, its history and possible future.