Passion music

Music depicting the gospel story of Christ's Passion. Passion music evolved from the medieval recitation, which was sung, as it still is, by three singers with different vocal ranges. The singer representing the Evangelist had a medium range, Christus a low range, and the singer responsible for the other characters and the crowd (turba) a high range. By the 15th century, the turba began to be entrusted to a vocal ensemble, and in the course of the 16th century the whole text was sung in a polyphonic setting. In the 17th century, Lutheran composers introduced recitative, chorales, and instrumental accompaniment. In the early 18th century, the inclusion of arias set to non-Biblical words turned the Lutheran Passion into an oratorio, indistinguishable in form from opera. Johann Sebastian Bach's two surviving Passions belong to this category.