top of page

Co-presented with the St. Paul’s Choir School

WORKSHOP: BACH’S ST. MATTHEW PASSION

WITH MICHAEL MARISSEN

Saturday, March 23

DiGiovanni Hall, St. Paul’s Campus

Michael Marissen

Swarthmore College

Co-Sponsored by Emmanuel Music and the Ratzinger Memorial Society

A limited number of tickets provided to registered participants (first-come, first serve) for the 4:00PM performance of the Passion in Boston by Emmanuel Music and the Saint Paul’s Boys Choir. For details click here.


Michael Marissen, renowned authority on the music and spiritual vision of J.S. Bach, explores the text, musical rhetoric, theological framework, liturgical context, historical setting, and spiritual vision of this masterpiece, considered by some to be the greatest achievement in Western music.  Lecture with recorded music, study of the text (to be handed out), and Q&A.


(Extend your study of Bach’s masterpiece by attending Emmanuel Music’s panel discussion on March 17 – for more, click here.)

MICHAEL MARISSEN

Michael Marissen, the Daniel Underhill Professor Emeritus of Music at Swarthmore College, has written and taught widely on eighteenth-century music, with a specialty in the musical, theological, and historical contexts of the compositions of J.S. Bach. Publications include Bach against Modernity (2023), Bach & God (2016), Lutheranism, anti-Judaism, and Bach's St. John Passion (1998), all from Oxford University Press, as well as articles in Harvard Theological Review, Lutheran Quarterly, and numerous other journals and general-audience media. Together with Daniel R. Melamed, he is the editor and translator of the web-based Texts and Historically-Informed Translations for the Music of J. S. Bach. Professor Marissen has a BA from Calvin College and a PhD from Brandeis.

bottom of page