In the fall of 1820, an eleven-year-old little Jewish lad sat at the piano of a harmony class far beyond one of his years, in the Singakademie in Berlin. They were studying, by way of illustration, a simple little chorale from a forgotten work by an obscure German master, namely “Befiel du deine Wege” from the Saint Matthew Passion of Johann Sebastian Bach. The little fellow, moved deeply by the music and the words, began to sing, too, with all his heart, along with the rest of the class. After they were through, a student nudged his neighbor and said loudly enough for them all to hear, “How appropriate! The little Jew kid raises his voice to the Savior, too!” They all laughed. Even the teacher smiled. But the little black-haired Jew, Felix Mendelssohn, ran all the way home and sobbed out his story to his father and declared that he would never go back there. The next day father [Abraham] Mendelssohn did what he had had in mind to do for some time. He took his boy over to the Lutheran church and had him baptized. One need not add that the baptism was one of expediency. But for little Felix, the words and the music of the chorale they had sung that day, had just begun their work. Three years later he was instructed and confirmed by the Reverend Mr. Wilmsen. Bach and his Saint Matthew Passion chorale had converted Felix Mendelssohn.
It was about the time of his confirmation that he got hold of a complete copy of the [Saint Matthew] Passion, and before many days he knew the whole masterpiece by heart. Bach became his ideal, the epitome of everything that was great and noble, musically and spiritually. Young though he was, he played Bach, dreamed Bach, and preached Bach in an age that knew the master but little and loved him less. When Mendelssohn was twenty years old and was already internationally famous, a taunting reference to Bach as a dry and mathematical contrapuntalist made young Felix resolve to revive the Saint Matthew Passion and show the world how little it knew about the master.
The first rendition [of the Saint Matthew Passion] was on March 11, 1829, exactly a century after Bach had presented it...and was the first performance by anyone outside of Bach himself. Ten days later, on Bach’s own birthday, the oratorio was given again to a packed auditorium. ... “The auditorium was like a church; the deepest quiet and the most solemn devotion prevailed...”
Thus Bach’s immortal “Passion” and with it Bach himself, after a hundred years, was restored to the world by the Jewish lad whom he had won with his chorale. It was the same Mendelssohn who...wrote “Saint Paul,” using exclusively the Bible and his chorale-book after the manner of Bach. Mendelssohn, too, knew his Bible well and followed it implicitly, saying, “The Bible is always the best of all.”
It was Mendelssohn’s tremendous revival of Bach that led to the formation of the Bach Gesellschaft and its gradual and epoch-making publication of Bach’s works.
Johann Sebastian Bach