The Brockes Passion, or Der für die Sünde der Welt gemarterte und sterbende Jesus is a German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 oratorio

Oratorio

An oratorio is a large musical composition including an orchestra, a choir, and soloists. Like an opera, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias...

 libretto

Libretto

A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...

 by Barthold Heinrich Brockes

Barthold Heinrich Brockes

Barthold Heinrich Brockes was a German poet.He was born at Hamburg and educated at the Gelehrtenschule des Johanneums. He studied jurisprudence at Halle, and after extensive travels in Italy, France and the Netherlands, settled in Hamburg in 1704...

, first published in 1712 and going through 30 or so editions in the next 15 years.

The most famous musical setting of Brockes' text is that by George Frideric Handel

George Frideric Handel

George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...

, HWV 48. Not much is known about this early work, a passion oratorio much like J.S. Bach's more famous St Matthew Passion and St John Passion. Handel composed the work sometime in 1715-1716 and probably premiered it in Hamburg

Hamburg

-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

, possibly as late as 1719.

Other composers who set this text are Reinhard Keiser

Reinhard Keiser

Reinhard Keiser was a popular German opera composer based in Hamburg. He wrote over a hundred operas, and in 1745 Johann Adolph Scheibe considered him an equal to Johann Kuhnau, George Frideric Handel and Georg Philipp Telemann , but his work was largely forgotten for many...

 (1712), Georg Philipp Telemann

Georg Philipp Telemann

Georg Philipp Telemann was a German Baroque composer and multi-instrumentalist. Almost completely self-taught in music, he became a composer against his family's wishes. After studying in Magdeburg, Zellerfeld, and Hildesheim, Telemann entered the University of Leipzig to study law, but eventually...

 (1716), Johann Mattheson

Johann Mattheson

Johann Mattheson was a German composer, writer, lexicographer, diplomat and music theorist.Mattheson was born and died in Hamburg. He was a close friend of George Frideric Handel, although he nearly killed him in a sudden quarrel, during a performance of Mattheson's opera Cleopatra in 1704...

 (1718), Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel

Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel

Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel was a prolific German composer.-Biography:Stölzel grew up in Schwarzenberg, Saxony in the Erzgebirge. From 1707 he was a student of theology in Leipzig, and of Melchior Hofmann, the musical director of the Neukirche. He studied, worked and composed in Breslau and Halle...

 (1725), Johann Friedrich Fasch

Johann Friedrich Fasch

Johann Friedrich Fasch was a German violinist and composer.Fasch was born in Buttelstedt, was a choirboy in Weissenfels and studied under Johann Kuhnau at the famous St. Thomas School in Leipzig and later founded a Collegium Musicum in that city...

 (1723) and several others.

External links

• Score of Brockes Passion (ed. Friedrich Chrysander
  Friedrich Chrysander
  Karl Franz Friedrich Chrysander was a German music historian and critic, whose edition of the works of George Frideric Handel and authoritative writings on many other composers established him as a pioneer of 19th-century musicology.Born at Lübtheen, in Mecklenburg-Schwerin, Chrysander was the son...
  
  , Leipzig 1863)