Bach's masterpiece, the St. Matthew Passion, in a Dutch translation. The German version needs no introduction, it is loved nowhere as much as in the Netherlands, as evidenced by the many concerts that take place in our country every year in March and April. With this Dutch edition, the work has been made more accessible to a wide audience and possibly even more people will be touched by Bach's masterful music and the story of Jesus Christ and his voluntary surrender to suffering and death, which is expressed in it. In response to the request and the assignment that resulted from it, I set to work on an exciting piece of work, which would take about two and a half years. As a child, I grew up with the St. Matthew Passion, my mother was an alto in the Bach choir and practiced her parts while doing daily housework, my four brothers sang in the boys' choir. 'The brothers with the white blouses on' would become the opening line of the poem 'Expectation' that I would write about this years later. The St. Matthew Passion came to me with milk and cod liver oil, was part of my upbringing, was familiar from my youth, and in this translation I could become friends with it again, although the name was now in Dutch: St. Matthew Passion. I completed the text in 2010, the year my mother died. I dedicate the text to her with love.
Apeldoorn, December 8, 2010
Ria Borkent