Rihm: DEUS PASSUS, for soli, mixed choir (SATB) and orchestra

Wolfgang Rihm's work "Deus Passus: Passions-Stücke nach Lukas" was created as part of the Passion 2000 project on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of Johann Sebastian Bach's birth. In addition to Wolfgang Rihm, the International Bach Academy Stuttgart invited three other renowned composers from different cultural backgrounds - Sofia Gubaidulina (Russia), Tan Dun (China / USA) and Osvaldo Golijov (Argentina) - to understand Bach's Passion settings as an impulse and to set the tales of suffering according to the four evangelists to music in their own sound language.

It was Rihm's personal concern in Deus Passus not to dress the Passion account of the Evangelist Luke in music without reflection, but to deliberately position question marks at many points:

"It is not a faith that comes along on lead feet, it all arises from questions. They are only questions, and that is why I only touch the words very gently with my finger, with the music. It's all very vibrating and endangered. Of course one can do it differently, it has often been done differently, but I can't." (Wolfgang Rihm quoted after Riehl, 2009, p. 31)

The premiere took place on 29 August 2000 in the Liederhalle in Stuttgart. Under the direction of Helmut Rilling, Juliane Banse, iris Vermillion, Cornelia Kallisch, Christoph Prégardien as well as Andreas Schmid, the Bach-Collegium and the Gächinger Kantorei took part.