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Good morning. It was going to be a big moment in music history. Suddenly, at the very last minute, the venue had to be switched, the musicians required an extra room, and the harpsichord needed emergency repairs. Yet somehow, on Good Friday 1724, the 39 year old Johann Sebastian Bach got his St John Passion to its first performance in St Nicholas Church, Leipzig. To commemorate that three hundredth anniversary, Radio 3 will be broadcasting a live performance of the work at 2 o’clock today, from the Bridgewater Hall, just a short ride, on one of Manchester iconic yellow trams, from the �鶹�� studios here in Salford. Yet the work listeners will enjoy this afternoon is not that first heard in Leipzig. Bach went back to it again and again over the next 25 years. The version now popularised was never performed in his lifetime. Bach had a tremendous output rate. It could only have been sustainable by the fact that he was willing to sign off work that he knew was not perfect. Earlier this week I was speaking in the first debate on a Bill that has come from the Commons to the House of Lords. It’s a good Bill, one I hope will be passed into law. But it will benefit from further work, to clarify and amend it where necessary. Most of the time, governments accept that the greater depth of attention and scrutiny we are able to offer in the second chamber, free from any party holding a majority, leads to better legislation. Today, Good Friday, Christians celebrate that getting things wrong, even badly and culpably wrong, is not the end of the story. To fall short is part of the human condition. Jesus’s death on the cross is the ultimate assurance that God’s love for each of us runs so deep, and is so unshakable, that no human crime, even that of killing God’s own son, is beyond forgiveness. Over and again I’ve found that assurance liberating. It allows me to go on trying my best, being far from perfect, yet seeking to be ready to own up when I recognise I’ve got things wrong. I strive to take to heart my favourite quote from Martin Luther, the founder of the Protestant Reformation, who famously said, “If you must sin, sin boldly!” Bach, whose work was first performed in a Lutheran Church, may or may not have known those words, but the boldness that underlies his approach to his St John’s Passion may well be why it remains a stalwart of Holy Week and Easter music, 300 years on from its premiere.