Osvaldo Golijov's Pasión según San Marcos is the work of one who moves back and forth between different worlds and can scarcly be pigeonholed as representing a specific culture. His work unites the music of South America, Cuba, the West and Jewish tradition to produce an unconventional conception of a "Passion" in which Jesus is not a light-skinned European, but instead a person of colour.

Sofia Gubaidulina's response was a St John Passion, and subsequently she added a sequel, St John Easter, which was premiered in Hamburg in March 2002. Both those works originally had Russian words, drawn mostly from St John's Gospel and the Book of Revelation, but in 2006, prompted by conductor Helmuth Rilling, Gubaidulina collaborated on a German translation of the text, while also making revisions to the score itself.