florida state university college of music performance practice

audience. 365 He continues that romanticism accepts an attitude of anachronism in which
the road to actualization, the performance, is fashioned so that expressive elements are
chosen above consideration of performance practice of any given era. 366
In contrast, melodic phrases in the Baroque tend to be inherently more complex in
nature due the fact they are ordinarily saturated with “twists and turns.” 367 The basic
structure of the Baroque phrase is smaller than the Romantic phrase in that its structural
component is smaller, often based on motifs rather than long arching phrases. Bruce
Haynes conveys that these motifs or units were derivatives of seventeenth-century
embellishments and diminutions that a performer would spontaneously improvise. 368
Figures once improvised became so popular that they became formulaic in the process of
composition and became closely associated with rhetorical oration. These musical
rhetorical figures were the vehicles of expressiveness for composers in the Baroque era.
Before movements within the St. John Passion are explored for the presence or
lack of expressive elements, each will be introduced to provide a brief but necessary
background in each topic. Artistic decisions regarding tempo, dynamics, rhythm,
articulation, ornamentation and pitch all contribute to the realization of an expressive
performance.
Tempo
It is often perceived that performances fashioned in romantic ideology are slower
and those that ascribe to historically informed performances are quicker. However, José
Bowen‟s analysis of recordings showed that there was “no overall trend to faster or
slower tempo”; rather, he found in some works they became faster, some became slower
and in some works, the average tempo did not change as time progressed. 369 Fabian lists
several studies that reject the idea that modern performers play faster than previous
generations. Robert Philip analyzed recordings made in the 1920s to 1950s and found
many examples where the earlier version was actually faster than the later interpretation.
365
Kevin Bazzana, Glenn Gould – The Performer in the Work: A Study in Performance Practice. (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1997), 52.
366
Bazzana, Glenn Gould – The Performer in the Work, 52.
367
Haynes, The End of Early Music, 186.
368
Ibid.
369
José Bowen, “Tempo, Duration and Flexibility: Techniques in the Analysis of Performance,” Journal of
Musicological Research 16, 1996, 114.
95