florida state university college of music performance practice

the dramatic chorale text are lost if they are not expressively performed and relayed to
their intended audience. Recordings analyzed in this study demonstrate both practices of
objective presentations and highly emotional interpretations that bring to life particular
words and phrases.
Examples of this are demonstrated in the chorale “Petrus, der nicht denkt zurück.
There were many conductors such as Schreier (1989), Weyand (1990), Ericson (1993),
Noll (1997), Daus (1999), Smith (1999), Neumann (1999), Leusink (2001) and
Hempfling (2004) who did little to highlight particular words or phrases with expression
such as contrasting dynamics or tempo. On the other hand, Gardiner (1986) demonstrates
conspicuous crescendi and decrescendi within individual phrases. Conductors including
Guttenberg (1991) and Fasolis (1998) demonstrate subito forte and accelerando at the
beginning of the phrase “Jesu, blicke mich auch an” (Jesus, also look on me) then softer
at “Rühre mein Gewissen!” (Stir my inner conscience.).
Additionally, another contributing factor in how fast or slow the chorales were
performed relates to the conductor‟s philosophy regarding how long to hold the fermatas
written in Bach‟s chorales. David Schildkret advances the theory that fermatas in
chorales were initially logistic in nature serving even in Bach‟s day as a convention to
help aid the singer match the text underlay with the musical notes in chorale books,
which usually had many strophes. 386 Schildkret goes on to explain that this logistical
practice was already customary by the time Bach began his compositional career so that it
was more a habitual tradition to add the fermatas than their conveying a musical function.
Another popular theory that has circulated are that fermatas that land on half cadences
should be held just slightly while those that exhibit the strong harmonic function of
dominant to tonic should be held longer. In the end, it is difficult to categorically say the
exact function fermatas served in chorales. However, the recordings explored in this
study demonstrate a variety of interpretations in the execution of fermatas.
386 David Schildkret, “Toward a Correct Performance of Fermatas in Bach‟s Chorales,” Bach: Journal of
the Riemenschneider Bach Institute 19.1 (1988): 23-24.
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