florida state university college of music performance practice

Beringer (1997) held out the last note considerably longer than his cohorts to add an
additional element of gravitas to the movement.
Milnes‟s (1996) recording of this movement is at such a fast tempo that it adds an
element of fury to the turba. So it comes as no surprise that his interpretation has the
shortest duration at 0:49. Second is Dutch conductor Koopman (1993) at 0:52 followed
by the third fastest, German conductor Max (1990) at 0:53. German conductor Weyand
(1990) has the distinction of being the slowest, recorded at 1:04 while Harnoncourt
(1993) and Rilling both performed this movement at 1:01.
23 f Wir haben keinen König (Chorus)
This short, four-bar chorus in B minor has the high priests responding to Pilate‟s
question “Shall I crucify your King?” with “We have no King but Ceaser.” 426
Interpretively, conductors demonstrated variety when approaching this brief chorus.
While the majority of conductors performed this chorus at a consistent full dynamic level,
there were several who chose to perform this chorus softly throughout. Further dynamic
diversity is present through several recordings (i.e. Harnoncourt (1985, 1993), Milnes
(1996), Beringer (1997) and Noll (1997) that begin soft and crescendos to the end. Lastly,
conductors Schreier (1988) and Herreweghe (2001) performed the first “wir” soft and
then contrastingly sang the second “wir” loud.
The single ornamental trill located in measure 78 was executed by every
conductor. The intial chorus entrance of “wir” was performed either with tone and decay
(the majority of conductors chose this option) or singing the quarter note at its fullest
value as demonstrated by conductors like Rilling (1996), Fasolis (1998), Güttler (1998)
and Neumann (1999). Thse choices were also exercised in the last word, “Kaiser”
followed by the last quarter note in the orchestra.
It would seem, based on how short this chorus is, that there would be less variety
in tempo and duration. Based on graph analysis of the twenty-five years studied, the
evidence does show a consistency in results around the first decade. However, after 1994,
the results show more diversity in the recordings of this particular movement. The fastest
recording comes from American Milnes (1996) at 0:07 followed by Austrian conductor
426 Translations are from Dürr, Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. John Passion, 158-159.
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