florida state university college of music performance practice

CHAPTER 7
SUMMARY, CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Summary
Chapter 1 functions as an introduction and outlines the purpose, procedures and
delimitations of this dissertation. The purpose of this study was to trace and document
the practices of conductors through the media-captured performances of the work, Passio
secundum Johannem, or more commonly known as the St. John Passion. The results
from the recordings were contextually enriched by the sociological and philosophical
currents in modern and contemporary society, the early music movement, Bach
scholarship and the reception history and origins of the St. John Passion.
Procedures for this study analyzed recordings to determine performing forces,
dynamics, ornamentation, articulation, rhythm and tempo/duration. Assessing such
criterion depends upon a methodology that inevitably includes subjective measurement.
While it is possible to obtain equipment through exorbitant costs, several cognition
specialists question even their accuracy. Such reservations have not diminished the
validity of such studies as demonstrated by several recent investigations that have served
as models for this dissertation.
Numerous parameters were placed in order to focus and manage the topic. First, a
temporal restriction of twenty-five years was selected that encompasses the years of 1982
to 2007. The years selected were by no means arbitrary, since 1981/82 represent the year
Joshua Rifkin challenged the scholarly community to think differently in regards to
Bach‟s performing forces. Of course, the year 2007 serves as the year this dissertation
commenced. Second, there is the technological restriction of only analyzing commercial
recordings that were in the media form of a compact disc or DVD recording to ensure a
recording quality of the highest caliber.
Bach‟s St. John Passion was chosen as the representative work not only due to
personal affinity for the work but to the fact that the work has enjoyed increased
popularity in regards to scholarship and performance in the last quarter of a century.
Additionally, its dramatic nature suggests that it would be an ideal candidate to draw
correlations between early music performances in the past twenty-five years and an
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