florida state university college of music performance practice

is now regarded as one of the most basic of reference tools for Bach research, Wolfgang
Schmeider‟s labeling and identification of Bach‟s compositions with BWV numbers
found in the extensive title, Thematisch-systematisches Verzeichnis der musikalischen
Werke von Johann Sebastian Bach: Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (BWV). A subsequent
second edition was published in 1990.
The year 1950 also launched the ambitious idea to begin a subsequent edition to
replace and update the Bach-Gesellschaft. The first volumes of the Neue Bach-Ausgabe
began to be published in 1954 and just this past year in 2007, the project was finally
completed. These volumes boasted critical and scholarly “urtext” editions complete with
user-friendly modern clefs. Throughout the project‟s history at least three important
achievements were attained: one, the discovery of spurious works that had been
previously believed to be composed by Bach; two, the rediscovery of many lost
compositions; and three, a new understanding of the compositional chronology of Bach.
Scholars Dürr and Dadelson discovered that the majority of Bach‟s 150 religious
compositions composed in Leipzig were actually written within the first five years of
Bach‟s tenure in Leipzig. The amended chronology of Bach‟s compositions had
repercussions on the Romantic image of Bach as the fervent and devoted religious
composer who spent all of his life in the service to the church writing religious music.
Recordings in the 1960s and 1970s started to reflect decades of prior research in
which smaller performing forces were promoted. For example, Willcocks‟ and Dart‟s
1960 recording of the St. John Passion with 29 singers and 24 instrumentalists, and
Nikolaus Harnoncourt‟s 1968 B minor Mass demonstrated lighter textures and historical
instruments. Lastly, Harnoncourt and Leonhardt launched a groundbreaking venture in
1971 to record all of Bach‟s cantatas. The cantata project, which was officially
completed in 1989, boasted recordings steeped in performance practice and featured an
all-male choir.
American musicologist and performer Joshua Rifkin set off a firestorm of
controversy at a November 1981 American Musicological Society meeting when he
proposed that most of Bach‟s concerted works were originally performed with an
ensemble no larger than a quartet. Obviously this stunned the conservative scholarly
community that had only recently come to terms with reduced vocal forces of about a
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