florida state university college of music performance practice

Version 4, which is believed to have been written around 1749, demonstrates the
final version of the St. John Passion. This version is almost identical to the 1724 version
except that in several places Bach shows several decades of compositional maturity by
enhancing this version with more embellishments and additional notes to fill out intervals
for fuller harmonies. Bach does keep movement 33 with the St. Matthew text and in its
augmented state that hails from 1725 version. Several additional parts were added to the
version that has scholars guessing if it was Bach merely augmenting the instrumentation
for this version alone or if it was to supplant older parts.
Toward the end of the 1730s Bach began to replace the original score identified as
Score X, with a new copy that is designated as Score A. The score was left into two
sections. The first section begins in bar one of the first movement and ends in bar 42 of
the tenth movement. This section is modeled after versions 1 and 4 but with several
changes. Section 2 was not written in Bach‟s hand but rather a copy of the lost original
score identifies it as score X. It is not known exactly why Bach never finished this score.
Many feel that the 1739 incident where the Council served an injunction that Bach could
not perform the Passion music scheduled for a week later as the reason Bach never
finished this new version.
While history records Felix Mendelssohn‟s close affinity to Bach‟s St. Matthew
Passion, Robert Schumann was equally infatuated with the St. John Passion. After many
years of analyzing the work, Schumann began to make several changes to the score to
reflect contemporary taste. On Palm Sunday of 1851, Schumann performed the work for
the first time. The hallmarks of this version incorporate the piano in the continuo part,
many modern instruments, thicker orchestration and larger performing forces. Several
movements were deleted based on making the work shorter and because certain soloists
found several movements too difficult. In some areas, Schumann changed keys to suit his
personal taste.
Chapter 5 traces the reception and practices of past performances of the St. John
Passion. The chapter begins with what is known regarding Bach‟s own performances of
the St. John Passion. While the actual number of singers remains somewhat a contentious
issue among many, there is a consensus that Bach‟s choir consisted of all males. In regard
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