florida state university college of music performance practice

the majority of recordings (34%), who list their roster. The majority of recordings employ
an orchestra of 21-25 members, slightly larger than the majority of listed vocal forces of
10-19 voices. A great number of these recordings demonstrate heterogeneous mixing of
modern and historical reproductions of historic instruments. Nevertheless, there are those
few recordings, which proudly list the provenance of either their true historic instrument
or they list the attribution to which the instrument was modeled after. This point is
demonstrated in the recordings of Kenneth Slowik (1989) and Nikolaus Harnoncourt
(1993) who meticulously list the instrument‟s origin. To counterbalance this preference
for genuinely authentic instruments or at least replicas of historic instruments there are
instruments used by conductors that are uniquely artificial to Bach‟s time. The most
obvious example of this is Craig Smith‟s 1999 recording that features the flugelhorn in
several areas to help blend the voices. Of course there is Hermann Max‟s 2006 recording
of Robert Schumann‟s arrangement of Bach‟s St. John Passion that features the modern
instruments and specifically unique to this version, the pianoforte and trumpets.
The topic of tempo has monopolized performance practice discussions for the
majority of the past quarter of a century. Performances characterized as Historically
Informed have been described as faster than those that are not attuned to performance
practice. However, recent studies question the validity of such assertions. Furthermore,
several writers suggest that performances are becoming more expressive and slower. In
the thirty-eight recordings obtained for this study, the evidence cannot substantiate such
claims. While a few movements may show trends in either becoming slower or faster
overall the evidence does not support the idea that recordings are becoming either slower
or faster. What can be surmised by the available evidence regarding tempo is that there
was closer uniformity in the choruses of the St. John Passion while the chorales showed a
remarkable divergence in recorded duration times. What can be inferred by this fact is
that conductors employed more expressive license in the chorales perhaps as an attempt
to draw closer attention to the moralizing and didactic poetry found within. Another
stereotypical belief is that interpretations of German conductors are slower than other
nationalities but based on the evidence in this study that assertion is also false. German
conductors consistently were represented in the top three fastest and slowest
interpretations of movements within the St. John Passion.
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