florida state university college of music performance practice

parts as the “B” parts in his Kritischer Bericht. 235 The next reference to the St. John is
found in the inventory catalogue of the Berliner Singakademie compiled by S.W. Dehn
prior to 1854. 236 It is highly likely they were in the library of the Berliner Singakademie
long before 1854 because on May 15, 1815 Carl Friedrich Zelter began rehearsing the St.
John Passion with the Singakademie. 237 In 1854-55, the Berlin Royal Library acquired
the parts and now today they are kept at the Berliner Staatsbibliothek. 238
It is important enough to point out that to untangle the quagmire of the various
parts, autograph corrections, insertions, deletions, restorations of previously deleted parts
involved in the multiple versions of the St. John Passion much is owed to the
indispensable work of Arthur Mendel‟s editing of the St. John Passion for the Neue
Bach-Ausgabe. Prior to this, there was the edited score in the Bachgesellschaft by
Wilhelm Rust who relied heavily on the haphazard chronology developed by Philipp
Spitta. 239
Between the publishing of the two editions only one additional part has been
discovered, identified as Peter/Pilate, B19 z in the Neue Bach Ausgabe, that now only
exists in photostatic form due to the original copy being lost in the events during or after
World War II. 240 Mendel‟s conclusions concerning the various extant manuscript sources
of the St. John Passion are drastically different from Spitta and Rust. The crux for
Mendel‟s research lies in the evidence presented by Dürr and Dadeslon that
revolutionized the chronology of Bach‟s works, which cast doubt on the previous datings
of the surviving sources of the St. John Passion as well as the evidence left by the
sources.
Mendel‟s research highlights that most of the surviving parts predate the only
extant original score, which in areas shows Bach‟s own handwriting as well as other
copyists. There is also the thorny issue that there are discrepancies between the surviving
score and parts. The original score is usually referred to as either Source A or Score
235 Helmut J. Roehrig, “The St. John Passion by J.S. Bach in the light of the Neue Bach-Ausgabe edition
1973: a conductor‟s analysis in preparation for a performance.” PhD diss., Indiana University, 1981, 5.
236 Ibid.
237 Ibid.
238 Ibid.
239 Ibid.
240 Ibid.
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