florida state university college of music performance practice

upcoming Good Friday service scheduled a week later on the 27, th due to the Council‟s
objections over the text. However, perhaps this is a story that overly romanticizes Bach‟s
struggles and lays all the blame on the Church and Council officials when perhaps, as
Dürr points out, it was also a matter of running out of time to complete the score and
instead either use an older set of parts, perform a different work altogether, or the least
likely scenario- perform no Passion at all. 279
Schumann edition 1851
Whereas Felix Mendelssohn is closely associated to the St. Matthew Passion,
Robert Schumann early on recognized and championed the St. John Passion as a
masterpiece. After several years of becoming acquainted with the work through score
analysis, he was so captivated by it that he wanted it to be included in his first season as
director of music of Düsseldorf in 1850. 280 After carefully “modernizing” the score to
reflect the current performance taste as well as instruments available to him, Schumann
performed the St. John Passion on Palm Sunday, April 13, 1851.
Schumann‟s 1831 Trautwein score used in his 1851 Düsseldorf performance still
survives with Schumann‟s indications concerning matters of ensemble, dynamics and
articulation. Various movements were deleted based on reasons such as soloists finding
the movements too difficult, inappropriate for their voice, or not being able to substitute
modern instruments for the nearly obsolete historical instruments in the Baroque. What
movements were deleted is somewhat unclear. In the textbook copy of the Düsseldorf
performance housed in the Robert Schumann Haus in Zwickau, five movements after the
Evangelist‟s recitative about Christ bowing his head and dying known as Und neiget das
Haupt, movement 31 in the NBA, are missing. The copy then picks back up with the
Chorale, O hilf, Christe, Gottes Sohn (O help, Christ, Son of God). Schumann lowered
this chorale a semi-tone either because of the high tessitura or to plan a smoother flow of
key scheme. 281 Part of the deleted scenes would be the athletic recitative concerning the
ripping of the temple veil known as movement 33. A concert review in the Rheinische
279 Dürr, Johann Sebastian Bach’s St. John Passion, 11.
280 Hermann Max. “Notes on the Performance of Bach‟s St. John Passion in the version by Robert
Schumann (1851).” Liner notes. JS Bach/ arr. Robert Schumann Johannes-Passion. CPO, 2006.
281 Ibid.
57