florida state university college of music performance practice

Wolfrum‟s score shows that the original instrumentation for the chorales is assigned as
colla parte (instrumental doubling). However, Wolfrum purposefully counters this when
he notates in blue pencil the chorale movements with the term a cappella. 309
English Performances in the Nineteenth Century
The popularity of Bach‟s Passions wasn‟t confined just to German territories.
England was also discovering its inherent drama as detailed in an 1832 advertisement that
announced the season performances of both Bach‟s passions billed for oratorio concerts
at the King‟s Theatre in London. 310 For unknown reasons those performances never came
to fruition but the advertisement does provide evidence that the English were aware of
their existence and were considering their revival contemporaneously alongside the
Germans. The fact that the English had such a keen idea of the German music scene
should come as no surprise. Richard Taruskin points out that Bach‟s best-known religious
pieces, referred to as part of his “Testaments,” were those that were similar to the
oratorios of the cosmopolitan composer George Frideric Handel. 311
Cross-fertilization of musical ideas, forms, and genres between German sovereign
states and England continued with Franz Joseph Haydn, who became smitten with
Handel‟s oratorio work and used it as a model for his own oratorios, The Creation of
1798 and The Seasons of 1801. 312 The next heir to the German and English musical
affaire de coeur was Felix Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn made several trips to England, the
first occurring in 1829. In 1846, he premiered his oratorio Elijah for the Birmingham
Music Festival. It is safe to assume that Mendelssohn‟s reverence for Bach and interest in
reviving his works proved very influential to the music circles in England. Is it mere
coincidence that after Mendelssohn‟s visits in England there was an upsurge of activity in
reviving the works of Bach?
The England Bach Society, founded in 1849, performed an English translation of
the St. Matthew Passion in 1854. 313 The first English version of the St. John Passion was
published by Novello in 1872 with the first English performance, admittedly with several
309 Leaver, “The Revival of the St. John Passion,” 24.
310 Leaver, “The Revival of the St. John Passion,” 16.
311 Taruskin, The Early Twentieth Century, 375.
312 Taruskin, “The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” 385.
313 Leaver, “The Revival of the St. John Passion,” 16.
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