florida state university college of music performance practice

Interestingly enough Wolle‟s conducting tempi were reported to be fast. While there are
no specific accounts concerning his tempos being fast in this particular 1888 concert
there were reports of his fast tempi in a concert featuring Handel‟s Messiah. Of particular
interest to this dissertation is a 1905 review from a music critic of the Cincinnati Times-
Star who observed Wolle conducting the St. John Passion in 1905, celebrating the fifth
Bethlehem Bach Festival: “In the choral numbers the tempos were startling and radically
rapid, but through this means considerably enhanced the effective character of the text.
The chorus, “Crucify, Crucify,” was sung as a veritable outburst of mob passion, and
“We have a law” in the same dramatic manner.” 327 This account contradicts the accepted
belief that tempos prior to the mid-twentieth century were dreadfully slow. Returning to
that first 1888 performance of the St. John Passion recalls the striking fact that the role of
the Evangelist was not sung but rather was read in expressive narratives by a local
Moravian minister named Rev. Edwin Gottlieb Klosè. 328
Performances in the Twentieth Century
Discovering and reconstructing performances in the Twentieth Century has as an
added luxury the dawn of the recording era that has captured and preserved many of these
performances. Despite this added technology, the St. John Passion still seemed to be
plagued with the judgment of “inferiority” compared to other works of Bach. Teri Noel
Towe points out that of the three large-scale vocal works of Bach, the St. John Passion
was last to have a complete recording made. 329 However, of these few early recordings,
one in particular focused on the rarely performed Bass aria, “Himmel reiße” from the
1725 version. 330 Rarer still is the fact that the chorale melody intoned in this movement
featured one soprano rather than the soprano section. 331
Towe‟s account of the few recordings made prior to 1950 indicates how off the
radar this dramatic work must have been. Of the rare recordings made most of them
featured abridged versions of the extensive choruses “Herr, unser Herrscher” and “Ruht
327 Leaver, “The Revival of the St. John Passion,” 27.
328 Leaver, “The Revival of the St. John Passion,” 28.
329 Teri Noel Towe, “St. John Passion,” in Choral Music on Record. Alan Blyth, ed. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991), 11.
330 Ibid.
331 Ibid.
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