A Messiah to send Hippites rushing for the smelling salts ?

[ahinton]

Gradually also forms of branding and promotion would emerge. "Virtuoso X plays on brand Y instruments ...."

Indeed - and how. I remember years ago the Steinway artists list published by that manufacturer, which included such luminaries of the instrument as "Maurizio Pollino" and "Yonti Solomon". So much for "branding and promotion"!

And then there's Wayne Stuart pushing to get his 9 octove piano out there...

Lots of interesting points in your post; many thanks.

[Richard Barrett]

Perhaps there was even some form of dialogue between instrument makers and composers, or maybe between instrument makers and performers.

Of course JS Bach's relationships with instrument makers such as Silbermann (with whom he discussed and tried out the fortepianos and organs Silbermann was working on) are well-known, and others as with the wind instrument maker Eichentopf, who invented the "oboe da caccia" used in Bach's vocal music, can be reasonably inferred. In the 18th century (and to a somewhat lesser extent the 19th), composers and performers were very often the same people.

[vinteuil]

. In the 18th century (and to a somewhat lesser extent the 19th), composers and performers were very often the same people.

... and in the case of Clementi - piano maker, piano seller and promoter, composer, and performer.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Lots of interesting points in your post; many thanks.

I agree - summed up many issues succinctly; many thanks, Dave.

There are complex "networks" of relationships between people with different needs from instruments - and the parallel with i-Phones is illuminating (I think of the piano that used o be in Finchcock's museum, with all the Janissary instrument "apps" included. Useful, perhaps, in the Rondo a la Turk - otherwise ... no.)

And the same complex networks extend to performance/reception/composition matters, too, of course. There had been "HIPP"-style endeavours for decades - but these became widespread only from around the late '60s, when growing numbers of performers and listeners found increasing satisfaction with the "PP", which led many listeners and performers who preferred the practices of the previous generations reaching for the smelling salts. Some of them still do.

Barbirolli's recording was made at the end of an earlier performing practice, and it will join those of Boult and Sargent as important documents of the mid-20th Century way with Handel in Britain (and is important in showing that this "way" wasn't as "singular" as the word suggests - Boult and Sargent both recorded performances very different from each other - I suspect that Barbirolli's will add to future scholars' fuller understanding of the "Choral Society" tradition.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Are you suggesting that Tchaikovsky really wanted there to be a C flute with a low B flat? And once more what are the nonexistent instruments Bach wrote for?

Did I really say non-existent? I think not. But when composer writes for an instrument he never used elsewhere, and scholars still can't make up their minds about it, it does give food for thought.

[french frank]

In the 18th century (and to a somewhat lesser extent the 19th), composers and performers were very often the same people.

Isn't the same very often the case now as well (where the composers are still alive, of course)?

[vinteuil]

Did I really say non-existent? I think not. But when composer writes for an instrument he never used elsewhere, and scholars still can't make up their minds about it, it does give food for thought.

...ummm -


.

Composers don't write for nonexistent instruments.

.

Are you sure about that? Check the scoring of Bach's Brandenburgs, and you will find great difficulty in finding all the instruments.

.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Did I really say non-existent? I think not.

Well, you certainly implied it by quoting RB's "Composers don't write for nonexistent instruments" and responding "Are you sure about that?" in #50 - further suggesting that by "check[ing] the scoring of Bach's Brandenburgs " we would discover evidence that such (nonexistent) instruments were being written for. Your "are you sure about that?" doesn't really make sense if you didn't mean that there were non-existent instruments for which composers wrote.

But when composer writes for an instrument he never used elsewhere, and scholars still can't make up their minds about it, it does give food for thought.

The food in this case is little more than a peanut, though, isn't it? If a composer cites an instrument that doesn't exist in a work, but never does this elsewhere in his work, then it's more likely that his misidentified an unusual instrument (or was told the wrong name by the instruments' owner[s]) than that he suddenly had an attack of the vapours and decided on this one occasion to create a work requiring two imaginary woodwind-y instruments.

[Richard Barrett]

Isn't the same very often the case now as well (where the composers are still alive, of course)?

It is often the case, yes, but less often than in the past. Plenty of living composers are involved very seldom or not at all in performing, while in the 18th century such a thing would have been unknown.

Returning to nonexistent instruments, I think we've now established that JS Bach didn't write for such things. And if he wrote for instruments that were rare or given proprietary names by their makers he certainly didn't write for instruments that hadn't yet been invented.

[Richard Barrett]

a work requiring two imaginary woodwind-y instruments

... added to which it's known that when Bach wrote "flauto" he always meant a recorder of some kind; and in what pitch it was intended can (in this case) easily be worked out by looking at the parts and score. And indeed by looking at the score of the harpsichord concerto BWV 1057, where the two recorders play exactly the same parts as the Fourth Brandenburg and in whose score they're simply identified as "Fiauti a bec". Mystery pretty easily solved I think.

[ostuni]

Well yes, the recorder parts in BWV 1057 are almost identical to those in Brandenburg 4, but the whole piece is in F major (as opposed to B4's G); the G major version includes a few high F#s for fl1 which don't feature in any 18th-century recorder fingering chart that I know. That's not to say that B4 is unplayable on the standard treble recorder (I'm sure I'm not the only forumite to have played it that way), but it's unidiomatic, and explains why several players (including Pamela Thorby on the recent Dunedin recordings) use a G treble for this.

[ahinton]

It is often the case, yes, but less often than in the past. Plenty of living composers are involved very seldom or not at all in performing, while in the 18th century such a thing would have been unknown.

That's right; performing would tacitly have been regarded as the norm for composers from before the 18th century through to some way beyond the time of Beethoven, whereas in more recent times it's been pretty much the exception (except to the extent that one could include conducting as performing).

Returning to nonexistent instruments, I think we've now established that JS Bach didn't write for such things. And if he wrote for instruments that were rare or given proprietary names by their makers he certainly didn't write for instruments that hadn't yet been invented.

Indeed and, given especially that so much of Bach's work had to be performance ready in days more often than even weeks, it's no wonder at all that he didn't write for instruments that might have existed nowhere outside of his own nevertheless phenomenal imagination.

[ardcarp]

Returning to nonexistent instruments, I think we've now established that JS Bach didn't write for such things. And if he wrote for instruments that were rare or given proprietary names by their makers he certainly didn't write for instruments that hadn't yet been invented.

No, but he did write a bottom B (off the organ pedal board by one note) in the Grave section of the Fantasia in G, BWV 572. It is an octave leap downwards which makes perfect melodic sense, but which unfortunately isn't there. (You just have to repeat the same B again.)

So unlike Bach, the master craftsman. Either he got carried away...or some mystery instrument existed that we wot not of.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

Well, you certainly implied it by quoting RB's "Composers don't write for nonexistent instruments" and responding "Are you sure about that?" in #50 - further suggesting that by "check[ing] the scoring of Bach's Brandenburgs " we would discover evidence that such (nonexistent) instruments were being written for. Your "are you sure about that?" doesn't really make sense if you didn't mean that there were non-existent instruments for which composers wrote.


The food in this case is little more than a peanut, though, isn't it? If a composer cites an instrument that doesn't exist in a work, but never does this elsewhere in his work, then it's more likely that his misidentified an unusual instrument (or was told the wrong name by the instruments' owner[s]) than that he suddenly had an attack of the vapours and decided on this one occasion to create a work requiring two imaginary woodwind-y instruments.

Perhaps I should hoist the white flag at this point.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]