Originally posted by RichardB
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Top speed and weird opening of RR 8.1.22
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Originally posted by RichardB View PostExactly! In terms of the actual notes that Bach wrote, there isn't any division into "solo" and "choir" and there's no need to add one. Most performances of Bach's vocal ensemble music these days are based on a choral tradition which doesn't have any relation to the conditions Bach was working in, and we can't say "but Bach would have wanted..." because in his "Entwurff einer wohlbestallten Kirchen Music" of 1730 he tells us exactly what he wanted, which corresponds to one voice per part. Performing this music with a chorus is like performing Beethoven string quartets with a string orchestra - which of course has been done, and is not uninteresting.
edit: more likely Christoph Wolff, as that is the biography in our local Library, not the Williams!Last edited by silvestrione; 21-01-22, 18:13.
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Originally posted by silvestrione View PostBut in the Williams biography (which I returned to the library some time ago so can't look up again at the moment) he clearly quotes from a document Bach wrote for local employers/performers in which he says four, or was it five. voices per part was ideal.
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Originally posted by RichardB View PostThe relevant passage from Bach's Entwurff... reads as follows: "Every musical Choir should contain at least 3 Sopranos, 3 Altos, 3 Tenors, and as many basses, so that even if one happens to fall ill (as very often happens, particularly at this time of year, as the prescriptions written by the school Physician for the Apothecary must show) at least a double-chorus motet may be sung." As Andrew Parrott and Joshua Rifkin have both pointed out, neither here nor anywhere else in Bach's text is there any mention of the vocal ensembles he used or thought necessary for performances of his cantatas or Passion settings, and therefore it can't be used as evidence where that question is concerned. I was mistaken in referring to this text of Bach's in my previous post; it's a while since I reviewed the scholarship on this question! - but Andrew Parrott's The Essential Bach Choir is essential reading for anyone who wishes to get to the bottom of it.
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