Top speed and weird opening of RR 8.1.22

[Bryn]

So, to sum up, it's a work which its composer performed with numerous people still living, only half a century ago, a recording of parts of it was released with many of those original participants (which few of them seem at all happy with), and there's still no agreement as to how it should be performed now! But, as I was saying, it seems axiomatic that the best way to proceed is to collect together as much as possible of the available information about how it was performed then, and use that information in what you as an interpreter think is the most appropriate way. (That's what I tried to do when directing paragraphs 2, 3, 6 and 7 in Novi Sad in 2016.) And if you're going to reject any of the knowledge at your disposal you have to have a good reason for doing so. As for Paragraph 2, only performing part of it is I guess a pragmatic solution to fitting it into a concert programme, but it won't have the sense of struggle as everyone has to sing higher and higher while making themselves heard against all the drums.

Indeed, one of the arguments put forward for truncating the performance of Paragraph 2 was that the singers would be too exhausted to go on to perform Paragraph 3, though I do not recall that being a problem in 1984. There again, I was drumming, not singing, in Paragraph 2, on both occasions. I'm reminded of the decision regarding whether to use a cough-free rehearsal take to patch the closing pages of the HCMF performance of Feldman's For Philip Guston for the Atopos recording. The performers decided that the rehearsal take showed them too fresh following over 4 hours of playing, so Carla's cough, from which she was suffering at the time, does punctuate the close, somewhat.

[silvestrione]

Exactly! 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.

But 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.

edit: more likely Christoph Wolff, as that is the biography in our local Library, not the Williams!

[RichardB]

But 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.

The 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.

[silvestrione]

The 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.

Ah yes, thanks for that.