![]() Positiv organs were sometimes found in a private house or a palace chamber, but also in churches and church rehearsal rooms. None of these organs still exists, but we do have some idea of what was considered an average small organ at the time. Paul's in Leipzig when he accompanied the eight-part motet Der Geist hilft unsre Schwachheit auf (BWV 226) in 1729.9 Michael's in Lüneburg, where Bach went to study in 1700.7 In Leipzig there was a harpsichord and a small organ in an auditorium adjacent to the Cantor's office in the Thomasschule,8 and Bach used a small organ built in 1628 and tuned to choir pitch at St. There was a four-stop organ as well as a regal at St. The first question to ask, then, is: what instruments were being used for continuo playing in Bach's time? It might surprise many to learn that there is very little evidence of box-shaped portable organs6 resembling our continuo organs in use in Central Germany in the eighteenth century. Among the groups that are currently recording Bach under the umbrella of historically informed performance, not one can claim to be truly faithful to the total body of historical literature on the sonority of Bach's keyboard continuo. In fact the debate quickly degenerated into the essentially unimportant and uninteresting argument of whether to use organ or harpsichord in Bach's vocal works.5 Once the dust settled over this question however, few musicians felt compelled to look much further into the matter. Yet the full extent to which the chosen keyboard instrument can influence the total sonority of a work was given little attention. Early on in the revival of historical performance practices, it was recognized that a keyboard instrument was needed to reinforce the bass and fill out the harmony in Bach's music. The same can be said of the situation with Bach's keyboard continuo instruments. This state has largely been caused by a simple deflection: the mere recognition of a larger truth (e.g., Bach played the harpsichord and not the modern piano) has sometimes been sufficient distraction to urge us down a side-winding path toward the most convenient solutions. And it has only been in very recent years that the not unimportant role played by the early German piano in Bach's late life has come to be appreciated and explored. For example, a generation of harpsichordists played Bach on their copies of late eighteenth-century French harpsichords before recognizing that the eighteenth-century German harpsichord was a different animal altogether-indeed, one that has yet to be fully revived. While many such pursuits have taught us much about the music's genesis and relevance, sometimes the result has been an enthusiasm-induced myopia that has kept us from seeing the true possibilities. ![]() ![]() One defining characteristic of late twentieth- and early twenty-first century musical culture has certainly been a devotion to the reconstruction of the performance traditions of the past.1 Defunct instruments like the viola pomposa have been eagerly researched, and their historical playing technique scrupulously recreated.2 Everything from the proportions of Bach's fingers3 to the cost of his candles4 has been examined in an attempt to understand the atmosphere and circumstances in which his music was made.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |