At 2:19 PM -0400 9/4/05, David W. Fenton wrote:
But I don't play Bach -- for one, he wrote not a whole lot of music for gamba, and what he did write is *very* hard (I am reluctantly concluding that Bach didn't know the gamba very well, because the gamba sonatas really aren't like other advanced gamba music, especially the French, in that they aren't terribly idiomatic, requiring extreme high positions on more than the top string, as well as having bowings that are different (and non-graceful) from any other gamba repertory I've seen).
Perhaps not entirely fair to Bach (who did own a gamba according to the inventory taken at his death, if I remember correctly), although I admit that I've never worked up the sonatas. What you're saying is that Bach did not write music like the French composers of his time, which is quite correct and not at all surprising! Chances are fairly good that he wrote the sonatas for his friend, Abel, at Köthen, and it's probably more likely than not that it was Abel who acquainted Sebastian with the new developments at the French court, including the adoption of the 7-string bass, and may even have been invited to Leipzig to play the first performances of the St. Matthew Passion. (All this is speculation on my part, of course, but at least informed speculation.) Certainly the obbligato in No. 58 of the St. John Passion is not un-idiomatic, and the fact that it calls for notes above the frets on at least the top two strings seems rather irrelevant. I've never played the part in Actus Tragicus, so I can't comment on that. And the two gamba parts in Brandenburg 6 are certainly not virtuoso parts, with the 2nd part very likely written for the Prince. As to bowings, do we know for sure what Bach's bowings were? Is there an autograph? I really can't remember.
Oh, and I agree completely that gut strings are much more important than pitch level for getting the silvery sound on violins that is so lovely.
But that's precisely why 415 is nonsense -- it offers a single solution to a problem that requires multiple pitches. As I said, it's a pragmatic compromise, just like equal temperament. But it has no historical authority as *the* pitch for playing early music (i.e., music before c. 1840).
And I doubt that anyone would claim such authority! Of course it's a compromise, just as the various temperaments including ET are, just as the average harpsichordist can't have a different instrument for each repertoire, just as standardizing recorders and other woodwinds as being in C and F, just as many things are compromised for practical reasons. And one of the most practical is that we don't sit in one place and play music with one set of people using one tuning and one pitch and one temperament. Modern musicians are portable, and require instruments that can be used equally well in different locations for music from different countries and centuries, so compromises are inevitable and necessary. But just because they are compromises doesn't make them fraudulent!
One of the most pitch-dependent instruments is the 18th century oboe. Oboes at 415 sound baroque. Oboes at 440 don't. But all that really means is that we have LEARNED to think of the tone quality of oboes at 415 as being "baroque," even though we know perfectly well that there was no standard pitch. I wonder whether Bach's tiefe Kammerton wasn't closer to 415 than to 440.
I don't know whether you're familiar with the Harnoncourt series of recordings of Bach's cantatas and oratorios, but the boys who recorded the first album (the St. John Passion, and I can't remember whether it was the Kings College boys or the Wiener Knabenchor) sang consistently sharp on the opening chorus, as if they had not adjusted to 415 yet, or perhaps had not even rehearsed at 415. Muscle memory is pretty powerful!
John -- John & Susie Howell Virginia Tech Department of Music Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240 Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034 (mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]) http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
