On 18 Feb 2006 at 14:46, Andrew Stiller wrote: > On Feb 17, 2006, at 6:10 PM, David W. Fenton wrote: > > > On 17 Feb 2006 at 21:31, Johannes Gebauer wrote: > >> On 17.02.2006 Kim Patrick Clow wrote: > >>> Would a tambourine in a Bach Orchestral Suite be that much of a > >>> musical faux paux? > >> > >> Good question. I tend to think that Bach wouldn't have had one, but > >> it's quite obviously possible to add it. On the other hand, Bach's > >> orchestral suites are imo not at all operatic, so perhaps it would > >> be a little weird? > > > > I think it's important to ask three questions: > > > > 1. what would Bach have done? > > > > 2. what would Bach have preferred? > > > > 3. what would contemporaries, given Bach's music to perform, have > > done? > > > > Very good questions. The answers are: > > 1) He wouldn't have used a tambourine, even if he could find one in > Cöthen or Leipzig. > > 2) Q: Would you have preferred a tambourine in that, Herr Bach? A: > Whadda you, nuts? > > 3) They wouldn't--as they in fact did not--use a tambourine. > > I hope we've cleared that up.
No, it clears up nothing, as those are *your* answers, without any support from historical documentation. We cannot always answer all (or even any) of those questions. In the case of Bach, I'm pretty sure that there is no documentary evidence to suggest the use of percussion. However, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. In regard to the overtures, I think that what matters is: 1. what tradition was Bach writing them in? 2. what were the percussion practices in that tradition? 3. did Bach know of those practices? 4. if he knew of them, would he have followed them or disregarded them? 5. were the overtures written for the same purpose as the works in the tradition/style they were written in? I don't know the specific answers to these questions. I suspect that it's correct that Bach would have been unlikely to have used percussion in them, but that may have more to do with the context in which Bach was performing his music. If, for instance, he'd had the opportunity to travel to Paris (somewhere secular and cosmopolitan), might he have performed the overtures with percussion? Or, if he travelled to a place where it was customary in this type of music to add percussion, might he there have added percussion? These are highly speculative questions. But when considering historical performance, it's important to consider what a composer actually did and the reasons why he did it. There are limitations on a particular composer's work circumstances that would prevent him from doing things that, given other circumstances, he might have done without quibble. This is the core of my objection to Joshua Rifkin's Bach chorus performance hypothesis (that if Bach only ever used one on a part, that means that one on a part it was he wanted and preferred, rather than simply what he was able to manage in the circumstances he found himself in). I don't think it's wise to take merely what a composer is documented as having done as an ironclad limit on what is allowable in historically informed performances. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
