Joshua Rifkin's arguments of "one-on-a part" Bach choruses were long ago
shown to be without merit. Bach's church choir, as a rule, numbered 12,
and he regularly nagged unsuccessfully for it to be enlarged to 16.
Rifkin based his argument on the existence of single choir copies.
There were generally a solo copy (with the choir part included) and a
choir part for each voice, and each was written large enough for two
singers to read, which would allow for a choir as large as 16. Rifkin
got some attention with his project, and got the musical world thinking
about smaller choirs, perhaps, but the one-on-a part B Minor Mass is
just silly.
Raymond Horton
David W. Fenton wrote:
On 16 Jan 2007 at 19:23, Johannes Gebauer wrote:
On 16.01.2007 Kim Patrick Clow wrote:
Payroll records weren't the only way to figure out how many
musicians performed at concerts, the number of parts tells us how
many played as well. (Of course as Joshua Rifkin's research as
proved, not everyone agrees.
As someone who used to play with Joshua regularly in the past, I found
not only his arguments convincing but also the result. I did the B
minor mass with his group, with 8 singers (no choir), 4 violins and
everything else one to a part, and it really works. In fact I much
prefer that to any conventional performance.
While I certainly Bach's music enjoyable and convincing when
performed one on a part, I *don't* find Rifkin's argument convincing
that this was Bach's intention (and his only intention). As someone
who's been involved in a lot of church music, I know that you really
perform with what's available that week, and single copies of vocal
parts could easily have been sung from by two singers. Had Bach had
the singers avaiable, I expect he would have prepared additional
parts.
It's this dogmatic part of Rifkin's argument that most people
disagree with (and I've argued it with him directly, in fact -- very
shortly after he came up with the idea), not the idea that much of
Bach's choral music doesn't work very well and sound quite good with
one on a part.
I also know from conversations with the continuo player for Rifkin's
recording of the B Minor Mass that the singers' voices were in
tatters after the recording sessions and that the recording was
heavily edited and patched together to get something usable. His
opinion (as an experienced church musician) was that this proved to
him, at least, that the B Minor Mass is not really performable with
but one singer on a part because it's too much music to attempt at
one go with such a small group of singers.
It is an open question as to whether there B Minor Mass as a whole
was ever intended by Bach to be performed or if it was just something
of a magnum opus demonstrating all the varying techniques and
varieties of musical settings for mass texts (to stand alongside the
Musical Offering and the Art of Fugue). I can't get past the
liturgical problems with the work as a whole (the creed is Catholic
and thus not usable in the Lutheran service , while other parts are
the Lutheran versions of the text and thus not usable in a Catholic
mass), and the impracticality of the variable number of parts (if
you're singing one on a part, what do the singers needed for the
Sanctus do the rest of the time (6 parts in the Sanctus, as opposed
to the 5 in the rest of the mass, and 8 parts in the Hosanna)? I know
that Rifkin attempts to address this question, but I don't find his
line of reasoning convincing. Either the B Minor Mass was not
intended for performance, or Bach did not restrict his intended
performances to one on a part -- both cannot be true.
Me, well, I have no problems with having 8 singers divided up
appropriately in the 5- and 6-part movements according to the voice
types of the singers you happen to be using.
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