On 17 Jan 2007 at 0:53, Raymond Horton wrote: > I just remember an article after the first Rifkin recording that > settled the issue as far as I was concerned. If I am wrong, I'm > wrong. My "instinctive feeling" is that I am not!
Robert Marshall was respondent to Rifkin's original article, and he's no slouch as a Bach expert. But his case did not come close to knocking over Rifkin's argument as it was presented, as it involved almost as much hand waving as Rifkin's own. Since then, quite a bit of work has been done on the subject, but I don't know that any of it has settled the issue in favor of one or the other. That seems about right to me, as my feeling is that Bach was a pragmatic musician, and he performed with what he had, and put together the best that he could. Sometimes that would have been one on a part, at other times it might have been doubled (i.e., beyond solo/ripieno). The result is that we have a range of historically justifiable possibilities for performing Bach's music, from one on a part to as many as 4 or 5 on a part. Anything larger than that might have been something Bach would have enjoyed the luxury of having, but I don't believe we have any actual documentary evidence to suggest that. So, to me, it seems legitimate to perform Bach's 4-part vocal music with anywhere from 4 to 20 singers. Anything larger than that seems outsized (especially given the small-by-modern-standards instrumental forces), and the low end of that seems problematic for works of any scope and with accompaniment beyond continuo and an instrument or two, while two on a part is problematic for intonation and blend reasons. Because of that, I'd settle on three on a part as the ideal size, myself, though because of balance and blend and the capabilities of individual singers and the requirements of the particular piece, you might have only 1 or 2 on particular parts (i.e., you might not divide up 12 singers into 4 parts of 3 each). For works with more parts, you'd either add singers or adjust the numbers on each parts. More singers gives more flexibility to keep the 3-on-a-part "ideal," but seems impractical. I've sung in many groups where some parts were sung by 3 and others by 1, and it can work perfectly well (single countertenors can almost always balance multiple singers on the other parts, much more so than female altos singing in the same range; of course, Bach didn't use female altos, but we must in modern times unless we are very lucky). All of the possibilities I described there seem historically justifiable, with no documentary reason (as opposed to musical and pragmatic reason) to prefer one combination over the other. And I wholly reject the dogmatic version of Rifkin position, where it is argued that Bach wanted, preferred and intended one-on-a-part performance as an ideal. -- 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
