On 04.09.2007 John Howell wrote:
Which is a pretty wild leap of faith in my book. By the same logic one would have to assume a priori that he provided his violinists with written parts meant for use by a single performer only, so he only used one violin on each part, and that is certainly not in agreement with his own description of his "ideal" forces. (From the 1731 Town Council memo, I think, but I'm not sure.)
This source must be one of the most misinterpreted ones ever. Bach is not talking about ideal "forces". Rather he is talking about how many _singers_ (not instrumentalists) he needs to fulfill the musical needs of the services. That was not one service, but several, and he needed at least three boys per part because two would easily be struck by illness, or their voice breaking. There is absolutely nothing here to suggest that he ever had that number of singers for any particular cantata performance. The performance of the John Passion you are refering to was in fact one of the largest performances which Bach ever staged. It included to the best of my memory, 8 singers, 3 first vlns, 2 second vlns, everything else single, including a contra bassoon (presumably to make up for the broken organ). This performance did not include Viole d'amore. I have done it with Joshua in precisely this way. it was very convincing.
The B minor Mass, which I also had the honour to do with Joshua, needs 8 singers (no choir), 2 firsts, 2 seconds. There is a lot of evidence to support this. In fact those parts of the mass sent to Dresden use exactly what was available there, which did not include a choir in today's use of the word.
Joshua never claimed that there were no ripienos in any of the cantatas. Instead he has always differentiated between cantatas with and without ripieno. The ripieno, however, seldom included more than one per part. That was the standard in most church performances at the time.
Johannes -- http://www.musikmanufaktur.com http://www.camerata-berolinensis.de _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
