On 4 Sep 2007 at 16:21, Kim Patrick Clow wrote: > On 9/4/07, David W. Fenton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > And the number of parts in the Dresden set doesn't tell you anything - > > - it is always the case that when sending a set of parts you copied > > out a single part for each independent part, and left it up to the > > recipient to create the doubling parts. > > But why didn't those *other* copies of the parts survive in Dresden?
Because they were never used? Or because they got lost? Or because they didn't need them? By itself, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. > Besides Parrott's monograph gives a detailed listing (pgs 177-187) of > all surviving vocal parts from Bach's cantatas, and very few of them > have multiple copies, just single S/A/T/B parts. Which doesn't tell us whether or not Bach would object to having 8-12 singers, only that in many situations, the parts clearly indicate one- on-a-part performance. > Parrott quotes from Praetorius: > > "When a large company of musicians is on hand, one can thus also have > such ripieno parts copied out two or three times, and distributed and > divided ..." It's always easy to mine treatises for all sorts of information. It's much more difficult to demonstrate that the remarks in those treatises: 1. represent anything other than recommendations or theories, and more important, 2. it's difficult to prove that the traditions represented in any particular treatise are connected with particular repertories. Praetorius is much, much earlier than Bach, of course. > Parrott cites many other quotes / sources showing that if there were > other singers, it was normative to copy out those parts. We know Bach performed his cantatas, but do we know that the Dresden B Minor Mass parts were used in a performance? I thought that there is no known performance until CPE's Berlin one quite some time after his father's death. > And what > about performance materials in Darmstadt and Frankfurt and Hamburg, > which have the same disposition, with one vocal part surviving, with > very few mutliple ones? Parrott raised the question and it's a valid > one, if there were multiple copies of vocal parts, if you add up Bach, > Telemann and Graupner's cantata output, we have about 3700 cantatas, > where there should be hundreds of copies of vocal parts. They just > don't exist. What survives is what survives, not what was. And what was is not necessarily strictly limiting for what would have been considered appropriate performance forces. It's the dogmatic limitation that has always annoyed the hell out of me, not the assertion that the pieces were performed one on a part in their original performances. > Actually the onus is on providing proof that 12-20 member choirs were > the norm in early 18th century Germany. That's a ridiculous straw man -- it's not even close to what anyone is suggesting in this discussion. -- 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
