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. -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
