At 1:43 PM -0500 1/16/07, Phil Daley 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.
So if there was one 1st clarinet part, there was only one 1st clarinet player?
2 clarinet players couldn't share music on one stand?
I know nothing about early music performances, but this sounds absurd, to me.
Of course not. What it DOES tell us is that there were no more than
could have read off the number of available parts (given that we may
not have them all), and that depends on not only the number of parts
but their size and the size of the handwriting. And sometimes if
there are, say, 2 soprano parts or 2 1st violin parts, and one of
them includes solo numbers or sections and the other doesn't, that
also tells us something valuable. (One of my disagreements with the
Rifkin hypothesis, whether or not it "works" for modern ears, is that
in his 1731 memo Bach specifically mentioned both concertists and
ripienists among the boys, and we do find such vocal parts in his
hand or that of one of his regular copyists.
John
--
John & Susie Howell
Virginia Tech Department of Music
Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240
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http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
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