As long as we are bouncing around among the theoretical, the
practical, the evidence, and the interpretation of evidence, may I
mention a matter that everyone seems to have been overlooking amid
all the rhetoric (and yes, including my own!).
Modern performances with one singer on a part do not use young boys
whose voices have not changed, or young university men whose voices
have not been thoroughly trained. At least that is true of every
example I have heard. In fact, every example I've heard has been
recorded with highly trained, professional singers with well
developed voices which project and can, with only four of them, fill
a small hall over a small orchestra quite adequately. (I would call
them "opera singers," but I don't want to suggest their skills are
limited to that one genre at all.) One of the basses I've heard on
such recordings was Jan Opalach, a very fine and very well trained
professional bass even when I worked with him at Indiana in the
mid-'70s.
BACH DID NOT USE OPERA SINGERS, or professional singers of any
kind!!!! He couldn't. He didn't have access to such singers. He
had what he had, and the best of them at any given time were his
soloists.
Let me hear good modern performances using the EXACT forces Bach had
access to and not gussied up with professional soloists, nor
rebalanced in the recording process, and I will readily concede that
such performances were POSSIBLE. That has no bearing at all on
whether they were what actually happened, some of the time or even
all of the time, which still rests on the interpretation of a large
amount of evidence.
(As to the comparison of Leipzig with Dresden, I would assume that
the Dresden court DID have professional singers, unlike the Leipzig
churches.)
John
P.S. Can anyone remember what the original question on this thread was?
--
John R. Howell
Virginia Tech Department of Music
Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
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