On 9/6/07, John Howell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I understand what you're saying, but I wonder whether the outlook is > wrong. Perhaps you are thinking about published music, but none of > this was published and (with the exception of the B minor) was always > performed with the composer in charge.
Actually "Gott ist mein Konig" WAS published at great expense by Bach's employers. The title of the piece at the very top is "ab 18 e se piace 22." Bach also marks the ripieno group with a curvy line at the bottom of the score with the word "capella." The optional 4 is a reference to the optional group of the "capella." A peer of Bach's, Fuhrmann writes: "Capella is used when in vocal music, a separate choir joins in certain sections, for the splendor and strengthening of the music .....with a shortage of people, these capellas can be left out, because they are in any case already also sung by the concertists." Fuhrmann also specificially mentions that concertists were physically separated from the others, making it unlikely they shared parts. John Butt printed a wonderful article in EARLY MUSIC (1998) that covers a lot of territory since Rifkin's theory was first published: the theory is pretty much accepted by younger scholars (isn't that interesting in of itself?) and it's gained the "support" of several leading conductors in both performances and recordings. As for those extra parts that should have survived (remember there 1000s of cantatas written in Germany by the top 5 composers and oddly enough, there aren't mutiple copies of the vocal parts). This is explained by "Oh, they were lost, destroyed, etc etc..." John Butt addresses this point: "More likely Bach would have given separate parts to the extra singers doubling chrous lines, as in indeed the case for the St. John Passion, one of the handful of pieces to survive with ripieno parts. Now one obvious direction to argue is that such doubling was Bach's standard practice and countless ripieno parts have simply disappeared. It is impossible to disprove this possibility but those who "hope" for the discovery of these lost parts generally do so under the common-sense assumption that Bach, like most of us today, would have wanted to use any spare singers who happened to be around to bolster the choir for the chorales and choruses. Yet here, Rifkin produces what for me was the coupe de grace:"bit" parts in the Passions generally contain only their particular roles, and surrounding choruses and chorales are usually marked "tacet." This phenomenon is evident in the St. Matthew part for Peter, Caiphas, Pontifex 2 and Pilate (all presumably taken by the one singer), and in the separate parts for the servant and Pilate in the St. John Passion. Arthur Mendel, editor of the Neue Bach-Ausgabe volumue of the St. John Passion, notes that these tacet markings are eigentumlich (peculiar) without commenting further. To explain away evidence such as this simply takes one too far beyond the bounds of reasonable scholarship." Kim Patrick Clow " _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
