James A Stimson
> My intention in the original posting was not to declare that all
> performances of Bach's cantatas were bad, as Howard seems to interpret my
> comments.
Neither of us said that.
> But it is undeniable that Bach was at times dissatisfied with the
> forces available to him -- witness his notorious confrontation with the
> bassoon player, whose playing he'd criticized.
I'm sure Bach was hard man to satisfy, and for all I know would turn up his
nose at the best we can offer today.
Before declaring it undeniable that "Bach was at times dissatisfied with the
forces available to him" in the sense of an institutional inadequacy causing
subpar performances of his own music, I'd like to see some evidence. The
incident with bassoonist Geyersbach scarcely qualifies. It appears to have
been a case of a racial slur, as it were, against bassoons. Bach, the
20-year-old organist at Arnstadt, apparently called Geyersbach a
"Zippelfagottist" ("nannygoat-bassoonist"), but when Geyersbach confronted
him about it later, Bach said he hadn't insulted Geyersbach at all.
Geyersbach responded that if Bach had not insulted him, he had insulted his
bassoon, and anyone who insulted his things insulted him. He attacked Bach
with a stick, Bach drew his sword (German church organists in 1705 wore
swords in the town square?) and they were separated by intrepid bystanders.
We don't know if Bach had said anything about Geyersbach's playing, as such.
Laurence Dreyfuss, in Bach's Continuo Group, devotes a few pages to the low
(but changing) social status of the bassoon, which appears to have been the
butt of frequent jokes.
> My point here is that the original performance of a piece may not have
> measured up to a composer's intentions or expections, for a wide variety of
> reasons -- inexpert players, lack of practice time, limited resources, poor
> performance venue, drunks in the audience, etc. For that reason, I think
> one should think twice about slavishly following documentary evidence about
> an original performance.
Of course. But you inadvertently stumbled into another swamp altogether
when you chose Bach as an example, because the whole subject carries a lot
of excess baggage. The notion that Bach's music was ill-served in his own
day -- a notion based on reading far too much into the available evidence --
was historically part of an entire 20th-century Bach mythology to the effect
that Bach was unappreciated by his contemporaries, that the 18th century
didn't deserve him, that he was not really a man of his time but of "ours,"
and that it took "modern" ears, refined by exposure to Stockhausen, Cage and
the Rolling Stones, to really appreciate him. The more-or-less logical
conclusion from all this is that we needn't care what his music would have
sounded like when he heard it, because it didn't sound right: he had to
await valve trumpets and organs with electronic keyboards and giant
motor-winded organs. I know you don't share this view, but it's still
pretty common, and even some folks on this list are receptive to it, despite
its catastrophic consequences for lute players. So in a forum like this,
I'm inclined to question the factual premises of a statement like "sung by
schoolboys and accompanied by mediocre local instrumentalists, as some were
probably performed 'originally,' much to Bach's dismay." Sometimes I learn
something in the process.
BTW, as I type this I'm listening to an aria from Cantata 43 sung by boy
soprana (now a fairly well-known tenor) Peter Jelosits, who was doubtless
younger when he made the DAW recording than the kid Bach wrote it for
originally. It's a wonderful performance.
