----- Forwarded Message ----- From: Martyn Hodgson <[email protected]> To: howard posner <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, 19 July 2013, 10:04 Subject: Re: [LUTE] Re: Markus Passion by Bach Dear Howard, Thank you for a constructive response. Indeed Kuhnau did press (unsuccessfully!) the church authorities for one or two instruments to play continuo which he called gallichons (I suggest large continuo instruments in A or B - but that's another story). Further, a few other contemporary composers (noteably Telemann) wrote church cantatas with a designated gallichon part (NB playing from a thorough bass part and not an obligatto lute part as Bach requires in this Passion). But this does not amount to gallichons being in 'common use' at the time (personally, being a gallichon player, I wish otherwise - but wishful thinking is, alas, not solid evidence for historic usage). Whilst Bach might occasionally overlook designating a particular obbligato instrument, that is not the case here where he clearly calls for the lute (ie not gallichon or mandora). If he had required a gallichon there's no reason to suppose he wouldn't have used the term (as his contemporaries did - see above) and that he was so ignorant or vague as to employ a generic term for all fretted plucked instruments. The Bach works I had in mind are those clearly designated for lute, and not the keyboard works sometimes wrongly, in my view, also thought to be lute works. In short, the burden of evidence points to Bach expecting the (Dm) lute proper in this Passion - any technical difficulties in playing what he wrote to be put down to his relative unfamiliarity with the detailed technical demands of the instrument. No doubt the player would have adjusted the part to make it technically possible (as in the intabulations we have of the lute works by contemporary lutenists). Martyn __________________________________________________________________
From: howard posner <[email protected]> To: Lute Dmth <[email protected]>; lute List <[email protected]> Sent: Thursday, 18 July 2013, 19:11 Subject: [LUTE] Re: Markus Passion by Bach On Jul 18, 2013, at 1:03 AM, Martyn Hodgson <[1][email protected]> wrote: > There is no evidence that Bach had the gallichon/mandora in mind for > this. There's rather stronger evidence than usual for gallichon in German church music and particularly in Leipzig, if not specifically in any Bach work. His predecessor Kuhnau wrote to the town council in 1704 asking for money to buy "at least one" gallichon, noted that its sound was able to penetrate better than a lute and thus was "necessary for all contemporary concerted music;" he wrote that 'we always have to borrow" them but they weren't always available. A later memorandum Kuhnau lists gallichons among the continuo instruments. He mentions them each time in the plural. In Das neu-eroeffnete Orchestra (1713) Matheson wrote that the gallichon was more useful in churches and operas than the lute, the sound of which was too small "and serves more to put on airs than to help the singer." This may not be sufficient to establish the gallichon in Bach's music beyond reasonable doubt, but it is strong evidence for its common use. > The names were very well known at the time for specific > instruments and widely used to distinguish them from the (Dm) lute > proper. This would be important if Bach were always meticulous, precise and clear in designating instruments in his scores, but he wasn't, as anyone who has worked through his designations of the lower lines in the Brandenburg Concertos (or puzzled about the "echo flutes" in Brandenburg 4) can attest. He sometimes failed to designate an obbligato instrument altogether; the unlabeled solo in cantata 90 that is now known as the Hardest Trumpet Part Ever being a good example. The blank wasn't a problem because the part would be given to the appropriate player at the first rehearsal, and Bach knew what instrument that player would use. He was working in a close community of musicians with established working habits and conventions. He didn't have to be precise, just as renaissance composers didn't have to write down whether or not instruments would play with the singers at all, and didn't have to write the text underlay. They were in charge of the performance in a musical establishm! ent in which the composer and the musicians all knew how things were done. > Any use of the gallichon/mandora in this context is a modern invention > - presumably to overcome perceived technical difficulties. But if we > look at the extant Bach 'lute' works, there are many similar (if not > more severe) comparable technical hurdles yet this has not led to these > to being identified as gallichon/mandora works. But several of them have been identified as keyboard works. -- To get on or off this list see list information at [2]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html -- References 1. mailto:[email protected] 2. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
