J.S. Bach

Présentation

Douzième volet de l’intégrale Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) pour clavier, le second volume du Clavier bien tempéré est présenté en deux récitals, chaque fois au clavecin, à savoir les préludes et fugues 1 à 12 (BWV 870 à 881), puis les préludes et fugues 13 à 24 (BWV 882 à 893), autrement dit la première moitié du recueil, de do majeur à fa mineur, puis la seconde moitié, de fa dièse majeur à si mineur.

Since their 19th-century rediscovery, Johann Sebastian Bach’s Sonatas and Partitas became a milestone both in the educational for violin and in virtuosos’ repertoires. This two-fold destination engendered a series of binary oppositions, which seem to have profoundly influenced the fortune of the collections.
This paper inquiries into the Italian reception of Sonatas and Partitas in the late 20th century, focusing on two specific oppositions. Firstly, the internal structure of Sonatas and Partitas let performers and organisers conceive them as a coherent collection, or as a series of distinct pieces suitable for showing performers’ technical and musical skills. Secondly, both collections could be oppositely considered as the latest violin masterwork of the Baroque era or as the first witness of modern instrumental technique.
The aim is to show how diverse premises entailed different reception-phenomena, in the complex web of Italian performers, concert life, and the ​broader discographic market.

Propuesta de análisis siguiendo los presupuestos teóricos de la retórica musical
aplicados a la sonata BWV 1030 para flauta y clave. Escrita por un gran conocedor de
la Retórica, disciplina que estudió en la escuela, J.S. Bach emplea numerosas figuras extramusicales para conseguir suscitar determinados efectos en el oyente. En la Retórica se encuentra la clave para dar explicación a figuras que en algunos casos transgreden las reglas tradicionales del contrapunto.

Based on the musical rhetorical principles, this paper provides new perspectives
of analysis on J.S. Bach Sonate BWV 1030 for flute and harpsichord. This composer
was an expert on Rhetoric, a subject which he studied during his school years. That is why Bach realizes its value raising feelings in the listener and uses consciously a lot of extramusical ornaments and figures. Rhetoric is the key in order to understand the meaning of figures which trespass usual counterpoint rules.

Since the nineteenth century, the analysis of music has undertaken to provide accounts of musical structure by explaining musical events and patterns that lend coherence to an individual work as well as contributing to its beauty and meaning. Drawing on a variety of musical building blocks-whether harmonic, contrapuntal, melodic, rhythmic or sectional-analysts of various theoretical persuasions have asked their readers to set aside their first impressions in order to pay attention to the way a piece of music works by examining the details of its 'facture'. The 'truth-value' of such interpretations can of course never be divorced from the ideas an analyst holds about musical structure, since these notions or 'theories' largely determine which musical parameters count as structurally significant. Nonetheless within the realm of musical analysis-far different from, say, mathematics or physics-it has rarely been the elegance or grandiosity of a structural theory that has attracted adherents. Instead, successful analyses have always appealed to an inherently musical plausi-bility, fuzzy though such a concept must ultimately remain. For this reason, the seeming circularity of interpretation endemic to musical analysis will appear less troubling, especially when one realises that analysts if they are to succeed-need to persuade a community of musicians that it is possible to hear a piece as proceeding 'so and not otherwise', to borrow a phrase of Theodor W. Adorno. And contrary to some popular perceptions, musicians are a famously hard-nosed lot when it comes to being told how to hear a piece with which they are intimate. The issue of musical plausibility in an analysis can be taken a step further if one asserts that accounts of musical structure are really no more than reconstructions of a set of actions taken by a composer. Analysis in this sense is tantamount to a kind of decomposition , taking apart what was once put together. How, one may ask, could it be otherwise unless the composer is some kind of idiot savanttaking dictation from an inaccessible muse? A discussion of this issue has been sidetracked for a long time by fears that analytical statements might all be taken to be identical to verbal statements composers might make (though they rarely do) about how they composed a piece of music. In the case of composers from the past, moreover, it has also seemed arrogant to claim that an analyst

In his musical retelling of Scripture, Johann Sebastian Bach was motivated by Martin Luther’s insight that the combination of music and message, sermo et vox, was an instrument that could effect profound change of hearts and minds [WA 50: 372, 1]. This article assesses the way in which Bach understood his own calling as one of “God’s Capellmeister” in presenting and proclaiming the word of God through music.

In attempting to determine how Johann Sebastian Bach taught composition, this article draws on recent archival discoveries to claim that it was not the ornamented, vocal Choralgesänge, but the simpler, thoroughbass-centered Choralbuch style that played a central role in Bach’s pedagogy. Fascinatingly, many newly-rediscovered chorale books from Bach’s milieu contain multiple basses under each melody, suggesting that Bach too may have employed this technique. What theoretical perspectives shall we bring to bear on this long-lost multiple-bass chorale tradition? This article asserts that it is a fallacy to assume that any pattern-yielding methodology offers a valid window into Bach’s teaching. Rather, an attempt is made to recover modes of music-theoretical understanding that existed contemporaneously with Bach. Such a coterminous theoretical “paratext” potentially offers more insight into Bach’s pedagogy because it establishes a horizon of possibilities from which we can draw when examining multiple-bass composition. Foremost within this paratextual horizon is the centrality of thoroughbass for Bach’s understanding of composition. In particular, Bach was immersed in the pre-Rameau thoroughbass tradition as represented by the writings of Johann David Heinichen. In contrast to many modern harmonic perspectives, chordal roots and root progressions played little to no role in the pre-Rameau thoroughbass tradition. Dissonance was understood not harmonically, but dyadically in terms of syncopatio (suspension) and transitus (passing and neighbor) figures. Drawing from a variety of sources from Bach’s circle, particularly those of his pupil, Johann Christian Kittel, this article posits that Bach may have understood multiple-bass chorale harmonization in terms of interlocking clausulae – that is, as a series of overlapping cadential modules. In sum, this article contributes to an ongoing revisionist project of recent years that aims to elevate early eighteenth-century thoroughbass from mere “pre-theoretical” accompaniment practice to its true place as the theoretical and practical basis of compositional understanding in Bach’s day.

In der Absicht zu rekonstruieren, wie Johann Sebastian Bach Komposition unterrichtete, und ausgehend von Archivfunden aus jüngster Zeit stellt dieser Artikel die Behauptung auf, dass nicht die reich ausgestalteten, vokalen Choralgesänge, sondern der einfachere, generalbassbasierte Choralbuch-Stil in Bachs Pädagogik eine zentrale Rolle spielte. Faszinierenderweise enthalten viele neu aufgefundene Choralbücher aus Bachs Umfeld mehrere Bassstimmen unter jeder Melodie, was nahelegt, dass auch Bach diese Technik angewandt haben könnte. Welche theoretischen Perspektiven sind aus dieser lange Zeit aus dem Blick geratenen Tradition des Choralsatzes mit multiplen Bässen abzuleiten? Dieser Artikel bezweifelt, dass eine auf historisch späteren Denkweisen basierende Methodik tragfähige Perspektiven auf Bachs Unterricht gewähren kann. Stattdessen wird versucht, musiktheoretische Konzepte nutzbar zu machen, die aus Bachs Zeit stammen. Solch zeitgenössischer theoretischer »Paratext« bietet möglicherweise einen besseren Einblick in Bachs Pädagogik, da er einen Horizont von Möglichkeiten bietet, auf die man sich bei der Betrachtung der Komposition mit multiplen Bässen beziehen kann. Besonders wichtig ist die zentrale Rolle, die innerhalb dieses paratextuellen Horizonts der Generalbass für Bachs Verständnis von Komposition spielt. Insbesondere war Bach von der vor-Rameau’schen Generalbasstradition geprägt, wie sie in den Schriften Johann David Heinichens repräsentiert ist. Anders als viele moderne, von der Harmonielehre informierte Zugänge spielten Akkordgrundtöne und Grundtonfortschreitungen in der vor-Rameau’schen Generalbasstradition kaum eine bzw. gar keine Rolle. Die Dissonanz wurde nicht harmonisch, sondern als zweistimmiges Phänomen, als syncopatio (Vorhalt) oder transitus (Durchgang oder Nebennote) verstanden. Auf der Grundlage einer Auswahl von Quellen aus Bachs Umkreis, besonders denen seines Schülers Johann Christian Kittel, postuliert dieser Artikel, dass Bach die auf multiplen Bassstimmen basierende Choralharmonisierung im Sinne ineinandergreifender Klauselkombinationen, also als eine Folge einander überlappender Kadenzmodule verstanden haben könnte. Im Ergebnis trägt dieser Artikel zu einem seit einigen Jahren laufenden Projekt bei, das darauf abzielt, den Generalbass des frühen 18. Jahrhunderts vom Status einer bloßen ‚vor-theoretischen‘ Begleitpraxis zu befreien und ihn in seiner wahren Bedeutung zu würdigen, die ihm als der theoretischen und praktischen Grundlage des Verständnisses von Komposition zur Bach-Zeit zukommt.

This paper compares Nathan Milstein and Jasha Heifetz's commercial recordings of J. S. Bach's Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin. It focuses on individual difference to examine the possible impact of Auer's teaching, cultural trends and personal characteristics.
I was originally published online  in 2009 in Performance Practice Review 14, pp. 1-40: http://ccdl.libraries.claremont.edu/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=/ppr
but now the Electronic journal's website link is now defunct so I've decided the post the paper here.

The early accounts of the keyboard contest that took place in Dresden in 1717 between J.S. Bach and Louis Marchand are widely divergent, despite Birnbaum (1739), C.P.E. Bach and Agricola (1754), Adlung (1758), Hawkins (1776), Marpurg (1786), and Forkel (1802) all claiming the authority of either Bach or his sons. These discrepancies enabled later biographers to craft their narratives selectively according to their own allegiances. Throughout much of the nineteenth century, Bach biography typically followed Bach/Agricola’s and Forkel’s retellings, in which Marchand fled Dresden on the day of the event before it could take place. However, in life-writing on Marchand, the story instead appeared in Marpurg’s more sympathetic version, which held that one concert took place—with Marchand implicitly judged to be Bach’s equal—prior to his taking flight. This rendering was apparently favored in France, where the episode’s potential for being appropriated to illustrate Austrogermanic musical superiority against French philistinism would have generated significant unease. Examination of variant narratives therefore reveals much about how national ideologies can steer a biographical episode in particular directions, as well as how an influential author’s endeavors to straighten the historical record can unwittingly send myth-making along fresh trajectories.

The press reception of famous 19th-century violinists is an important resource for the historical study of performance. Comparing several reports across many years with surviving sound recordings provides some insight into what these recordings might have captured from the artistry of these players. At the same time such a comparison also informs about 19th-century expectations, concert practices and taste. Currently held received wisdom regarding the differences between these violinists gains a new perspective, too. For instance, Joachim is upheld as the ‘authoritative’ interpreter of the classics, especially Bach. But it turns out that, at least for Bernard Shaw, “Ysaÿe’s power of polyphonic playing enables him to challenge any comparison”. Intonation, tone quality and musicianship are all commented on and make the picture more in line with the evidence of the recordings than the black & white opinion that posits, for instance, a discriminating difference among the violinists in vibrato usage.  Recordings are analysed with respect to interpretative style, tempo, vibrato, and violin tone.

The impetus for this three-day symposium on historical improvisation was twofold: the emergence of an important new source and the release of a new publication. The new source, discovered by researchers at the
Bach-Archiv in Leipzig, is the only known copy of the ‘Anweisung zum Fantasieren’ by Jacob Adlung (1699–1762). This manuscript treatise, which probably dates from the 1720s, contains thirty-four voice-leading
models for keyboard improvisation, all intended for the beginner and illustrated with numerous examples. The new publication is a collection of essays by staff of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and members
of the Forschungsgruppe Basel für Improvisation (founded in 1996 and jokingly dubbed the FBI) entitled Compendium Improvisation: Fantasieren nach historischen Quellen des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts, edited by Markus Schwenkreis (Basel: Schwabe, 2018). The Compendium was originally intended to compile teaching materials used at the Schola. But in the fifteen years since its inception, the project has grown into a wideranging overview of recent scholarship and pedagogy concerning historical improvisation and music theory of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The symposium provided an enticing foretaste of the fruits of the FBI’s labours as found in the Compendium.

The choreography of George Balanchine has long been described as “musical.” By applying music-analytic tools to patterns in dance, this essay analyzes relationships between dance and music in Balanchine's Concerto Barocco, set to J. S. Bach's Concerto for Two Violins (BWV 1043). Choreomusical notation and annotated videos offer readers the chance to sketch-dance, to feel in their own bodies the movements in relation to the music. Balanchine's choreography maps both specific patterns of pitch and rhythm from Bach's score—sometimes synchronized to the music and sometimes displaced temporally—and general patterns of motivic development and metric manipulation. Balanchine's use of funky rhythms resonates with his characteristic on-top-of-the-beat step timing, offbeat visual accentuation, and jazz-dance-inspired movements, attesting to the adoption of both Africanist and Europeanist musical techniques in the formation of an American neoclassical ballet.

En el año 2023 se cumplirá el 50 aniversario de la muerte de Pau Casals i Defilló, nacido en 1876 en El Vendrell, y fallecido en 1973 en San Juan de Puerto Rico. Su figura ha generado numerosas publicaciones de distinto ámbito: desde las biografías escritas en formato de “vidas ejemplares”, hasta los trabajos académicos de distinta índole. Aunque se han realizado estudios sobre Casals músico, estos trabajos no son tan numerosos como sería propio de una figura de su envergadura. Puede que la parte artística de Casals se haya visto eclipsada por su imagen más popular como figura del catalanismo, defensor de la Segunda República Española, luchador contra el fascismo a nivel internacional y contra Franco en particular. En este artículo de revisión, se repasan las biografías publicadas sobre Pau Casals, así como las tesis doctorales y trabajos científicos que han aportado nueva información a tener en cuenta. Se hace especial hincapié en los trabajos académicos que estudian aspectos musicales de Casals relacionados con la interpretación musical, dirección orquestal y/o composición musical, además de estudios científicos que tratan su influencia en otros músicos. Para finalizar, se apuntan ciertas cuestiones a considerar sobre las biografías publicadas y el estado actual de la necesaria revisión de la figura de Casals, además de plantear algunas reflexiones sobre el trabajo pendiente acerca del violonchelista catalán. The year 2023 will mark the 50th anniversary of the death of Pablo Casals i Defilló, born in 1876 in El Vendrell and died in 1973 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Several works have been published covering different fields on his figure, including biographies in the form of “exemplary lives”. Although some studies about Casals as musician have been undertaken, the number of this kind of works is not as large as on could possibly imagine taking into account his important social and musical roles. One hypothesis is that his artistic side has been historically overshadowed by his relevance as figure of the Catalanism, defender of the Spanish Second Republic, fighter against fascism at the international level and more specifically against Franco. This review article goes through the biographies devoted to Casals, as well as through the doctoral dissertations and scientific studies providing new information. The article specially highlights the academic papers that examine the musical aspects related to his performance, orchestral conducting and musical composition, as well as his influence on other musicians. Finally, several issues concerning the already published biographies and the need to review the figure of Casals are pointed out, along with some considerations about the existing gaps regarding the artistic life of the Catalan violoncellist.

An examination of the chaconne and the passacaglia in the works of Bach, focusing on the chaconne from the partita no. 2, BWV 1004, for unaccompanied violin. The differences between this work and the equally well-known passacaglia for organ, BWV 582, have nothing to do with their titles, but are the consequence of their belonging to two altogether different traditions. In the violin chaconne Bach superimposes a tradition of instrumental dance-improvisation and virtuosity on a structure derived from Lully that is based on varying generic bass patterns. The passacaglia comes out of a cantus-firmus variation practice on a motivically distinct ground bass.

We open with Kenneth Kam's study of Miguel Llobet, illustrious Spanish guitarist-composer of the early 20th century. In his arrangements of Catalan folksongs and Spanish nationalist works, compositions in genres like mazurka and impromptu, and recourse to earlier repertoire, Llobet proved his Romantic bona fides. Mr Kam focuses on Llobet's transcription and recordings of the Sarabande from Bach's Violin Partita No.2, giving special emphasis to yet another aspect of the guitarist's Romantic temperament, his embrace of 19th-century performance practices in scoring and performing this work.

This talk provides an overview of the intersection of music and faith, taking a broad, historical perspective. It then focuses in on several works by J.S. Bach, illuminating the composer's practice of illustrating theological concepts by musical means.

Onzième volet de l’intégrale Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) pour clavier, les partitas seront présentées en deux concerts le dimanche 9 novembre 2014 à 16h et le dimanche 16 novembre 2014 à 16h. Pour chacun de ces concerts, deux clavecins construits par Dominique Laperle seront utilisés, l’un d’après Nicolas Dumont (Paris, 1707) et l’autre d’après Carlo Grimaldi (Messine, 1697/1703).

ABSTRACT
J.S. Bach’s Passacaglia and Walter Benjamin’s Das Passagen-Werk – literary montage as mosaic in Memorandum. A story with paintings (2006)
The conclusion of Agaat (2004) suggests the cosmopolitan ideological stance in memorandum through metafictional comments. Proceeding to Memorandum, it is read as constituting, inter alia, an in memoriam for the initiator and co-contributor to the book, the painter Adriaan van Zyl. He was roughly the same age as Walter Benjamin, in his late forties, when his promising artistic career ended abruptly with his death in September 2006 (shortly after the production of the book). Van Niekerk's surface narrative of a terminally ill cancer patient, is accompanied by Van Zyl's reproductions of his Tygerberg “Hospital Series 2004-2006”, with the last painting, “The waiting room”, left incomplete, due to his death. The short narrative text is also highly philosophical, suggesting concern with the whole of western culture and humanity’s future.
In Memorandum Van Niekerk set a daunting task for herself (as formulated through the fictive beginning writer, Wiid, at the start of “Memorandum 3”): to translate Bach’s Passacaglia and fugue in D Minor (BMW 582) into prose and plausibly to write a smaller, Afrikaans version of

Walter Benjamin’s Das Passagen-Werk (1983), a text in which the architecture of a city and reflections upon it, determine the structure of the narrative. Benjamin’s text is woven around a mosaic of quotations, with his own comments interspersed. This incomplete work overwhelms the reader with its volume and strange textual apparatus. Van Niekerk’s narrative has the same effect with its word lists, addenda, copious footnotes plus memoranda in different graphic formats. Incompleteness, discontinuity, a yearning forward to completion, is the absent presence. Yet both texts get caught up in the artists’deaths (Benjamin’s and Van Zyl’s). Incompleteness is a permanent characteristic of both texts.
Benjamin (1892–1940) identified three consecutive steps for the production of good prose: firstly a musical level, on which it is composed, thereafter an architectonic one, on which it is built, and eventually a textile level, on which it is woven (1972:102). Benjamin’s oeuvre is an important intertext for Memorandum and identifying the separate levels of composition, structuring (or building) and weaving is a useful tool for understanding the narrative text.
The musical level on which it is composed, corresponds to the twenty variations constituting Bach’s Passacaglia (Mulbury 1972c). Van Niekerk’s narrative is “composed” around the nocturnal dialogue between the dying patients X and Y on the night of 5 October 2005, with Wiid listening in as another patient in the same ward (presumably an oncology ward). Each variation is centered around a certain hour of the night, starting at nine, and ending at around six o’clock in the morning. Following on the permutation logic in Bach’s iconic composition, Van Niekerk strives for a similar classic text with her narrative. For architectonic structure the author of Memorandum uses topoi from Benjamin’s convolutes (the flâneur, the poet-writer, the collector, eternal return, catacombs, dream city and dream house, the streets of the city, literary history, and mirrors, Benjamin 1983:81). The textile design, upon which it is woven, has to do with the weaving through of detailed references to fill each of the topoi. For the ideal house, city and building, she uses especially Joseph Rykwert’s Adam’s house in paradise, but also Idea of a town and The seduction of place; for the dehumanizing of modern medicinal practice, Ivan Ilich’s “Hospitality and pain” and Limits to medicine; Gaston Bachelard’s The poetics of space for the idea of bird nests as ideal homes; Friedrich Nietzsche’s Ecce homo for the nature of the ideal reader, and Benjamin’s Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiel for ideas on the nature of tragedy and contemplation of death. To complicate matters, thematic content also deals with urban architectural designs, music and textiles (mosaics, nest weaving and Mexican quipo). In Van Niekerk’s text the consciousness of a multitude of micro- and macrospheres (Sloterdijk 2004) replace Benjamin’s prophetic cultural consciousness of a dawning new technological era (1970:219-254). The narrative text is organised like a highly dense, non- hierarchical neural network.
In Memorandum (an infinitely shorter text than Das Passagen-Werk) the reader finds a similar montage technique of a mosaic of citations throughout. In his central section on Baudelaire Benjamin remarks: “The poet has made his dwelling in space itself, one could say – or in the abyss” (1999:352). Van Niekerk’s Memorandum ties onto this idea, via Heidegger – Wiid, as archetypal poet, experiences “Unheimlichkeit” intensely in the hospital, and even at home in his desolate flat. The similarity between Bach and Benjamin’s greatest works, Passacaglia and Das Passagen- Werk, is not by accident. In both works walking, wandering or flâneurship plays a central role (“passe”=walk and “calle”=street, while “passage” in French refers to walkways between small shops, or arcades). Similarly there is a walking up and down passageways at the opening and in the cyclical ending of Memorandum. In Van Niekerk’s narrative the suggested presence of a multitude of spheres (Debray 1995; Sloterdijk 2004) replace Benjamin’s prophetic cultural consciousness of the dawning of a new technological era (1970:219-254). Benjamin’s Paris is juxtaposed with Van Niekerk’s Parow, a large northern suburb of Cape Town, complete with prostitutes, street vendors and crowds, a large hospital and shops. There is also a feasible link

between Bach’s baroque music and Benjamin’s study of baroque literature in Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels (1928).

KEY WORDS: Marlene van Niekerk, Memorandum, Agaat, Afrikaans literature, South African literature, Bach’s Passacaglia, Benjamin’s Das Passagen-Werk, metatextuality, literary montage, mosaics

OPSOMMING
Van Niekerk se Memorandum-narratief is ’n gedenkskrif vir die elegies-realistiese skilder, Adriaan van Zyl, wat in September 2006 sterf – soos Walter Benjamin in sy laat veertigs en insgelyks met sy kunstenaarsloopbaan onderbreek. Van Niekerk stel in Memorandum vir haarself ’n uitdagende taak (soos Wiid dit formuleer aan die begin van “Memorandum 3”): om Bach se Passacaglia en fuga in C Mineur (BWV 582) (± 1715) te “vertaal” in prosa en om ’n kleiner, Afrikaanse weergawe van Benjamin se Das Passagen-Werk (1983) te skryf. Die struktuur van Benjamin se teks word bepaal deur die argitektuur van die stad Parys, en besinning daaroor ingeweef rondom ’n enorme mosaïek van aanhalings. Soos Benjamin se onvoltooide werk oorweldig met sy volume en vreemde tekstuele apparatuur, so ook Van Niekerk se teks met sy woordelyste, addenda, voetnote plus drie memoranda in verskillende grafiese vorme. Onvoltooidheid, onafheid, uitreik na later en na voltooiing, is die afwesige aanwesigheid. Maar albei tekste word in die toekoms wat wag, onvermydelik gefnuik deur die dood van die kunstenaar (van Benjamin en van Adriaan van Zyl plus die fiktiewe skrywer, Wiid). Van Zyl se laaste skildery, “Die wagkamer” word onvoltooid in die Afrikaanse gesamentlike werk ingesluit. Die onvoltooidheid merk die Duitse sowel as Afrikaanse tekste met die dood.

TREFWOORDE: Marlene van Niekerk, Memorandum, Agaat, Afrikaanse letterkunde, Suid- Afrikaanse letterkunde, Bach se Passacaglia, Benjamin se Das Passagen- Werk, metatekstualiteit, literêre montage, mosaïekwerk