August 28 2024

Bach and some modern understandings of the Baroque

I was trained as a “modern” cellist, most of my career was on modern instruments with endpins and metal strings, always exploring any new developments in each, and more. But as a modern player, I also studied scores, searching for authoritative “urtext” editions, manuscripts, and first editions of the “standard” repertoire. The idea was to seek understanding of a composer’s intent, and exploring the context of the period in which they lived and worked. I was often frustrated with learning Bach’s Solo Suites, especially as I grew up playing in an orchestra that specialized in the Cantatas, and there just seemed so many discrepancies between this music, which had strong foundations in the original texts, and how the Suites appeared in print and was heard in performance.

As a result of this, for me, regarding Bach, the best editor is the one who does the least. Anything that is not in the manuscripts that exist is editorial. Do you want to learn Bach, or someone else’s opinion on what Bach intended? I believe that there is no real choice to a musician who wishes to seek a composer’s intent, you go with the least editing. You don’t seek to interpret an interpretation of an interpretation. That result seems to be more like the result of a game of “telephone.”

[The game of telephone: Players form a line or circle, and the first player comes up with a message and whispers it to the ear of the second person in the line. The second player repeats the message to the third player, and so on. When the last player is reached, they announce the message they just heard, to the entire group. Errors typically accumulate in the retellings, so the statement announced by the last player differs significantly from that of the first player, usually with amusing or humorous effect. It is often invoked as a metaphor for cumulative error, especially the inaccuracies as rumours or gossip spread, or, more generally, for the unreliability of typical human recollection.]

“On November 2016, Bärenreiter Verlag published Bach’s Cello Suites of “New Bach Edition, Revised Edition” (NBA rev. 4 / Editor: Andrew Talle).” This is the most recent edition, yet it contains some errors:

https://bachcellonotes.blogspot.fr/2017/02/new-bach-edition-revised-nba-rev-4_13.html

Here is a review of the new Barenreiter Bach Suites (2016). Barenreiter also publishes a synoptic edition the compares line by line the early manuscript copies and the first published edition.

http://stringsmagazine.com/compare-the-five-earliest-copies-of-the-bach-cello-suites-at-a-glance-in-barenreiters-new-edition/

https://www.baerenreiter.com/en/shop/product/details/BA5277/

There are many editions available here for free, including facsimile manuscripts

http://imslp.org/wiki/6_Cello_Suites,_BWV_1007-1012_(Bach,_Johann_Sebastian)

Of these, I prefer the Bach-Gesellschaft Ausgabe (edited by Alfred Dorffel), which was edited by a musicologist/organist, not a cellist. Why is that a good thing? Because decisions about slurs are about being consistent with the preponderance of the extant manuscripts, not someone’s bowing ideas. The parts are very clean (no fingerings). This is this best free download to start with, IMO. You can look at lots of options from the IMSLP list if you need fingerings and bowings, but they often have little to do with what Bach wrote.

Zander Masterclass

Whispelwey Masterclass

I think we must study Bach Choral works, arias from the cantatas (check the cello parts, Bernard Greenhouse played in the Bach Aria Group for years, after all), and the keyboard suites. Fingerings are not that big of a deal, look at the chords and scales and the fingering is usually pretty obvious. If they aren’t, then that is where to concentrate your initial efforts (scales and arpeggios, with a teacher, if possible, but there are many scale/arpeggio books available). Bowings in the Suites are problematic only in that there is no original manuscript from Bach’s own hand, only copies made by others. By looking at the works I suggest, you will see what common types of articulation patterns exist consistently in Bach’s writing for cello (like arpeggiated chords, commonly 3+1 or 1+3, etc., not as commonly 4 (or 8) to a bow as many “modern” editions contain, 2+1+1, et al), but modern cellists rarely seem to do this, even if it is in the existing manuscripts and the Gesellschaft, so any online “tutorial” is likely more of the same distorted stuff. Casals’ “revolution” was to program the Suites in performance (most uncommon at the time), and that you should study them and make them your own, not that you should play them as he himself did. That was Bernard Greenhouse’s experience gained from working with the great Catalan cellist.

By looking at the keyboard works, you see similar patterns of articulation. Bach most often played the keyboard, and I believe that his thinking on articulating in archetypal works like French dance suites (they are “types” by definition) is clear in these works. By listening to great keyboard players in this repertoire, you get a very different idea of tempo, pacing, and consistent articulation. Zander pretty much nails it, in that regard. The suggestions he makes are compelling.

These things are the very basis of what makes Bach’s music what it is: when harmonic rhythm changes, this needs to be clear, ditto a hemiola; how melodic material changes dependent on the chord it occurs within, and where the key changes take place tell us much about the journey we are on, and structurally, where we are within that journey. These are the indicators, the signposts and the scenery on our path, and we need to animate our understanding and our performance with them.

Robert Schumann wrote piano accompaniment to the suites, and it’s available at IMSLP. Antonio Janigro (who had been a student of Diran Alexanian, who published the first widely distributed edition of the Suites containing the Anna Magdalena manuscript facsimile) played the suites on the piano and played the Schumann arrangement from memory in class; very illuminating.

Among the best training for playing Bach is to play the continuo (and solo) parts of the Cantatas and Masses (particularly Arias and Recitatives), followed by the orchestral suites. You can get the music on imslp.org and play along with recordings to get a feel for it. This will give you the sense of the range of articulations (be mindful of the words in this regard!) in the vocal works, and the rhythmic inflection in the Dance movements of the orchestral suites. Then get a clean, un-bowed and un-fingered edition of the Suites and do your own hiking. It isn’t Mt. Everest, it’s the Appalachian Trail.

In the 1980s, my first former mother-in-law (at my suggestion) transcribed the 4th Suite for Harpsichord. I recently found a very old, not very high quality cassette tape (remember those?) of a performance. I attempted to make it reasonably listenable, and the result is linked below. I think it offers an excellent example for cellists to consider thinking about the Bach Suites not as cello pieces, but more as “pure” music.