I have learnt some of the Bach
Suites and have performed Suite 1 Prelude in public. The issue of1
how to create dance-like sound is a difficult one especially if there are slurs
of 3-4 notes. The edition I use is the Barenreiter. (For the violin I have an
edition of Bach’s 6 Sonatas & Partitas which I absolutely love because it
includes facsimile of the autograph manuscript). At the back of my cello suites edition that I
use I have notes on the score (in German) that tell me things about the Anna
Magdalena’s score amongst other things. Under notes on Suite V Sarabande I
think it states how certain bars look in the Anna Magdalena score and the lute
version of the score. So, in Anna’s version, when there are 4 quavers together
they have a clear (deutlich) slur (bindebogen) over them in bars 1, 5, 6, 7,
16, 20 and in the lute version in bars 2, 3, 4, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 18 a
group of 4 quavers together have a slur on the last 3 but not over the first
note.
A question that crossed my mind
was: How does the slurring work in Bach’s lute version of the Sarabande because
while looking at a website showing Bach’s autograph of it, it looks to me as
though he tends not to include the first note in a bunch of quavers in the slur
irrespective of whether it is a high note or a low note? The Barenreiter
edition mentions in its notes that the lute version has bars in the Sarabande
which leave the first note of a group of quavers un-slurred and then slurring
the next 3 quavers in the group, as mentioned above, although this doesn’t
include their thoughts on bar 5.
However, it did occur to me that dances
in those days were slower so the slurred notes are not such a problem because
the overall tempo was sedate and slow. I think perhaps slurs suit the shape of
the choreography. Watching this video2 demonstrates the dance steps
used for a sarabande and how it fits with the music. I think it shows that
slurs can fit well with the dance and still maintain the beat. A slur on a lute
would also come across very differently to listeners from a slur on the cello. Slurs
are especially tricky here because lute notation, especially in early scores,
is different from cello notation so can be misread by non-lute players. For
instance, a slur may be written more minimally to keep the tablature style of
score neater because, in the Baroque era, there was a preference for the
visually pleasing rather than being strict about writing down every instruction
with precision so the notation left it up to the lute player to assume
correctly what was implied. So, are
there any implied slurs we should be thinking about as cellists when playing
this suite?3
You may have already read Cardin’s
article4 but it definitely was an exciting find for me because it
relates to my research paper on the Philosophy of Music, ‘When is a Piece of
Music the Identical Piece? Subtitle: The Problem of Identity in Music and
Performance’5:
Abstract: It is difficult to be
certain how composers felt their pieces should sound in performance.
Nevertheless, this is desirable background knowledge for musicians aiming at an
authentic interpretation. It is even problematic to analyse the composer’s
intention behind the music when recordings of a composer playing their own
piece of music is available to listen to (or see him/her perform it on video)
because there can be differences in approach between recordings taken several
years apart. For example, Kreisler composed Liebesleid and there are at least
two recordings of him playing it (1930 and 1942) but he does not play and
express it identically each time. This discrepancy between the different ways
Kreisler plays this piece raises, I think, questions about identity and
interpretation in music. In this paper, I shall attempt to explore the
following research questions. When and why is a piece of music the same piece
across many different interpretations and performances? Could analysing pieces
of music in terms of types and tokens help to track the identity of a musical
work over different editions of scores, performances and interpretations? Is it
the same piece if it is one and the same piece that the composer had in his/her
mind? Is the music the composer has/had in their mind always completely
identical to each instance of it being performed and how easy is it to
replicate what the composer had in mind when performed by others across time?
Even if we say a piece’s identity is what is written in the score, what if
different editions are heavily edited so the piece is somewhat different or if
a performer changes the mood of the piece or adds additional grace notes or
improvisations? Could a piece change its identity under certain conditions and
cease to be the same piece?
1 Steven Isserlis on
Urtext editions, (10/05/2017) available at:
2 ‘Basic Steps for a
Sarabande’ from www.dancilla.com,
available at:
3 For further
information about slurs in the baroque era, see:
4 Cardin, M., (2001) ‘The slur concept in the late Baroque lute
Tablatures’, in The London Manuscript unveiled - 6. Appendix 3, The slur
concept, available at:
5 available and downloadable on my academia.edu site:
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.