Scherzo of Beethoven’s Third Symphony) or ‘learned’
connotations. The simplest way to deal with such cases—
as the editor of the Legrenzi cantatas discussed below
demonstrates—is to leave the metre unchanged and indi-
cate quadruplet subdivision in the normal modern way
(which is really the same way as in the sources). Freitas,
however, changes the metre to common time for one
bar. This is dangerous, since the unwary may be tempted
to make the change non-proportional: that is, to proceed
on a crotchet-equals-crotchet basis. The risk is all the
greater since the editor has gone out of his way prudently
to state, in the introduction (p.xxiii), that proportional
relationships between sections in different metres and/or
employing different note values cannot be assumed to
apply.
In his critical report Freitas describes four different
categories of accidental used in the edition: normal; within
square brackets; within round brackets; or in reduced font.
This is unnecessarily fussy. One might raise the rhetorical
question of why no distinction is made between original
precautionary accidentals and editorial ones. In general,
the edition is a little too upfront with its scholarship: a lit-
tle sprezzatura (being clever without showing it) would
have been welcome. My final quibble is that by electing
to place bass figures above rather than below the continuo
stave Freitas has unnecessarily distended the systems,
making them distinctly harder to read.
To end with some good points: the presence of vocal
range finders at the head of each cantata is a boon to the
user (far more valuable for this type of music than the
prefatory staves that many editors still insist on employ-
ing). Freitas also has some sage advice for singers,
observing that ‘the commonly heard practice of inter-
polating much higher notes [than those notated in the
score] is entirely a product of the (late) nineteenth
century, a substitution of bombast for the wanted refine-
ment’ (p.xxi). Say it again (but do not expect many to take
notice)!
The three volumes of Legrenzi cantatas and canzonets
from Green Man Press have a more modest, largely
practical orientation. They have some excellent features:
a competent edition of the sung text with a (slightly less
good) parallel English translation; a separate score with-
out continuo realization usable either by the singer or by
a continuo player; the inclusion of works for bass voice
(a comparative rarity for the period); and a cleanly
presented text. Their Achilles heel, however, is the conti-
nuo realization, which is as unsuitable in every respect
(voicing, harmonic content, part-writing) as any I have
694 early music november 2006
ever reviewed (to be fair, one of the two editors, Barbara
Sachs, is a little better at this than the other, Cedric Lee).
I would be the greatest hypocrite if I stated that, in an
edition intended for wide practical use, an editorial
realization was redundant. But publishers owe it to their
customers (and editors owe it to themselves) to come
up with a realization that, if not sparkling, is at least
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serviceable. In the past, this task often fell to a specialist,
and although sub-contraction is never ideal, it should be
considered if the alternative is as weak as this.
doi:10.1093/em/cal096
Susan Wollenberg
Reviving C. P. E. Bach
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, The complete works
(Los Altos, CA: Packard Humanities Institute)
vol.I/3: ‘Probestücke’, ‘Leichte’ and ‘Damen’ sonatas,
ed. David Schulenberg (2005), $25
vol.II/8: Sei concerti per il cembalo concertato (Wq 43)
ed. Douglas Lee (2005), $30
vol.III/3: Orchester-Sinfonien mit 12 obligaten
Stimmen (Wq 183), ed. David Kidger (2005), $20
Following the sad demise of the C. P. E. Bach Edition
begun so promisingly by Oxford University Press in 1989
under the direction of Eugene Helm and Rachel Wade,
the collected works of C. P. E. Bach are newly launched
in this handsomely produced set of volumes by the
Packard Humanities Institute, in co-operation with the
Bach-Archiv, Leipzig, the Sächsische Akademie der
Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, and Harvard University. It is
good to see that a collected edition is once again a real
possibility for this composer. The new editorial team
includes such established Bach scholars as Darrell M.
Berg (General Editor, together with Ulrich Leisinger
and Peter Wollny) and David Schulenberg.
Schulenberg has edited vol.I/3 (keyboard music) to a
generally very high standard, particularly as regards the
provision of source information, although I have some
reservations about his editing of the musical text. The
contents form a generous musical offering: the volume
contains not only the three sets of keyboard sonatas
mentioned on the cover and title-page, but also a further
set of pieces, the Sechs neue Clavier-Stücke (VI Sonatine
nuove) which accompanied the Versuch in its third edition
of 1787, and which are here labelled as ‘Wq 63/7–12’.
The other three sets comprise the Achtzehn Probestücke
in Sechs Sonaten, originally issued to complement the
Versuch in 1753 (‘Wq 63/1–6’), the Sechs leichte Clavier-
Sonaten (‘Wq 53/1–6’), and the Six Sonates pour le Clavecin
à l’usage des Dames (‘Wq 54/1–6’). The general editors
have expressly retained the old Wotquenne numbering,
used here virtually exclusively. Wotquenne’s thematic
catalogue was superseded by Helm’s much more extensive
and nuanced listing published in 1989 (and provisionally
available before that in the New Grove 2). The Helm
catalogue [H] numbering has generally taken precedence
in the literature on C. P. E. Bach since, and could have
been expected to be used here. The rationale behind the
adherence to Wotquenne is explained by the editors sim-
ply by reason of its sheer persistence: ‘Alfred Wotquenne’s
Thematisches Verzeichnis . . . (1905) has long been the
standard catalogue of Bach’s works, and the present edi-
tion employs Wotquenne numbers . . . for primary refer-
ences to Bach’s work’ (general preface to all volumes),
although H numbers do put in an appearance here and
there, and are to be found among the small print in the
critical commentary.
It could be argued that the ideal way to access
C. P. E. Bach’s keyboard music would be directly from
Darrell Berg’s facsimile editions of the various original
manuscript and printed sources (New York: Garland,
1985). The added value of a modern edition such as this
must lie in its presenting the musical text in a carefully
considered form for the present-day reader, and in the
extent of the contextual information it provides. On this
latter count, Schulenberg’s edition scores highly, with,
besides its nearly 150 pages of musical text, some 50 pages
of introductory prose and commentary, presenting the
fruits of his searching scholarly enquiry.
My reservations about the editorial approach concern
the suppression of certain features of the original, in
particular C. P. E. Bach’s detailed dynamic markings.
Bach is quite precise about where, and in which part,
and on which note, the dynamic markings should apply.
As Hans-Günter Ottenberg has observed, ‘Here more than
anywhere else in his keyboard music, Bach has notated
in great detail his exact requirements’ (C. P. E. Bach,
trans. Philip Whitmore (Oxford, 1987), p.78). Schulenberg
suppresses some of this detail as a matter of policy,
subsuming it under a single marking or omitting it
altogether, and sometimes thereby distorting what seem
to be the original intentions. This happens even where a
linear texture is strongly characterized, either by contra-
puntal working-out or through the combination of dis-
tinctive melody and accompaniment lines. To give just
two instances: in the Probestücke, Sonata III, first move-
ment, bars 16–17, the canonic imitation at a bar’s distance
is marked in Schulenberg’s edition with a single forte
indication on the first quaver of the ‘dux’ in bar 16; no
further marking is given. In fact Bach marked the right
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hand ‘comes’ entry with a forte on its first quaver. In
Probestücke, Sonata I, second movement, bar 9, in this
edition the syncopated melody is correctly marked piano,
but the bass part entering on beat 2 with an elegant
accompanying figure is left unmarked; Bach had a piano
on its first crotchet. (The same happens with the
pianissimo sequential repetition beginning at bar 13.)
Howard Ferguson, in his Associated Board edition of
the Probestücke, agrees with me on this point. He con-
sistently retains the original placing of dynamics in left
and right hands (and I find his bold-type, italicized
dynamics easier to take in visually). Ferguson’s edition
scores less well, though, in regard to Bach’s fingering:
here it is Schulenberg who presents the more comprehen-
sive rendering of this aspect of the original.
The presentation of the musical text itself seems vir-
tually error-free, although there are occasional small slips:
bar 21 in Probestücke, Sonata III, second movement
should be numbered 22, and is there a fingering missing
in Sonatina VI in D minor (p.148), bar 14, RH on d 0 ?
The Probestücke (the most substantial of the sonatas
here) conclude with the famous ‘Hamlet’ Fantasy, H 75;
Helm’s catalogue lists over 25 items in the literature on
this work (and more have appeared since). Less well
known but often cited in discussions of their genre are
the attractive ‘Damen-Sonaten’; belonging to the 18th-
and 19th-century proliferation of ‘music for ladies’, these
could all too easily be dismissed as simple, deliberately
undemanding pieces. At times they resemble Mozart in
K545 vein (see Sonata I, bars 9ff.). I have, though, heard
the suggestion made (at a C. P. E. Bach conference) that
these works show an enhanced empfindsam character,
in keeping with female sensibilities (simultaneous cross-
relations are a speciality: see, for instance, Sonata VI,
second movement, bar 7). These sonatas are not lacking
in C. P. E. Bach’s characteristic twists and turns; as a
collection they display a variety of keyboard textures
and moods, including the humorous effects for which
the composer is renowned.
Besides the general preface common to all three
volumes, setting out the editorial policy for the whole
project, each series has its own generic preface (by Darrell
early music november 2006 695
Berg on keyboard music, and Peter Wollny on sym-
phonies and concertos). These provide an overview that
will be especially helpful for those relatively unfamiliar
with C. P. E. Bach’s work. Also among the preliminary
material are sections of plates featuring facsimiles of
title-pages and pages from manuscript and printed
sources. The prefaces to the individual volumes cover
matters of compositional genesis and publication history,
performance history and reception, performance practice,
and musical style. What emerges from them collectively
is, above all, a strong sense of C. P. E. Bach’s high profile
as a composer in his own time, of his successful and
astute management of his professional career (for exam-
ple in cultivating and negotiating with publishers), and
of the appreciative reception of his music despite—in
fact, because of—its pronounced individualism: he was
recognized in his own time as an ‘original genius’.
Another important aspect that emerges strongly is his
consideration of ‘Kenner und Liebhaber’—connoisseurs
and amateurs—with the carefully contrived appeal to
either or both of these categories in designing and
marketing his published collections. An advertisement
for the Sei Concerti per il cembalo concertato, H471–6 of
1772, possibly originating with Bach himself (see vol.II/8,
p.xi), declared: ‘To connoisseurs of good music that comes
from the heart and to friends of natural rather than
muddled and foolish tastes, these concertos certainly will
be desirable.’ Such words both flattered and instructed
the potential buyer, while also stressing the pieces’
suitability for the amateur, ‘the solo part as well as the
accompaniments’ being ‘easier’ and the cadenzas written
out. As the editor, Douglas A. Lee, reminds us, with these
works Bach was contributing to a relatively new genre.
In them Bach explored the relationship of solo and
orchestra that was at the heart of the late 18th-century
keyboard concerto. Thus the entries of the harpsichord
soloist following the opening ritornellos display a variety
of strategies. In Concerto I the soloist enters immed-
iately after the ritornello as part of a dialogue with the
orchestra (to which the opening idea lends itself, with
its forte–piano contrasts). In Concerto V the soloist is
absent from the slow introduction (except of course for
the customary continuo function), and enters in the
following Presto, introduced unaccompanied for maxi-
mum exposure, whereas in Concerto II the opening
Allegro di molto for orchestra is followed by an
Andante section with the soloist entering virtually
unaccompanied before the Allegro di molto resumes (the
alternation of these two tempi recurs later). Concertos IV
696 early music november 2006
and VI have the solo part entering with varied versions
of the opening idea, the latter a more-or-less literal use,
the former constituting an expressive decorative varia-
tion. In Concerto III the solo part entering at bar
33 features a reflection in improvisatory style, taking
its departure from the ritornello material. The set as
a whole shows experiments with structure and key
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(for example, in the through-composed form of
Concerto V, with all four sections based in the tonic G
major, the first three being open-ended, and in the use
of open-ended movement-structures and interesting
key-juxtapositions within the three-movement cycles of
the other five concertos).
Similar experiments characterize the four orchestral
symphonies, the Vier Orchester-Sinfonien mit zwölf
obligaten Stimmen, H663–6, of 1775–6, edited here by
David Kidger. These symphonies are the crown of Bach’s
work in this field. Again, the genre was relatively new, and
Bach’s major contribution to it in these works (as well as
in the earlier set of Six String Symphonies, H657–62,
commissioned by van Swieten) perhaps shows his origin-
ality at its most striking. The extreme quirkiness with
which he handles symphonic gestures—themselves still a
novelty—renders them even more novel: the opening of
the very first symphony, in D major, immediately estab-
lishes this with its unexpected ‘take’ on the conventions.
The expanded wind section is used colourfully and with
a new independence. These four symphonies deserve
to be adopted into the regular concert repertory (their
première in Hamburg was a triumph, as Kidger docu-
ments). In fact they sustained a presence in the repertory
long after Bach’s lifetime. Peter Wollny points out (vol.II/
8, Preface: Symphonies, p.x) that they were ‘issued and
revived in the concert hall on a number of occasions in
the 19th and early 20th centuries and are thus the only
symphonies from Bach’s generation’ to have the dis-
tinction of claiming ‘a continuous performing tradition
running from his era to ours’.
Christopher Hogwood (chair of the editorial board)
and his colleagues are to be congratulated on their sterling
efforts on behalf of a composer once described in Early
music, xviii (1990) as ‘still one of music’s half-knowns’,
and one who definitely deserves to be much better known
and appreciated. Or as Bach’s friend Charles Burney
put it, ‘it must be owned that the style of this author is
so uncommon, that a little habit is necessary for the
enjoyment of it’.
doi:10.1093/em/cal097