Bach’s Chorus: A Preliminary Report Joshua Rifkin The Musical Times, Vol. 123, No. 1677 (Nov., 1982), 747-751+753-754. Stable URL htp:/flinks.jstor-org/sicisici=( 127-4666% 2819821 1%29123%3A1677%3C747%3ABCAPR%3E2, .CO%3B2-C ‘The Musical Times is currently published by Musical Times Publications Ltd. Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at hup:/www,jstororglabout/terms.hml. ISTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www jstor.org/journalsmtpl him, ch copy of any part of'a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the sereen or printed page of such transmission, ISTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support @ jstor.org. hupulwww jstor.org/ ri Jul 15 13:23:06 2005Bach’s Chorus A preliminary report Joshua Rifkin In virtually any choral performance today, a singer will read from his of her own copy of the music. Simple prac- ticality dictates this arrangement; not surprisingly, therefore, its history reaches back a considerable distance. Indeed, vocal groups seem rarely if ever to have sung any fther way since at least 1600 — or so we may conclude from the surviving performance materials of such com- posers as Schiltz, Biber, Haydn, Mozart and Schubert, to rname just a few. These materials, samples of which we shall examine shortly, differ from ours in giving singers individual parts instead of vocal scores; but as notational, theoretical and documentary evidence all make clear, they invariably provide a separate part for every singer. If earlier choirs kept the same ratio of singers to music as we do, then the parts they used can obviously furnish precise evidence of their size and disposition. A survey of this evidence yields two principal findings. First it con- firms the familiar belief that vocal ensembles of the 17th and 18th centuries generally had fewer members than their modern successors: Mozart, for example, appears 10 have presented the greater number of his masses with only 12 singers.’ More important, the parts show that a chorus did not always mean the same thing that it does to us. Before 1750 in particular, musicians regularly used the word ‘chorus’ to describe a group of solo singers.’ These singers, often referred to as ‘concertists’, performed ‘solo’ and ‘choral’ numbers without distinction; accordingly, their parts ~ which offen bore no label beyond the name of the voice ~ contained everything in a piece that fell within their respective ranges, whether recitative, aria, chorus or chorale, If one had sufficient forces, one could double the concertists at appropriate points with extra singers called ripienists, who received special parts that omitted everything sung by the concertists alone. This addition, of course, created precisely the sonority that we now regard as the hallmark of a chorus. Yet contrary to ‘what we might imagine, ripienists did not constitute an integral part of even the most opulent textures. Numerous pieces give performers the express option of leaving them out; and even more simply do not cal for them in the first place. Let me illustrate these points with three examples. Schitz’s Musicalische Exequien Swv279~81 contains six "ee he source dst the til rprts to NMA 1 2 Apu fom eidence sn the pats thems, Ligh ote G. . Ses recoltion othe Singh he Neve Khe ep io the cart 18 en ‘ay, sf Math’ Grade nr Ehfove (7) el Max Sets (Belin Hota 18 voice parts, labelled ‘Cantus’, ‘Altus’, ‘Tenor’, ‘Bassus’, ‘Quintus’ and ‘Sextus’.’ The composer's preface states that the first section of the work ‘is, strictly speaking, for six voices, or rather six concerted singers with organ . - From these six concerted parts, one may also write out six further parts wherever the word capella appears . . . and thus set up and add a special extra chorus, or capella’ ‘The equation of ‘six voices’ with ‘six concerted singers’, the similar equation of ‘six concerted parts’ with the neutrally labelled parts of the set and, finally, the absence ‘of any suggestion that the members of the capella ~ in ‘other words, the ripienists ~ share the same music as the concertists all indicate that Schitz expected only one singer to read from cach part. Similarly, the ad libitum nature of the capella underscores its secondary importance. ‘My second example comes from the other end of the chronological spectrum. The original materials for Haydn's Harmoniemesse of 1802 contain a total of 18 voice parts, four marked ‘concertato’ and the rest ~ four each for soprano and alto, three each for tenor and bass ~ marked ‘rippieno’.* A year earlier, the Esterhazy chapel hhad included only eight singers, two in each range.* Obvi- ously, either the ensemble grew in the meantime or Haydn engaged ‘tingers’ for the performance; in neither case, however, does it seem probable that he would have bhad more singers than parts. ‘The third example brings us to Bach. The largely auto- graph materials to the early cantata Gott ist mein Konig BWV7I" include eight voice parts, four inscribed ‘in Ripi- eno’, the others designated by range alone but ~ as even a slance at the music should demonstrate — clearly meant for concertists. Despite the lavish instrumental forces used in the piece, the heading of the score contains the indica- tion ‘ab 18. & se piace 22’, allowing the omission of the ripieno partsi* indeed, these do not even appear in the printed edition of the cantata brought out at more or less the same time. As with Schitz’s Exeguien, therefore, the concertists by themselves form the ‘chorus® proper, while the optional ripienists merely enrich the basic texture, ae Hic Shi: SnmiheWork oP Spt Leip 12R197 9s the fc of th ia pain Stare Scare te, See Juph Hap: Wy, wl il repr, 1D see H.C: 8 Linton Haya Choe and Wat, (Lond, 1977, 636 se fs eo. (Lip, 1970) a7‘As BwV71 reveals, Bach began his carcer squarely within the tradition that I have outlined. It should thus come as no surprise to discover that the sources of his later can- tatas, Passions and other concerted vocal works continue to reflect this tradition in al its aspects. Yer this discovery hhas implications that many have indeed found surprising; even alarming. To understand why, we must take a closer look at the materials themselves. Given restrictions of space, I shall concentrate here on one admittedly exceptional, but exceptionally informative, set of parts: those to the St John Passion BWV245.° Bach performed this work at least four times in. 1724, in 1725, in 1728 or 1730, and at an uncertain date during the very last years of his life.” Ar each performance after the first, he introduced changes into the composition and thus into the parts; these changes prove especially valuable in reconstructing his vocal forces. ‘Only @ handful of parts survive from the first perfor- mance, so we should start our examination with that of 1725. Counting one part no longer extant but whose exis- tence we can safely infer, the vocal materials used on this occasion comprise the ten parts listed in Table 1. Those Table 1 Si Jon Panton: Pare sed in 1725 performance ‘CoNCERTSTS PARTS Soprano ao ‘Tenore (includes Evangelist; labelled “Evangel sun) Basso includes Jesus) RIPIENISTS FARTS (copied 1724) Soprano Ripieno Alto Ripieno Tenore Rico Basso. Ripleno (includes Peter) INTERLGCUTORS PARTS "Tenore Servus ost) Bass. Pats (rapment) beneath first for the ripienists date from the previous year; Bach had the others newly copied. The four parts that I have associated with the concertists contain all the recitatives, arias, choruses and chorales; the tenor further includes the Evangelist’s narration, the bass the words of Jesus. The ripieno parts include the choruses and chorales, as well as choral interpolations for two arias; the bass of this group also contains the music for the role of Peter. Not enough of the two interlocutors” parts survives for us to say much about them; judging from parallels elsewhere, however, they would probably have contained only their particular roles and marked everything else ~ including the choruses and chorales ~ ‘tacet’" 9 oral destin of hse, ete el ep 19 NBA i 32-52 748 Read according to the normal practice of the time, this material would indicate that the 1725 performance of the ‘St John Passion involved no more than ten singers, only eight of whom ever sang at once. This latter number in particular falls sufficiently below even the most conser- vative prior estimates of Buch’s vocal forces for us to ask whether we can really trust it. May we not, for example, assume that extra singers read along from either the con certists’or the ripienists’ parts? For the concertists’ parts, we can answer this question in three ways. The first ofthese comes from a detail in the tenor part. Beneath the start of the opening chorus, the scribe, Johann Andreas Kuhnau, placed the word ‘Evan- gelista. Since the inscription has nothing to do with the ‘movement itself, it ean scarcely have had any purpose but to indicate that the part belonged to the singer who took the role of the Evangelist ~ and, by obvious implication, to no-one else ‘The second answer comes from the bass part. The aria ‘Mein teurer Heiland’, no.32 in the NBA edition, com- bines a solo bassline with a four-part chorale. Bach appor- tioned the five lines among the parts as shown in Table 2. Clearly, if he had even one additional singer reading Ripieno ITenorel + Tenore Ripien: Bast. Ripieno fiom the bass part, he would have found a way 0 have him double the chorale line, either by entering tht line together with the solo or by a directive sending him to the ripieno part. The absence of any such device can only mean that Bach meant the concerted part for one singer only; and since what holds for chs part and the tenor must hold for te alto and soprano as wel, it becomes clear that hae intended the entire set of concerted parts for solo voices alone. ‘A revision made in connection with the next perfor- mance, that of 1728 or 1730, makes these intentions even ‘more explicit. In this presentation, Bach replaced the opening number sung in 1725 witha different one ~ the chorus ‘Herr, unser Herrscher’, which had in fac opened the Passion in its earliest version. To make the replace- iment, he sewed a new piece of paper over the first page of each voice part. The new pages bear identifying labels ‘more precise than the earlier ones. Those forthe tenor and ‘bass now read "Tenore Evangelista’ and “Basso. Jesus’, respectively, while the upper two pars cary the headings ‘Soprano Concert lato? and “Alto Concert.laol” ~ thebetter, we may assume, to distinguish them from the cor- responding ripieno parts, These latter two inscriptions especially remove any doubts that could remain as to the number of singers reading from each part ‘The ripieno parts must also have served for only one singer each. As we have seen, the bass of the group in- cludes the role of Peter, while that of Pilate appears in a separate part it seems hardly credible that Bach would have done this if he had had two singers using the ripieno pat. In sum, therefore, the materials for the Passion bear ‘out the inference that we initially drew from them: in its earliest performances at least, the work called for a mere ten singers. Even with such unexpectedly small forces, of course, the performances themselves would not have sounded all that unusual to modern ears, given the presence of ripienists in the choruses and chorales.”> But the significance of the parts to the St John Passion lies not so much in what they telus about this individual work as in their demonstration of Bach’s continued adherence 1 the notational principles described at the outset, and in the particular manifestations of those principles that they reveal, To illustrate this point, we might turn briefly to Bach’s other surviving Passion, the Sr Maachew BWV244. For a revival of the work in 1736, Bach prepared the 12 voice parts listed in Table 3; these replaced an earlier set no Tables 7 ‘St Marthe Parton: Pars for 1736 performance Soprano. Chori 184 ‘to 1 Chor ‘Tenoee I. Chori Evangelista) Basso 1. Chori Jesus) Soprano Chori I ‘Alto Chor ‘Tenore Choti I Basso Chori Soprano jn Ripieno Soprano (Anca Iy Ancila 2, Usor Pia) ‘Basso Judes, Pontifex 1) Basso (Paras, Pontifex [Caipas], Pontifex 2, Pats) longer extant." Like their opposite numbers in the St John Passion, the tenor and bass of the first chorus bear the character designations ‘Evangelista’ and ‘Jesus’; in ‘each part, the name appears in the upper left-hand corner of the first page. Since we have no reason to believe that "te eae enn of his reir in he ching is, I gpd that Bach i ethene pare ary ence te pense (hela proce 4 rectamnain ofthe sehen, prune hat Tif description the par athe carpet NBA il, 49-36; on ‘Re sme Fenn a he sry nated pi the Jn Pasion I appears ‘siya ihe peng crs, im whch ngs the chorale cot Bema Seas iy ied he cr these markings mean something different in this Passion from what they did in the other, it would seem hard to escape the conclusion that Bach intended the two parts ~ and, obviously, the remaining ones as well ~ for single voices. If doubts persist, his treatment of the smaller dramatic roles should eliminate them. Pilate, for example, appears together with the Evangelist and Jesus, accom- panied by the same continuo group as they; properly speaking, therefore, he belongs to Chorus 1. Had Bach en visaged more than one singer performing from the bass part of that chorus, we might expect him to have included Pilate’s music in that part, especially as this would have allowed the singer faking the role to participate in all the ‘choral numbers. Yet not only did he relegate Pilate to one of the extra parts, but the part in question contains ‘tacet’ markings for every chorus and chorale within its boun- aries. The St Matthew Passion thus calls for the same basic complement of eight singers as the S¢ Johns only in the Matthew Passion, as everyone knows, the second group ‘of four does not simply double the first but sings in- dependently of it, at least much of the time. In other ‘words, Bach performed the monumental double choruses of the Passion = from ‘Kommt, ihr Téchter’ to ‘Wir setzen uns’ ~ with exactly four singers in each choir. ‘This brings us to the nub of the matter. Beyond the three examples we have already discussed, the materials to no fewer than 16 of Bach's works with four or more voices = BWV21, 27, 29, 55, 56, 57, 63, 76, 84, 110, 169, 195, 201, 213, 248/1V and 249 ~ contain evidence indicating that one singer read from each part in the set. At che same time, not one surviving part contains anything, such as ddivisi writing, that would clearly show more than one singer to have used it." Only nine works, however ~ BWV21, 29, 63, 71, 76, 110, 195, 201 and 245 — have parts for ripieniss;* the rest, like the Sr Matthew Passion, include only a single copy of each voice. The conse- quences would seem obvious: unless, contrary to all appearances, Bach deviated at some point from standard practice and had more than one singer read from a part, the ‘chorus’ with which he presented his vocal music = sacred or secular, whenever or wherever composed — ‘must normally have consisted of no more than four singers inal. Needless to say, previous scholarship has not seen things this way. Prevailing opinion has it that Bach did indeed "8 wie te wads ‘wou appear sera in hand of pars the presence a sma marhings suc ples nthe te pat ofthe oetre rvs ycheficmleln NBA isl pr uch evr api ty fsa copys pe moc ke the epee in Sch’ Ese "eRe selenide reno, th st aes no secant af wed ring eye screen when we haven fo pe hat he pass woud ae ded pont or pene m9deviate from standard practice, atleast in one very sizeable portion of his output ~ the Leipzig church cantatas. For these works, supposedly, he had a chorus of 12, with three singers ~ a concertist and two ripienists ~ sharing each part.” We have already seen, however, that the parts themselves do nothing to encourage belief in this uunweildy arrangement; and as T hope now to show, the documentary record does equally litle. Bach drew the singers for his Leipzig cantatas from the first of four choirs into which he had to divide the pupils of the Thomasschule."* In 1723, the year he arrived in Leipzig, the town council published a new set of regula- tions for the school, the first since 1634. Chapter 13, Arti- cle 8, of the regulations describes the choirs as each con- sisting of eight boys.” This clearly remained in force throughout and well beyond the four or five succeeding years in which Bach produced the bulk of his cantatas, 28 the council reiterated it in a decree of February 1737, copies of which Bach himself appended to two petitions ‘written later the same year 2” ‘The figure of eight singers to a choir seems to have represented something of a traditional norm, no doubt because it encompassed virtually every vocal scoring com ‘mon at the time.’ Yet eight singers to a choir did not always mean eight singers at a performance. As Bach’s predecessor Johann Kubnau noted in petitions of 1709 and 1717 ~ T quote from the latter ~ ‘some of the pupils are always out of town or sick’. This created an obvious problem for at least the first three choirs, since the services at which they sang usually included an eight-part motet > Bach thus sought to expand the number of available singers. In an appendix to a report of 18 May 1729 on applicants to the Thomasschule, he set his requirements for the first three choirs at 12 singers each; and in the well-known Enrwurff einer wohlbestallen Kirchen Musicy & "7 Tosh of my kul, thie me fa apptranc i A Schering Die Bens Bacar Coie Ba ash 18a 1-89 fo SDB tht a tea amo, ce Scerig oaan Stan Bah Lip Te Richer (Leg, 31958) 30 "Sr bahgound oa his nd seve ofthe lowing mates et eel, Se: oan Shon Dacha as Lier ei eben 2 isnt, ay ape A gh cy Fe pen Si 6 Grape 1 Kose and Scher (Nechasen Sten, Isiah 813"Sts and W. Hee, ie Thomoner Beri, 197), 29 Hake, Rs dr Sta Lig Orn Sau. Toma Li, 1723, 15-4 ‘Drewel auch sige Zt he Schl Raat, web den ate fiver ahr angenomnen 2 for the tea ofthe dere, ee BachDtume & Sick oer oat Joka iat Bache W- Nene, 93} 99 100ee 156 (Eae ite in Pe Bh Ress, els HT Dave nd A. Mendel (New ott 1786e)152}; on Has vcs spa in eon fears eae JR “The Chora of hs Sot Mathew Paso Meal Quarto (197), 58087 on Bae) 21 fy an eae expe, eG. Dion “The Capp ofS. Main Teasevere {aso yan Arch Su la & Leer 805 303 fo) 2 eB Spi: Johan San Buk (Lgl 172-0, 85, 892 2 ee Schering: Bak Lagi Kiem 130 2 Bah Dabumont 250 Bch Rear 124 750 memorandum to the town council dated 23 August 1730, he elaborated on the subject as follows: Each musical choir” requires atleast three sopranos, three altos, thre tenors and 2s many basse, so tha even ifone fll ill @s very often happens, particulary at this time of year Jy at least a double-chorus motet may be sung. (NB: ‘Though i would be stil better ifthe student body were so constituted that one could have four subjects for each voice and thus 16 persons in each choir.) An apparently universal impression to the contrary not- withstanding, we do not know if Bach succeeded in his cf forts to get 12 singers for each ‘musical’ choir. Even if he did succeed, however, the implications for his cantatas re- ‘main far ftom certain. For one thing, Bach clearly uses the word ‘choit” ~ at least in the Enraurff ~ to denote a pool of singers larger than the number taking part in any one composition.” For another, his remarks have no demonstrable connection to anything beyond the mot not only does he speak of nothing else but his frame of reference includes the third choir, which did not sing con- certed pieces. Most important, perhaps, Bach could never have hed the entire membership of his first choir singing in cantatas even if he wished to. As he wrote elsewhere in the Enteourff, a shortage of paid instrumen talists meant that ‘I have’ usually had to fill the second violin, and always the viola, violoncello and violone with pupils from the school; it is easy to judge what the vocal choir has lost thereby”. On feast days, he added, the se- cond choir also sang a cantata, and he had to send ‘all those pupils who play one instrument or another’ to ac- company these performances.” At the very least, therefore, he would have lost three capable singers every Sunday; four on many others} and a presumably still greater number on feast days ~ which, in Leipzig, made Lup roughly a quarter ofthe occasions for which he had to provide music." A the lose of the Entwurff, Bach appended a list of all his pupils, dividing them into three classes according to musical ability. Only 17 qualified as ‘usable’ for cantatas. Two of these had to serve as prefects, or deputy 2 fae suountngporons fhe Ena mae pho ‘il coi ees pal the et en ao ir cha 2 acDokumoue, i 6-64 uted psi 6) The Yas of he Enon in ‘The Bh Rear, 126-24, aloes ome qesonae eg hs a tet evant page: the enna bere aod my andetanang othe Ean esr ea coscable este pening say by Sse 1). 5c reference fr 16 gestae ely ht he woul ae ied toe pan he eel unter even fend 12 arson say ce he in {harem opans wou bel once. Simi ur ajc fr cah wie C2 {Eder Somme t sutecs) cares no pean of far ges perfor fopter,ot tht the pop shold ince fur epreetaes le ange lay inthe ans fe Sige ere cir fw ews ee ‘Sip tom the unvesiyrsce A. Seri” Muse Lape (ep, IsUuiosy 2 Back Doboments 62conductors, with the second and third choirs; and between Christmas and Easter, @ further prefect had to lead the fourth choir. Of the 14 or 15 thus remaining, a ‘minimum of three had to go tothe second choir ~ assum- ing, forthe sake of argument, thatthe prefect ofthis group could singin @ cantata and conduct it at the same time, Of the 11 or 12 left forthe first choir, atleast three played in- struments in every performance. At the very most, therefore, only eight or nine could stil have sung; and they could not have sung as a unit unless their voices i cluded two each of sopranos, altos, tenors and basses, and feryone stayed in perfect health. Given the list of op- timum assumptions necessary to assemble even this modest group, the documentary basis for imagining as ‘many as two singers on a part, let alone three, would ap- pear fragile indeed.* OF course, the writing of the Enrwurff came after the period of Bach's greatest vocal productivity, and some may wish to argue that he had had a lerger supply of Singers in those earlier years. But we have no real evidence for this proposition, and some indirect evidence agains it. 29 on hia rf, how the Emourf dos ot mention lige seed aan concarr fete re che macht we gure Dhamens ser Lebugeciche Toon Sion ‘Bas 168-170 W. Newmana and HL. Sb Lap, 1909527 H Sone ees might ate may wish Se evidence of Bach's ein te cerns fr ihe rganaaon shin wh which he ep the Ear. ‘ater ns emats do of do net men shale oth be athe net fue) hey sty dt ab ha di fi an at i a The Thomashirche and Thomarschal, Leip: fom an ‘old phoagrph the ‘A portion of that evidence comes from documents that I shall consider ata later date; the portion I wish to consider here brings us back to the sources of the Passion music. ‘We have already seen that both the St John Passion and. ‘St Mathew would have had only one singer reading from ‘each of their parts. To these works we must add the Sr ‘Mark Passion of Reinhard Keiser, which Bach performed 1726. Only a set of concerted parts survives from this ‘occasion; but these materials contain indications, similar to those encountered in the other Passions, that again let us fix the number of singers using each part at one. ‘On Good Friday, Bach could evidently add the more capable members of his second choir to the singers of the first, something impossible on regular Sundays and feast days, when the two groups sang in different churches.”* Presumably, therefore, the eight voices that sing most of the St Marchew and St John represent the combined forces of both choirs ~ four from one, four from the other.%* oq hi work see, most scety, As Glsknr Johann Sehaian Bac ‘Aaitrangen tages? Passonsme’, Bac Jobtuk 1977, 75-119 fen 7 89 an 109-19) Gian, decries tex para doubt wih which Bach ad perfred Keser Panic in Wein, bt hs un compaionbeween he Tipe aod Weimar rernars sale pn Bach ould oe bate ed bo ‘ani i the ae permance, 3 se Scaring: Bac: Lier Kichnmah, 18-6 28cm wor ping ot tha of Bach’ far ered works wih rien pars wten ater 1728 bw 110, 195 and 245 ree eo eco Sieh he oul hae combined both bn: Good Fy (245) the innugration a Them coun onthe Monday afer the Fea ofS Bunce (3) a2 eig 95, 71Since we have only concerted pants forthe Keiser Passion, vee cannot tll whether the second choir would have sung In this work, too; whether it did or no, however, the size of the first choir would have remained a four As we already know, Bach performed the St John Pas- sion in 1724 and 1723 ~ his frst two Good Fridays in Leipzig ~ and the Keiser Passion in 1728. He apparently presented the St Matthew Pasion in bath 1727 and 1729" tnd gave the St John Passion in 1728 or 1730. We thus have an almost unbroken record of his Good Friday music throughout these seven years; ence despite the incom: plete state ofthe Keiser parts ~ and despite the fact that the extant pars forthe St Mathew Pasion originated at a later date ~ we can establish with considerable certainty that the fire shoir performed concerted music with no more than four singers ata regularly recurring point in tinually every year of his early Leipzig period. Since the Constitution of the chor ike that of school rgb team, would have remained fundamentally unchanged trough. but the academic year, what holds for Good Friday would also hold for the entire Itorgical calendar. Even for the years before the Enuff, therefore, we have litle choice Butto conclude dat Bach normally presented his canttss with concertss alone, one reading from each pat in the materials. Bach, then, did remain faithful to standard practices and if ‘we wish to remain faithful to him, we must orientate our performances to what his parts tell us, however modest the resulting forces. But do such forces truly reflect Bach’s intentions, as distinct from what he had to put up with? I, for one, would not presume to answer, as I claim no preternatural ability to read his thoughts. On the face oft, however, I see no reason to believe that he continually thirsted after something bigger than what he had. As I ‘hope to show elsewhere, the discontent so plainly vented in the Enrwurff has less to do with the number of singers and players taking part in any actual performance than ‘with their level of skill and the strain of pulling them together from disparate sources. The secular cantatas for the Leipzig Collegium Musicum - where Bach presum- ably had a freer hand — show no consistent use of larger forces: only two of those that survive, BWV201 and 215, hhave parts for more than four singers in their choruses. Nor do we see any signs of dissatisfaction with the very ‘small body of singers at the ducal chapel in Weimar, for which Bach wrote his earliest series of church cantatas and neither does Bach seem to have had qualms about sub- mitting his Missa of 1733 ~ the Kyrie and Gloria of what later became the B minor Mass = to the electoral Saxon chapel at Dresden, even though that institution seems to 2 see Riis Chrono of Bach's Sit Mat Pe! for he personnel othe Weimar chapel, se Back Dome, 88 55, 623 ‘have had only one tenor in its ranks at the time.*' Indeed, as recent research has emphasized, Bach admired the Dresden chapel without apparent reservation. AAs so much of the controversy aroused by the research presented here has centred on the B minor Mass, we ‘might pause briefly over this work. The materials that Bach left in Dresden include the usual one part for each voice in the score ~ in this instance, Soprano I, Soprano IL, Alto, Tenor and Bass. Nothing in these parts implies the addition of ripienists; on the contrary, more than one feature makes such an addition look improbable in the ex- treme. The transition fom the ‘Domine Deus’ to the ‘Qui tollis’ offers a case in point. The former movement calls for Soprano I and Tenor, the latter for four voices: Soprano II, Alto, Tenor and Bass. Modern performances underscore the shift from two parts to four with a shift from solo to choral forces; yet the parts show no trace of such a change. The tenor bas the heading ‘Duetto’ at the start of the ‘Domine Deus’, which confirms that Bach ‘meant this number for two soloists. But at the ‘Qui tollis? ~ which follows without so much as a barline ~ no fur- ther marking appears." A ripienist reading from the tenor part could scarcely have known to sing at this point, nor ‘could a conductor other than Bach very well have known to cue him, since Bach had not left a copy of the score in Dresden.** By the same token, a copyist could not have prepared a separate ripieno part either. Even if we dis- count the apparent paucity of tenors in the chapel, therefore, the vocal scoring of the Missa would seem a foregone conclusion. ‘Since the second half of the Mass survives only in score ~ and since Bach evidently did not conceive the music in terms of a specific insttution** ~ we do not have so com plete a basis for determining its forces as with the Kyrie and Gloria. Nevertheless, I see no reason to assume that Bach envisaged ripienists as part ofthe vocal complement. Afterall, he could more readily have included them in a work like this than in one tied to the limitations of par- ticular circumstances. Yet nothing in the autograph even " ubough the terme rable ome mae tpn 0 determine he voc face te etre Copal nd Comme cacy ar 2S an 1 1 those eats the ensemble inclod oly ene fens see Fea Zar (Goce dr ‘Mant aad" dr "Tare am He ae. ren (Dred, ‘et 278940 160“t), nd Baath Lb ech Jobo Sai aso W. Neu (Lapis 9, 28. ‘see R, Masha ‘Buch he Progen: Obserwions ms Laer Wash ‘tial Quarry (9705 19°31 on IRS aad) ee NBA i, cel ep, 214-20 1 290,295 45 ach eset coud bry ve dese pefrmance of be Mi afer ef ite court His coving eter ed Dresden 27 fay 175, era an ‘tek er Buch ad verumed 0 Lape Bash Dita, rand le “lr sr Legere ote Setanan Bass (Lei 191081939) 41-08 “echancs oan er piace a Dede, yest crag (he Ma om Neneh 038 48 eG. von Dalen: Binge or Chom dr Were Jom ebro Back (eningen, 1958) 195-8 753hints at their use; and given the care Bach takes to indicate such details as the scoring of the soprano line in move rents with fewer than five teal parts, we cannot take the omission lightly. I might observe, too, that at least one knowledgeable 18th-century musician appears 10 have read the autograph as calling for single voices. When CPE. Bach performed the Credo at Hamburg in 1786, hie had only five voice parts copied, and none of them gives any indication that more than one singer would have read from it.* ‘A final observation concerns the Sanctus. Bach wrote and first performed this piece in 1724, and he performed it again in 1727 and inthe last years oFhis life ~ at about the same time, in fact, as he incorporated it into the Mass." In its independent form, the music called for sopranos, one alto, one tenor and one bass, for each of Which Bach provided a single part.® An attempt to fit these forces to the 12-voice choir so long regarded as the norm for Leipzig comes up either with a grotesque im balance between upper and lower voices ~ or with an ‘ensemble including only one singer foreach line. “Bern, Saat Preacher Kuurbests, Mat MS. Hach Se 118 se duce Dads: Bey, 8-208 J. Shon “Deedee eo igre et Ana Maplens Hach’, Bak Jou el eer 223-6 5 gh tare readers ht he earig prducion tam made every fl reproduc acl efrmance Baer ely Foil Tchaikovsky’s Marriage David Brown The following extract is taken from ‘Tehaikovsky: a Biographical and Crivcal Study, iis the Criss Years (1874~ 1878)’ by David Brown, 10 be published by Victor Gollancz this month. In 1940 a collection of letters writen by Tchaikovsky to various members of his family was prepared in the Soviet Union. This volume, ‘Pisma k rodnim’, contained the fullest text ever printed of some of the most revealing documents Tehaikovsky penned. However, the book, though ready for distribution, oas withdrawn at the last moment, and only a ‘very fer copies found ther illicit way into private possession ‘within Russia, The Sovier scholar Alexandra Orlova zoho in 14 In any event, the recent experience of the Bach Ensemble in performing and recording the B minor Mass has brought forth some lessons that may help put the issue of Bach’s vocal scoring in less heated perspective. For one thing, the use of solo voices ~ at least when pitted against ‘an ensemble of the proper size and proper instruments = does not lead to any unusual problems of balance. Some difficulties remain, of course, but no more than one would find in virtually any Bach performance, no matter what the forces; and in countless places, the polyphony gains new clarity and immediacy.” The experience has also shown that the music itself creates something of an aural illusion in fully scored passages: solo voices in ensemble, especially when doubled or intricately accompanied by in- struments, become all but indistinguishable from a larger chorus. In fact, one really loses nothing by wiping away the overlay of ripienists that we have s0 indiscriminately applied to Bach's finely wrought textures; the music sheds some weight, perhaps, but takes on new flexibility and in- cisiveness. This itself does not prove such a performance historically correct; but for those who accept the inter pretation of the evidence that I have outlined here, the ‘musical gains come asa decided ~ and decidedly welcome = bonus. This article rare a revsd and expanded version ofan esa publish inthe September 198 isu of igh Piatra paper prepared for a ‘meting of the American Musialoial Society in Baton November 198; {he guation ase nia further diced in the October nue of Tigh Fidelity (hy Robert L. Marshall andthe forthcoming December iu 1940 was a student in the Tehaikoosky Museum at Klin, ‘managed to obtain a copy, held on to it secretly for nearly 40 sears, and wohen in 1979 she emigrated to che USA she suc- ‘ceeded in smuggling it to the West. Through Mrs Orlova’s kindness, David Brown has had access to this copy and has ‘used it freely in preparing this volume of his four-volume life- and-zoorks study of Tehaikousky. This extract contains some of this newly available material, which reveals with terrible ‘eloquence the emotional turmoil of a man toho in 1877 mar- ried a certain Antonina Milyukova, @ woman he scarcely Jeers, in a desperate attempt to defeat his homosexuait, or at least 10 silence the rumours which had begun to circulate ‘about his sexual condition.