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Guilmant’s transcription of the sinfonia from the cantata ‘Wir danken dir, Gott, wir danken dir’, bwv29, one
of Robert Schumann’s fugues on B-A-C-H from Op. 60, movements from Bach’s Memento by Charles-Marie
Widor and Bach’s own assimilation of French style in the Pièce d’Orgue, bwv572. On the second evening,
the Yale Schola Cantorum under the direction of David Hill was joined by the Elm City Girls’ Choir for
a complete performance of the St John Passion as arranged by Robert Schumann. Premiered in Dusseldorf
in 1851, Schumann’s adaptation was, to quote the evening’s programme notes, ‘remarkably faithful to Bach’s
St. John by mid-nineteenth-century standards’. The use of cello and fortepiano in the continuo group was
compelling, as were discreet additions of clarinets and the exquisite colour added by girls’ voices (originally
scored for fifty boy sopranos) to the melody of each chorale. On the third night, Masaaki Suzuki led a choir
of Yale Institute of Sacred Music alumni and Juilliard415, The Juilliard School’s primary period-instrument
ensemble, in a stirring performance of the Mass in B minor. Before the performance, Suzuki was awarded an
honorary membership of the American Bach Society for his accomplishments as a performer and champion
of Bach’s music.
As demonstrated throughout the papers and performances, concepts of fixity and finality were largely
unknown to Bach and his contemporaries. Taken together, their working methods suggest – quite strongly,
in fact – that they would have ignored the limitations arising from overzealous interpretation of sources
alone, or views that reduce musical works to mere artefacts or museum pieces. Writing about authenticity and
Bach in Early Music: A Very Short Introduction (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), Thomas Forrest
Kelly cautions that even ‘if we really did it Bach’s way, there would be nothing of ourselves in the matter’,
adding, ‘the thing that mattered most to Bach, and probably to almost anybody else, is the presence of a
musician’ (88). Such a view offers creative licence for continued engagement with Bach’s music through
parody, transcription, adaptation and other novel forms of reworking.
chad fothergill
chad.fothergill@temple.edu


Eighteenth-Century Music © Cambridge University Press, 2019
doi:10.1017/S1478570618000507

PROFESSIONALS AND AMATEURS: THE SPIRIT OF KENNER UND LIEBHABER IN KEYBOARD

COMPOSITION, PERFORMANCE AND INSTRUMENT BUILDING
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, 9–12 MAY 2018

The seventh annual meeting of the Historical Keyboard Society of North America (HKSNA) featured papers,
lecture-recitals, mini-recitals and full evening concerts (some of which included the performance of new
works for harpsichord), roundtable discussions, workshops led by instrument makers and the presentation
of instrument collections both in private hands and belonging to the University of Michigan.
In ‘Music for All: Amateur Piano Making in Nineteenth-Century America’, Alexandra Cade (University of
Delaware) detailed some instances of American piano making by non-professional instrument makers who
often had little or no knowledge of standard piano action. The self-sufficiency, creativity and imagination of
these instrument makers force us to redefine the craft of piano making. Jim March (Morningside College)
then described his work reconstructing an English baroque spinet in a lecture-recital entitled ‘Hitchcock
Spinet no. 1241: An Amateur’s Adventure’. Another lecture-recital by Sarah Davies (Pocono Pines, PA), ‘From
Liebhaber to Kenner: German Keyboard Notations and the Training of Organists with Reference to “The
Michigan Organ Tablature”’, showed how organ tablature was used as the notation of choice in ‘teaching
both music lovers and budding professionals’ until approximately the turn of the eighteenth century. A
third lecture-recital, ‘For Music-Lovers and Connoisseurs: J. S. Bach’s “Clavierübung III”’ by James Kibby

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(University of Michigan), identified a number of characteristics in Bach’s collection that can be associated
with either Kenner or Liebhaber (designations included in the title of Clavierübung III). The Liebhaber
elements encompass the manualiter works, while the Kenner elements include more esoteric connections
associated with numerology.
My paper (Julia Dokter, Georgia State University) presented discoveries concerning ‘Tempo Relationships
in Bach’s Fugue in E-flat major bwv552/2, from “Clavierübung III”’. Here, the relative tempos of the fugue’s
three sections (each with its own time signature) may be understood with reference to proportional theory,
which reveals how Bach controlled every element of speed, affect and historicity through his use of seemingly
odd time signatures. Sarah Simko (University of Michigan) outlined what we know about the liturgical
function of Matthias Weckmann’s sacred organ works. She noted the role of affect in moving the emotions
(equivalent to a sermon in music), and that the verses composed by Weckmann were not used in true
alternatim fashion, but functioned as interludes (that is, not as verse replacements) between sung verses.
Darrell Berg (St Louis, MO) called attention to both original and conventional aspects of C. P. E. Bach’s
six ‘Kenner und Liebhaber’ collections for solo keyboard. Andrew Willis (University of North Carolina)
continued this theme in his lecture-recital ‘Accommodating Liebhaber: “Easy” Pieces by C. P. E. Bach’. He
showed how Bach shifted from writing works for Kenner to focusing on more accessible, easier works in
order to increase his income from publishing. The didactic elements of collections such as the Sechs Neue
Clavierstücke, Wq63/7–12, can be seen in their relatively simple technical demands and use of fingering
indications to guide the performer. In ‘Kenner, Liebhaber, Kenner und Liebhaber: Assessing Style Change
in the Keyboard Sonatas of C. P. E. Bach’, Wayne Petty (University of Michigan) showed that while Bach
concentrated in his early Berlin period on sophisticated works (for Kenner), and in his later Berlin period on
simpler works (for Liebhaber), his Hamburg works were written ‘explicitly for both kinds of musicians’.
In a group of papers centred on pedagogy, Jeong-Suk Bae (University of St Thomas) discussed Bernardo
Pasquini’s fourteen solo harpsichord partimenti as tools for teaching composition and improvisation. Manuel
Dahme (Stuttgart) showed how Philipp Jacob Böddecker constructed his 1701 teaching manual for basso
continuo with a bass line, an upper voice, basso-continuo figures and fingerings to make realization easier
for the more advanced student. The changes made by Böddecker to the music of Johann Albrecht Kress,
used as examples in the manual, strikingly include modifications of the bass lines. Finally, Thérèse de Goede
(Conservatorium van Amsterdam) showed how the filling-in of harmonies above a bass line was probably
practised in England much earlier than previously thought. She noted that the improvisation of chords was
taught from at least 1525, and probably reflected earlier notated practices. Later, Adriano Banchieri (1611) was
the first musician to offer a method to learn this skill, and basso-continuo playing was the general practice
in England by the mid-seventeenth century.
In his lecture-recital ‘Music for Amateurs? Reevaluating Andrea Antico’s Frottole of 1517’, Alexander
Meszler (Arizona State University) argued that even though publishing music for amateurs was unheard
of during the early sixteenth century, Antico’s volume of frottole (commercially an absolute failure) was
intended for a handful of wealthy patrons. Marcos Krieger (Susquehanna University) continued this theme in
his paper ‘The 1598 Intavolature d’Organo Facilissima: Early Practical Repertoire for Organists’, in which he
noted that this published collection represents uncomplicated music that a less proficient organist could play
on a Sunday morning. Maria Luisa Baldassari (Ensemble Les Nations) contrasted two volumes of music in
a lecture-recital entitled ‘Music for Beginners and Music for Professionals: Keyboard Tablatures in Southern
Italy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’: Rocco Rodio’s Libro primo di Ricercata (1575), published in
open score and intended for high-level professional musicians, and Antonio Valente’s Intavolatura di cembalo
(1575), which offers easy-to-read number tablature for those wishing to learn the harpsichord.
Gregory Crowell (Grand Valley State University) detailed Victor Hammer’s 1929 reconstruction of a
clavichord from c1800, an instrument that eventually came into Crowell’s possession. Had the Nazis not
confiscated Hammer’s possessions in Vienna and compelled him to emigrate to the United States during the
Second World War, he might well have become a major figure in the early-instrument revival. In her lecture
‘The Clavichord and Cantabile in Fantasies by J. S. and C. P. E. Bach’, Carol lei Breckenridge (Central College)

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discussed what cantabile playing meant for the two Bachs: dynamic nuance, rubato, embellishment and even
legato playing (which eventually became the norm in the nineteenth century). She argued that the special
singing qualities of the clavichord make it the perfect instrument to realize eighteenth-century cantabile.
Keyboard builder and technician Paul Irvin (Portland, OR) argued that modern clavichord builders make
the performer’s job much more difficult than it actually should be because they do not understand what
sound was intended for these instruments. He suggested that a deeper, more lasting sustain than normally
heard today is ideal.
In her lecture-recital ‘From Francesco Gasparini to Domenico Scarlatti: Exploring Harmonic Possibilities
at the Harpsichord’ Natalie Khatibzadeh (University of North Carolina) showed the influence that Gasparini
had on his student Scarlatti via such compositional elements as acciaccaturas and tied seconds or fourths
above a syncopated bass line. Nina Campbell (formerly of Northern Kentucky University) presented a
lecture-recital focusing on various left-hand techniques in Scarlatti’s music. In a lecture-recital on late Italian
baroque keyboard sonatas, keyboard builder David Sutherland (Ann Arbor) questioned why we appear to
have no music for Cristofori’s Florentine piano. Sutherland suggested that rather than understanding the
word ‘cembalo’ to mean harpsichord, we should see it as an umbrella term for all keyboard instruments.
Therefore ‘cembalo’ music by Benedetto Marcello and others might be considered suitable for piano.
In his paper ‘Reviving Historical Improvisation for Professionals and Amateurs’ John Mortensen
(Cedarville University) described tools and patterns, such as partimenti and the ‘rule of the octave’, that
an eighteenth-century musician would master in order to learn improvisation. Jonathan Salamon (Yale
University) elucidated the programmatic elements in J. S. Bach’s Capriccio, bwv992, and placed the work
in the context of earlier programmatic keyboard music by Johann Jakob Froberger and Johann Kuhnau.
A paper by Mario Aschauer (Sam Houston State University) entitled ‘“He Still Belonged to the Old
School of Good Pianoforte Players”: Schubert and Tradition in Viennese Fortepiano Culture’ proposed that
instead of interpreting Schubert’s works with instruments and performing techniques contemporary with
the composer, we should instead view the music in light of the late eighteenth-century instruments and
techniques available to him. Finally, Thomas Green (Royal Conservatory of Music) detailed the life, career
and compositions of the Chopin admirer Stephen Heller (1813–1888), who was considered by some of his
contemporaries to be the Polish composer’s equal.
julia dokter
juliardokter@gsu.edu


Eighteenth-Century Music © Cambridge University Press, 2019
doi:10.1017/S1478570618000519

RETHINKING MUSIC IN FRANCE DURING THE BAROQUE ERA / REPENSER LA MUSIQUE EN

FRANCE À L’ÉPOQUE BAROQUE
UNIVERSITÉ PARIS-SORBONNE, BIBLIOTHÈQUE NATIONALE DE FRANCE, CENTRE DE
MUSIQUE BAROQUE DE VERSAILLES, ABBAYE DE ROYAUMONT, 19–23 JUNE 2018

French baroque music tends to be a poor stepchild in the study of Western music, in university music
departments and in contemporary concert life. In contrast to the Italian style that dominated most of Europe
and the German repertory of Bach, Handel and their musical children, godchildren and grandchildren (literal
or metaphorical) – often cited as having established a universal musical language of the soul – French music
has largely been viewed in social terms, tied to the projection of grandeur by Louis XIV and to la belle
danse. A look at practically any undergraduate textbook will confirm this. Indeed, until relatively recently,

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