Gregory Butler - Bach Perspectives, Volume 7: J. S. Bachs Concerted Ensemble Music: The Concerto

BACH PERSPECTIVES

VOLUME SEVEN

J. S. Bachs Concerted Ensemble Music,
The Concerto

BACH PERSPECTIVES

VOLUME SEVEN

Editorial Board

George B. Stauffer, General Editor, Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University

Gregory G. Butler, University of British Columbia

Stephen A. Crist, Emory University

Don O. Franklin, University of Pittsburgh

Mary Dalton Greer, Artistic Director, Cantatas in Context

Walter B. Hewlett, Center for Computer Assisted Research in the Humanities

Robin A. Leaver, Westminster Choir College of Rider University

Michael Marissen, Swarthmore College

Daniel R. Melamed, Indiana University

Kerala J. Snyder, Eastman School of Music

Russell Stinson, Lyon University

Christoph Wolff, Harvard University

Bach

Perspectives

VOLUME SEVEN

J. S. Bachs Concerted Ensemble Music,
The Concerto

Edited by Gregory Butler

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS URBANA AND CHICAGO

2008 by the Board of Trustees

of the University of Illinois

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the

United States of America

C 5 4 3 2 1

This book is printed

on acid-free paper.

ISSN 1072-1924

ISBN -10 0-252-03165-2

ISBN -13 978-0-252-03165-6

Bach Perspectives is

sponsored by the

American Bach Society

and produced under the

guidance of its Editorial

Board. For information

about the American Bach

Society, please see its

Web site at this URL:

www.americanbachsociety.org .

BY GREGORY BUTLER

BY PIETER DIRKSEN

BY DAVID SCHULENBERG

BY CHRISTOPH WOLFF

V olumes 6 and 7 of Bach Perspectives, devoted to the concerted ensemble music of J. S. Bach, are most timely. In recent years there has been a surge of interest on the part of Bach scholars, particularly in the composers concertos, the subject of the present volume. This interest was greatly stimulated by the first Dortmnder Bach-Symposion in 1996 devoted to Bachs orchestral works and the publication of the proceedings from this conference the following year. The Bach year in 2000 saw the publication of a comprehensive study of the concertos, Siegbert Rampe and Dominik Sackmanns Bachs Orchesterwerke, which has provoked considerable reaction in the world of Bach scholarship.

The Bach Colloquium at Harvard University has been an important forum for lively discussion of various issues surrounding these works, and two of the essays in this volume, those by Gregory Butler and David Schulenberg, were first presented in early stages of preparation before this group and now appear in print. As such, these two volumes, 6 and 7, add a primarily American voice to the ongoing scholarly discourse centering on this group of works of such importance for Bach studies.

Gregory Butler, President

The American Bach Society

T his volume of Bach Perspectives, along with its sister volume already published as Bach Perspectives 6, marks the extension of a project begun with my early collaboration on volume 4 of the series, edited by David Schulenberg and published in 1999. The intention to bring out a collection of essays devoted entirely to Bachs concerted ensemble music, only partly realized in two studies by Jeanne Swack and myself in the earlier volume, has now come to fruition in volumes 6 and 7. The first of these focuses on the ouverture, a genre of concerted ensemble music that has received remarkably little attention in the scholarly literature of late, and the second centers on the concertos of Bach, an area that has attracted considerable scholarly attention and debate.

The opening two essays in the present volume are a study in contrasts, in that they come to diametrically opposed conclusions concerning the origins of two of the concertos for solo cembalo, for which the original versions do not survive. In the opening essay, I call on evidence provided by the sources for the E-Major Concerto ( BWV 1053)in particular, the correction of transposition errorsto demonstrate that Bach resorted to the expedient of bricolage, the assembling of concertos by recycling preexistent isolated concerted movements with different origins. In the following study, Pieter Dirksen, in focusing on the early source history of the F-Minor Concerto ( BWV 1056), presents important source evidence and analyses in support of his view that the works origins lie in a G-minor violin concerto.

The third essay, by David Schulenberg, offers new perspectives on what has been a major issue of Bach studies, the auf Concertenart sonata. In doing so, it raises more fundamental questions concerning how Bach conceived of the concerto early in his career and how that concept evolved over time.

Finally, Christoph Wolffs study focuses on the siciliano, establishing it as an important subgenre for slow concerto movements of Leipzig provenance. His essay goes on to explore the implications of the late chronology of a specific siciliano, BWV 1053/2, for the concertos performance history and the identity of its solo instrument.

Gregory Butler

Vancouver, British Columbia

The Origins of J. S. Bachs E-Major Concerto ( BWV 1053)