Post by Tom HensPost by j***@yahoo.comWeren't most of the sketches in made in the margins while he was
waiting for the ink to dry? This would lend credence to the theory the
music was estabished before he started to write the score.
What a bizarre story. Have you ever taken the time to look into the
revision history of Bach's works? With works he performed several times,
often with intervals of years or decades, he kept on revising, often
squeezing corrections into the margins. In the case of the harpsichord
concertos for instance he made revisions to the harpsichord part in the
margins using organ tablature, because that takes up less space than
standard musical notation. When the revisions became too extensive, or
perhaps too confusing for the poor copyists who had to write out parts, he
occasionally wrote out a new, "clean" partition (version 3 of BWV 134, for
instance).
Revision history is irrelevant about the sketches. I suggest you read
"The Music of JSB: the Sources, the Style, the Significance" by Robert
L. Marshall. He studied the sketches in depth to try to determine
Bach's compositional technique. On page 111, I quote Robert Marshall:
"The majority great majority[sketches] seem to be memory aids written
at the bottom of a recto to record the immediate continuation of the
music on the next page while the ink was drying."
My question for Herr Bakker was to clarify if he had more information
on the subject. From his response, he clearly doesn't understand what
the sketches are and the significance to the compositional process of
Bach.
Second, Spitta in his essay Beethoveniana ( 1892 ) wrote:
Despite the great complexity of [Bach's] music, we know of few cases
where the layout of a piece was rejected once it had been worked out.
Nor did he often falter while working out the details. Sometimes he
made changes when he took up a word again at a later date, but for an
understanding of the way it was formed in the beginning, teh evidence
provided by such changes tells us nothing. ( p. 181).
Marshall agreed with assessment.
Post by Tom HensPost by j***@yahoo.comAlso, some
scholars have expressed the opinion he rarely had to change the overall
design once he started to put the work to paper.
Again, a bizarre idea. The convoluted revision history of a lot of Bach's
works shows the exact opposite. To name just one prime example, look at the
revision history of the St. Matthew Passion and the St. John Passion, how
some music wandered between both works (and other works, such as the
funeral music for Leopold of Köthen), how some arias were added to revised
versions of the St. John Passion but discarded for later performances, etc.
Or look at the whole complicated tangle of parody and borrowings between
both vocal and instrumental works. To name just one extreme example, Bach
turned what was a part of a solo violin sonata, written in Köthen (BWV
1006/1), into a mini-concerto for organ, strings, oboes, trumpets and
timpani for a Leipzig cantata (BWV 29/1) -- and a lovely piece it is, too.
That's hardly a sign that there was an "overall design" that existed before
he put pen to paper, is it?
The revisions of Bach's works are different than the compositional
process. After he finished a work he often tinkered with things after
the fact. But this doesn't give us insight on how he composed.
I think this answers the original question plus the supplementary
question I proposed. It also corrects the faulty information provided
by others in the thread.
Time to call it a night.
Jimmy Boy