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May 2006 Program Notes
Virtuoso Violin
by Mary Burke
Tonight's program demonstrates the virtues of economy—specifically the reuse of existing musical material in new formats.
Whether it goes by the name of arrangement, transcription, parody, contrefact, adaptation, repurposing, reversioning, reimagining, remixing, quodlibet, mashup, or recycling, the practice of creating new works from existing musical material has a very long history, from early polyphony to modern telephony (my basic Nokia phone, for example, comes with ring tones by Mozart and Wagner). One might, for example, take a piece of plainchant and build a Mass around it, and then turn a movement of the Mass into a consort piece or intabulate it for lute. An opera aria might reappear as solo song with a new text, or a string quartet could become a piano sonata. Composers might choose to rework a piece to practice their counterpoint, experiment with orchestration, take advantage of the availability of particular performers, or simply to spend a little more time with some especially evocative bit of material.
Of course, the quality of the rearranged piece depends to some extent on how good the original material is, and on the skill of the arranger. When dealing with Bach's arrangements of his own music, we are in very good hands indeed!
Bach recycled quite a lot of his own work in wildly varying configurations. Some of the reworkings stayed fairly close to their originals, such as a cantata aria reappearing with slight tweaks in a later cantata, or a concerto being reworked for a different solo instrument. However, he also made some quite drastic leaps across genres; one of the most remarkable examples is the transformation of an unaccompanied violin piece (the prelude from the E major partita) into the glorious sinfonia of Cantata 29, with trumpets, oboes, and obbligato organ.
Much of Bach's best instrumental writing dates to his tenure at the court of Cöthen (1717-1723), where he was Kapellmeister to Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen. His duties there did not include liturgical music, so there was ample time and encouragement to explore various types of chamber music for the Prince (who played several instruments quite well) and his small but skillful orchestra. Among other things, he produced the Brandenburg concerti, solo violin works, gamba sonatas, and concerti for violin and/or oboe during this period.
When Bach moved on to his new post in Leipzig, his working conditions changed considerably. His responsibilities now included turning out enormous amounts of liturgical music (the obligatory 58 cantatas per year plus miscellaneous other pieces for special occasions), along with teaching and rehearsing the ensembles to perform them each week. Not surprisingly, the hectic musical pace, plus the administrative tedium, plus increasing friction with the city council and his boss at the Thomasschule, all began to weigh on Bach's spirits. Luckily an opportunity came his way in 1729 that provided a boost to both his mood and his creativity: the Leipzig Collegium Musicum.
The Collegium, which had been started in 1702 by the inexhaustible Telemann, included skilled local players as well as visiting artists, who gave weekly concerts at Zimmermann's famous coffeehouse. It gave Bach much the same kind of stimulating creative environment that he had experienced at Cöthen, and he threw himself into the organization wholeheartedly. Zimmermann happened to keep a number of excellent keyboard instruments on the premises, so it was only natural that Bach would write works for the ensemble that would take full advantage of them. To that end, he pulled out some of his violin concerti from the Cöthen days and reworked them for harpsichord. (The fourth Brandenburg also received this treatment.) The D major concerto heard tonight began life as the well-known E major violin concerto. His D minor harpsichord concerto, BWV 1052, is likewise descended from an earlier violin concerto; in this case, however, the original violin work has been lost, and so the version heard tonight is a reconstruction of it.
The opening set in our program includes arrangements of movements from two cantatas and a motet. The cantatas, BWV 61 (Nun komm der Heiden Heiland) and BWV 4 (Christ lag in Todesbanden), both incorporate hymn tunes by Martin Luther; in fact, the hymn in BWV 4 is itself based on a piece of chant. The motet, BWV 230 (Lobet den Herrn, alle Heiden), is a setting of two verses from Psalm 117, its date unknown. Some scholars believe that the style of the vocal writing indicates that it was reworked from an instrumental original; others believe that this circumstance further indicates that Bach didn't actually write it at all.
Whether he was converting vocal works to instrumental ones, string music to keyboard, or any of a hundred other combinations, Bach demonstrated brilliantly what riches can be found in recycling.
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