florida state university college of music performance practice

It is no surprise, based on these biographies, that Uri Golomb (2004)
suggests that two contrasting, but sometimes integrating, conceptions evolved in the
nineteenth century concerning the iconic status of Bach. Bach, the religious composer
and Bach the heroic cerebral intellect, would be explored in the coming century as
evidenced through thoughts expressed in writings as well as evidence of performance
captured through recordings. 164
The Dawn of the Twentieth Century – Bach scholarship
Dramatic transformations have been witnessed within the twentieth century
concerning the critical opinion and performance of Bach‟s life and music. The century
opened with Albert Schweitzer, 165 at the original behest of his organ teacher Charles
Marie Widor, contributing “an aesthetic and practical study” of Bach drawing on
historical information provided by Spitta. 166 Schweitzer‟s original 1905 publication was
in French. However, a subsequent, more detailed and expanded version was translated
into German three years later in 1908. 167
Arnold Schering began publishing material in the 1920‟s, advocating for smaller
chamber performing ensembles for Bach performance. Schering researched manuscript
parts that were used by Bach‟s singers and instrumentalists, which normally consisted of
one surviving copy of each vocal line. He interpreted the bulk of the evidence and two
different sections in the Entwurff 168 to conclude that a maximum of three singers shared
a part, thus three singers for a balance of four voice parts should account for a chamber
size choir of a dozen. 169 Within each voice part consisted a principal singer (Concertist)
who was responsible for singing recitatives and arias and leading in choruses and
164
Golomb, “Expression and Meaning in Bach Performance and Reception,” 5.
165
There are those who consider Schweitzer‟s biography the end of an inclination to portray Bach in a
Romantic approach. See Alfred Mann, “A Document from the Hand of Arthur Mendel,” Bach: Journal of
the Riemenschneider Bach Institute 20.3 (1989) 4.
166
Albert Schweitzer, J.S. Bach, trans. Ernest Newman (New York: Dover, 1966), 1:iv.
167
Ibid.
168
The Entwurff, as it is commonly known, is the memorandum written by Bach to the Leipzig town
officials in August of 1730 entitled, “Short But Necessary Draft for a Well – Appointed Church Music,
with Certain Modest Reflections on the Decline of the Same.” The two sections used by Schering to
support his thesis comes from the majority of the opening section and the second half of Section 2. See
Christoph Wolff, ed. The New Bach Reader: A Life of Johann Sebastian Bach in Letters and Documents.
(London and New York: Norton, 1998), 145.
169
Andrew Parrott, The Essential Bach Choir, (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2000), 189.
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