Bach's Bungalow

[DavidW]

I guess you don't stream?

Mass in B Minor
St. Matthew Passion

I like some of his organ works.

And his entire box set of cantatas.  Okay both the sacred masterworks and cantatas used to be in bargain box sets.  You just missed it.

Here try this:

[vers la flamme]

I guess you don't stream?

Mass in B Minor
St. Matthew Passion

I like some of his organ works.

And his entire box set of cantatas.  Okay both the sacred masterworks and cantatas used to be in bargain box sets.  You just missed it.

Here try this:

You guess correct.

Which recording of the SMP? There was a recent one as well as one from some 20 years ago. I've been looking for good deals on the cantatas box sets for several years. The ones I've seen have all been damn expensive.

[DavidW]

You guess correct.

Which recording of the SMP? There was a recent one as well as one from some 20 years ago. I've been looking for good deals on the cantatas box sets for several years. The ones I've seen have all been damn expensive.

I've only heard the old one so I can't comment.

[Mandryka]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000sht1

Mark Seow explores links between Bach's music and farming - of the soil, heart and soul.

Bach's Germany was an agrarian society. Just beyond Leipzig's city walls, farmers worked the land to grow crops that sustained its citizens. Some of Bach's music explicitly engages with farming. Its rustic oomph and repetitive motifs call to mind the manual toil of digging. John Eliot Gardiner even described the texture of one Bach cantata as "warm topsoil, fertile and well irrigated". Yet devotional writings of Bach's time make it clear that farming was something not just done out on the fields. Instead all Lutherans were to be farmers of sorts: they were to plough the "soil" of their hearts so to receive the Word of God and bring it to fruition.

The notion that scripture was a type of seed pervaded 18th-century thought, and Bach was intimate with this kind of corporeal agricultural. In this episode, Mark Seow explores how the cultivation of Lutheran hearts as if they were farmland urge us to rehear much-loved moments of Bach, including movements from his Christmas Oratorio and the St Matthew Passion

[Chaszz]

I started this thread on a whim and then abandoned it after several days with no replies. I see there WERE a later few replies back then. So it is still open. A couple of fantasy questions if anyone cares to consider and reply.

1. There are still a large number of Bach's compositions missing, particularly much of eldest son Friedemnn's collection. If a trunkful of them should be found somewhere in the proverbial attic, what kind of music would you hope to see in it? Choral or instrumental, church or secular, cantatas, motets, solos, concertos? Etc., etc. And why? And are there any particular works which we know were written but are missing that you would hope to find?

2. If you could take a time travel trip to Leipzig in 1748, a couple years before the Master's death, with what specific words and sentences would you inform him of his place in music history, and the development of music since his death, and his influence(s) on this development? 

[milk]

I started this thread on a whim and then abandoned it after several days with no replies. I see there WERE a later few replies back then. So it is still open. A couple of fantasy questions if anyone cares to consider and reply.

1. There are still a large number of Bach's compositions missing, particularly much of eldest son Friedemnn's collection. If a trunkful of them should be found somewhere in the proverbial attic, what kind of music would you hope to see in it? Choral or instrumental, church or secular, cantatas, motets, solos, concertos? Etc., etc. And why? And are there any particular works which we know were written but are missing that you would hope to find?

2. If you could take a time travel trip to Leipzig in 1748, a couple years before the Master's death, with what specific words and sentences would you inform him of his place in music history, and the development of music since his death, and his influence(s) on this development?

i suppose a lot of people would expect to find another cantata. Isn't it well-established that many cantatas were lost?

[Jo498]

There might be as much as two "years" of cantatas lost but the estimations seem to vary. Some think that a lot of the lost music was re-used anyway, others think that about 100 cantatas could be totally lost. I don't know about instrumental music; it seems even more speculative here. It seems rather likely that none of the keyboard concerti except Brandenburg 5 and two harpsichords C major was originally for keyboard, so several of the originals are missing (but that's not that much, not really new as we have the later keyboard versions and the originals might not all have been by Bach anyway, like the Vivaldi for the 4 keyboard).

In any case I would not expect anything revelatory. It's diminishing returns. How much could another 50+ cantatas in pretty much the same style (because written at roughly the same time for the same audience) add to the 200 extant ones? Maybe some nice concerti and chamber music but again, almost certainly nothing revelatory.
(One can also take the rare cases when a short piece by Bach (or Handel or Mozart or...) is actually found in some archive. Disregarding uncertain authorship, they were never anything special, AFAIK.)

[milk]

There might be as much as two "years" of cantatas lost but the estimations seem to vary. Some think that a lot of the lost music was re-used anyway, others think that about 100 cantatas could be totally lost. I don't know about instrumental music; it seems even more speculative here. It seems rather likely that none of the keyboard concerti except Brandenburg 5 and two harpsichords C major was originally for keyboard, so several of the originals are missing (but that's not that much, not really new as we have the later keyboard versions and the originals might not all have been by Bach anyway, like the Vivaldi for the 4 keyboard).

In any case I would not expect anything revelatory. It's diminishing returns. How much could another 50+ cantatas in pretty much the same style (because written at roughly the same time for the same audience) add to the 200 extant ones? Maybe some nice concerti and chamber music but again, almost certainly nothing revelatory.
(One can also take the rare cases when a short piece by Bach (or Handel or Mozart or...) is actually found in some archive. Disregarding uncertain authorship, they were never anything special, AFAIK.)

Are many of his best pieces usually found as recycled in other formats? I wonder how likely it is to find an original masterpiece existing nowhere else? I'd love it if there were more somewhere.

[Jo498]

I think there is the idea (not quite a "theory") that Bach sometimes recycled pieces to give them broader distribution, more permanence. Not sure if it worked back then but to a certain extent in hindsight, as b minor mass and especially Xmas oratorio have a lot of recycling and since the late 19th century they are certainly far better known than the secular cantatas most of the latter is taken from.
So I think the "optimists" take this as an indication that not that much and especially not the best/most important stuff was completely lost. As some of Bach's sons and students also did care to preserve some of the music we could also expect an amount of cherry picking instead of randomness. Sure, a few very good cantatas and chamber pieces might be lost, but probably no secret masterwork.

[SonicMan46]

Bach's Violin & Cello Solo Works on Plucked Instruments - Any Fans! 

Last few days there has been some exchange of posts in the 'listening thread' regarding Bach's Cello Suites performed on plucked instruments, i.e. lutes and theorbos (or the 'German theorbo') w/ Hopkinson Smith vs. Pascal Monteilhet.  In my collection, I currently have Smith doing the Violin Works on an MP3 DL and both Cello discs in a recent combined Naive wallet-box; also have the two Monteilhet recordings 'in the mail' and have owned the Nigel North 4-CD set for ages.

Now, I like all of these performers and also greatly enjoy these works on plucked instruments although this is often a controversial subject - attached are some reviews but not that many except for North.  For those liking this 'transcription exercise', who are some of your favorites among those shown below and/or any others to promote into the top tiers?  Thanks - Dave

   

   

[calyptorhynchus]

I think the Cello Suites on a lute sound wonderful. But they do sound like Cello Suites arranged for lute (except 5, of course, which was a lute suite to begin with).

But the Violin Sonatas and Partitas, I think, sound better on the lute. This is because it gets rid of the violiness of the originals. :-)

Hopkinson Smith for preference.

[Mandryka]

Bach's Violin & Cello Solo Works on Plucked Instruments - Any Fans! 

Yes, of Hopkinson Smith. But I have a strange feeling of déjà-vu.

[prémont]

Toyohiko Satoh did and recorded some nice transcriptions for lute of the cello suites 1,2 and 4.

https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/7938907--three-solo-suites

[SonicMan46]

Yes, of Hopkinson Smith. But I have a strange feeling of déjà-vu.

LOL!    Well, of course this topic has come up in the past, but always helpful to get some new insights and possibly new recordings that may be of interest?  Dave

[SonicMan46]

Toyohiko Satoh did and recorded some nice transcriptions for lute of the cello suites 1,2 and 4.

https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/7938907--three-solo-suites

Thanks : premont : - I've heard of Satoh - have the recording below in a De Visée playlist on Spotify - have not heard his Bach, so will check there; also listened to Rübsam on the lute-harpsichord doing the first 3 suites and enjoyed.  Dave

 

[Mandryka]

Thanks : premont : - I've heard of Satoh - have the recording below in a De Visée playlist on Spotify - have not heard his Bach, so will check there; also listened to Rübsam on the lute-harpsichord doing the first 3 suites and enjoyed.  Dave

 

Concerning the de Visée - you have to imagine a perfect late summer's day, not unlike today in London in fact,  old man De Visée retired from the court at Versailles, by the river in a provincial town - Tours maybe, or Chinon. He's got his lute with him and he's playing, reflecting on life and on death.

[prémont]

Thanks : premont : - I've heard of Satoh - have the recording below in a De Visée playlist on Spotify - have not heard his Bach, so will check there; also listened to Rübsam on the lute-harpsichord doing the first 3 suites and enjoyed.  Dave

As you know Rübsam has recorded his own transcriptions for lute-harpsichord of both the solo violin S&P and the solo cello suites. I find his recording of the cello suites very good, the only thing to critisize is that he plays most of the fast dances so slow as to impair the feeling of dance. Maybe it is also his slow pace which makes me think that the violin S&P's are less successful. Pieces like the C-major fugue seem endless and become boring long before it is over. But listen yourself and see what you think.

[JBS]

I recently got this one:


The Mandolin Partita can be described as "in the manner of Bach".
The Amazon listing has three videos (look under the alternate CD images) so you can try before you buy.

[calyptorhynchus]

Just going through my plucked Bach (excluding harpsichord) at greater leisure.



Hopkinson Smith has also done the Partita for Solo Flute on lute!



This was one of my earliest discs (bought around 1989) and still in the catalogue! The Lute Suite (=Cello Suite 5) is very fine, Allemande particularly.



Slava Grigoryan plays the Bach Cello Suites on two disks on a baritone guitar, which is a very fine instrument. I don't normally like guitar music because of the overtones (acoustic not cultural), but this instrument has fine overtones. He uses a normal clasical guitar for the Sixth Suite       

[Mandryka]

Bach's Violin & Cello Solo Works on Plucked Instruments - Any Fans! 

Last few days there has been some exchange of posts in the 'listening thread' regarding Bach's Cello Suites performed on plucked instruments, i.e. lutes and theorbos (or the 'German theorbo') w/ Hopkinson Smith vs. Pascal Monteilhet.  In my collection, I currently have Smith doing the Violin Works on an MP3 DL and both Cello discs in a recent combined Naive wallet-box; also have the two Monteilhet recordings 'in the mail' and have owned the Nigel North 4-CD set for ages.

Now, I like all of these performers and also greatly enjoy these works on plucked instruments although this is often a controversial subject - attached are some reviews but not that many except for North.  For those liking this 'transcription exercise', who are some of your favorites among those shown below and/or any others to promote into the top tiers?  Thanks - Dave

   

   

If you can access it, see what you think of Matthias Kläger's recordings. Guitar. They just caught my attention as rather poetic, that's all.

They're on Spotify here in the UK, and on YouTube. This is the link that I'm using

https://open.spotify.com/album/3CM10MvcyyhoULzV6CXcfb

https://www.discogs.com/sell/release/14609661?ev=rb