The Significance of Bach

I am particularly critical of many of the conclusions that the representatives of "historical" performance practice reach with regard to articulation-that is, the question of how short or long each individual note is to be played or sung. Based upon theoretical writings from the time of Bach, such as those of Quantz, C. P. E. Bach, Mattheson, and many others, representatives of the "historical" school of interpretation have voiced opinions that assume an obligatory character. The theoreticians of that time were not always of the same opinion, however, and they turned their attention to aspects of their contemporary musical life of which they were critical. It is for these reasons that I am uncomfortable with conclusions regarding articulation that presume to be based upon the above-named theoreticians, and therefore to a certain extent to be endorsed by them, but that actually represent individual and perhaps capricious viewpoints. This specific criticism can be addressed properly only in detail, but I believe I can generalize regarding two points.

First, the proponents of the "historical" approach direct their attention too much to microstructure. Short individual notes or groups of notes that are separated after a tie emphasize momentary events and distract one from more important interrelationships. It seems to me that this might be a possibility for small-scale movements, but it is an encumbrance for complexes of large dimensions.

Second, a certain form of tone production, the so-called "bell tone", has achieved entirely too much prominence. This crescendo diminuendo of each note is, by its very nature, not particularly well suited to the conveying of a linear character. Can this quality properly dominate, then, in a type of music that was written for the church and the primary characteristic of which must therefore be singability? Of course, Bach's interest included the organization of details and the differentiation of small forms, but it was certainly directed at least as much to the architecture of large-scale movements. Otherwise, how could he have written a piece such as the opening chorus to the St. Matthew Passion?

I believe that it is our right to use the complete range of available possibilities of articulation, including those developed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries-since the time of Bach-in order to bring clarity to the structure, architecture, and thereby the meaning of a Bach work. It is precisely for this clarification of the meaning of a piece or a movement that the nature of its articulation is of exceptional importance. For example, a dance movement in, say, an orchestral suite, might have a playful character; in the "Hail, King of the Jews" from the St. John Passion, however, it has been given strange characteristics for the sake of parody. The "Shepherd Symphony" of the second part of the Christmas Oratorio, has the function of an entryway from which-as in the case of the other introductory choral movements-the entire second cantata of the work becomes manifest. To make these ideas clear is the task of an articulatory scheme based on Bach's expressive wishes.

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