CC BY
19
КОМПОЗИТОРСКОЕ ИСКУССТВО
© Boysen, J., 2021 УДК 78.02
DOI: 10.24412/2308-1031-2021-1-76-91
COMMUNICATING THROUGH MUSIC - A BAROQUE
COMPOSER SPEAKS
J. Boysen1
1 Conservatory of the Utrecht University, 3511 LL, Utrecht, Netherlands
Abstract. The article is concerned with the function of music in the 17th and 18th centuries as a means of communication. Since his youth, the author has immersed himself in historical sources on the art of composition and has acquired the ability to compose in various baroque styles. He takes care to follow the working method of a baroque composer as consistently as possible. First, he gives a brief outline of where his interest in composing in historical styles originated. The main section of the article discusses the various compositional means that composers used to write music that expressed the particular affections of the underlying texts and let the listeners feel them for themselves. The composers used the art of rhetoric as a model when approaching the compositional process. Finally, on the basis of two of his own works, the author provides insights into his working methods. An Entrfte in the French style serves as an example for the composition of instrumental music. With the help of a recitative from a completion of Bach's lost score of the St. Mark Passion, the author explains various aspects of vocal composition; the difficulties in dealing with prose texts; and his own possible solutions to them.
Keywords: musical poetics, historical composition, baroque music, communication with music, recitative, Bach, St. Mark Passion, BWV 247.
Conflict of interests. The author declares the absence of conflict of interests. For citation: Boysen, J. (2021), "Communicating through music - A baroque composer speaks", Journal of Musical Science, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 76-91. DOI: 10.24412/2308-1031-2021-1-76-91. (in Eng.)
ОБЩЕНИЕ ЧЕРЕЗ МУЗЫКУ - СЛОВАМИ БАРОЧНОГО КОМПОЗИТОРА
Й. Бойзен1
1 Консерватория Утрехтского университета, 3511 LL, Утрехт, Нидерланды
Аннотация. Данная статья посвящена значению приемов коммуникации в музыке XVII и XVIII вв. Автор данной статьи с самого детства был страстно увлечен чтением и изучением исторических трактатов о композиторском и исполнительском искусстве того времени. Благодаря этому интересу, Йорн Бойзен развил в себе навык сочинять музыку в различных стилях эпохи Барокко. В своей композиторской практике он старается максимально следовать принципам сочинения той эпохи. В первую очередь автор рассказывает в общих чертах о том, как и почему зародился его интерес к сочинению музыки в старинных стилях. В основной части статьи обсуждаются некоторые средства, с помощью которых композиторы XVII-XVIII вв. писали музыку, довольно точно выделяя определенный аффект, соответствующий тексту произведения. Тем самым слушатели могли прочувствовать этот аффект не только посредством текста, но и через музыку. Композиторы того времени использовали искусство риторики как модель для композиторского процесса. И в заключении на основе
двух своих собственных сочинений, автор дает представление о композиторском подходе того времени. Увертюра во французском стиле служит примером инструментальной композиции. А на анализе речитативов из завершенной автором утерянной партитуры «Страстей по Марку» Иоганна Себастьяна Баха автор расскажет о различных аспектах вокального сочинительства, о сложностях работы с прозаическим текстом и написанием к нему музыки, и о том каким методом автор пришел к решению этой проблемы.
Ключевые слова: музыкальная поэтика, историческое сочинение музыки, музыка эпохи Барокко, общение посредством музыки, речитатив, И.С. Бах, Страсти по Марку, BWV 247. Конфликт интересов. Автор заявляет об отсутствии конфликта интересов. Для цитирования: Boysen, J. (2021), "Communicating through music - A baroque composer speaks", Journal of Musical Science, vol. 9, no. 1, рр. 76-91. DOI: 10.24412/2308-1031-20211-76-91. (in Eng.)
Some readers may be surprised and have to rub their eyes after reading the title of this article, but they read correctly: I compose music in baroque style. Yet, on reflection, one may observe that this is not so remarkable as it may at first seem. There are many contemporary composers who compose in historical styles more or less consistently: composers of music for computer games or films for example. The scores of films such as Star Wars or Lord of the Rings are reminiscent of scores by Wager or Mahler, but I compose scores that could be 150 years older. (It is interesting to note that composers of film music also employ historical compositional techniques, such as the leitmotiv technique, as I also do.)
At about 12 years of age I discovered the music of Bach and Händel and other baroque composers. Spurred on by this discovery, I began to study 17th and 18 th century scores; treatises on performance; and the philosophy of Musica Poetica, as the art of composition was then called (Herbst J., 1643, p. 4). On the basis of these explorations I began to compose music in different baroque styles. (There are a variety of styles and classes of composing in baroque music, depending on function and occasion.) I made it my
personal goal to become a Baroque Capellmeister, a performing composer who understands theory and practice. I went about my work very seriously: I studied the works by the foremost music theorists of the 17th and 18th centuries and aspired to adopt the composers' compositional techniques and ways of thinking. This process was not limited to music. Treatises on other art forms, diaries, descriptions of everyday life, even cookery books or letters have also been very useful. Later, my work with historically informed actors and dancers has deepened my understanding still further.
My investigations have led me to conceive of a baroque score as a charcoal sketch or a cartoon made in preparation of a large canvas: you may recognize the outlines and the figures, but the colours still have to be added. It is my conviction that the more the contemporary musician knows about the compositional process, the better he can interpret the score. And there is no doubt that the findings I made in this way also benefited my work as a historically-informed musician, they have had a direct impact on my view of questions relating to performance practice.
I have now been performing my own works regularly for 15 years.
77
They include sacred and secular vocal music as well as chamber, dance and theatre music in different baroque styles. In November 2015 I had the great pleasure to perform my own completion of Bach's St. Mark Passion at the Siberian Seasons Festival in Novosibirsk and Barnaul. In this article I would like to give a little insight into my work.
Rhetorical music
"[Musica Poetica] is that part of music which teaches how to compose a musical composition [...] in order to incline men's minds and hearts to various emotions."
(Burmeister J., 1606)
No matter what the occasion, no matter whether it be music for the church or the stage, for instruments or voices, the goal of a musical composition was communication with the listener. It was meant "to incline men's minds and hearts to various emotions", as composer and music theorist Joachim Burmeister put it into words in 1606 (Burmeister J., 1606, p. 7). In his opinion, there was little difference between music and oratory, as both were artistic means to deviate from the normative way of communicating. The art of oratory is not based on the straightforward stringing together of simple words repeatedly in similar contexts, but on the fact that language facilitates expressiveness through embellishment and the use of weighty words.
Likewise, music offers us rhetorical figures to heighten expressiveness. These figures are musical phrases that contradict the strict rules of counterpoint and were named after rhetorical terms. The dissonances
created by these devices are divided into different classes according to the affect achieved by them. Deviations from contrapuntal conventions are regulated and restricted by this classification and listeners react both consciously and unconsciously to them (Bernhard C., 1999, pp. 40-131). There are many rhetorical figures, but they include such devices as retardation (ie syncopation), anticipation, or changing notes. (The idea that these figures were developed and collected in catalogues that composers used like cookbooks to manufacture their compositions is not correct, however. Rather, in the course of the 16th century, composers began to deviate from rules of counterpoint in pursuit of greater expressiveness. Theorists such as Burmeister later attempted to analyse and explain these deviations and summarize them in their treatises.)
The musical composition had to serve the understanding of the text or, if there was no text, the understanding of the passion that is the subject of an instrumental piece. The musical form and its affect should correspond to the form, metre, style and affect of the poem or to the state of mind being presented in instrumental music, often in a particular context (ie the state of mind of a particular person. The order of the word accents and emphases must be observed in the composition, as well as the different punctuation marks that correlated with the various cadences. The harmony serves as grammar.
The first four bars of Bach's C major Prelude in the first part of the Wohltemperirte Clavier may serve as a simple example for the harmonic form of a short clause, This
harmonic pattern appears in various forms in many of Bach's works, (Note the retardatio in the bass and its resolution in the third measure).
Figure 1: Harmonic structure opening bars BWV 846
Figure 2: BWV 1021, opening bars, here in a variation that leads into a half cadence
(Manuscript copy: A.M. Bach, 1732-1733)
You will find a variation of this harmonic turn on an organ point in my example from the St. Mark Passion below in bar 24-26.
In order to realise the effect of the music, it needed to be performed in the right, expressive way. The compositional process is only completed in the act of performance, and this was understood as Only through performance was the work completed, and was able to develop its full persuasive power and fulfil its purpose. The performer, like the composer, must adhere to the affect and pay attention to the different word accents and emphases so that his or her presentation can be covered by the greatest possible comprehensibility (Quantz J., 1752, p. 116, 175). Singers used facial expressions and gestures to emphasize the words and enhance their performance. It was known that these facial expressions
were unconsciously mirrored by the facial muscles of the listeners. This made them feel empathy and brought them into the respective emotional state, or affect.
The following excerpt from a piece of theatre music I wrote illustrates the effect music can have when it comes to putting the audience in a certain mood: My goal was to prepare the audience with my Entrée de Brutus for the monologue "Friends, Romans, countrymen" in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Brutus, at odds with himself, emphasizes here on the one hand his love for Caesar, while at the same time defending his murder of the emperor.
I chose the form of a French Overture (related to Louis XIV and everything majestic) to illustrate Brutus' noble status. I express his pain through numerous dissonances, his desperation by big leaps in violins and basses, the inner conflict with the help of harmonics (modulations, fallacies). Notice how the musicians' playing matches the affect: https://bit.ly/33wAeLx.
The working methods of a baroque composer can best be demonstrated in vocal music. Therefore, in the following I would like to give a more detailed insight into my approach (and that of baroque composers) by means of a recitative from the St. Mark Passion.
Composing a recitative - an
explanation of the procedure using an example from the St. Mark Passion. In 2010 I received the commission to reconstruct the St. Mark Passion by Johann Sebastian Bach. The only copy of this work was burned during the Second World War. Only the printed libretto has survived (Picander C., 1731, p. 49). Like other works by Bach, the St. Mark Passion contained
Entrée
de Brutus
Grave.
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Figure 3: Opening bars of my Entrée de Brutus
parodies of music from other works, in this case mainly BWV 198, whose music Bach used for the large choral
pieces and the majority of the arias in the St. Mark Passion. Since it was not customary for Baroque composers
to use parody to set prose recitatives, I had to compose them from scratch. In addition, there were texts for the turba choruses (the crowd) and an aria for which there is no composition by Bach that is suitable for parody.
Various reconstructions have appeared since the 1960s, but none of them offers a stylistically coherent recomposition of the missing pieces. Instead, music in completely different styles (mostly modern) was employed or material from other Passions by Bach, with the goal of achieving a Bach-sounding result. However, in order to make this material suitable for the prose of the Gospel of Mark, one has to make major interventions, and change so much, that in principle it is more satisfying to rewrite the missing pieces.
In recitative composition, there is, among other things, a special kind of harmony treatment. For example, a dissonance in one voice may be resolved in another voice as you will see in bar 3 of my example below (Heinichen J., 1728, p. 672). In addition, there are certain rules about the distribution of syllables in common metre. These are especially important in connection with the irregular prose text from the Gospel of Mark, which I had to fit into the regular bar system with its uniform arrangement of accented and unstressed syllables.
For lack of references to this topic by Bach himself (except for his own recitative compositions in his cantatas, of course), I studied every German source on that topic of which I could get hold. The most important writings are Johann Mattheson's Vollkommener Capellmeister (1739), Gottfried Heinrich Stolzel's Abhandlung vom Recitativ (Treatise
on the Recitative, a manuscript from around 1739), Johann Adolf Scheibe's contribution to Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften und freien Künste XI-XII, (1764-1765) with the same title and Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg's Kritische Briefe über die Tonkunst (Critical letters on music) on recitative composition from 1763.
Although most of the existing relevant sources in German date from shortly after Bach's death, they are very useful for us. Remarks on performance and taste (may) differ from Bach's own treatment of certain features of recitative composition, however the theoretical foundation of recitative composition and the principles for treatment of individual syllables, harmony and punctuation marks, did not change during the 18th century.
As an aside, it is remarkable that composers went to the trouble of fitting prose into the bar, when the singers were expected to ignore the barring and declaim (not sing in the modern sense!) the text freely according to its natural pronunciation (Marpurg F., 1762, p. 255). Although the different note values are an indication of the speech tempo, and the relationship of the note values to each other may indicate at which point the composer wishes to speed up, the notation could be no more than a sketch for the performance. The quavers all look the same, but they all have to have their proper (hence varying) lengths, depending on the treatment of the corresponding syllable in speech. (I will delve into that below.)
In the following I would like to demonstrate on the basis of one of my recitatives how I proceeded. Here the text:
Evangelist:
Petrus aber sagte zu ihm: Petrus
Und wenn sie sich alle ärgerten, so wolte doch ich mich nicht ärgern.
Evangelist
Und Jesus sprach zu ihm: Jesus
Warlich, ich sage dir, heute in dieser Nacht, ehe denn der Hahn zweymahl krähet, wirst du mich dreymal verleugnen.
Evangelist
Er aber redete noch weiter: Petrus
Ja, wenn ich auch mit dir sterben müßte, wollt ich dich nicht verleugnen.
Evangelist
Desselbigen gleichen sagten sie alle. Und sie kamen zu dem Hofe, mit Nahmen Gethsemane. Und er sprach zu seinen Jüngern:
Jesus
Setzet euch hie, bis ich hingehe, und bethe.
Evangelist
Und nahm zu sich Petrum, und Jacobum, und Johannem; und fieng an zu zittern und zu zagen, und sprach zu ihnen:
Jesus
Meine Seele ist betrbbt bis an den Tod, enthaltet euch hie, und wachet.
Peter, however, said to him:
Even though everyone will be angry at you, yet I will never be angry.
And Jesus said to him:
Truly, I say to you: today, in this very night, before the cock crows twice, you will deny me three times.
But he said insistently:
Indeed, even if I must die with you, I will not deny you.
They all said exactly the same. And they came to a garden, called Gethsemane. And he said to his disciples:
Sit here while I go over there and pray.
And He took Peter and James and John; and began to tremble and despair, and said:
My soul is troubled unto death; stay here and keep watch!
The composition process. 1. Preparation of the text. First, I declaim the text expressively, with the right affect. By this process I find the appropriate stresses of the individual syllables. (Some compromises will have
to be made later in the distribution into regular barring.) Subsequently I mark the most important stresses and decide which of the stressed syllables have to preferably fall on a stressed beat in the bar:
Evangelist:
Petrus aber sagte zu ihm: Peter, however, said to him:
Petrus
Und wenn sie sich alle ärgerten, so wolte Even though everyone will be angry at doch ich mich nicht ärgern. you, yet I will never be angry.
Evangelist
Und Jesus sprach zu ihm: And Jesus said to him:
Jesus
Warlich, ich sage dir, heute in dieser Truly, I say to you: today, in this very Nacht, ehe denn der Hahn zweymahl night, before the cock crows twice, you krähet, wirst du mich dreymal will deny me three times. verleugnen.
Evangelist
Er aber redete noch weiter: But he said insistently:
Petrus
Ja, wenn ich auch mit dir sterben müßte, Indeed, even if I must die with you, so wolte ich dich nicht verleugnen. I will not deny you.
Evangelist
Desselbigen gleichen sagten sie alle.
Und sie kamen zu dem Hofe, mit Nahmen They all said exactly the same. Gethsemane. Und er sprach zu seinen And they came to a garden, called Jüngern: Gethsemane. And he said to his disciples:
Jesus
Setzet euch hie, bis ich hingehe, und Sit here while I go over there and pray. bethe.
Evangelist And He took Peter and James and John;
Und nahm zu sich Petrum, und Jacobum, and began to tremble and despair, and und Johannem; und fieng an zu zittern said: und zu zagen, und sprach zu ihnen:
Jesus
Meine Seele ist betrübt bis an den Tod, My soul is troubled unto death; stay here enthaltet euch hie, und wachet. and keep watch!
Adding the emphases (syllables in bold): Evangelist:
Petrus aber sagte zu ihm: Peter, however, said to him:
Petrus
Und wenn sie sich alle ärgerten, so wolte Even though everyone will be angry at doch ich mich nicht ärgern. you, yet I will never be angry.
Evangelist
Und Jesus sprach zu ihm: Jesus
Warlich, ich sage dir, heute in dieser Nacht, ehe denn der Hahn zweymahl krähet, wirst du mich dreymal verleugnen.
Evangelist
Er aber redete noch weiter: Petrus
Ja, wenn ich auch mit dir sterben müßte, wolte ich dich nicht verleugnen.
Evangelist
Desselbigen gleichen sagten sie alle. Und sie kamen zu dem Hofe, mit Nahmen Gethsemane. Und er sprach zu seinen Jüngern:
Jesus
Setzet euch hie, bis ich hingehe, und bethe.
Evangelist
Und nahm zu sich Petrum, und Jacobum, und Johannem; und fieng an zu zittern und zu zagen, und sprach zu ihnen:
Jesus
Meine Seele ist betrübt bis an den Tod, enthaltet euch hie, und wachet.
2. Text and bar. Next, one needs to fit the text into common metre. Here it has to be observed that:
1) if possible stressed syllables fall on stressed beats in the bar (i.e. 1st and 3rd beat which both are equally important in recitative composition) or at least on a stressed part of any beat.
2) the stressed syllable of a word before a punctuation mark has to fall on either the 1st or 3rd beat of the bar.
And Jesus said to him:
Truly, I say to you: today, in this very night, before the cock crows twice, you will deny me three times.
But he said insistently:
Indeed, even if I must die with you, I will not deny you.
They all said exactly the same. And they came to a garden, called Gethsemane. And he said to his disciples:
Sit here while I go over there and pray.
And He took Peter and James and John; and began to tremble and despair, and said:
My soul is troubled unto death; stay here and keep watch!
NB: In the first bar, we have an example of one of the compromises already mentioned: The emphasis of the short phrase falls on its very first syllable: Petrus. However, the last stressed syllable before the colon at the end of the sentence must fall on a stressed beat in the measure. If it weren't for the little word "aber", there would be no problem: "Petrus sagte zu ihm:" would fit perfectly. However, the word "Petrus" has to be placed on the second beat, so
Evangelista Jesus
Und kam, und fand sie schla- fend. Und sprach zu Pe - tro: Si - mon, schlä - fest du?
Ver-mö-gest du nicht ei - ne Stun-de zu wa-chen? Wa chet, und be-tet, daß ihr nicht in Ver-su-chung fal-let. Der Geist ist wil-lig, 8 Evangelista
a - ber das Fleisch ist schwach. Und ging wie-der hin, und be-te-te, und sprach die-sel-bi-gen Wor-te. Und kam wie-der,
und fand sie a - ber-mahl schla-fend, (denn ih-re Au gen wa-ren voll Schlafs,) und wus-sten nicht, was sie ihm ant wor-te-ten.
Und er kam zum drit-ten-mahl und sprach zu ih-nen: Ach, wollt ihr nun schla-fen und ru- hen? es ist gnug, die Stund ist kom-men.
} > * > J' * > * i* * , } } } } * j
Sie - he, des Men - sehen Sohn wird ü - ber - ant - wor - tet in der Sün - der Hän - de.
t * :> > v J > > i * j , 1; J* < - ¡'я
Stc - het auf, las - sei uns ge - hen; der mich ver- rath, ist na - he.
that "ihm" falls on the first beat of the following measure. This problem will be resolved melodically at a later stage, as well as that of the two stressed words "nicht ärgern" in the third aand fourth bar. There was no choice but to place the stressed "nicht" on the last sixteenth of the measure.
Jesus' answer (bar 5-9) is organised as a coherent sentence so that the last stressed syllable before the end of the period falls on a good beat again and all other comparable places in the text as well. I actually work backwards here.
The comma after the stressed "dir" (bar 6) actually has the function of a colon here. (It is a perfect comma,
Figure 4: text in common time
while the comma in the following measure is an imperfect comma, which is not normally set off by rests.) The following syllable, the first of "heute" is also stressed. Here the use of a crotchet rest solves the problem of two successive stressed syllables. At the same time this crotchet pause also helps to clarify the colon. Everyone who speaks this sentence (in the right affect) will notice that he automatically breathes at this point. The (crotchet) rest was also called "suspir" (respiration), in Bach's time. Fortunately, it fits perfectly with the declamation of the text.
From here on, the text continues without any major problems. In measure 22, we have again a case of
two successive stresses: "fieng an". There are several possible solutions at this point: One could, for example, place two sixteenth notes for "und fieng", so that "an" falls on the following downbeat. However, I would be forced to use faster note values for the rest of the movement as well. One could save half a measure here. But a fast speech tempo would not at all fit the affect of this passage. So I decided to put "fieng" on the first beat and to give the word "an" its proper accent by stretching it (suspension). In this way, I can indicate the tempo of speech according to the affect, i.e. slower.
3. Harmony. Before determining the harmonic structure of the recitative, I must determine in which key the preceding piece ends and in which key the next piece begins. (It was customary not to compose the various movements of a (passion) cantata in the order in which they would be performed. Arias, chorales, and choirs were often composed before the connecting recitatives were written. In our case the preceding chorale ends with a complete cadence in F major. The following chorale is composed in G major. That means that the recitative needs to modulate from F to G major.
I also need to analyse the punctuation marks, since every one of them asks for its own harmonic treatment. i.e. a period requires cadence, either perfect or imperfect, depending on whether it is the end of a sentence or the end of a whole section. A colon and some commas require a harmony that gives the listener the expectation that something else will follow (e.g. a dominant chord with or without 7th in 1st or 3rd inversion). A question
mark can be expressed by a half cadence (see bar 9 in my recitative). Depending on the number of cadences to be made, one has to make more or fewer 'detours' before 'landing' on the final cadence of the recitative. In addition, emphases require stronger harmonies than other syllables.
Figure 5 shows this step.
NB: In bar 3 the bass jumps from the seventh of the D major chord to the root of G minor. The resolution occurs during the performance in one of the upper voices.
In measures 13 and 14, the disciples speak in the same way as Peter just before. Just as his words close with a perfect cadence, I have the following movement end with the same cadence to illustrate the repetition by the disciples.
Depending on the affect of the words and the social standing of the person speaking, I make use of diatonic, chromatic and enharmonic modulations. Two examples are measures 9 and 23:
In order to give Jesus' terrible announcement that Peter will betray him the proper portion of pain, I make use of chromaticism: (B3 ^ G9
C11 -> F).
In1 keeping with Jesus' passions, the recitative concludes with a short arioso. The transition from recitative to arioso happens when the affect is particularly strong and the speech becomes very similar to singing. I begin it in F minor before closing the piece after a modulation to G minor with a consoling G major chord that transitions very well into the following chorale. According to Johann Mattheson, F-minor stood for "deadly anguish of heart" (Mattheson J., 1713, p. 248). This is exactly the
Evangelista Jesus
8 Evangelista
affect of Jesus in this passage. and wants to "at times cause the listener horror or a shudder". To reach F minor from the B-flat major of the last cadence, I modulate enharmonically in measure 23. (The D flat in the bass is actually a reinterpreted C sharp.) In this way, the far-off F minor can be reached and reinforce the message of the text.
4. Melody. The next step is the composition of the melody. Care must be taken to ensure that the syllables are placed on the corresponding high or low notes, depending on the intensity of their emphasis. (An emphasis can be achieved by a relatively high as well as low note.)
Writers such as Scheibe and Marpurg also emphasize the importance of composing the melody of the recitative as much as possible according to the melody of natural speech. (Remembering that the words should be declaimed with the passions of the speaker.) Incidentally, Bach was criticized by contemporary music
Evangelista
theorists and composers for failing to abide by it. His composition of the description of the tearing curtain in the St. Matthew Passion is a good example of this. Bach lets the melody exhaust the entire vocal range of the tenor to portray the tearing of the curtain from top to bottom, the opening graves and the resurrecting bodies of the saints.
In order to make my baroque recitatives sound Bach-like, it helps to use the same compositional techniques as Bach in comparable passages in the text from the Gospel of Mark, and thus basically make the same "mistakes" as Bach did (at least in the eyes of his contemporaries). At the words of Jesus "Sit down here..." (bar 18-19) I first let voice fall (sit down) to rise afterwards (turn to heaven for prayer).
We return to the problems with the stresses at the beginning of the recitative that I mentioned earlier:
They can be solved by pitch accents: The first word "Petrus" is set on
Jesus
Und kam, und fand sie schla- fend. Und sprach zu Pe - tro:
4 2
Si-mon, schla-fest du? Accomp.
Wor-te. Und kamwie der. und fand sie a - ber-mahl schla-fend, (denn ih-re Au-gen wa-ren voll Schlafs.) und wus-sten
a relatively high note before the melody falls off afterwards.
I proceeded in the same way two bars later: the important word "nicht" in Peter's speech is set on a high note. The problem of the two
Figure 6: composing the melody directly successive stressed syllables in "nicht grgern" in bar 3 and 4 are solved by already reaching the high d in "nicht".5. Accompaniment of the words of Jesus. In principle, the recitative is finished. Since I had
be-te-te, und sprach die-sei - bi gen Wor-te. Und kamwie-der, und fand sie a - ber-mahl schla-fend, (denn ih-re
ih-nen: Ach, wolll ihr nun schla-fen und ru- hen? es isl gnug, die Snmd ist kom-men. Sie-he,des Men-schen Sohn wird ü-ber-ant Accomp.
wortet in der Siin-dcr Hän-dc. Stc-hct auf. las-set uns gehen; der mich ver-räth,
decided not to compose the words of Jesus as secco recitative, but to accompany them with string chords, as Bach did in his St Matthew Passion, I had one last step ahead of me: the composition of this accompaniment -in a certain way the cherry on the cake.
Here the score of the whole recitative (figure 7): You may listen to the result here: https://bit. ly/3oAmsQv.
Trying to put myself in the mindset of an 18th century composer and imitate the way of working that was common at the time has greatly changed my perspective on many
Figure 7: final result
issues that confront musicians who specialize in early music. In order to better understand the music and arrive at more convincing interpretations, the historically informed performance movement has adapted instruments and playing techniques to the practices of that time. However the composition of new baroque music has been neglected, even disdained.
In my opinion our performance and understanding of existing Baroque scores would be greatly enriched by a serious attempt to compose new music in this style. It is my hope that this challenge will be taken up widely in the near future.
REFERENCES
Bernhard, C. (17th c.) Tractatus compositionis augentatus in: Die Kompositionslehre Heinrich Schützens in der Fassung seines Schülers Christoph Bernhard (1999), Kassel (Bärenreiter), pp. 40-131. (in Germ.)
Burmeister, J. (1606), Musica Poetica, Rostock in: Musica Poetica, Musical poetics / Joachim Burmeister; transl. with introduction and notes, by Benito V. Rivera; edited by Claude V. Palisca (1993), New Haven and London (Yale University Press), p. 17. (in Eng.)
Heinichen, J.D. (1728), Der General-Bass in der Composition, Dresden, p. 672 (§ 53), available at: https:// imslp.org/wiki/Der_General-Bass_in_der_Composition_(Heinichen,_Johann_David) (Accessed 25 November 2020). (in Germ.)
Herbst, J.A. (1643), Musica Poetica, Nürnberg (Dümler), p. 4, available at: https://ks4.imslp.info/files/ imglnks/usimg/d/df/IMSLP123794-PMLP245987-musica_poetica_644.pdf (Accesssed 25 November 2020). (in Germ.)
Marpurg, F.W. (1762), Critische Briefe über die Tonkunst, Vol II-3, Berlin (Birnstiel), pp. 253-416, available at: https://imslp.org/wiki/Kritische_Briefe_%C3%BCber_die_Tonkunst_(Marpurg%2C_ Friedrich_Wilhelm) (Accesssed 25 November 2020). (in Germ.)
Mattheson, J. (1713), Das neu-eröffnete Orchestre, Hamburg, pp. 248-249, available at: https://imslp.org/ wiki/Der_vollkommene_Capellmeister_(Mattheson%2C_Johann) (Accesssed 25 November 2020). (in Germ.)
Mattheson, J. (1739), Der vollkommene Capellmeister, Hamburg (Herold), p. 55 (§ 91), available at: https:// imslp.org/wiki/Der_vollkommene_Capellmeister_(Mattheson%2C_Johann) (Accesssed 25 November 2020). (in Germ.)
Picander, C.F. (1731), Ernst-Schertzhaffte und Satyrische Gedichte Vol. 3, Leipzig, pp. 49-67, available at: https://reader.digitale-sammlungen.de/resolve/display/bsb10310725.html (Accesssed 25 November 2020). (in Germ.)
Quantz, J.J. (1752), Versuch einer Anweisung die Flöte traversiere zu spielen, Berlin (Voß), p. 116, p. 175, available at: https://imslp.org/wiki/Versuch_einer_Anweisung_die_Fl%C3%B6te_traversiere_zu_spielen_ (Quantz%2C_Johann_Joachim) (Accesssed 25 November 2020). (in Germ.)
Author information
Jörn Boysen, Correpetitor and lecturer for historically informed performance practice (HIP) E-mail: [email protected]
Сведения об авторе
Йорн Бойзен, аккомпаниатор и лектор по исторически информированной исполнительской практике (HIP)
E-mail: [email protected]
Поступила в редакцию 15.01.2021 После доработки 02.02.2021 Принята к публикации 10.02.2021
Received 15.01.2021 Revised 02.02.2021 Accepted for publication 10.02.2021
