Daniel R. Melamed. J. S. Bach and the German Motet. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. xv +229 pp. $34.99 (paper), ISBN 978-0-521-61976-9.
Daniel R. Melamed. Hearing Bach's Passions. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. xi + 178 pp. $24.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-516933-1.
Reviewed by Janette Tilley (Department of Music, Lehman College, City University of New York)
Published on H-German (October, 2006)
Revisiting Bach's Vocal Music
Few sacred vocal works of the early eighteenth century, with perhaps the exception of Handel's Messiah (1741), have secured as solid a place in the modern performance repertoire as those of J. S. Bach. At the same time, few repertoires seem as replete with persistent questions--questions of genre, performance practice, chronology, meaning and in some cases even authorship--as Bach's motets and Passions. Perhaps a victim of its popularity, Bach's vocal music has been plagued with steadfast yet spurious assertions. Some stem from overzealous attempts to assign the Bach name to anonymous works, while others are the result of false assumptions. The long-held belief, for example, that all of Bach's motets date to his Leipzig years (1723-50) was partly founded on the assertion that they were closely connected to the cantatas as substitution pieces--an assertion that has never been demonstrated with evidence. In two recent publications--one a re-issue--Daniel R. Melamed lays bare some of the misconceptions about Bach's vocal music and with methodological rigor explores pressing concerns of both the listener and performer of the repertoire.
Originally published in 1995, J. S. Bach and the German Motet was and remains a significant appraisal of Bach's motet writing activity. In the book's opening chapters, Melamed clears the muddy waters of definitions by exploring eighteenth-century usages of the term "motet." A survey of German writers, including Johann Adolph Scheibe, Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg, Friedrich Erhard Niedt and Johann Mattheson among others results in a definition of the term as Bach's German contemporaries understood it: a German-language setting of biblical and chorale texts with no independent instrumental parts. Problems with Bach's catalogue have arisen, however, since Bach used the term "motet" for works that do not conform to the widely held German definition. Amid the enigmatic and often contradictory definitions of "motet," Melamed identifies several contemporary usages that apply to Bach's work, including a modified understanding of the German definition, and the expanded French-Italian sense, which permitted the term for works with independent instrumental parts--works that Germans would have called concertos. Melamed convincingly argues for Bach's invocation of different definitions of the term for various pieces in his repertoire, thereby accounting for all the compositions Bach named motets, including those otherwise catalogued by the editors of recent critical editions.
The greater part of the volume is given over to a detailed and technical discussion of Bach's motet repertoire, including pieces explicitly titled motets and sections of larger works written in a motet style. Through careful paleographic and stylistic analysis, Melamed successfully questions the received notion that Bach's motets stem entirely from his Leipzig years. He tackles some of the persistent questions of authorship in the repertoire and demonstrates the breadth of motet-style composition in Bach's Latin works, oratorios, cantatas and other concerted music.
This is not an accessible introduction to Bach's motets; familiarity with the repertoire is presumed, as is a sophisticated musical knowledge. It is, however, a thorough examination of an important group of compositions in Bach's oeuvre. Surprisingly, no other major study of Bach's motets has appeared in English in the ten years since this volume's first publication. This is striking, for Melamed's work--placing the motets within their early eighteenth-century context and explicating motet style as understood by Bach's contemporaries--should have inspired further critical investigation into the eighteenth-century motet repertoire. Furthermore, his strictly positivist methodology ought to have prompted musicologists to explore questions of culture, theology and meaning that Melamed avoids in this volume. Hopefully the book's paperback re-issue will ignite precisely those investigations.
Melamed's latest monograph, Hearing Bach's Passions, is both methodologically and stylistically a contrast to his earlier work on the motets. Here, Melamed explores precisely those questions he previously avoided--questions of meaning and ontology that concern modern performers and listeners. Each chapter, devoted to one of Bach's Passions, offers a case study in the performance of early music in general, such as reconstructions, performance practice and editorial procedures. Written for the non-specialist, this accessible volume is meant to introduce connoisseurs to some of the difficult issues that surround a well-loved and oft-performed repertoire.
A central question asked by both performers and listeners of early music drives much of this slim volume: is it possible to hear old music as it was heard when composed? The answer is, most assuredly, "No." We would be wise nonetheless to make ourselves aware of ways in which modern performance practice differs from Bach's time in execution and understanding--that is, the performers and instrumentals as well as the significance of the experience for the intended audience and the conventions of performance. As Melamed rightly points out, Bach's Passions are enjoyed by audiences today, not so much because these works are "timeless" or "transcendent," or that they have kept their meaning over time, rather because they are able to draw new listeners and mean something for new audiences (p. 15).
One of the most vociferous debates in the performance of Bach's vocal music concerns the disposition of vocal forces. Melamed follows Joshua Rifkin, Andrew Parrott and others in favoring one-singer-per-part as the most accurate representation of Bach's practice. But unlike many who staunchly defend one or the other point of view, Melamed magnanimously admits we might enjoy performances on modern instruments with large performing corps. In an ecumenical gesture, he allows that historically informed performance is not the only way to perform the passions, but might simply open another possible way of hearing and understanding these works (p. 32).
The most original argument presented in the volume is a significant re-thinking of the St. Matthew Passion (1736; earlier versions 1720s). For most listeners, the St. Matthew is remembered for its stunning "double chorus" configuration--an arrangement explained and propagated in countless recordings, program notes and textbooks. In a recent article, which the author summarizes here for a general audience, Melamed convincingly argues against received wisdom that the work was composed for two equal and independent choruses. Instead, the distribution of voices in the parts is not significantly different from other passions, and the relationship between the choirs is always unequal with Choir 2 supporting or answering Choir 1 and never the opposite. The choral writing, Melamed argues, owes more to single-chorus writing than to antiphonal, double-chorus practices.
Much of "Hearing Bach's Passions" exposes the influence of nineteenth-century Romantic aesthetics on modern reception of the Passions. Questions of ontology arise around the St. John Passion, which survives in several versions for performances in 1724, 1725, c. 1732, and c. 1749. The eighteenth-century practical musician, ready to re-use and alter compositions to suit later needs, directly conflicts with the nineteenth-century ideal of an independent genius working toward a final and complete work. The same is true of parodies; Bach composed several, reworking older compositions for new situations. The Romantics seriously devalued parodies and used their assessment to establish chronologies that have more recently been rejected. On the other hand, by embracing the parodies and reworkings too readily, modern conductors run the risk of attributing to Bach a work that has little or no basis in fact. Such is the pitfall of Ton Koopman's recent recording of Bach's "lost" St. Mark Passion. Koopman's overzealous reconstruction using various movements from Bach's oeuvre is perhaps in the spirit of Bach's parodies and re-compositions, but is as much a modern pastiche as a work by Bach himself. Likewise, the spurious St. Luke Passion has enjoyed performances and recordings simply by virtue of its once having been considered a composition by Bach. The fact that it is decidedly not a composition by Bach has deterred few from including the Leipzig cantor's name in a prominent place--today prefaced by "formerly attributed to" or "apocryphal"--no doubt to lend the work greater commercial interest.
The "apocryphal" St. Luke Passion also raises interesting questions about musicological methodology and the politics of aesthetics. Attribution of the St. Luke Passion to Bach in the nineteenth and early twentieth century resulted initially from stylistic comparisons with works that today, too, are considered spurious. The St. Luke Passion's s implicity and prevalent contrapuntal "errors" were explained as signs of immature writing and the work was placed early in Bach's oeuvre. The St. Luke Passion was of particular interest to German aesthetic camps in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Composers and writers of the "New German" school, associated with Wagner, advocated breaking the arbitrary rules of harmony and counterpoint in the service of greater expressivity and creative license in the "music of the future." Members of the conservative camp, most notably Brahms, were keen to find examples of contrapuntal "errors" in the masterpieces of the past in order to rebut the "New German" claim to innovation and superiority. As Melamed points out, the authorship of the St. Luke Passion may well have remained in question, for it was bound too closely with heated aesthetic battles (p. 124).
Hearing Bach's Passions is the product of a keen and practical musical mind. Melamed eschews esoteric or symbolic explanations always in favor of plausible musical solutions. He rejects, for example, the "cross-wise" symbolism attributed to the arias "Erbarme dich" and "Gebt mir meinem Jesum wieder" from the St. Matthew Passion. In each case, the vocalist and instrumental accompaniment are from a single "choir" (Chorus 1 for the former and Chorus 2 for the latter) with the exception of one violin "borrowed" from the other. This borrowing, he argues, has little to do with symbolism and everything to do with practical performance needs: a third violinist is needed for these two arias and can be found in the other chorus of instruments. Similarly, practical explanations do much to reinvest Bach with humanity and to create an image of an active musician with musical and time-management concerns not so very different from our own.
Although intended for the non-specialist, the book's rigorous foundation makes it a unique and valuable contribution. Hearing Bach's Passions brings the most recent musicological research out of its disciplinary tower and makes it accessible for a wide, music-loving audience. Melamed is not afraid to invite the connoisseur into disciplinary discourse and expose some of musicology's methodological difficulties and past errors. This unusual marriage of disciplinary rigor and engaging, accessible writing creates a welcome bridge between the scholar and the informed listener. Both will find value in hearing this popular repertoire anew.
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Citation:
Janette Tilley. Review of Melamed, Daniel R., J. S. Bach and the German Motet and
Melamed, Daniel R., Hearing Bach's Passions.
H-German, H-Net Reviews.
October, 2006.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=12388
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