more on: Bach cello suites...

[bloke]

sort of Kopprasch...except AMAZINGLY MUSICAL GENIUS and (well...) friggin ENDLESS.

I may never (other than a handful of movements) feel like I could play a bunch of these dance movements in a recital, but sight-reading them - and working on some of them - is strengthening my contrabass playing (as I'm playing them down an octave (on the huge Miraphone), and only occasionally playing some of the movements as written for cello (on the F tuba).

I'm also finding that my old "guitar ears" are waking back up...
I see a chord (arpeggiated) "up ahead" (next event/measure/whatever...) in the music, I hear the chord in my head, and I'm finding that I'm not having to "poke" (linearly) at the individual notes.

Just in case anyone is interested, it seems as though the Wenzinger edition is deemed the most reliable and the most free off goofs and wrong notes.
It's also the least edited.

I found a free PDF download of it, and I feel as though anyone with rudimentary searching skills can find it just as easily as did I.

The Wenzinger edition is based on the manuscript by the hand of Mary Magdalena Bach. His edition is the most honest edition since all markings not in the original manuscript are indicated as such: changed slurs are indicated with dashed lines, added dynamics are shown in parentheses, all corrected notes are footnoted.

bloke "I'm actually approaching getting the (relentless, in these dance movements - in this octave - "double low C" in the context of my musical range (rather than "a pitch that I can play").

Just fwiw...A rotary hybrid 6/4 B-flat tuba (with an American-style 6/4 bell and 21+mm bore rotary valves) requires much more energy(/precise timing/precision) to play than a 5/4 piston C tuba with a 19mm bore...and I'm really getting a kick out of it...still...

[donn]

I am looking at a print copy of that Wenzinger, and comparing with the Werner Icking edition I've been using. (Legitimately free PDF "typeset by editor" - 6 Cello Suites, BWV 1007-1012 (Bach, Johann Sebastian), about 4/5 of the way down the page.)

Not a comprehensive comparison - I just found a spot where Icking put a question mark. In IV Allemande, Icking wonders if a couple of Ab should have been accidental A. Wenzinger just marks them accidental A. I play it Ab. There are more of these, I believe, just haven't scoured through Icking to itemize them all.

[bloke]

There are quite a few places where none of the editors marked an accidental, yet an accidental sounds better to me. When I play through those phrases without the accidentals, they still sound okay... My ears are neither 18th century nor those of Mr Bach.

Those who are certain about such things remind me a lot of those who tell us all to pay attention to and abide "The Science".

More important to me is whether I can ever manage to play through some of these allemandes and preludes musically. It's pretty challenging to make something musical with very little rhythmic drive a little more than harmonic and melodic drive.

[arpthark]

I'd probably favor an A natural in the passage above, as Bach seems to be dancing around the key area of G minor.

This looks like something fun to tackle on Eb tuba.

[bloke]

I haven't played through that excerpt in my head, but as a general comment I think part of why the music of Bach attracts the ears of musicians is because - just about the time one is fairly sure they know what's coming next - it ends up being something else, whether it be the direction of the melody, the direction of the harmony, or even the equivalents of letters and words in music, which are individual pitches.

As far as becoming really academic about his compositions, something in me imagines him listening to a fine cellist play one of his dance suites at a small party, the cellist intentionally changing something to his own liking while eyeing Bach, and Bach smiling and winking back.

When I was referring to editions and accuracy, I was speaking more on a basic level, having played through some movements in some editions whereby there were epic boo boos - such as clef errors... When that sort of stuff occurs in printing, it's pretty difficult for the player (at least a player with as little imagination as myself) to make such juxtaposed phrase fragments work musically.

[donn]

I'd probably favor an A natural in the passage above, as Bach seems to be dancing around the key area of G minor.

This looks like something fun to tackle on Eb tuba.

I play Eb or BBb - but octave lower regardless. Not going to get me to play that high.

It would be interesting to hear what Bach would think about it, if we could bring him back to look at it. For me, the break is the uncontested A shortly after the second A/Ab. That's when he gets on the A Train!

[Oedipoes]

Slightly off-topic, but this guy's videos are all about Bach's handwriting calligraphy, great stuff!
Some very nice insights in differences between the original compared to copied versions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NFFiFLWRF0&t=5s

[Tubeast]

As to accidentals in certain movements:
Whether or not those "belong" in certain places seems a rather arduous discussion to me.
And this sort of rhymes with what Bloke mentioned about the scientific approach to music THAT old:

- Nobody but Bach himself can tell how many versions of each piece there were, and which one of those we need to look at to have the "correct" version on the desk. Bach himself may have thrown that one in a dustbin or lost it in a puddle of dissolved horse-feces on his way from his studio to Thomaskirche, and may have erred in his attempt to recreate it later, coming up with something that fit as well, but was not the exact same.
- Chances are, that originals may have altered over the ages. Chips of paper may have come off those manuscripts due to poor storage conditions, someone in 1759 may have decided that accidental really didn´t belong there and scraped it away...

I´d simply go with what seems right TO ME, which may include varying on occasion.

[bloke]

I like the previous post.
If someone playing through these dance movements has listened to a whole bunch of Bach and feels like they have a bit of a sense of his tastes in chord progressions, and understands Which chord they are implying by choosing an accidental that they encountered in one edition versus one not encountered in another, where's the sin?
I do believe that I've noticed more often that an added flat seems to work versus an added sharp. This might be related to the key signatures that Bach chose, but it also might be related to flatting certain pitches changing chords to those that sound more like chords that Bach himself might have chosen.

[donn]

Something occurred to me this morning when I noticed another one. It's the Ab near the end here, in suite V.

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What notes are these questions about? I am probably forgetting something, but I can't remember one that didn't involve Ab. Either Ab vs. A that the arranger wants, or here it's just Ab turns to Bb by error. OK, that's 99% likely due to the original notation where those notes above the clef are all written a step higher, and in the original notation version Wenzinger got it right. But he surely played through the "klang" notation version after he set it.

For us, Ab, Bb, A ... no big deal, either finger is just as happy to push down a valve as the other. But on 'cello, Ab could be kind of a long ways off. I've heard real live 'cello players complain about flat keys. How nice if that note were not the horrid Ab, but a nice A instead. It's a sad thought, probably an unworthy thought as I'm sure all these arrangements come from the hands of great players. But what is it about Ab?

Note that I'm just talking about what I'm seeing here, and for now I'm not going to force anyone to play the notes one way or another. My preference for me, is to play the notes I want to play. You may be able to get away with playing the notes you want.

[MikeS]

If I am ever in doubt about an accidental in one of the ‘cello suites, I tend to play the note that makes me smile and say to myself, “Now he’s just messing with me.” Then again, my musical muse is not found in a DMA dissertation. I have the luxury of following Seamus Heaney’s advice to, “Sing yourself to where the singing comes from.”

[bloke]

Again, I rarely see a pitch written whereby I would wonder if it is supposed to be ~sharped~ in any of those dance movements.