Author: Vito Samaniego

I had a lot of fun preparing for and performing in the final concert for this program, including the rehearsal and presentation of a section of Bach’s BWV 199. This cantata was composed during Bach’s time in Weimar for the 11th Sunday after Trinity in 1714. In particular, I find this cantata very special because it is one of the few to feature an obbligato viola part in the sixth movement choral.

For me, there is a lot to consider when performing Bach and other earlier composers. I try to be very conscious of historical practice through my playing, and having recently started playing baroque viola at Princeton with Nancy Wilson, many major concerns with historical playing have been brought to my attention.

Principally, with baroque viola/violin, there is no chin rest or shoulder rest, so most of the instrumental support comes from the left arm, and not the shoulder and head as it is with modern instruments. As such, I find there is a greater connection between the instrument and the body, making it an extension of the arm. With this conception, phrasing becomes not only a musical idea but also a physical one. It becomes imperative to move the instrument to observe the strong and weak beats of the bar on early string instruments. In an attempt to adapt this style of playing on a modern viola, while I do not need to push up my instrument to facilitate stronger bow contact on strong beats, I try to keep this image in mind to help with general phrasing.

Further, bowing is an equally important concern for me in early music playing. I was able to use a baroque bow for this performance due to Ruth’s generosity in bringing hers from Princeton. This helped a lot with phrasing and easing many string crossings in the movement, as the bow tends to phrase strokes naturally given its tapered structure, seeing that bow directions are decided properly. In addition to this, there is an intent in baroque string playing to imitate the voice I have learned from multiple teachers (but still am far from understanding completely). It is harder to get these nuances in the sound from metal strings, but in an attempt to emulate early music playing on a modern instrument, I focused on starting entrances with “t” sounds and tried to create long “h” sounds on downbeats. I also tried to observe some inégal with repeated 16th notes, as it might have been played in the 18th century and with the heavy French influence on Bach’s writing.

Finally, the most difficult topic for me would be ornamentation. I have always struggled with finding appropriate places to add vibrato, and tend to be a little too conservative with my usage. However, given the amount of notes in this selection, I don’t think it was a significant issue here. In terms of other added ornaments, I had gone through the music and tried out a few, but ended up not adding them in the final performance. I feel slightly conflicted with Bach and added embellishments, seeing something a while back about Bach disliking excessive ornamentation in his music (what would be counted as “excessive” in this time?) and also the idea that this choral is part of his sacred music, which might be a little more strict for performers.

In total, it was such a great opportunity to add this portion of a Bach cantata to my performance history with Gabrielle and James!

My favorite room of the Bach Museum was probably the instrument room, housing many period instruments from Bach’s time. Aside from the very entertaining music set up, where you could increase the volume of a chosen instrument to highlight its sound in the various Bach compositions playing throughout the room, I greatly admired the artistry of the antique instruments on display. Often, my favorite part of listening to music is appreciating the different colors each instrument brings to the sound, and, as such, I have grown very attuned to period instruments in the recordings I choose to listen to. It was a great experience to see so many of the instruments I admire in early recordings on display, particularly early woodwinds like the recorder, transverse flute, and oboe da caccia. I find their wooden construction to bring a warmer and more unprocessed sound to performances when compared to their modern counterparts.

Aside from sound, there is also a certain artistry in the carving of many wood instruments that I revere, more so with string instruments, as I am exposed to them more often. With the gambas and violin, I found their varnishings particularly beautiful; they weren’t overly shiny as many expensive instruments appear today, but had a more muted sheen and color that I don’t often see in string instruments. I see this more worn and rustic appearance being more consistent with my image of “tafelmusik” or music being brought out not only for formal concerts as we mostly see today, but also for everyday eating and dancing.

That being said, I always become very conflicted within myself when I see instruments kept in museums. On the one hand, they are historical artifacts made with stunning craftsmanship that should be admired by the public. Behind glass, their history is kept mostly safe from damage, ensuring they will be able to be studied for years into the future. Yet, their primary purpose is still to be played. I know specifically for good string instruments, most of the carving work is actually done on the inside of the instrument, a part no one will be able to see, but definitely hear in the instrument’s sound. Showcasing instruments only visually, in some sense, seems like a disservice to their makers, but also, how else will people be able to get this close to remarkable instruments if they are only owned and used by musicians?

On the same night as the Cello Suites concert, I instead went to the Leipzig Zoo for Concert No. 26 “Reflections” with the Tim Kliphuis Trio and Shunske Sato, the former concertmaster and artistic director of the Netherlands Bach Society. I have been in love with Sato’s playing ever since I began listening to historically informed performances of Bach, so I couldn’t miss this opportunity to witness him play in person, even if the Cello Suites concert did present as a very tempting alternative.
Nevertheless, after a brief tour of the Zoo and dinner, the concert was a very big change from the music I had been hearing for the past week. I don’t really know what I was expecting, buying a ticket to an open-air concert in the Zoo featuring modern arrangements of Bach, but it was definitely a pleasant surprise. The concert began with a jazz arrangement of the 3rd Brandenburg Concerto, with supposed inspirations taken from all the other Brandenburg Concertos as well (though I was not able to hear any). It did make me realize, however, how unfamiliar I am with each concerto and how much I rely on hearing the instrumentation to identify which one I am listening to. I also found it interesting that, despite playing on an instrument from the 1800s (I overheard Sato talking about his instrument with a colleague I suspect is from the Netherlands Bach Society) and using a modern bow, his technique remains very baroque. His bow hold and the way he supports his instrument all stayed consistent with how he played on early instruments, and it also sounded in his playing, even in a jazz context.
Overall, I found the concert to be a very well-constructed take on Bach and other composers in a “Transformed” way, including an arrangement of Pachelbel’s canon, Handel’s “Arrival of the Queen of Sheba”, and, unsuspectingly, Copland’s Rodeo Hoedown that I found very cheesy but also well-made. My favorite part of the concert was, without question, the encore, where Sato played a selection of Bach solo violin repertoire, and the Kliphuis Trio played an arrangement of Strauss’s “Morgen.”

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Some images of the Handel Festival in Halle: notably, a statue of Handel as the figurehead on a children’s pirate ship and the child who unintentionally happened to be in the same pose.

The particular location of Halle as the site for this Handel Festival prompted me to think about why or how it comes to be that we attribute certain places to composers. Many large music festivals, such as the Bachfest Leipzig, Beethovenfest Bonn, and the Salzburg Festival, which emphasizes the work of Mozart, are held in cities where these composers spent a significant portion of their lives. In contrast, the Handelfest being in Halle seems out of place. Handel merely spent his adolescence here compared to the more formative years of his life spent in Italy and Hamburg, and the vast majority of his life spent in London, the site of another Handel Festival. Being the birthplace of Handel, I find that Halle does hold some significance regarding the composer, but it’s more of a postmortem significance implemented by historians and fans.

This point addresses the idea of wanting ownership, mentioned in class and the Agrippina preview session. We, in the present, look at people from the past and choose where we identify them. It becomes a question of who gets to hold the responsibility of having built the figure rather than where the figure identifies themself. For Handel, it is a debate concerning nationalistic pride regarding the composer as a champion from Germany or as the world-renowned British Subject that he was.

This idea of postmortem identity building then brings us back to Bach, particularly the location of Leipzig for the Bachfest. Bach spent a significant portion of his career in Leipzig, but it is also important to note what the composer actually thought about the city. It’s difficult to know definitively what Bach felt about Leipzig with so little writing. However, I found his relationship with the city to be somewhat questionable, given his failed attempt at applying for the Kapellmeister position in Dresden and his general attitude towards his role in Leipzig, discussed during our visit to the Bach Archiv. Overall, I find it valuable to distinguish the conceptions of historians from the contemporary sentiments of those being studied. We can so easily get caught up in popular opinion that we fail to notice the more nuanced relationships historical figures have with the places we associate them with.

There is a very extensive tram system throughout Leipzig with many lines to possibly get lost on!