I’ve spent a lot of time studying Bach, but I learned so much at our session with Professor Wollny yesterday. Those little account books that he showed us were really remarkable. Princeton manages dozens and dozens of endowed funds that make many things possible for us — including this trip—but here we see how it worked in the sixteenth and the seventeenth century! Imagine having motets sung in your name for hundreds of years! I was also very excited about Peter Wollny’s project concerning performance practice in Bach. It is exciting to know that there is still so much we can learn — and to remember that performance traditions are never static — there’s one “authentic” to play Bach. Changes in dynamics, articulations, scoring — all of these things make a differences, and I’m sure he was sensitive to the abilities of his players, the spaces in which he was performing, and that his notions about what made a good performance changed, much as ours do.
I hope you will take some time to listen to multiple recordings of the pieces that we are studying — and see the kinds of performance choices that different groups are making. I will add as many as I an to the class playlist! If you find some interesting performances or have comments about some of thee ones we’ve posted, feel free to respond to this post!
