Luogo e data di registrazione		Schloß Amerongen (Holland) - 13 giugno 1973
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Recording Supervision		Thomas Gallia | Paul Dery
	Engineer		Sonart, Milano
	Prima Edizione LP		Harmonia Mundi (Basf) | 39 21955-9 | 2 LPs - durata 45' 24" - 48' 55" | (p) 1974
	Edizione CD		Deutsche Harmonia Mundi | LC 00761 | GD 77170 | 2 CDs - durata 45' 24" - 48' 55" | (c) 1990 | ADD
	Cover Art		-
	Note		-

On violin playing at the time of Johann Sebastian Bach There is probably no hope of ever knowing exactly how the most important violinists (and the average ones as well) all over Europe used their instrument in Bach’s time: there were so many ways of playing that the relatively few sources on violin technique can never give a complete overview and of course by no means everything about such technique can be transmitted in words and drawings. This is fundamentally not to be regretted; it must be recalled that nowadays as well the variety of techniques is not all that restricted - the fact that the variety of individual interpretation today is levelling out in a regrettable way may be mentioned in passing. One should perhaps even be pleased that it is not possible to know everything about the old technique: in the arts, indeed, nothing can be exactly repeated, and again and again one must refer back to personal creativity and this applies equally to attempts to bring older forms to life once more; one is forced to follow on where one’s knowledge of the old methods ends: good taste must have the final say. However, as a player concerned with old music, one should take care not to rely on the “good taste” argument too soon (e. g. in order to follow only one’s so-called “inspiration”), without first having spent years in thorough and continuous study of the source material and without having learnt from the experiments which result from it. Despite the impossibility of reconstructing exactly the old techniques, the sources nervertheless give plenty of stimuli and important details which are fundamental to performing the music. The Instrument Since it originated, the violin has undergone alterations which in every case are connected with social and stylistic developments. Ever larger concert halls and bigger orchestras to accompany the soloist have led to details of the violin being modified to adapt the sound to the new circumstances: - the length of the sounding string was somewhat lengthened, at least in many cases. - the angle of the neck in relation to the body of the instrument was altered so that the tension of the strings on the bridge was heightened (the neck was angled more to the back). - the sound post and the bass bar became heavier and longer to take up the tension adequately. - the material of the strings became ever thicker, again to increase the tension (this gives a bigger, but also a more balanced, “equalized” tone). Nowadays almost nobody plays on gut strings anymore; but right into the 20th century they were the only type used. - the violin bow developed in parallel: since about 1800 (the point at which the older master violins began to change as well) only the modern model designed by TOURTE has prevailed, which produced a “bigger” tone. The earlier model was in general somewhat shorter, bending outwards, lighter, and completely different in its articulative possibilities, which in those times aimed more for a detailed, oratorical delivery. The technique of violin playing in general - Until about 1820/30, the violin was by no means always held firm between chin and shoulder. It is only from about 1740 that one finds in many, but not all, French violin schools the indication that one schould lay the chin on the body of the violin, and then only when changing position backwards and, by implication, not as a rule. Geminiani, at the same time, certainly did not use the chin-rest. In his 1756 violin school, Leopold Mozart expresses himself very unclearly, but is obviously not indicating that the violin should always be firmly held under the chin; equally, however, Hiller is referring to Mozart in 1792 when touching the instrument with his chin all the time. As late as 1800 Cambini, an Italian in Paris, writes that there is only one good position among all of them, namely that in which the instrument lies on the shoulder and is held firmly by the left hand, while the chin can give support when finger positions are changed backwards. - The violin was held in general with less constraint than nowadays, and this establishes some really important differences: above all, the right arm was typically not raised in the old way of playing. This resulted in a different kind of pressure on the strings (from the bow) from that produced in the modern position, in which the entire weight of the hand and the arm is applied: the old position 10 is centred only on index finger pressure (cp. Geminiani in his “Art of Playing”). He emphasizes this position three times in a relatively short section. - Vibrato as a constant element, almost as a sine qua non for a “good” tone as it is all too often regarded nowadays, was foreign to Baroque practice, and not only to the Baroque: in the nineteenth century too, this basic approach of the eighteenth century was continued. Vibrato was only an ornament, which was used quite consciously at particular places; according to whether it was played fast, more slowly, accelerating, etc, it had a particular effect. One could not, therefore, speak of the use of vibrato, as if a violinist had only one type to hand. - The finger positions resulting from the old holding position were not, as they are today, essentially geared to melody (e. g. “a melody, an air, on aparticularstring. . .”), but rather to harmony (allowing all fingers to rest on the string, lifting them only when needed elsewhere; result: due to the co-vibration of preceding notes, a general effect which was polyphonic rather than monodic). The close interconnection of playing technique and musical idiom here becomes clearly apparent: This definite priority of the harmonic structure is indeed an important element of the Baroque tonal vocabulary. - The differences of the old violin bow require a manner of playing adjusted much less to sweeping lines than to clearly divided phrases and sub-phrases; each note and each liaison from one note to the next becomes more and more of a separate experience as a result of the very great possibilities of differentiation immanent in the old bow. In passing one should mention that the old bow was also unable (even less able than the modem one) to simultaneously draw and hold 4-part or 3-part chords. The so-called “Bach bow” designed between the two World Wars so as to be able to play the Bach solo sonatas in the Urtext with all chords sounding exactly as they are written is a pure invention on the part of the musicologists of the time; Schering and A. Schweitzer gave the stimulus for it. Their intellectual error however lay in the fact that - astonishingly - they did not start from the principle that notation and performance can never be completely identical (and this is quite certainly still true of 18th century practice). How could one write down everything which happens during performance? Notation is rather an optical simplification. Furthermore, the old sources give plenty of descriptions of how such chords are to be played: but all the various possibilities include recognisable arpeggiation. - As the very refined music was played before a relatively small and select audience in smallish rooms, it was not so much the big, general effect as the direct affective emotion, sensed and changing at each moment, which was the main concem as much in the composer’s mind, who had to build into his pieces a richness of affects and emotions, as in the interpreter’s mind, who had, as the essence of his art, skilfully to let this richness emerge. (Most interpreters, of course, were themselves composers, even if they were third-rate ones; and all composers were also practising musicians.) In his “Art of Playing”, Geminiani reports illuminatingly on this “affective” playing technique, and it emerges very clearly how much more important it is to grasp the “affective” significance of the ornaments than to know exactly how long or short one should precisely hold a particular appoggiatura, how this or that trill should be played etc. - There were scarcely any rules which had to be stringently observed, but rather liberating rules of thumb, all of which derived ultimately from general musical considerations and from simple human thoughts. The present recording of Bach's Violin and Cembalo sonatas For this recording Sigiswald Kuijken has adapted to himself a manner of holding the violin so that the chin never touches the instrument (naturally, neither shoulder support nor chin-rest is used). The violin was made about 1650 under the influence of the Brescia school (Maggini) and, probably in the course of the 18th century, received a new sounding-board; the instrument was later equipped with all the innovations of the 19th and 20th centuries (new neck, etc...); this was reversed in 1967 (a new neck was constructed on a model from the original period, all other details such as the bass bar, bridge, soundpost were adjusted to Baroque measures). The bow is a model of uncertain origin from the early 17th century. The left-hand-technique of the violinist is based above all on the Geminiani method, insofar as the player has been able to grasp it from the “Art of Playing”. This method is probably the only significant source on Italian violin playing in direct succession to Corelli; Leopold Mozart, Tartini, Quantz, etc deal more with late Baroque, even if some of what they say was probably already current in the Baroque period. The Sonatas Not only the structure of Bach’s late cycles of the time in Leipzig give evidence of the artistic composition: the six partitas for harpsichord, published as opus 1, in their always new presentation of free forms according to French patterns; the contrasts of the “Italian Concerto” and the “French Ouverture” in the second part of the “Clavierübung”; the theologically, mathematically and artistically profound sequence of chorales and duets in the third part of this “Clavierübung”, including the prelude and fugue serving as a frame, Already the cycles dating from the time in Köthen indicate planning and coherence, even if this is not always supported by recognizable documentary evidence or even if the parts came into existence at different times such as the Brandenburg Concertos. In any case, the original versions of the six sonatas for violin and harpsichord, that were already praised very early, date from the time in Köthen. J . N. Forkel says in his Bach-biography: "They have been composed in Köthen and can be ranked among Bach’s first masterpieces... The violin part requires a master. Bach knew the possibilities of this instrument and did not spare it less than his clavier." The first four sonatas remained unchanged after a later editing. A quicker-moving key-board gave the third movement of the fifth sonata more weight in its whole structure. The fourth sonata even went through several arrangements and was probably not given its final version until the thirties. Is the change from five to six movements and then again to five one of importance, or the final elimination of two dance-movements that did not find a legitimate place in the sonatas composed in Italian style, or did Bach, with his special liking for cabbalistie numerology, actually aim at the really astonishing total of 2400 measures for six sonatas? After all, the tonal sequence argues in favour of a basic plan of the six sonatas, as is the case with the partitas and the “English Suites”; the intervals between the sonatas reveal a completely symmetric structure: second - fourth - third - fourth - second. By choosing the three major modes and the three minor ones (the tonality of d is lacking), the variety of the emotions produced by the different keys were given full scope. Thus the formal and rhythmic variety is less to be admired than the expression resulting from the inner nature of the tonalities. The title of the autograph, not written by Bach himself, gave rise to various speculations as to the best way of performance, due to its mentioning the viola da gamba as an optional accompanying instrument. It does not seem to be an accident that no separate bass part is handed down, for the changing structure of the movements becomes more obvious without the accompanimental stringed-bass, especially when such instruments as those in our performance are used. Eckhardt van den Hoogen