The Hammock Papers: Echo.

23 November 2010

Echo.

The fourth Brandenburg Concerto is scored for violin, 2 flutes, strings, and continuo. Bach’s Previewscore calls the flutes “fiauti d’echo,” an unusual term which probably indicates that a recorder in F was intended. But does “d’echo” mean more than simply specifying which recorders were to be used? If indeed recorders, rather than the transverse flute, then one might presume that the softer sound of the recorder is intended as a sort of echo—except for the fact that the flutes appear from the start of the Fourth Brandenburg, even without the solo violin, and while they occasionally double the solo violin, they are rarely used in an echo function. They do occasionally “echo” each other, especially in the second movement, but one wonders whether Bach really thought of these repeated “echoes” as softer echoes, or merely as imitative passages, which we find so often in Baroque music.

Read the rest here.

Because it features the recorder and the fiddle, the fourth concerto of Bach's Brandenburgs has always been my favorite. Being a huge fan of early music has caused me to have a love-hate relationship with Baroque music ... it's the incessant banging and clanging of the harpsichord (sorry, WFB).

In their treatment of the piece, Rinaldo Allessandrini and Concerto Italiano the problem is quietly solved. This is fantastic.

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WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."

DAN CAMPBELL