Bis repetita placent: C.P.E. Bach, Mozart, en de praktijk van het “gevarieerd herhalen” - Beghin, Tom (Ghent, Belgium Davidsfonds, 2023)
Lecture
One of the more evocative practices of musicking during the Enlightenment was that of varying repeats—or the expectation for musicians in true oratorical style to improvise on the written text, whenever they repeat a section of a piece. This practice belonged to the realm of rhetorical “delivery” (Vortrag, pronuntiatio), but such professional skill came in conflict with a blossoming amateur market of keyboard players, for whom an ever-expanding repertoire of published scores became available, or what CPE Bach called, Handstücke, where music must first and foremost be accurately read and realized.Addressing this conflict—while continuing a pedagogical mission that had started with his 1753 Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen—Bach published a first series of six Sonaten mit veränderten Reprisen Wq. 50 in 1760. These important examples of “ex tempore” variation incorporated in a fully written-out score may be compared with the improvisational prowess of the young Mozart, whose father Leopold (as evidenced in a letter of 1775, in almost certain reference to Sonatas K. 279–283) held high hopes for his son to contribute to this “new” genre of “sonata with varied reprises.”
FRIS
Editorial review
Keywords: Declassifying the Classics: Rhetoric, Technology, and Performance, 1750-1850