But the Sixth Partita, well, that's an entirely different kettle of fish. This is a particularly recondite gigue cast as a fugue with a chromatic leaping subject and the second half uses the same subject in inversion. But the time signature! It's like two "cut" time signatures facing one another, or like a circle with a slash. Like this, but with the slash vertical, not at an angle: ∅ What could this possibly mean? Not too surprisingly it is also derived from Medieval metric notation. The circle with a vertical slash stands for proportio dupla sometimes called diminutio simplex. From the 14th to the 16th centuries this meant that the correct rhythmic reading of the notes would be two short notes making up a long, as opposed to three short notes making up a long. It seems as if Bach is using a very, very old-fashioned metric signature to tell the player that, yes, this is a gigue all right, but it is a gigue in duple time! Very odd, since gigues are, as I said, always with a triple subdivision. Just not this one. It still sounds, oddly, like a gigue ... in duple time. How strange that Bach would choose to end, not just the set of six partitas, but the very lifespan of the Baroque keyboard suite itself, with such an unusual movement.
For an entirely different reading of this whole time signature issue, have a look at this essay which relies more on how this kind of signature was interpreted in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Now, for a couple of performances. The first is by Murray Perahia and he plays the rhythms as they appear in the score.
The next is Trevor Pinnock interpreting the rhythms as indicating triplets in the way suggested in the essay I just linked to. Of course doing this involves quite a lot of tinkering! How much tinkering, you ask? Well this chart from the essay illustrates one scholar's suggestions. On the left is the original time signature and rhythms. UPDATE (correcting left to right): On the right is the proposed "tripletization" with a 24/8 time signature and the rhythms adapted appropriately:
Now let's have a listen to what that sounds like:
Which do you prefer? I lean towards the duple version because I think it is more interesting of Bach to have written a truly duple gigue than that he wrote one that looks like a duple gigue, but one you can, with a lot of tinkering, turn into a triple gigue. On the other hand, isn't it even more fascinating that both of these possibilities exist?
5 comments:
I find it somewhat amusing that some "scholar" sees fit to alter the score in no insignificant ways to satisfy his élucubration... Bach knew exactly what he was doing, I think it is criminal to literally rewrite it. Seriously. Unbelievable.
Yes, of course Bach knew what he was doing, but scholars can help us understand what he was doing.
It has always been and will always be in duple meter. The tripletized interpretation is a meme. Someone got it in their head that it 'ought' to be in compound meter, saw the strange time signature, and then willfully misapplied the older Baroque notation practice of implying compound meter in an effort to justify their a priori conclusion. The meme then caught on with a certain type of pretentious and stubborn scholar/performer who fancies the idea of being 'correct'.
But Bach did not notate like this, least of all in his carefully-constructed Opus 1, which is otherwise very straightforward and was written for an audience of middle-class amateurs. He easily could have written this piece in compound meter, but he didn't. But, most importantly by far, the duple subdivision is immeasurably more successful musically. The tripletization destroys the obsessive rhythmic drive, obscures the pervasive motives established over the course of the suite, and demands compromises and alterations to the text that would be unthinkable without the encouragement of this bizarre 'tradition'. The unique time signature is either a typo or an obscure choice by Bach, but it does not parsimoniously imply compound meter.
Still, I like that this grand finale to the Partitas is controversial and enigmatic. It seems appropriate somehow. It's just a shame when otherwise outstanding performers like Schiff go out of their way to mar their interpretation with a silly rollicking tripletized finale.
I don't see any reason why Bach would have been offended by someone writing a variation on one of his pieces. Lord knows he did it himself, to others.
Most composers would take it as a compliment: variations require a genuine interest in the original.
Thanks Brian, for commenting on this old post! It gives me the opportunity to clarify something that was not perhaps quite clear enough in the original post. The 18th century had a lot of differences from our time. For example, it was not a strange thing to say back then that it was a poor sort of man who knew only one way to spell a word! We take a different view now. We also take a different view of notation. There is only one "correct" notation though we, grudgingly, admit that there might be different possible interpretations. A piece like this, with a notation that admits of more than one possibility, we find uncomfortable, though Bach would not.
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