Bachs Orchester- und Kammermusik: Das Handbuch Edited by Siegbert Rampe (review)

Bachs Orchester- und Kammermusik: Das Handbuch, is part of an ambitious, multi-volume lexicon on the music of Johann Sebastian Bach which Laaber-Verlag refers to as a seven-volume set. However, because three of the “volumes” consist of two separate books, called “teilbänder” by the publisher, the completed series will consist of ten individual books. The first five volumes (in eight separate books), which are devoted to Bach’s works, treat respectively: the cantatas; the Latin sacred music; the passions, oratorios, and motets; the keyboard music; and, in the volume discussed here, the orchestral and chamber music. The remaining two (biographically-oriented) volumes, not yet released, will be the new Bach-Lexikon, edited by Siegbert Rampe, an expanded and revised edition of Das Bach-Lexikon (Michael Heinemann, ed. [Laaber: Laaber-Verlag, 2000]) and Bachs Welt, which, according to the publisher’s Web site will be a collection of “images, texts, and documents,” and is still in preparation with no volume editor named yet.

Even ignoring the rest of this series, Bachs Orchester- und Kammermusik is by itself a major undertaking. Rampe alone authored the first Teilband on the orchestra music. The second Teilband on the chamber music is the collaborative work of seven contributors, two of whom, Dominik Sackmann and Rampe, served as editors. This Handbuch examines Bach’s instrumental music from the viewpoint of historical performance practice in its broadest sense. Rampe and two of the other contributors mention their professional activity as performers in their brief biographies (2:399–400), so it is not surprising that the information contained in this Handbuch will especially interest performers who want to inform themselves about the pieces. Such a work cannot appear from nowhere, and indeed, in his foreword, Rampe sets out a list of twelve titles that he considers foundational that cover different aspects of Bach’s instrumental output, stating that the present work is “substantially based on the named works, while at the same time expanding upon them and bringing them up to date” (1:10). While three of the works mentioned, all dealing with the unaccompanied solos, were written in English (Joel Lester, Bach’s Works for Solo Violin: Style, Structure, Performance [New York: Oxford University Press, 1999]; David Ledbetter, Unaccompanied Bach: Performing the Solo Works [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009]; and Jaap Schröder, Bach’s Solo Violin Works: A Performer’s Guide [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007]), the remaining titles are in German. Some of these are widely available, if not widely read, in English-language libraries, such as the titles by Ulrich Siegele (Kompositionsweise und Bearbeitungstechnik in der Instrumentalmusik Johann Sebastian Bachs, Tübinger Beiträge zur Musikwissenschaft, bd. 3 [Neuhausen (Stuttgart): Hänssler, 1975]) and Hans Eppstein (Studien über J.S. Bachs Sonaten für ein Melodieinstrument und obligates Cembalo, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Studia musicologica Upsaliensia, Nova series 2 [Uppsala: Almqvist u. Wiksells, 1966]), while others are hardly available and difficult to access (Reinhard Seiffert, J.S. Bach, Sei Solo: Sechs Sonaten und Partiten für Violine; Interpretation, Aufführungspraxis, Authentizität [Munich: Praxis und Hintergrund, 1991] and Ingrid Fuchs, “Die sechs Suiten für Violoncello Solo (BWV 1007–1012) von Johann Sebastian Bach: Ein Beitrag zur historischen Stellung, Aufführungspraxis und Editionsgeschichte” [Ph.D. diss., University of Vienna, 1980]).

While the distinction between orchestral and chamber music is anachronous and arbitrary (in Bach’s time “chamber” music was a designation meant to distinguish it from music for the church or theater, and much of what we would now consider orchestral, such as concertos, would likely have been performed without a conductor or the doubling of parts) it is logical to the modern reader. Because Bach wrote fewer “orchestral” pieces, the first book has more room for chapters that provide contextual historical information that is pertinent to more than one piece or body of pieces...