Volume 37, Number 12 · July 19, 1990
The Shock of the Old
By Charles Rosen
Authenticity and Early Music: A Symposium
edited by Nicholas Kenyon
Oxford University Press, 219 pp., $14.95 (paper)
To take a harpsichord concerto by Johann Sebastian Bach and arrange it for a four-part chorus, organ, and orchestra would not, for most music lovers today, be considered the proper way to realize the composer's intentions or even to show decent respect for the score. Yet this is what Bach himself did to his own harpsichord concerto in D minor—which was, incidentally, in its original version a violin concerto of a somewhat simpler cast. The ideal of performing a work as it would have been done during the composer's lifetime or even by the composer himself gives rise to unexpected considerations, of which this is an extreme case, but by no means a rare one.
Review, 9639 words
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