Where is the Bach Chaconne?

At first glance this seems like the kind of nonsensical question only a philosopher would ask. The obvious answer is, well, uh, of course it's... Well, it has to be in the Bach Museum in Leipzig, right? Or the Bach Archive, wherever that is? The philosopher would answer, no, that's actually the score, or one copy of the score--the autograph score that is, (unless it is in the hand of Ana Magdalena Bach who actually wrote a lot of the fair copies we have):

Click to enlarge

So that's it, the Chaconne by Bach, even though the name is spelled "Ciaccona" here, is carefully stored away in an archive somewhere, probably in Leipzig. Now, mind you, if you show up at their door and ask to see it they might get all Teutonic on you and ask for the "correct name" which is actually the Partita No. 2 in D minor for violin solo, BWV 1004 (from the original Bach catalogue number). So when you have it in your hands you will have that special feeling you only get when you have found a particular piece of music. Right? Oh, not right? Because this is just a few scraps of paper, not an actual, you know, piece of music. Music, last I heard, was sound (most of the time). So what we have been going with so far is the theory that a piece of music is the earliest autograph score. But that doesn't quite work, does it?

We need another theory. This one, slightly more subtle, says that the original autograph copy of the score is just a plan or instructions for performance, it is not an actual performance. So what we really need is a performance of the Chaconne. But by whom? By the violinist who may have given the first performance, in Köthen in 1720, Johann Georg Pisendel or someone else? Sadly, no recordings available! Something more modern? By Jascha Heifetz? or on Baroque violin by Rachel Podger? Andrés Segovia on guitar? Maybe a performance of the Brahms or Busoni transcriptions on piano? Jean Rondeau or Gustav Leonhardt on harpsichord? Where is the Chaconne?!

Sadly, that theory, that the actual Chaconne is instantiated in performances might cause some confusion as well. Which performances? Any performances? Even bad ones that miss a lot of notes and are profoundly unmusical as well? Maybe not! Perhaps the work only really exists in whatever the first performance was, in which case, not only will we have no knowledge of the Chaconne, but also of most other music.

The correct answer may be found in a book by a Polish philosopher, Roman Ingarden, who devoted a whole book to the question: The Work of Music and the Problem of Its Identity. Hat tip to Richard Taruskin who summarized all this in his essay "The New Antiquity" in Text and Act, p. 206.

Rejecting score because of its lack of specificity and performance because of its excessive contingency, he characterizes the musical work ... as a "purely intentional object," using the word intentional in the highly specialized sense adopted by phenomenologists for whom it denotes something that can exist only in thought (for in understanding). Such thinking about a piece of music does depend on the prior existence of score or performance or both, but the piece cannot be wholly identified with either. The score is a plan for the work and the performance an instance of it, but the work as such is a mental construct only.

This harks me back to a performance I heard of one of the Janáček string quartets, which one I forget, by a quartet in a summer festival performance. I was chatting with the first violin afterwards, we both taught at the same conservatory, and he suddenly blurted out, "do you know the piece?" That might seem an odd question as I had just listened to him play it, but less so if you understand that a piece of music is a purely intentional object. I had a recording of the piece at home and, yes, I had just heard it performed, but he was talking about a specific harmony so what he was really asking was, had I studied the score. And the answer was no.

To know a piece actually means to have some understanding of it. To not only have seen and studied the score but also to understand what it means. Even listening to a piece of music with no understanding of harmony or structure means, you probably don't actually know it. Ontology and epistemology have a subtle relationship when it comes to music.

I've been playing, or trying to, the Bach Chaconne for some fifty years, so I have a vague sort-of understanding of it!

I heard Daniil Trifinov play the Brahms version for the left hand in Salzburg a couple of years ago:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ljb5MvKv0Hw

You might point out that this problem no longer exists, because now we have perfect first performances in the form of, for example, the Beatles' Abby Road recordings where the songs actually, from the time of Rubber Soul on, were composed and performed in the studio and we have those performances. Well, that argument was looking pretty good, at least for that repertoire, but now the question is going to come up, what is the most authentic? The original vinyl? The CD reissue? But what mastering? The latest? And will there be no more perfect remastering? No, I'm afraid that, even when it comes to a Beatles' song, a piece of music is still a purely intentional object. It's all in your head.