The wide-ranging Friday Miscellanea for October 27 received an equally wide-ranging number of comments, putting it in the lead for the month. Some sample comments:
Will someone please confirm my understanding that we cannot assign Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644-1704, I think) to the "second half of the Baroque period"? A writer did yesterday at the NYT and while the moment's irritation passed I've wondered if I actually had no cause for it, not that such things are engraved on the frieze of the Muses' temple, I guess.
The reply:
Taruskin, rebelling against the "Renaissance-Baroque-Classical-Romantic" template refuses to title his volumes with those words, instead just referring to the century. But traditionally, one would say that the Baroque began around 1600 with the first operas and the development of monody and the use of continuo. And it extended to the death of Bach in 1750. So Biber would fall in the middle, favoring the first half. But it might be best just to call him a 17th century composer.
So let's have some Biber, who was the composer before Bach who really started the genre of compositions for solo violin. Which pretty much ended with Bach as no-one has seen a way to progress from what he did. Here is a Biber Passacaglia from one of the Mystery Sonatas for solo violin. A friend of mine at grad school was writing her dissertation on them.
I have long had the idea of transcribing this Passacaglia for guitar and possibly pairing it with the Bach Chaconne in concert. Just now I decided to have another look at it and, not sure where I had stored the download I went to IMSLP. I was delighted to discover there that someone has already done a guitar transcription. That someone happens to be our frequent commentator Steven Watson!
Ha! It's an old transcription so I can't remember everything about it, though I did perform it in a recital so it is playable. I know I rewrote some of the runs, but nevertheless they remain tricky.
ReplyDeleteLooks playable, but yes, some tricky passages.
ReplyDelete