thorough-bass accompaniment according to johann david heinichen

Thorough-Bass Accompaniment according to Johann David Heinichen by George J. BuelowReview by: Bathia ChurginJournal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Autumn, 1968), pp. 393-396Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/830544 .Accessed: 16/06/2014 20:07

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REVIEWS 393 four-voice settings, "from various prov- inces, from friends who were learned men, a number of clever and witty say- ings and serious and light poetic thoughts were sent to him [Jacobi." Some of the texts-even those of the earlier collec- tion- might therefore have been written by Jacob's friends and then set to music for their gratification. Mantuani has shown that Gallus gained some of his income from gifts by friends, sent after their receipt of his music.3 Could not Gallus have seen the possibility of in- creased income through the setting of texts that were either favorites or even original compositions of these "learned men"?

After his discussion of the origin of the Moralia, Cvetko turns to the music itself and offers a summary of Gallus' style often filled with insights. He con- tinues by explaining his editorial practice, which includes the omission of many accidentals found in the original publica- tion. He justifies the practice by suggest- ing that Gallus may sometimes have implied the use of Vicentino's enhar- monic genus. Regarding Gallus' accidentals, Cvetko writes: "Comme chez les autres compositeurs de cette periode, chez Gallus et dans ses compositions profanes aussi se pose la question de leur interpr6tation et, peut-etre, en partie aussi de l'interpr6tation de l'enhar- monique, la oi~ les accidents sont prob- lematiques par 6gard a la tonalit6 et aux diverses complications qui pour- raient s'en suivre. Dans des cas pareils, nous sommes bien en droit de douter de leur fonction chromatique et nous pou- vons les entendre dans le sens de l'intonation plus haute, done hors des possi- bilites diatoniques et chromatiques." (pp. xxiii-iv)

Cvetko's interpretation of the enhar- monic genus largely affects the sharp or signum cancellationis.4 He removes it

most frequently where its presence would create a cross relation in con- secutive sounds, which he numbers among "irregularites contraires aux regles du contrepoint rigoureux." (p. xxiv) Cvetko permits cross relations where the text seems to justify them.

If a case is to be made for the enhar- monic interpretation of accidentals in the Moralia, it should be demonstrated that Gallus shows some awareness of Vi- centino. Even if Gallus did, the interpretation should not be limited, as it is in the present case, primarily to sharps and naturals. If a case is to be made for en- harmonic interpretation generally, which Cvetko apparently would like to do ("comme chez les autres compositeurs de cette periode"), far more evidence and logic must be adduced than is done here. Cvetko is a serious scholar, and he surely does not suggest this interpretation lightly; he owes us a complete statement of the facts as he views them so the matter might be fully examined. The burden of proof is his.

At least Cvetko indicates (in the Corrigis) which accidentals he has elimi- nated. Still, in the absence of any kind of widespread agreement with Cvetko's interpretations, the usefulness of the edition is severely impaired. The sig- nificance of other questionable editorial practices found here-inconsistent bar- ring (always with the Mensurstrich) and meter signatures, the omission of the original metrical and proportional signs, the placement of musica ficta on the staff (added accidentals are indicated only in the Corriges)--pales in compari- son to the larger issue.

ALLEN B. SKEI Georgia College

s Josef Mantuani, "Einleitung" to Jacob Handl's Opus musicum, Vol. 12 of Denk- miiler der Tonkunst in Oesterreich (Vienna, 1899), p. xxv. 4 Cvetko writes in the Introduction to Gallus, Plautzius, Dolar et leur oeuvre (p.

xxxiv) that "le signe pour la hausse de- vant la note correspondante pourrait etre ici aussi seulement le signe pour l'intonation plus haute du ton determine, et non pas pour la transposition chromatique en haut."

George J. Buelow. Thorough-Bass Accompaniment according to Jo- hann David Heinichen. Berkeley


394 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1966. ix, 316 pp. HEINICHEN's Der General-Bass in der Composition appeared at Dresden in 1728.1 Nearly a thousand pages long, the work is, as Professor Buelow shows, the most comprehensive source of thorough- bass practice for the German scene and the Italian theatrical style of its day. The manual proper is preceded by a detailed biography of the author, whom Burney called "the Rameau of Germany." Hei- nichen (1683-1729) studied at the Thomasschule in Leipzig with such im- portant composers as Schelle and Kuh- nau, and he also came into contact with Telemann, Johann Krieger, and Keiser. In 1716 he was engaged as kapellmeister to the royal court in Dresden, a post he held for the rest of his life. Buelow em- phasizes Heinichen's practical experience as a successful opera composer in Leip- zig, Venice, and Dresden, and his long stay in Venice (ca. 171o-17), during which he absorbed the Italian style. This accounts for Heinichen's authority regarding thorough-bass conventions of the theatrical style, which are often mentioned. Heinichen's valuable chapter on the resolution of dissonances in the theatrical style has been excluded, re- grettably, because Buelow has treated it at length in a separate article.2

In his second prefatory chapter, "The Thorough-Bass in Late Baroque Music: The Problem and the Sources," Buelow stresses that no single common practice existed for continuo realizations. They differed not only according to period, but also nation, school, style (church, chamber, or theater), and medium (harpsichord or organ), not to mention per- sonal idiosyncrasy. He believes that F. T. Arnold's great compendium, The Art of Accompaniment from a Thorough-Bass,

which synthesizes practices of different periods and schools, and utilizes modern harmonic terminology (such as chord inversion) to a large extent, fails to transmit those refinements of style so essential for a historically and musically correct realization. In earlier pages, he also criticizes Arnold's overreliance on Carl Philip Emanuel Bach for late Baroque practice, since the second part of Bach's treatise, on accompaniment, was published in 1762 and hence reflects a later stylistic development that is tran- sitional in character.3

To establish a suitable frame of refer- ence for Heinichen's remarks, Buelow frequently refers to significant similar- ities and differences of content and treat- ment found in several other thorough- bass treatises, including Emanuel Bach's. He concentrates in particular on four outstanding treatises of the time, the earliest two of which directly influenced Heinichen. These are: Francesco Gas- parini's L'armonico pratico al cimbalo (1708); Michel de Saint-Lambert's Nou- veau trait6 de l'accompagnement du clavecin (1707); David Kellner's Treu- licher Unterricht im General-Bass (1732), heavily dependent on Heinichen; and Johann Mattheson's Kleine General-Bass Schule (1735). One cannot overestimate the value of such comparisons for the light they shed on the musical thought of the period.

Buelow has been able to condense Heinichen's treatise by offering sum- maries as well as direct quotations, by some reorganization of material, and by omitting certain examples and sections.a

1 Substantial excerpts from the treatise have been available in F. T. Arnold, The Art of Accompaniment from a Thorough- Bass (London, 1931), pp. 255-269, 448- 463, 731-775.

2George J. Buelow, "Heinichen's Treat- ment of Dissonance," Journal of Music Theory VI (1962) 216-275.

3 For example, one simple difference be- tween late Baroque and post-Baroque practice concerns the doubling of the six-four chord. While Bach permits doubling of the sixth,

-einichen refers only to doubling the

bass, which was the customary doubling before 1750 (p. 37).

4 Besides omitting the chapter mentioned above, Buelow leaves out the Introduction; part I, chapter V, "On the application of the chords, signatures, and quick notes in all other keys," which contains long realizations in different tempos and meters trans- posed in various keys; and part II, chapter V, "Concerning a Musical Circle." Some


REVIEWS 395 We should have been grateful had he indicated the contents of the original treatise (given in Arnold), and stated how he has dealt with the text, giving reasons for what he omits. This would have clarified the relation of the original to the modem edition.

The manual proper is divided into seven chapters covering a multitude of topics: a summary of types of figures; all the types of chords, including the most dissonant, which are grouped as falsae-Heinichen describes these as "the most beautiful materials of music" (p. 50); the full-voiced accompaniment; the accompaniment of quick bass notes; em- bellished figured basses; the bassetti; un- figured basses, etc. Very valuable is Heinichen's "practical demonstration" of how to interpret note by note the un- figured bass of a highly chromatic solo cantata by Alessandro Scarlatti. A model realization of this bass is given in the Appendix, admirably summing up many points of the discussion.

Heinichen's classification of chords by interval is retained, as is his special type of figure. Occasionally the discussions are hard to follow because most of Hein- ichen's short musical examples have been deleted. On the other hand, many of the original's long, fully realized musical examples are reproduced in modern clefs. As Buelow says, these examples make the treatise the most practical of the period. For all the intervals considered, each example appears in three distributions, with the soprano starting on the third, fifth (or sixth), and octave of the bass. Quite illuminating, too, are the examples of elaborated realizations, which include the introduction of ornaments and of imitation. Such realizations, Heinichen points out, require considerable experience. They "can be applied discreetly to

music of a few parts" (p. 156), and should not overshadow the soloist or main melodic lines. Evidence is adduced to show that they were the exception, not the rule, and were usually reserved for passages where the solo parts rest. These pages constitute a solid warning to modern continuo players to resist the temptation of inventing parts so active and independent that they weaken rather than strengthen the overall musical effect.

The musical examples represent frozen improvisations. As Arnold remarks, "we feel that Heinichen has set down what he himself would have played when seated at his Harpsichord in the Opera House." Though most are in four parts, they occasionally vary in number of voices from three to five, and they sometimes show less concern for purity of voice leading than we find in Emanuel Bach (see Ex. I37, the realization of a fugal bassetto). The freer attitude is epitomized in the discussion of the full- voiced accompaniment particularly as- sociated with opera and with orchestral music, and therefore applies to the harpsichord rather than the organ (for which the style was also inappropriate). In this startling but evidently common type of accompaniment, the continuo player doubles "as many notes from right hand chords as the left hand can grasp" (p. 69). References to it go back as early as Praetorius' Syntagma musicum, III (1619), and Buelow traces them up to Heinichen's exhaustive instructions. The complex rules concerning parallels (which are treated with remarkable freedom) and dissonant intervals form the substance of Heinichen's discussion. For illustrations, Heinichen takes up earlier four-part examples and expands them, adding explanatory comments. Another valuable part of the treatise is Heinichen's long chapter on the accompaniment of quick bass notes-the most exhaustive discussion in the I8th century.

The concluding chapter, entitled "Heinichen Rediscovered: Perspectives of Late Baroque Musical Thought and

remarks from the Introduction are incor- porated in the concluding chapter. For Heinichen's fascinating discussion of Affect in text setting, which constitutes the major part of the Introduction, see Buelow's "The Loci Topici and Affect in late Baroque Music: Heinichen's practical Demonstra- tion," The Music Review XXVII (1966), 161-176.


396 JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN MUSICOLOGICAL SOCIETY

Practice," examines Heinichen's earlier treatise, Der neu erfundene und griind- liche Anweisung . . . zu vollkommener Erlernung des General-Bass (Hamburg, 171), and details his mature musical philosophy as revealed in the General- Bass. Especially striking are Heinichen's strong aversion to counterpoint (which he relegates to church music), and his remarks favoring the more moderate, pleasing emotions. These views offer further evidence of the shift in style and aesthetics that started in earnest during the 172o's.

The volume contains a rich store of information. It is skillfully written and organized, and includes an extensive bib- liography of thorough-bass sources. Handsomely produced, it constitutes a significant addition to our knowledge of the period, indispensable for both performer and scholar.

BATHIA CHURGIN Vassar College

Karl Geiringer. Johann Sebastian Bach, The Culmination of an Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1966. xii, 382 pp. THIS IS THE FIRST life-and-works Bach book to appear in English since the re- search of the 195o's has made the old ones obsolete. This means that it is the only one that can be given to students without a whole list of dates and "facts" that must be revised. To the extent that dates and facts (narrowly defined) are of value to the student, this is then a valuable book, particularly during this interim period when the only English encyclopaedia and dictionary articles (and even the article in MGG) were written before the obsoleteness of the standard books (Spitta, Schweitzer, and Terry) had been revealed. It is enriched, too, by the author's special knowledge concerning the other members of The Bach Family, previously demonstrated in his earlier book of that title, and use- fully kneaded into the present work.

The discussions of the music are sup-

plemented by musical examples often well chosen and (o tempora, o mores! that one should have to mention it) for the most part well proof-read. It is re- grettable that the editing of the book is so much less good than the proof- reading. One cannot expect of a scholar who was born and spent his first forty years in German-speaking countries that his writing should be free of unidiomatic usages, but a reputable publisher ought to provide editorial revision that would protect him against their appearance in print: different tenses (might and may) and different forms of the same tense (make, do make, are making) appear without discrimination; we are told that "the second [section] returns . . . over a related key to the tonic"; definite is regularly used for definitive and whereby in the sense of the German 'wobei, meaning "in connection with which"; the interpolations in the Eb version of the Magnificat are referred to as enclosures; six of the solo harpsichord concertos are said to have been ascertained (meaning "identified") as works by Vivaldi. This is the sort of German-American writing that infests too much of American musicological publications. It is not the fault of the German-speaking scholars, to whose coming here American musicology is so greatly indebted, but of editors who do not give them the help they have a right to expect.

The book is clearly designed as a text- book, and it has many of the faults that make most text-books the obstacles they are to serious education.

Bach's changes of position-Miihl- hausen, Weimar, C6then, Leipzig-provide a convenient means of dividing up his creative life into periods. The chron- ological researches of Diirr and Von Dadelsen have helped us to subdivide the 27 Leipzig years. Periodization is often a useful tool in historical studies, and because Bach in the first twenty-five years of his activity as a composer was so much influenced by external circum- stances in his choice of type of composition and medium of performances,


Article Contentsp. 393p. 394p. 395p. 396

Issue Table of ContentsJournal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Autumn, 1968), pp. 249-432Volume Information [pp. 429-432]Front Matter [pp. 249-250]Vocal Scoring in the Chansons of Machaut [pp. 251-257]Foreign Music in German Manuscripts of the 15th Century [pp. 258-285]The Earliest French Lute Tablature [pp. 286-299]Ciaccona and Passacaglia: Remarks on Their Origin and Early History [pp. 300-320]Apostolo Zeno's Reform of the Libretto [pp. 321-341]Supplement (1968) to Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology [pp. 342-380]Studies and AbstractsAddendum to Hans Tischler's "Another English Motet of the 13th Century" [pp. 381-383]

Publications Received [pp. 384-387]ReviewsReview: untitled [pp. 388-391]Review: untitled [pp. 391-393]Review: untitled [pp. 393-396]Review: untitled [pp. 396-400]Review: untitled [pp. 400-404]Review: untitled [pp. 404-406]

ObituariesHans T. David (1902-1967) [pp. 407-409]Sophie H. Drinker (1888-1968) [p. 409]Ludwig Misch (1887-1967) [pp. 409-410]

Communications[Letter from Howard E. Smither] [pp. 411-412][Letter from Albert Seay] [pp. 412-413][Letter from R. Alec Harman] [p. 413]

Papers Read at Chapter Meetings [pp. 414-419]Notices [pp. 420-423]Back Matter [pp. 424-428]

thorough-bass accompaniment according to johann david heinichen

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