JAVS Summer 2011

It has been found possible to reproduce, in this key, most of the chords as they appear in the original.” 13

Fritz Spindler (1902–1984). Spindler performed with the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, Germany, from 1949 until 1967. He edited a great deal of music for viola from the 1930s well into the 1950s. Publisher information: Hofmeister (two volumes), 7367 and 7376, 1953. The Foreword, in German, indicates that both the Anna Magdalena Bach manuscript and the Bach-Gesellschaft were consulted. The edition is interestingly done with two staves throughout: the top is the lightly fingered and bowed viola part, and the bottom is a clean modern notation copy of the Anna Magdalena manuscript cello part unedited with only slur indications as found in that manuscript (exs. 1a–1b). Footnotes indicate discrepancies between the Anna Magdalena Bach manuscript and the Alfred Dörffel edition in the Bach-Gesellschaft. Suite No. 5 uses normal tuning for the viola part (upper score) and the scordatura tuning for the (lower score) cello part showing instantly which chord tones are left out because they are unplayable in normal tuning! Suite No. 6 transposes the viola part into G major while retaining the five-stringed tuning in D major for the cello part. A 1953 solution to problems struggled with by Martinson, Rutledge, and Rowland-Jones. Example 1a. J. S. Bach, Suite No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007, Prelude; mm. 1–2 (Spindler edition).

Example 1b. J. S. Bach, Suite No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007, Prelude; mm. 1–2 (Anna Magdalena Bach manuscript).

V OLUME 27 S UMMER 2011 O NLINE I SSUE 9