JAVS Summer 2011

An Acoustical Journey in Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 6: Genre, Instrumentation, and the Quest for Timbre

by Andrew Filmer

Introduction: An Acoustical Gamble

One takes a gamble when suggesting that specific instrumental timbres play a major role in any of the works of Johann Sebastian Bach. After all, even the unaccompanied violin sonatas and partitas, which Robert Donington believed “requires the violin, and nothing else will do,” 1 were malleable enough for Bach to turn one movement into the sinfonia for Wir danken dir, Gott, wir danken dir , BWV 29. For the equally idiomatically regarded cello suites, the fifth also exists in a lute version, BWV 995, and some evidence exists that the original manuscript— now lost— may also have been for that instrument. 2 Even Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos owe some debt to Max Reger’s piano duet transcriptions in bringing them to initial recognition. 3 Nonetheless, perhaps the gamble is worthwhile for at least one of the concertos “ avec plusieurs instruments” : the sixth Brandenburg Concerto. In this concerto (along with the third), Bach has chosen a different approach to building as diverse as possible a mix of instruments, opting instead to highlight the subtle differences between closely linked instruments. The final work of this set is particularly notable for the complications that timbre plays for modern ensembles, with the instrumentation—involving violas da gamba—creating complications in substitutions, arguably even more so than the substitution of flutes for recorders in the fourth concerto. This article looks at the sixth Brandenburg from two perspectives; the first deals with instrumentation and genre in defining the role of timbre, while the second addresses the crucial problem of replacing the violas da gamba—with a new solution in the form of scordatura violas. Part I: Genre and Instrumentation Central to a discussion on timbre are questions on instrumentation, specifically an attempt to pin down what constitutes the continuo group in the sixth Brandenburg—and whether the common understanding of a continuo designation applies. The relevance of distinguishing the continuo group—or deciding if one is clearly demarcated—is in discerning the timbral importance of the violas da gamba in relation to the rest of the ensemble. In doing so, this highlights complications when substitutions are required due to practicality of available instrumentalists.

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