JAVS Summer 2011

In contrast to the intermingling of roles in the first two movements, there is a clear division of solo and ensemble elements in the final movement fitting Boyd’s hybrid classification. Boyd has described this dichotomy as Bach placing “the members of the new violin family in the foreground, with those of the older viol family in the background, almost as if he intended an allegory on the changes taking place at the time in the development of string instruments.” 16 Likewise, Philip Pickett conjectures that the metaphor of “The Meeting of the Three Quick and the Three Dead” is present in this concerto, with the violas and cello representing three princes “returning carefree from the chase,” while the figures of death in the viols and violone “warn the Princes to repent, for wealth and beauty vanish—all must eventually succumb to death.” 17 As an alternative to seeking one classification that would best describe the sixth concerto, one could hear the work as presenting an overlap of concurrent functions—allegory, generic mixing, and timbre. In certain cases, generic mixing and timbre exploitation can work hand-in-hand; the order of the five-part fugue section discussed earlier is a primary example. The use of the organ in the second movement by Neville Marriner is clearly one with timbre in mind—a decision in line with Laurence Dreyfus’s theory of “dual accompaniment.” 18 Instrument Size and Timbre There is also the possibility of a calibrated spectrum of timbre from the violas to the violas da gamba to the cello, and finally to the violone and the continuo, highlighting again the importance of the timbre of the viola da gamba to the overall instrumentation. This is particularly relevant when we consider the varied sizes of violas of the day, the ranges of the violas da gamba, and the specific size of the violone. Dreyfus notes that the violone used in this work is of the 8-foot range 19 —the smallest of three sizes used in the Brandenburg Concertos, bringing it closer in range to the cello. He notes that the violas da gamba in the sixth concerto are noted in alto and tenor clefs 20 —presumably referring to the early manuscript copies used by Heinrich Besseler and not the margrave’s presentation score 21 —despite the relatively equal pitch range of the scoring. This leads to speculation whether they were intended for the alto and tenor violas da gamba (Marissen argues that this is by no means definitive). 22 As for the two solo violas, we are accustomed to having two identical instruments simply because of the current place of the viola in the history of the instrument. Franz Zeyringer noted that it has become “so customary in music since the Classical period that even in the few cases in which the composer calls for two violas, any two instruments of the multiform and varied viola family are used, without regard to their size.” 23 Precedent would have indicated the occasional division of Viola I and Viola II parts in the seventeenth-century Italian orchestra, performed by alto and tenor violas. 24 It would, however, be overly convenient to picture the two solo violas in the sixth concerto as being alto and tenor violas, the latter being up to twenty inches in body length, making the technical requirements of the second viola part impractical. Instead, when one considers the French court’s “high alto” quinte / cinquiesme and “low alto” haute-contre violas, as contrasted to the taille tenor viola, 25

V OLUME 27 S UMMER 2011 O NLINE I SSUE 33