JAVS Summer 2011

Bach Violoncello Suites Arranged for Viola: Available Editions Annotated

by Thomas Tatton

“To present yet another edition of the Bach Violoncello Suites arranged for viola might appear to be a rather questionable exercise in redundancy.” 1 So writes William Primrose in the opening sentence of his 1978 G. Schirmer edition. Since then, other viola editions have come to the fore including those by Leonard Davis (International, 1986), Stéphane Wiener (Gérard Bellaudot, 1990), Jerzy Kosmala (PMW, 1997), Simon Rowland-Jones (Edition Peters, 1998), Paolo Centurioni (Bèrben, 2001), Christine Rutledge (Linnet Press Editions, 2007), and Kenneth Martinson (Gems Music Publications, 2008). In total, there are at least sixteen viola editions of the suites available and in popular use today. 2 It is my purpose here to briefly describe these different editions in order to give the reader a sense of each arranger’s purpose, method, and scope. The primary explanation for multiple editions is that there is no holograph manuscript of the suites, but two, often conflicting, contemporaneous copies: one copy by Anna Magdalena Bach (AMB) and the other by Johann Peter Kellner (JPK). These, plus later conflicting anonymous copies, 3 all led to the flawed Bach-Gesellshaft (B-G) edition of 1879. 4 This is exacerbated by Bach’s use of scordatura in the fifth suite 5 ; the use of an unnamed five-stringed instrument (viola pomposa or violoncello piccolo) in the sixth suite, 6 and the multiple editions, each different, for violoncello! Editions are prepared for a myriad of reasons. For Svecenski, his edition is most likely the first American edition for viola (1916). Bruno Giuranna’s edition was an effort to rebuild a devastated music education system in Italy after the Second World War. 7 William Primrose felt pressured by students and colleagues alike to provide his musical ideas—phrasings, bowings, fingerings, etc. There are also purely performance editions—Leonard Davis, Watson Forbes, Milton Katims, Samuel Lifschey, and William Primrose come to mind. These editions concentrate on the musical ideas used by the individual artists in his own performance. Recent editions have taken a more scholarly approach. These include Rutledge, Martinson, and Rowland-Jones. In truth, all editions fulfill multiple goals and ideals! Experienced violists agree that these suites are as remarkable for what we do not know about them as they are for the many familiar and shared understandings, i.e., what we do know about them. Both perspectives loom large in the particulars of the popular editions in use today!

V OLUME 27 S UMMER 2011 O NLINE I SSUE 5