Rifkin ? Gould

[Jim Morrison <jim_morrison@sprynet.com>]

Hello Fminor

What follows is the introduction to an interview with Rifkin on early
performance.  I found the interview at


http://www.kdsi.net/~sherman/index.html

Also on the site are articles on the B minor mass, some cantatas, and a
brief review of Parmentier's version of the Toccattas in which he says of
one of my new keyboard heros

"In general... these performances are unsurpassed. Mr. Parmentier's
imagination and intensity are hard to resist, perhaps even by those used to
knocking these pieces."

Check out the site.  It's pretty good.



Is it just me, or, after having read the intro, do others think Gould and
Rifkin share some similarites that at least should be mentioned if not
discussed and examined.  I've still not found any reference to Gould or the
55 Goldbergs in my reading on Rifkin, Parrott, and Thomas, though I have
seen refereces to Wendy Carlos.

What's up with that?  What don't these people want to link "crazy" Gould
with "serious" scholars and researchers and performers and conductors?
Strange.

Jim




Chapter 20
"Re-Inventing Wheels": Joshua Rifkin on Interpretation and Rhetoric


from Inside Early Music: Conversations with Performers
by Bernard D. Sherman


Copyright © 1997 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Used by permission of
Oxford University Press. Front and end matter revised, Jan. 1999. This
material may not be copied or distributed without the prior permission of
Oxford University Press.


To many early-music enthusiasts, the name Joshua Rifkin brings to mind a
single association: the renegade who argues that Bach generally used only
one singer on each of his choral lines. But that association obscures the
sheer variety of Rifkin's career. His work as conductor, harpsichordist, and
pianist has taken him from Busnoys and Josquin through Mozart and Haydn to
Stravinsky, Weill, and more recent composers. It has also included a healthy
dose of Scott Joplin, whose revival in popularity began with Rifkin's
recordings in the early 1970s. Rifkin has appeared as guest conductor and
keyboard soloist with many leading modern orchestras, such as the English
Chamber Orchestra, Amsterdam Concertgebouw Chamber Orchestra, and San
Francisco and St. Louis Symphonies. Along the way, he has found time to
record his spoof The Baroque Beatles Book and some lovely instrumental
arrangements for Judy Collins.

Rifkin studied composition with Karlheinz Stockhausen, and theory with
Milton Babbitt at Princeton. He is also a musicologist, who has specialized
in Renaissance and Baroque music, particularly Josquin and Bach. His
research on the B Minor Mass has produced several coups, including his
deduction, since proved correct, that the Credo chorus was originally
written in a different key than the familiar one. His revisionist work on
the dates of the St. Matthew Passion (demonstrating that it was premiered in
1727, not 1729 as previously believed) won quick acceptance among Bach
scholars when Rifkin published it in 1975.

Rifkin used a similar style of philological analysis to arrive at his
argument that Bach typically used one singer per part. When Rifkin presented
this argument in 1981, of course, it won nothing like the acceptance of his
earlier publication; if anything it made him something of a pariah. It is
clearly gaining ground today, however. The idea is discussed in Chapter 15
by John Butt, Jeffrey Thomas, and Philippe Herreweghe, along with other
aspects of interpreting Bach's choral music. (Click here for a short article
I wrote about the persistence of the one-per-part idea)

Early-music enthusiasts have at least some reason for their association of
Rifkin with Bach, then, especially since Rifkin has performed a great deal
of Bach using one singer per part. The Bach Ensemble, which he founded in
1978, has toured throughout the U.S. and Europe and made a number of
recordings.

Rifkin preferred not to discuss the one-per-part debate in his interview.
Instead, our conversation touched on more basic issues of historical
performance, going beyond the specifics of scholarship to the foundations of
the whole enterprise.



----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----