Bach Ŕ 32 Mains
Understanding Bach, 8, 87–137 © Bach Network UK 2013 Bach à 32 mains: Joseph Proksch and his Role in Bohemian Bach Reception TANJA KOVAČEVIĆ Although the public concert is today regarded as very much a staple of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, in reality, orchestral and operatic performances at the time were still a luxury for most music lovers. On the other hand, the piano, that emblem of bourgeois status, was increasingly making its way into even the most modest of middle-class households. Consequently, before the invention of the phonograph and radio, nineteenth-century musicians found piano transcriptions and arrangements a convenient vehicle for the dissemination and iteration of the symphonic, chamber and choral repertoire. Already by 1822, the popularity of piano transcriptions and arrangements had become so great, and their number so staggering, that a critic for the Quarterly Musical Magazine felt that ‘the passion for arrangement is, we think, a little run mad’.1 The sources housed in the archive of the Prague Conservatoire include curious transcriptions of works by Bach, Handel, Beethoven and others, arranged for multiple pianos involving up to sixteen players. Of particular interest to this study is an arrangement of the Prelude and Fugue in B-flat major on the name of BACH (BWV 898), for eight pianos, each for four hands—thirty-two hands in total. What would have been the purpose of such an arrangement? Why was it written for what seems to be an extraordinarily impractical number of performers and instruments? Who was the arranger? Was it ever performed? If so, who were the performers and where did all the pianos come from? And why was this particular work chosen? These are just some of the enigmas posed by this peculiar find, which will be addressed in the following discussion.
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