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Rating: Ten minutes ago, I learned with disappointment that my better half decided, on her own, that she, along with her mother (my Mother-in-law… Grrr..), should have the honor of giving my newborn daughter her first bath. They were not supposed to mess with the bath, something worthy of consulting a lawyer.
It means I'll have to get my revenge. There you have it.
So, one day, when my daughter reads on Debaser the review of the concert for two violins and orchestra by A. Vivaldi RV 522, transcribed for organ by Bach and cataloged as concert BWV 593, she will know it wasn't my fault if I missed her first bath...
I can't help but smile when I hear about covers, arrangements, featuring, and various plagiarisms, and I think of this concert. As if all that were something new. Well yes, friends, Bach was a great copycat! Although, to be fair, he did it rather well…
Between 1711 and 1713, our beloved Johan Sebastian, having nothing better to do, decided to transcribe some concerts that, years later, would be cataloged in two large collections, the first for solo harpsichord (BWV 972 to 987) and the second for organ (BWV 592 to 597). And he did so by borrowing the scores, using them as a blank canvas, from the greatest baroque musicians of the time, from Vivaldi to Telemann, passing through various Albinoni and Marcello. Among these, there's one in particular I'd like to talk about, and it is precisely the concerto BWV 593, an organ version of the splendid RV 522 concerto, a gem in turn extracted from Vivaldi's "L'estro Armonico".
It's difficult to talk about Bach's concert without talking about Vivaldi's, so I'd like to propose a game: a double interview with our two authors, let's have them tell us about these two sumptuous works and we'll also try to ask them a few questions.
Reviewer: Good morning Johan Sebastian, good morning Antonio, let's start with an easy question, who wrote "L'estro Armonico"?
V: Me! In 1711, I asked my friend Estienne Roger to publish in Amsterdam the Opus No. 3. That guy is a fraud if he dares to take the credit!
B: Don't get upset Antonio, calm down, or you'll blow a gasket. Here, no one wants to steal anything!! It's just that your concerto seemed a bit poor to me, so I decided to add a little of my own, that's all.
Reviewer: Come on, be nice, don't argue. Rather, could you explain the genesis of your respective works?
V: I wanted to show the world the art of counterpoint and represent the perfect union between the fantasy of creativity and the cold rigor of mathematical formulas so dear to harmony.
B: Well, maybe. Just some small stuff. There are plenty of such concerts around, and in the future, no one will remember them. On the contrary, by making sacred what was not sacred, your music, thanks to my worthy contribution, will become immortal. Two violins and some strings scattered here and there have become the Lord's voice, to infuse words of infinite sweetness. Did you hear the allegro? Oh yes, the allegro. Listening to it, you don't think it's of earthly origin, and then, they sound like many voices. Let me remind you that I am the king of the fugue, the highest expression of counterpoint in Western music, and you talk to me about counterpoint? Please, you're full of hot air!
Reviewer: Alright, I get it, you're both talented, but could you tell me in two words the characteristics of each?
V: What would you like me to say? These are tough times for us musicians, times and musical tastes are changing. Solo music is no longer appreciated hence the choice of a concerto for two violins and orchestra. Let's say that with this Concerto I laid the foundations for my subsequent work "Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventore". But I don't want to either praise myself or spoil too much otherwise no one will buy my records anymore..
B: I slightly go against the trend compared to my esteemed hot air balloon. Too many instruments, too many notes (Quote.). And then, in a time of value crisis, let's use music as a catechesis tool. And what better instrument than the organ. Take the adagio for example. Two notes alternate, like a cuckoo in May, introducing the main theme. They are there, alternating, without touching, without hindering each other. And then, here’s the theme that overlaps with the first. Yes indeed, dear friends, these are not notes written by a trained monkey (quote)! Here again is the Lord's voice speaking, and it does so through the organ.
Reviewer: So in summary, we could say that the concerto written by Antonio and the arrangement by Johan Sebastian have two different purposes, the first the praise of creativity emphasized by the beauty of counterpoint while the second assumes a more sacred connotation and is dedicated to a more refined audience?
V: Although he remains a charlatan and doesn't particularly endear himself to me, I must recognize a certain genius in his work, and while claiming the authorship of the original, I won't file a lawsuit with SIAE.
B: Too kind, Master Antonio… and anyway, I also have to admit that without his insight, I probably wouldn't have written my beautiful organ concerto. If you want, one of these nights we can meet for a Jam session.
I hope you haven't been too bored. What I wanted to emerge from this, I hope, appreciated game is that the works in question are truly superlative and, while I appreciate the complexity of the counterpoint in Vivaldi's concerto for two violins, I consider Bach's, among all the transcriptions he made, an unsurpassed peak.
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