Arrangement Practices in the Bach Tradition, Then and Now: Historical Precedent for Modern Practice

ABSTRACT Despite the increased use of period instruments in modern-day conservatories and concert life, many classical musicians continue to make their careers by playing early music on “modern” instruments. In such performances, aspects of the esthetic impulse of the music can always be conveyed. In adapting early music for modern instruments, it is helpful to think about the adaptation as an “arrangement,” and to seek out ways of capturing the esthetic impulse of the music despite the use of instruments from later time periods. It is possible to contextualize an understanding of the term “arrangement” within performance practices of the eighteenth century by highlighting sources that attest to the flexibility of instrumentation as an important feature of eighteenth-century music. A series of examples of performance practices from the collection of the Berlin salonnière Sara Levy reveal a spectrum of choices available to interpreters of music from the Bach family tradition and help provide a set of historically grounded principles for arrangements that may be applied in the present day by instrumentalists of all sorts.