Follow the crazed path of googling, and then enjoy my True-life story (below) about playing the piece for the first time. Happy reading and spoiler alert, there's no errata; it's an F-natural.
The email conversation started like this (I'm paraphrasing each emailer):
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Flutist A: My flute student is playing an F-natural in the fourth beat of bar 17 of the Allemande after he has prepared the work while listening to Emmanuel Pahud's youtube recording. I've always played an F# on the fourth beat, second 16th. There are quality editions in print that contain either note. Which is correct?
Flutist B: I've always played the F# as found in the Rampal recording and in his edition. To my ear it has always sounded far more pleasant than the F-natural and I believe it to be the best sounding version of the harmonies in question. Growing up hearing it, my ear just loves it better!
Flutist C: Looking at Bach's original manuscript I see that it does look like an F-sharp, and that might have confused earlier interpreters. In Bach's time every accidental had to be marked separately, so this note must be an F-natural as the previous accidental just doesn't carry through the bar as it does in modern scores.
Flutist D: Wasn't there an interesting story I read somewhere about a two different copyists who changed out right at the half-way point in the Allemande, and one of them wrote some note mistakes that are visible in the score? (NB: red herring as the visibly corrected mistakes happen after measure 17.)
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Flutist E: And of course, in music history at this time there are no "Classical Harmony Rules", as this is the early 1700s and no such rules yet exist. J.S. Bach is inventing what we think of as "rules" as he is writing ground breaking stuff.
Flutist F: In my edition my teacher wrote years ago that the F-natural is correct because it matches a transposition of the identical measure 41 in which the same note is definitely marked correctly as a B-flat in Bach's manuscript:
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Well there you have it. It was sitting on page two this whole time staring at us.
An exact transposition in measure 41. (or bar 42 if your edition is numbered differently).
Do I ever feel stupid for staring at measure 17 and googling my face off finding all the above links and enlarging hard-to-read copies of the original manuscript when I could have just read the urtext sheetmusic in a quiet room to measure 41 without a computer, and figured it out myself. Oh deary me.
But meanwhile I did play through all these versions of measure 17 to figure out why the note F-natural would have been Bach's actual choice (as it does sound less sweet than the F-sharp at first), and here are all the great things that I came up with for your ear's amusement. The top line is the original and the bottom line is the simplification (play on piano or flute):
1. The delicious chromatics in bar 17's first beats (I love them!):
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2. The descending scale in the soprano:
3. The two note chords on each eighth note whose sequence beautifully frame the upcoming cadence in E minor (play on piano to hear the pure beauty):
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And who does not love a minor second rising in an inner voice, right?
Wow! Just look at all the thing Bach is doing in that measure 17, holy smokes it's incredible! Here they are, all at once:
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After playing through all the above my ear did think the F-natural sounded "right" at last. :>)
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True Life Story
I have never performed the Allemande of BWV 1013 as an adult because of a slightly scary memory from when I was fourteen years old. I was a highschool flute player who'd been playing for three years. I'd never had a flute lesson with a actual flute teacher nor did I own any flute sheetmusic (and to tell you the truth, my notation reading was seriously sketchy).
Our band teacher told us in September that this was the year when each of us would have to perform for the class at the end of the Fall term, a solo written for our instrument.
I was panic stricken; where would I find a solo? (And how could I avoid having to play with a pianist who'd cost money and require rehearsals?)
My friend the Oboe player said "No problem, we'll just go to the Municipal Music Library and borrow some sheetmusic to try out." I was astonished. I didn't know there was a music library. She took me there and I borrowed the only unaccompanied flute solo I could find. It was by J.S. Bach and was the unaccompanied A minor Sonata. But it was the Recorder transcription in C minor. (Little did I realize this was not the original key.)
Well I practiced the opening two page Allemande more than any other piece of music I had ever practiced before. But when it came to the performance in December that year, although I started out with a bang, the nerves hit just about a third of the way through and I started to tremble and shake, yet boldly played on.
By the end of the Allemande I was so shaky with adrenalin that I felt I were losing control of my legs. Knee vibrato! The worst way to shake!! I ran from the band room in tears. I felt I had failed completely because of the physical weirdness of my performance. That's what being fourteen is all about. Unfortunately it precluded me ever wanting to play the Allemande again.
Anyway, that's my story of playing in the wrong key (who knew?) and the reason why I was seldom attracted to that movement when it came around in University. For one thing, I probably subconsciously preferred the key of C-minor as it was slightly easier to make sound brilliant! For another I now knew how difficult the piece truly was to play well! And let's not even mention the breathing questions. hahahahhaaa..hahhaaaHAHAHAHA oops! *hic!*
Hope you enjoyed this J.S. Bach errata in BWV 1013 question adventure.
And I hope my blog readers are happy with the substack subscribe which is new.
Blog posts will appear in both places. Comments truly welcome!
I'd love to hear everyone's take on this Allemande BWV 1013 and the first time they played it!
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