Notes - January 27, 2021
Dongsok Shin
Plays Bach’s Favorite
Forgotten Instrument
Our new artist video comes from EM/NY’s resident keyboardist Dongsok Shin, who performs J.S. Bach’s Prelude, Fugue and Allegro in E-Flat, BWV 998 on a modern reconstruction of a lautenwerck, sometimes called a lute-harpsichord.
In his introductory remarks, Mr. Shin describes the history of the lautenwerck and the particular instrument in this performance, as well as discussing why he is playing on a keyboard a work thought for many years to have been composed for a plucked string instrument. You can read more about this issue in the adjacent column of this newsletter, and you can watch the video here.
Dongsok Shin was born in Boston, started piano lessons at the age of four, but converted exclusively to early keyboard instruments in the early 1980s. His connection with Frederick Renz and Early Music New York goes back decades, both as a performer and as the recording producer, engineer, and editor of EM/NY’s recordings.
Mr. Shin tunes and maintains early keyboard instruments for the Flintwoods Collection in Delaware, and in New York City for the Metropolitan Opera and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His YouTube videos produced by the Met Museum, demonstrating their earliest known Bartolomeo Cristofori fortepiano, have garnered more than 380,000 views.
IN CASE YOU MISSED THEM
VENUES
First Church of
Christ, Scientist
Central Park West
at 68th Street
Near Lincoln Center, the First Church of Christ, Scientist faces Central Park at 68th Street and is reached via the M72, M10 and Columbus Avenue M7 & M11 bus lines; subways C to 72nd Street at Central Park West (70th Street exit) & #1 to 66th Street at Broadway. Parking garages are available along West 68th and West 66th Streets. For information regarding disability access call 212-280-0330.
For a listing of restaurants near West 68th Street in Lincoln Square, click here.
Cathedral of
St. John the Divine
Amsterdam Avenue at 112th Street
Adjacent to the Columbia University campus, the Cathedral is easily reached by public transportation: Buses M4, M11, M104; Subway #1 to 110th Street & Broadway. Parking is available in nearby garages on 112th and 114th Streets. For information regarding disability access call the Visitor Center at 212-316-7540.
For a listing of restaurants near the Cathedral and Columbia University, click here.
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WHEN IS A LUTE
NOT A LUTE?
“…we have to confront the elephant
in the room…” – Dongsok Shin
When Johann Sebastian Bach died, among his belongings were a number of musical instruments, including three harpsichords, several violins, one lute and two lautenwercke, or lute-harpsichords.
In a lautenwerck, gut strings were used for the most part instead of metal ones, producing a mellower sound that closely resembled a lute, though each string was activated by a plectrum rather than by human fingers. No examples of this instrument have survived from Bach’s time, but documentation about its specifications has enabled the building of modern reconstructions.
For most of the 20th century, a small body of work by Bach was assumed to have been composed for the lute, despite the fact that no lute of Bach’s time could render these works without the performer making adjustments to allow for the instrument’s limitations. There also is little evidence that Bach could play the lute, as opposed to the many keyboard instruments of which he was acknowledged to be a peerless master. (He was, by many accounts, a pretty decent fiddler as well.)
The “elephant in the room” to which Dongsok Shin refers during the introductory comments in his video has to do with determining the proper instrument for these so-called lute works. With the advent of the modern reconstructions, it has become clear that the “lute” works by Bach that require technical accommodations on the lute need none when played on the lautenwerck.
The Bach “Lute Suites” and other works continue to be performed on lute, as well as the modern guitar (pioneered by the 20th-century masters Andrés Segovia and Julian Bream). But even though a modern reconstruction of a lautenwerck is not, strictly speaking, an original instrument, it can be argued that a lautenwerck gets us closer to the composer’s expectation of how this music should sound.
Bach was a notorious re-purposer of his own music; one of his “Lute Suites” is actually a transcription of one he composed for the cello. Thus, technical limitations aside, the quality of his works, and our enjoyment of them, is not necessarily dependent upon the medium of delivery. That said, this is an opportunity to hear a Bach work the way he would have played, and heard, it himself.
FURTHER READING
The following two articles offer a wealth of information about J.S. Bach’s works for the lautenwerck and/or lute (by the way, there are a few that really are for the lute).
The Myth of Bach’s Lute Suites by Clive Titmuss discusses the repertoire, the sources, how scholars decided it was lute music, and recordings. It concludes with a fanciful description of an encounter between Bach and Sylvius Leopold Weiss, the greatest lute virtuoso and composer of his day.
The lute works of J.S. Bach, the Lautenwerck, and the “Two famous lutenists” by Cameron O'Connor expands upon the connection between Bach and Weiss; discusses the plausibility that some of these works were intended for the lute; and goes into great detail about each work.
A “Great Names”
Concert Season
SPRING 2021
A FAMILY AFFAIR
The Haydns and the Mozarts
Saturday, March 6 at 7:30 pm
First Church of Christ, Scientist
Central Park West at 68th Street
To Be Rescheduled
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Franz Joseph Haydn
The Bachs weren’t the only clan to make their mark on music history. Maestro Renz leads EM/NY’s classical orchestra in symphonic works from two illustrious 18th-century musical dynasties: the Haydns – Joseph (1732-1809) and his well-respected but overshadowed younger brother Michael (1737-1806); and the Mozarts – Leopold (1719-1787) and his prodigious son Wolfgang Amadeus (1756-1791). Alongside their better-known kinsmen, Leopold Mozart and Michael Haydn bear favorable comparison and offer familial perspective.
TELEMANN À LA POLONAISE
From Folk to Formal
Saturday, May 8 at 7:30 pm
First Church of Christ, Scientist
Baroque composer Georg Philipp Telemann (1681-1767) first encountered folk dance tunes from Poland in his early 20’s, and compiled many of them in a volume known today as the Rostock Manuscript, discovered only in 1987. He drew a lifetime of inspiration from this material for numerous compositions “in the Polish style,” which he considered to be the equal of French, German and Italian styles. EM/NY’s baroque orchestra performs suites and concerti utilizing themes from this collection.
SUBSCRIPTIONS AND SINGLE TICKETS WILL GO ON SALE
IN THE NEAR FUTURE
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New York City Department of Cultural Affairs
in partnership with the City Council,
 
New York State Council on the Arts
with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo,
the New York State Legislature
and the generosity of
EMF’s Friends of Early Music.
Your Support is
More Meaningful Than Ever
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