For Johann Sebastian Bach, composition and transcription were inextricably linked. His sixteen concertos, BWV 972-987, are the most famous example of this, all of them based on pre-existing works by other composers: violin concertos by Antonio Vivaldi and Georg Philipp Telemann, an oboe concerto by Alessandro Marcello, pieces by Prince Johann Ernst of Saxe-Weimar, and so on. This practice was commonplace at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries. It allowed composers to understand and assimilate different styles, which they would then incorporate into future works. In a manner equally common at the time, Bach “transcribed himself,” using musical material previously created in another context and for another instrumentation in his own works. This was particularly the case with the Collegium Musicum in Leipzig, which he took over in 1729: to provide material for the numerous concerts given by this excellent ensemble, it was sometimes much more convenient to start from a work that had already been written than from a blank page. Thus, the Concerto for Flute, Violin, and Harpsichord, BWV 1044, draws freely from the Prelude and Fugue for Harpsichord, BWV 894, and from the central “Adagio” of the Organ Sonata, BWV 527.
Playing Bach’s works on instruments other than those originally intended is therefore anything but sacrilegious. Seeing Robert Schumann, Johannes Brahms, and Ferruccio Busoni adapt the “Chaconne” from the Violin Partita BWV 1004 for the keyboard is a natural extension of Bach’s transcribing his own work – such as one of his violin Sonatas and Partitas, transcribed for the keyboard (BWV 1003 into Sonata in D Minor, BWV 964). It seems that he made such adaptations on a regular and informal basis, according to one of his students, Johann Friedrich Agricola, who stated that Bach “added as much harmony as he thought necessary”!
At the beginning of the 20th century, transcriptions of Bach’s works began to diversify. Ferruccio Busoni, editor of a voluminous seven-volume Bach-Busoni Gesammelte Ausgabe (collected edition), is the finest example of this: some volumes consist of “arrangements” (Bearbeitungen) and “transcriptions” (Übertragungen), but the fourth volume focuses on ”compositions and free adaptations ” (Kompositionen und Nachdichtungen), paving the way for all kinds of re-compositional games. In 1985, Helmut Lachenmann added his own contribution to the post-Bach edifice by slipping a third voice of his own creation into the Two-Part Invention in D minor, BWV 775, demonstrating his mastery of counterpoint.
Tristan Labouret
