1 ‘Es ist Zweck dieser Zeilen, mit Nachdruck einmal wieder darauf hinzuweisen, daß die heute allgemein übliche Art, Bachs Kantatenchöre durchweg in chorischer … Besetzung aufzuführen, dem Stile der Zeit nicht immer entspricht und der Sucht, um jeden Preis Monumentalität herauszuschlagen, eine Menge feiner und wohlbedachter Einzelzüge opfert’. Arnold Schering, ‘Die Besetzung Bachscher Chöre’, Bach-Jahrbuch 17 (1920), 77–78.

2 SBB Mus. ma Bach P 180; Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek, Mus. 2405-D-21; SBB Mus. ms. Bach St 118.

3 Joshua Rifkin, ‘Bach's Chorus’, in Andrew Parrott, The Essential Bach Choir (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2000) (henceforward EBC), 190.

4 Erich Leinsdorf, The Composer's Advocate: A Radical Orthodoxy for Musicians (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 98.

5 Wilhelm Ehmann, ‘“Concertisten” und “Ripienisten” in der h-moll-Messe Joh. Seb. Bachs’, Musik und Kirche 30/2–6 (1960).

6 This proposal picks up on a practical suggestion from Schering, ‘Die Besetzung Bachscher Chöre’, 88. Acknowledging that there was no evidence from Bach's time for this tripartite division, Ehmann subsequently defended it against criticism from Alfred Dürr as a means of bridging the gap between solo and choral sections in an age when the ratio of soloist to choir singer had turned from Bach's supposed 1:3 to 1:15 or even 1:30. Wilhelm Ehmann, ‘Noch einmal zum Problem: “Concertisten–Ripienisten”’, Musik und Kirche 31/6 (1961), 269.

7 ‘Sehr viel größer aber ist die Zahl der Fälle, wo solche direkten Hinweise fehlen und dennoch die “konzertierende” Vortragsweise zur Anwendung kommen muß’. Schering, ‘Die Besetzung Bachscher Chöre’, 79.

8 ‘Zunächst den continuobegeleiteten Anfang der ‘Cum sancto spiritu’=Fuge; wird er nach Art vieler ähnlicher Stellen in den Kantaten vom Soloquintett ausgeführt, so ergibt sich über den Choreinsatz des ‘Amen’ hinweg bis zur Wiederholung der Fuge durch den Gesamtchor eine elementare Steigerung.’ Schering, ‘Die Besetzung Bachscher Chöre’, 87.

9 See EBC, 141–142.

10 See EBC, 36–37, 68 and 141–142.

11 ‘Kurtzer, iedoch höchstnöthiger Entwurff einer wohlbestallten Kirchen Music’. Bach-Dokumente, volume 1: Schriftstücke von der Hand Johann Sebastian Bachs, ed. Werner Neumann and Hans-Joachim Schulze (Kassel and Leipzig: Bärenreiter, 1963), 60. See EBC, 163 and 167.

12 Messe in h-Moll BWV 232. Neue Ausgabe, ed. Christoph Wolff (Frankfurt am Main: Peters, 1994), 408. See also Joshua Rifkin's review of facsimile editions of the Mass in B minor in Notes 44/4 (1988), where Wolff is also quoted as saying that the markings ‘are in themselves . . . a strong argument against Joshua Rifkin's view’ (797–798).

13 EBC, 61–62.

14 See EBC, 59–92.

15 George Stauffer, Bach: The Mass in B Minor (New York: Schirmer, 1997), 214.

16 See EBC, 35–36.

17 ‘Ein zur Ausfüllung dienender Discant, der nur bißweilen mit einfällt’. ‘Canto ripieno’, in Johann Heinrich Zedler, Universal-Lexicon (Leipzig, 1731–1754). The corresponding definitions of alto, tenor and bass ‘Ripieno’ also variously employ zur Verstärckung, mitsingen/mitgehen and dann und wann in equivalent contexts.

18 The evidence of these parts confirms that Walther's and Zedler's ‘occasionally’ does not mean merely ‘whenever a chorus occurs amidst arias and so forth’.

19 Thus in one instance ‘ripieno singing’ stands for the singing of choruses, while elsewhere we are told that ‘the four soloists double up as ripienists in the choruses and chorales’. BBC Music Magazine (July 2007), 71.

20 See EBC, 59–92.

21 In his review of the German edition of EBC (Bachs Chor: Zum neuen Verständnis (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2003)) Hans-Joachim Schulze claims that ‘large parts of Parrott's book have no bearing on the matter in hand, as they transfer the performance data of, say, Mühlhausen or Weimar indiscriminately to Leipzig’ (große Teile von Parrotts Buch [tragen] nichts zur Sache bei, weil sie etwa die Aufführungsgegebenheiten von Mühlhausen oder Weimar ungeprüft auf Leipzig übertragen). Bach-Jahrbuch 89 (2003), 270. Arnold Schering is rather more relaxed when explaining the concerted style: ‘This practice was naturally introduced in Leipzig too’ (Auch in Leipzig war diese Praxis natürlich eingeführt). ‘Die Besetzung Bachscher Chöre’, 77.

22 See EBC, 64–65.

23 ‘Methodisch problematisch erscheint zudem die Annahme einer an höfischen Kapellen wie städtischen Kantoraten identischen Verfahrensweise bei der Darbietung von figuraler Kirchenmusik’ (it seems methodically problematic to assume that court chapels and municipal cantorates had identical ways of presenting figural church music). Andreas Glöckner, ‘Alumnen und Externe in den Kantoreien der Thomasschule zur Zeit Bachs’, Bach-Jahrbuch 92 (2006), 9.

24 Joshua Rifkin, ‘From Weimar to Leipzig: Concertists and Ripienists in Bach's Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis’, Early Music 24/4 (1996), 591.

25 Christoph Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 211–215.

26 Christoph Wolff, ‘Originale Ripienstimmen zu BWV23’, in Wolff and others, ‘Zurück in Berlin: Das Notenarchiv der Sing-Akademie. Bericht über eine erste Bestandaufnahme’, Bach-Jahrbuch 88 (2002), 167–169, 179. Earlier the existence of such parts had been doubted: ‘If vocal ripieno parts for bwv23 have been lost, Bach may have had sixteen or more singers. Considering the seemingly complete set of performance parts, however, such a loss is not very likely’ (Christoph Wolff, Bach: Essays on His Life and Music (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), 135). Joshua Rifkin, in ‘Bach's Choral Ideal’, a paper first presented at the Royal Musical Association conference of 1990, thought it likely that ripieno parts would have been used for the 1723 performance (compare the revised version given in Rifkin, ‘Bach's Choral Ideal’, Dortmunder Bach-Forschungen 5 (2002), 31), and has since identified the rediscovered parts as dating from that year (Wolff had concluded that they dated from the repeat performance in 1724), and thus within the short period after which such ripieno parts ‘disappear all but totally’. Rifkin, ‘Bach's Chorus: Some New Parts, Some New Questions’, Early Music 31/4 (2003), 573–574.

27 Andrew Parrott, ‘Bach's Chorus: Beyond Reasonable Doubt’, Early Music 26/4 (1998), 653, note 22; see also EBC, 75. Schering, I have subsequently noticed, makes exactly the same observation; ‘Die Besetzung Bachscher Chöre’, 83.

28 In bwv31/9 the two soprano parts are amalgamated, as they are for all chorales in the motet Jesu, meine Freude, bwv227. Bach's normal ripieno practice is, of course, to double all four parts, but the same effect is produced when, for example, in the St Matthew Passion the two independent choirs are brought together in four-part writing; see Daniel R. Melamed, Hearing Bach's Passions (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 49–65.

29 Joshua Rifkin, review of facsimile editions of the Mass in B minor (Notes), 797. He continues: ‘It stands to reason, I need hardly add, that any obstacles to the copying of vocal ripieno parts would equally diminish the possibility – a strictly hypothetical one in any event … – of having extra singers read from the same parts as the soloists.’

30 Rifkin, review of facsimile editions of the Mass in B minor (Notes), 797.

31 Basso continuo book, 61 (Tavola Delli Salmi).

32 EBC, 64.

33 The New Bach Reader: A Life of Johann Sebastian Bach in Letters and Documents, ed. Hans T. David and Arthur Mendel, revised and expanded by Christoph Wolff (New York: Norton, 1998), 371.

34 The New Bach Reader, 371.

35 Joshua Rifkin, ‘“… wobey aber die Singstimmen hinlänglich besetzt seyn müssen …”: Zum Credo der h-Moll-Messe in der Aufführung Carl Philipp Emanuel Bachs’, Basler Jahrbuch für historische Musikpraxis 9 (1985), 157–172.

36 Stauffer, Bach: The Mass in B Minor, 224–231.

37 Stauffer, Bach: The Mass in B Minor, 229.

38 A comparable but even longer passage for bass occurs in bwv110/1 (Unser Mund sei voll Lachens) at bars 128–147, but there is no bass copy in the ripieno set to confirm it as a solo.

39 See Melamed, Hearing Bach's Passions, 49–65.

40 At the same time, suspicion may be aroused that the additional voices required to supplement the five (and six) concertists would have been expected to take some earlier role as ripienists. The arithmetic does not work, however, unless we speculate further and summon up two more sopranos for a five-part ripieno earlier in the Mass.

41 ‘Bach läßt oft in Fugen erst beim Eintreten der Chorstimmen die Instrumente einsetzen.’ Schering, ‘Die Besetzung Bachscher Chöre’, 79.

42 Wilhelm Rust, ed., Johann Sebastian Bachs Werke (Leipzig: Bach-Gesellschaft zu Leipzig, 1855), volume 5, xviii.

43 EBC 62, Table 3B, note d.

44 The wavy line has alternatively been interpreted as a possible guide for a bassoon part (though in the case of bwv71 a bassoon is already present), while a third possibility is that it indicates passages in which a fuller organ registration is to be used. In practice, these three interpretations need not be seen as mutually exclusive: the line corresponds to those passages where a fuller sonority may be desirable. See Rifkin, ‘Bach's Choral Ideal’ (2002), 59, note 111.

45 ‘An attempt to fit these forces into the 12-voice choir so long regarded as the norm for Leipzig comes up either with a grotesque imbalance between upper and lower voices – or with an ensemble including one singer for each line.’ Joshua Rifkin, ‘Bach's Chorus: A Preliminary Report’, The Musical Times 123 (November 1982), 754.

46 For the cantata movement's middle section, not used in the Mass in B minor, the Neue Bach-Ausgabe supplies editorial instrumental doubling of all vocal lines.

47 Stauffer, Bach: The Mass in B Minor, 224–231.

48 Alfred Dürr, The Cantatas of J. S. Bach: With Their Librettos in German–English Parallel Text, revised and translated by Richard D. P. Jones (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 724.

49 Stauffer, Bach: The Mass in B Minor, 227, 229.

50 C. P. E. Bach, Zwey Litanien aus dem Schleswig-Holsteinischen Gesangbuch, 1785 (Copenhagen, 1786), Preface (see also Briefe von Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach an Johann Gottlob Immanuel Breitkopf und Johann Nicolaus Forkel, ed. Ernst Suchalla (Tutzing: Schneider, 1985), 515).

51 See Stauffer, Bach: The Mass in B Minor, 225.

52 Although the repertory of this second choir does not directly concern us, we may briefly note that Bach considered himself obliged to choose it ‘according to the capabilities of those who are to execute it’ (EBC, 19). The idea nevertheless circulates that for his all-important first choir Bach, by contrast, ‘seems deliberately to engineer a bad-sounding performance by putting the apparent demands of the music beyond the reach of his performers and their equipment’ (Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, volume 2: The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 370) – a perverse strategy which would immediately have drawn attention to itself. It certainly runs counter to Daniel Speer's advice to avoid ‘overly artificial and difficult pieces when one does not have the people for them … one should always take full account of the people at one's disposal and avail oneself of such pieces as one may be able to bring off and deliver without upset, so that no offence is given to the congregation in their prayers and devotions’ (allzukünstliche und schwere Stuck wann sie nicht Leute darzu haben … sondern es soll ein jeder nach seinen unter sich habenden Leuten sich richten und solche Stuck ergreiffen/ die er ohne Anstoß fortbringen und hinauß führen könne/ damit der Gemein in ihrer Bet- und Audienz-Andacht kein Aergernus gegeben werde). Daniel Speer, Musicalisches Kleeblatt (Ulm, 1697), 18.

53 ‘Eine gantz andre Beschaffenheit’. Johann Mattheson, Der vollkommene Capellmeister (Hamburg, 1739), 222.

54 Thomas Selle in 1642 declared that ‘For motets there must be as many [singers] again’ as for concerted music (EBC, 29), and a Chorordnung from the town church of Darmstadt from 1721 stipulates ‘that the chorus musicus be staffed only with capable persons who apply themselves to music, of whom for every voice part, excluding the four concertists, three or four would be used when and where desired, so that they can sing and execute a complete motet or artful aria in various parts figuraliter’ (daß man den chorum Musicum mit lauter tüchtigen und zur Music sich applicirenden Subjectis bestelle, deren bey jeder Haupt-Stimme ohne die 4 Concertisten 3 oder 4 zu gebrauchen wären, damit sie, wann und wo es begehret wird eine vollständige Mottette oder geschickliche Arie mit zusammen gesetzten Stimmen figuraliter absingen und bestellen können). Elisabeth Noack, Musikgeschichte Darmstadts vom Mittelalter bis zur Goethezeit (Mainz: Aktiengesellschaft für mittelrheinische Musikgeschichte, 1967), 202. Casually read, this may appear to match modern expectations of a (small) ‘choir’ and (independent) ‘soloists’, as in most Bach cantata performances of today. In fact, a rather large choir (of twelve or more) is being associated here – quite explicitly – not with concerted music but with the distinctly more workaday motet and (chorale-like) choral aria repertory.

55 ‘Das Haupt-Chor’. Johann Mattheson, Das neu-eröffnete Orchestre (Hamburg, 1713), 158.

56 At one point Schering writes of ‘the introduction of a quartet of soloists’ into a particular chorus (‘Die Einführung eines Solistenquartetts’); ‘Die Besetzung Bachscher Chöre’, 88.

57 Martin Heinrich Fuhrmann, Musikalischer Trichter oder Anleitung zur Singekunst (Frankfurt an der Spree, 1706), 80.

58 See EBC, 61.

59 In parallel with the instrumental concerto grosso, where the concertino forms the backbone of an entire work and does not rest during tutti sections, ‘Canto Concertante’ is defined in 1724 as ‘the Treble of the little Chorus, or the Part, that sings throughout’. [Johann Christoph Pepusch,] A Short Explication of Such Foreign Words, as are Made Use of in Musick Books (London, 1724), 18. ‘Concertante’ by itself is explained as ‘those Parts of a Piece of Musick which play throughout the whole, to distinguish them from those which play only in some Parts’ (23).

60 The issue of stamina, however, has been cited as a ‘loose end’ in the argument for single voices (Yo Tomita, review of EBC, The Musical Times 141 (Summer 2000), 66), though I am not certain how well it would stand up to historical scrutiny. What we must surely presume, though, is that a singer lacking the necessary stamina to be a concertist is unlikely to have been selected for that role (see EBC, 84, note 22). On the related matter of balance see EBC, chapter 10, and for some comments on Bach's younger singers at Leipzig see EBC, 12–13 and Appendix 2. (My own experience from directing performances of the most extended works – the Mass in B minor and the two Passions – is that perceived problems of stamina for single-voice choirs prove almost wholly illusory.)

61 Even the otherwise exceptional vocal scoring of Der Streit zwischen Phoebus und Pan, bwv201 (1729), seems to imply an eight-singer line-up of this sort: for the work's two choruses, the solo voices of the six named characters (SATTBB) are joined by just two ripieno parts (SA), suggesting a total of two singers of each voice type (EBC, 61, 63). Equally unusual (by Bach's standards) is Zelenka's oratorio Gesù al Calvario, written in Dresden in 1735. Of the apparently complete set of surviving vocal parts, five are for soloists (SSAAA), while a further six serve for the ‘Ripieni per i Cori’ (SATTBB), suggesting a probable ensemble of 3S 4A 2T 2B for the four-part choruses. See Janice B. Stockigt, Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679–1745): A Bohemian Musician at the Court of Dresden (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 239, and Joshua Rifkin, ‘Zelenkas Chor: Der Blick von 1725’, in Provokation und Tradition: Erfahrungen mit der Alten Musik (Festschrift Klaus L. Neumann), ed. Hans-Martin Linde and Regula Rapp (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2000), 246–250.

62 On Bach's use of the expression ‘a4 voci’ Ton Koopman writes: ‘Did this really mean only a solo quartet … ’. If so, he continues, how are the surviving ‘six vocal parts’ for bwv21 to be explained?; ‘Bach's Choir, an Ongoing Story’, Early Music 26/1 (1998), 114. Yo Tomita claims I have not answered Koopman's question (review of EBC (The Musical Times), 66). Born of an elementary misunderstanding, the question addresses a claim that has never been made and therefore surely merits little serious attention; my earlier treatment of it is nevertheless duly noted (EBC, 40, note 37). (In 1998 I pointed out that ‘it has nowhere been suggested that [the expression] necessarily does mean “only a solo quartet”’; Parrott, ‘Bach's Chorus: Beyond Reasonable Doubt’, 638.) It may be added that bwv21 has not six but eight surviving vocal copies (EBC, 178, where there is also a reference to Rifkin's eminently clear explanation of the cantata's complex origins).

63 Fuhrmann, Musikalischer Trichter oder Anleitung, 80: ‘an einem a parten Ort von den Concertisten abgesondert gestellt’.

64 Ignatio Donati, Salmi Boscarecci concertati a Sei Voci, con aggiuntà, se piace, di altre sei voci (Venice, 1623), A2, §3.

65 Mattheson, Das neu-eröffnete Orchestre, 158.

66 See, for example, Mattheson, Das neu-eröffnete Orchestre, 158–159.

67 EBC, 51–56.

68 My italics. ‘Es konnten aber die Tuttisänger zur Not auch aus den Konzertatstimmen singen, falls etwa die Zeit das Ausschreiben der andern nicht gestattete’. Schering, ‘Die Besetzung Bachscher Chöre’, 80.

69 ‘Ein Zeichen des Dirigenten genügt, um die Ripienisten an der gewünschten Stelle wieder einfallen zu lassen’; Arnold Schering, Johann Sebastian Bachs Leipziger Kirchenmusik (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1936), 31, note 3. Compare Schering, ‘Die Besetzung Bachscher Chöre’, 80.

70 ‘E quando si faranno i Ripieni, [il Maestro di Capella] volterà la faccia a tutti i Chori, levando ambe le mani, segno che tutti insieme cantino’. Ludovico da Viadana, Salmi a quattro chori (Venice, 1612), Preface (‘Modo di concertare i detti salmi a quattro chori’). Compare Michael Praetorius, Syntagma musicum, volume 3 (1619), 126 [recte 106].

71 Joshua Rifkin, ‘From Weimar to Leipzig: Concertists and Ripienists in Bach's Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis’, Early Music 24/4 (1996), 601, note 49.

72 There is only a single instance (bwv24) where solo–tutti markings are found in a set of concertists' parts for which no companion ripieno set has survived. In other words, the rare occurrence of such markings in concertists' parts correlates pretty exactly with the apparently equally rare occasions on which ripieno parts were provided, suggesting (as Rifkin has persuasively argued) that the markings served not for singers but for copyists preparing ripieno parts.

73 ‘Wenn hier [in bwv24] wie anderswo diese Stimmen den Ripiensängern mit galten, so konnten es solcher höchstens zwei sein: der eine blicke rechts, der andere links vom Konzertisten mit ins Notenblatt’ (‘If here [in bwv24] and elsewhere these copies also served for the ripieno singers, there could be at most two of them, the one sharing the music from the concertist's right, the other from the left.’ Schering, ‘Die Besetzung Bachscher Chöre’, 81); ‘Die Aufstellung [muß] so gewesen sein, daß der mittelste Sänger jeder Dreiergruppe – der “Solist” oder “Konzertist” – dasNotenblatt hielt, in das bei Chorsätzen je ein Nachbar zur Rechten und zur Linken als “Ripienist” mit hineinschaute’ (‘The arrangement [must] have been such that the middle singer of each group of three – the ‘soloist’ or ‘concertist’ – held the copy which in choral movements was also read by a ripienist on each side, one on the left and one on the right.’ Schering, Johann Sebastian Bachs Leipziger Kirchenmusik, 30).

74 ‘If [once existent] vocal ripieno parts to BWV23 have been lost, Bach may have had sixteen or more singers.’ Christoph Wolff, Bach: Essays on His Life and Music, 135.

75 Die Welt der Bach Kantaten, volume 3, ed. Christoph Wolff and Ton Koopman (Stuttgart and Kassel: Metzler/Bärenreiter, 1999), 232; engraving by Christoph Weigel (1698), heading Ton Koopman, ‘Bachs Chor und Orchester’, 233–249. See also the illustrations chosen on 243–244.

76 See Rifkin, ‘Bach's Chorus’. Uwe Wolf, however, has argued that ‘the evidence of the sources is not capable of demonstrating single-voice choral scoring’ (daß der Quellenbefund als Beweis für eine einfache Chorbesetzung nicht tauglich ist); ‘Von der Hofkapelle zur Kantorei: Beobachtungen an den Aufführungsmaterialien zu Bachs ersten Leipziger Kantatenaufführungen’, Bach-Jahrbuch 88 (2002), 191. In response, Rifkin shows that a dubious comparison of like with unlike lies at the heart of Wolf's ‘sweeping assertion’: solo–tutti indications in Bach's parts for concertists cannot be expected to have had the same force as in those of Homilius designed for ripienists. By contrast, ripieno parts by both composers clearly support the view ‘that ripieno singers sang from ripieno parts that told them exactly what to do’; Joshua Rifkin, ‘Bach's Chorus: Some New Parts, Some New Questions’, 573–580.

77 Jeanne Swack, ‘Telemann's Chorus: Vocal Forces in Telemann's Frankfurt Cantatas and the Implications for the “One-on-a-Part” Controversy’, paper presented at the American Musicological Society conference of 1999. See also EBC, 218, and Swack, Music and Performance in the Music of Georg Philipp Telemann (forthcoming). If the presumption of copy-sharing amongst singers supports a belief in larger vocal forces, larger forces may themselves seem almost to presuppose the practice of copy-sharing. However, any such easy assumption should perhaps be measured against what is known of German practice from both before and after Bach's lifetime. In mid-seventeenth-century Halle, for example, polychoral music often called for ‘30, 40 and more persons’, yet according to the organist Johannes Zahn in 1641, ‘each person must have his own [material] specially written out’ (Weil die itzige art der Music auf viel Chor gesetzet undt oftmahls auf 30, 40 und mehr Personen gerichtet, und einem Jeden das seine absonderlich vorgeschrieben werden muß), cited in Walter Serauky, Musikgeschichte der Stadt Halle, volume 2/1 (Halle: Schneider, 1939), 116–117, and given again in Barbara Wiermann, Die Entwicklung vokal-instrumentalen Komponierens im protestantischen Deutschland bis zur Mitte des 17. Jahrhunderts (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005), 61. More surprisingly, perhaps, we find that only a few years after his epoch-making 1829 performance of the St Matthew Passion by a reported 150 or so singers (EBC, 3), Mendelssohn still had in his possession no fewer than 140 vocal parts for the work (a list of Noten Sachen drawn up in 1835 by his sister Fanny Hensel; Peter Ward Jones, Catalogue of the Mendelssohn Papers in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (Tutzing: Schneider, 1989), 302).

78 Any regular use of more than one ripieno group would, of course, make the scarcity of such parts even more puzzling. Bach's few ripieno parts survive in single sets, a partial exception being bwv76, which has two S ripieno copies, one of them – like the A ripieno part – incomplete (EBC, 181).

79 A further five works by Bach suggest ripieno participation in different ways (EBC, 59–62). For what it is worth, a similar survival rate of ripieno copies is found in the smaller body of works by Carl Gotthelf Gerlach, organist at Leipzig's Neue Kirche from 1729: of twenty-six extant sets, just two include parts for ripienists (Andreas Glöckner, Die Musikpflege an der Leipziger Neukirche zur Zeit Johann Sebastian Bachs, Beiträge zur Bach-Forschung 8 (1990), 153ff).

80 Yo Tomita, review of EBC (The Musical Times), 66.

81 ‘Da diese Tutti- oder Ripienstimmen den Gesangsteil nicht in toto enthielten, also gleichsam unvollständig waren, mag man auf ihre Erhaltung weniger Gewicht gelegt haben als auf die andern mit der vollständigen Musik’. Schering, ‘Die Besetzung Bachscher Chöre’, 80.

82 Mattheson writes of ‘keeping together the parts that have been copied out (which is an important part of the prefect's official duty)’ ([die] Zusammenhaltung der ausgeschriebenen Stimmen (welches ein wichtiges Stück ist, so zum Am[t] des Vorgesetzten gehöret)); Der vollkommene Capellmeister, 481.

83 ‘Zu iedweden musicalischen Chor gehören wenigsten 3 Sopranisten, 3 Altisten, 3 Tenoristen, und eben so viel Baßisten, damit, so etwa einer unpaß wird … wenigsten [sic] eine 2 Chörigte Motette gesungen werden kan.’ Bach Dokumente, volume 1, 60; EBC, 163–164. Ironically, it turns out that virtually the only thing we can learn of performance practice from the Entwurff is that double-choir motets (of the pre-Bachian type suitable for larger choirs) may in fact be performed with single voices on at least most parts. Interestingly enough, Schering was prepared to go even further. Elsewhere in the ‘Entwurff’ Bach explains that ‘Concertists are ordinarily four [in number], and even five, six, seven and as many as eight – if one wishes, that is, to perform [concerted] music per choros’ (EBC, 167). Arnold Schering comments: ‘That means that in double-choir pieces each part is taken by a solo voice’ (Das bedeutet: bei doppelchörigen Stücken wird jede Stimme solistisch besetzt). Johann Sebastian Bachs Leipziger Kirchenmusik, 30–31. Compare Rifkin, ‘Bach's Choral Ideal’ (2002), 27–29.

84 The Bach Reader, ed. Hans T. David and Arthur Mendel (New York: Norton, 1945), 121 (my italics). Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, volume 2, 362.

85 The New Bach Reader, 146. In linguistic terms the revised understanding of the sentence in question – a direct product of Rifkin's close reading of the whole document – turns on two words: Chor and bestellen (Rifkin, ‘Bach's Choral Ideal’ (2002), 16–29, especially 21–23). The passage from Bach's ‘Entwurff’ reads: ‘Wiewohln es noch beßer, wenn der Coetus so beschaffen wäre, daß mann zu ieder Stimme 4 subjecta nehmen, und also ieden Chor mit 16. Persohnen bestellen könte’ (EBC, 164). Chorus (or Chor), as Mattheson observes, means several things ‘promiscuously’, notably either the body of performers, or ‘that part of the work where all participate’ (Es kan noch angemercket werden / daß das Wort Chorus promiscuè, bißweilen … die Musicirenden / oder denjenigen Theil des Stückes / wo alles gehet / bedeute); Das neu-eröffnete Orchestre, 159. In Bach's immediate context the word is used unambiguously in the former sense, and his continued use of the same meaning is confirmed by its time-honoured association with the verb bestellen (most commonly ‘to appoint’ or ‘to set in order’). Thomas Selle and Johann Gottfried Walther employ the two words in the same way; see Rifkin, ‘Bach's Choral Ideal’ (2002), 21–22. Beer (?1690s), in similar vein, writes: ‘In Halle war die Capell sehr stark bestellt.’ Johann Beer: Sein Leben, von ihm selbst erzählt, ed. Adolf Schmiedecke (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1965), 22. In discussing his Hamburg ‘Chor’ (used here in the broader sense of a complete vocal–instrumental body), Telemann adopts the same usage as Bach: the vacant place of a deceased wind player should be filled by a violinist, otherwise ‘der Chor für unsere neuere Music [wäre] viel zu schwach bestellet’; Georg Philipp Telemann: Briefwechsel, ed. Hans Grosse and Hans Rudolph Jung (Leipzig: VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, 1972), 32. Mattheson's admiring reference to Handel's ‘Chor, von mehr als hundert ausgesuchten Personen’ on the occasion of the 1727 coronation in London is mistakenly used by Günther Wagner to imply ‘more than a hundred’ singers, when in fact it refers to the entire ensemble; ‘Die Chorbesetzung bei J. S. Bach und ihre Vorgeschichte: Anmerkungen zur “hinlänglichen” Besetzung im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert’, Archiv für Musikwissenschaft 43/4 (1986), 286. Compare Donald Burrows, Handel and the English Chapel Royal (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 258–259 and 274–279.

86 ‘However, all these petitions [from Kuhnau, Gerlach and Bach] are better seen as skillful devices of politically resourceful musicians to extract funds from reluctant councilors’. Tanya Kevorkian, ‘Changing Times, Changing Music: “New Church” Music and Musicians in Leipzig, 1699–1750’, in The Musician as Entrepreneur, 1700–1914, ed. William Weber (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004), 77.

87 Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, volume 2, 362.

88 Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, volume 2, 362.

89 See Dürr, The Cantatas of J. S. Bach, 709.

90 It is curious how often the composer of the Mass in B minor is thought to have been inept in matters of simple arithmetic. The total of ‘at least eighteen persons for the instrumental group’ specified in the ‘Entwurff’ makes perfect sense when it is recognized that the optional third players on violins 1 and 2 and the two allocated to a seldom needed viola 2 part are in effect the same players, as Bach's subsequent tables of players and vacancies confirm (EBC, 168); see Ulrich Siegele, ‘Bachs Endzweck einer regulierten und “Entwurf einer wohlbestallten Kirchenmusik”’, in Festschrift Georg von Dadelsen zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Thomas Kohlhase and Volker Scherliess (Neuhausen and Stuttgart: Hänssler, 1978). Similarly, his third oboe and second bassoon parts are extremely likely to have been covered by a single player. On the commonplace practice of such doubling see EBC, 14–15, and also Dieter Kirsch, Lexikon Würzburger Hofmusiker vom 16. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert (Wurzburg: Echter, 2002), 13 (and compare 14–15).

91 Bach qualifies his summa of ‘eighteen persons for the instrumental group’ with the words ‘at least’ (EBC, 167), evidently in order to take account of the occasional third oboe and second bassoon, which, though listed, are not included in his total. Moreover, he proceeds directly to mention the further possible addition of a pair of recorders or flutes (which Taruskin supplements with his own ‘etc.’), thus making not ‘twenty at least’ but ‘twenty instrumentalists in all’ (my italics). In other words, Bach's earlier qualification most obviously allows just for those wind instruments that are not part of the core ensemble of eighteen; it does not imply any interest in a larger string section, nor is this hinted at elsewhere in the document.

92 See EBC, 117.

93 Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, volume 2, 363, note 17, where he cites Rifkin, ‘Bach's Chorus: A Preliminary Report’, adding ‘the controversy over this article has lasted more than twenty years and generated a sizeable literature of books, articles and manifestoes’.

94 See Donald Burrows, Handel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 297–298.

95 See Stockigt, Jan Dismas Zelenka, 238. (Trumpets are listed separately on page 75.)

96 Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, volume 2, 363.

97 ‘Zur Einrichtung einer Compendiosesten Hoff-Capell oder Kirchen Musique werden erfordert …’; Kirsch, Lexikon Würzburger Hofmusiker vom 16. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert, 13 (compare 14–15). See also Lorenz Christoph Mizler's lists in the Neu eröffnete musikalische Bibliothek, oder Gründliche Nachricht nebst unpartheyischem Urtheil von musikalischen Schriften und Büchern (Leipzig), volumes 3/1 (1746) and 4/1 (1752).

98 Mattheson, Der musicalische Patriot (Hamburg, 1728; reprint Leipzig: Zentralantiquariat der DDR, 1975), 64. See EBC, 118, and Rifkin, ‘Bach's Choral Ideal’ (2002), 34.

99 ‘In Republicken läßt sie sich eher vergrössern, als an Höfen, wenn man was darauf wenden will’. Mattheson, Der musicalische Patriot, 64.

100 Peter Williams, J. S. Bach: A Life in Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 273.

101 Rifkin, ‘Bach's Chorus’, 750; compare EBC, 97–98.

102 See EBC, 118.

103 See EBC, 96.

104 Johann Christoph Pez in 1714, cited in Samantha Owens, ‘Professional Women Musicians in Early Eighteenth-Century Württemberg’, Music & Letters 82/1 (2001), 33 (see also 32). By 1717 there were ten singers (36).

105 See Joshua Rifkin, ‘Bassoons, Violins and Voices: A Response to Ton Koopman’ (Observation), Early Music 25/2 (1997), 306–307.

106 See Joshua Rifkin, ‘Zelenkas Chor: Der Blick von 1725’, 242.

107 EBC, 104–111. Despite the reasonably clear stipulation at Leipzig in 1723 that ‘none apart from Inquilini [boarders] … be admitted to the first Cantorey’ (EBC, 105), there remains an apparent desire amongst scholars to enlist externi posthumously to its ranks; see Peter Williams, J. S. Bach: A Life in Music, 272.

108 Owens, ‘Professional Women Musicians in Early Eighteenth-Century Württemberg’, 36–37.

109 Franz Benda [, Autobiography,] (Potsdam, 1763), cited in Stockigt, Jan Dismas Zelenka, 69. For precedents in Dresden see Mary E. Frandsen, Crossing Confessional Boundaries: The Patronage of Italian Sacred Music in Seventeenth-Century Dresden (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 444.

110 See EBC, 13–15 and 98.

111 Reginald Sanders, ‘Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach's Ensemble for Liturgical Performances at the Hamburg Principal Churches’, Hamburger Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft 18 (2001), 394–395. In an appended ‘Verzeichnis der Chorknaben’, setting out in colourful detail the boys' characters, behaviour, absences and payments, there is no information of any musical nature, while the usual two Discantisten who sang concerted music are accounted for separately.

112 See EBC, 103–115.

113 Christoph Wolff, ‘Bach's Chorus: Stomach Aches May Disappear’ (Letter), Early Music 26/3 (1998), 540.

114 See EBC, 34.

115 See most recently, for example, Uwe Wolf, ‘Von der Hofkapelle zur Kantorei’, 181–191. See also Rifkin's response in ‘Bach's Chorus: Some New Parts, Some New Questions’, 576–577.

116 EBC, 128 (Table 9); I have removed the two ambiguous Jena examples from consideration here.

117 Janice B. Stockigt, ‘Consideration of Bach's Kyrie e Gloria BWV232^I within the Context of Dresden Catholic Mass Settings, 1729–1733’, paper delivered at the international symposium Understanding Bach's B-minor Mass (The Queen's University of Belfast, 2007), Discussion Book I, 75–76.

118 EBC, 128 (Table 10); I have taken account of an estimate for bwv22 based on eight singers, rather than just four.