Bach's French overtures and the politics of overdotting

Abstract

M ORE than 20 years ago, back when questions about the performance of Baroque music were easier to answer, the opening movement of Bach's 'Overture in the French Manner' lent authority to both sides of a contentious debate. At issue was the realization of rhythm in French overtures. Privileging the familiar, engraved version of the ouverture proper (ex.1) over an earlier version of the same work from the hand of Anna Magdalena Bach (ex.2), Michael Collins maintained that the characteristic dotted rhythms of French overtures should be sharpened in performance. Bach's B minor overture, according to this (mainstream) view, is simply more explicit; the C minor version reflects an older, less precise way of notating the same rhythms. Making an equally strong case for a more-or-less literal reading of both, Frederick Neumann countered that Bach changed his mind about French overture style, not just about its notation.' If only the composer himself had been available for a personal consultation. Old J. S. B. might have resolved, once and for all, the long-standing controversy over the systematic lengthening of dotted and tied notes and the corresponding shortening of upbeats in (at least his) French overtures. As it happened however, his twin overtures simply added fuel to the fire.2 More recently, in a monograph on notes inegales and overdotting, Stephen Hefling coolly observes that 'in the case of ... Bwv831, [Bach] apparently took the trouble to notate the performance mannerism of overdotting before sending the work to press.'3 This much is clear. But did Bach, in making these revisions, simply refine imprecise notation, or did he specify new rhythms? In a new book on Bach's keyboard works David Schulenberg proposes that Bach did both: some of the changes are real and others only cosmetic; the revised rhythms of the first several bars lend a 'more vehement motion' to the beginning, while the small changes in other upbeat figures (the ends of bars 5, 7, 8, to and elsewhere) improve passages in parallel motion that no intelligent musician would perform as written.4 While Schulenberg's very sensible reading gets no argument here, I return to what is surely Bach's most infamous overture for a couple of reasons: first, because its two versions epitomize (as we shall see) two fundamentally different styles of French overtures; second, because the debate over French Baroque performance style, as my title implies, was about more than just rhythm. Ironically, the first part of this article, though it supports Neumann's otherwise lonely position, will raise few hackles; there is abundant evidence that Bach changed his mind about French rhythmic style tout court. As for the second, I should perhaps say at the outset that this inquiry into the 'politics' of overdotting concerns ideology and aesthetics more than practice.