t was in the late-1950s when David Stancliffe – a future bishop of Salisbury, but then still a schoolboy – was caught breaking into the organ loft in St Martin’s, Ludgate Hill to play the organ by the organ-builder himself, Noel Mander. But Mander wasn’t cross. He approved his means of entry – which left no traces – and put David and his bike in the back of his Volvo and drove him straight off to look around his organ works in Bethnal Green.
So began a lifetime’s involvement with historic organs and period instruments and, above all, with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach – and the furious debate, which has raged now for half a century, about what that music sounded like to him and his eighteenth-century contemporaries.
Since leaving Salisbury in 2010, David has devoted his energies to conducting every one of those Bach vocal works he never had the chance to perform before. That makes this book not just an inspirational guide to the debate, it is also a comprehensive companion to Bach’s sacred vocal works and how to perform them, by an enthusiast and expert who has himself wrestled with practical issues like where performers should stand and how many there should be.
David Stancliffe, the former bishop of Salisbury, is now more of a jobbing musician – but for more than 50 years now, he has pioneered new approaches to performing Bach’s music as it would have been heard originally in late sixteenth and early seventeenth century Germany. This book (subtitle: ‘What have we learned over the past 50 years, and how has has our performance practice changed?’) sets out the background to his investigations and where he has reached.
PRAISE FOR THE BOOK …
“David Stancliffe peels Bach with an almost unrivalled combination of musical and theological experience. He looks forward to Bach from the practices of his predecessors as well as backwards, from our own assumptions. And he mines his own developing practice throughout the last fifty years, together with many of the major new discoveries in Bach scholarship and performance..” John Butt, the doyen of Bach performers.
“How we perform Bach has changed radically in the last half century, and continues to change as we better understand the musical world he took for granted. David Stancliffe‘s fresh and challenging study opens all kinds of new possibilities for recovering what Bach was aiming to do. Combining the best of musicological scholarship with the experience of a seasoned practitioner, it will be a vital and welcome addition to the bookshelf of any musician or musical enthusiast...” Rowan Williams (Lord Williams of Oystermouth), former Archbishop of Canterbury. now Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge.
“David Stancliffe writes from long practical experience performing Bach’s vocal music. In his hands one can always feel confident that HIP has not lost touch with the spiritual purpose of the music…” Bill Hunt, a founder member of the established viol consort Fretwork.
£12.99
