BACH: 8 SONATAS FOR DIVERSE INSTRUMENTS - The Aulos Ensemble

Bach 8 Sonatas Aulos Ensemble Liner Notes

The Aulos people have the instruments and they have the techniques (as they believe them to be). They, to coin a phrase, go for baroque. They, as the notes to one of their earlier records say, have "been spreading the word.'' So if you want your Bach as Bach supposedly heard it, here 'tis (sort of: see below). (If you want to duplicate the con­ditions under which Bach heard it, turn off your central heating, your water, and your electricity for starters.) But wait a mo'! I have sensed from the testiness of certain reviewers that Authenticity is beginning to run dry in some quarters. Now here comes Taruskin suggesting that something is missing. Getting as close as is possible to what the composer intended has its drawbacks. It turns the music into museum pieces--impeccably restored, beautifully mounted, cleaned to a luster, but museum pieces all the same. Bach was less respectful of his own work "Individual movements slipped in and out of conjunction; media were interchangeable and adaptable (even vocal to instrumental and vice versa); masses paraphrased cantatas and oratorios parodied bawdy ditties ... .It becomes clear that the status of a piece of written music was by no means as definitive in Bach's day as it is in ours." Do you sense where this is leading?