Sketch for recitativo ‚Am Abend aber kam er‘ (Boysen)

Part 1 of this article

My completion from 2010/11

The ability to compose in different baroque styles belonged to the set of tools of an 18th century “Capellmeister”. This ability has big influence on the persuasive power and therefore the quality of the performance of baroque music. As a director of a baroque orchestra, I find it indispensable to be able to compose baroque music to understand the musical language of the different styles in baroque music. During the last twenty years I have thoroughly studied treatises and other sources about composition, rhetoric and performance practice from the 17th and 18th century. My compositions are liked by musicians and audiences and regularly performed.
For my completion of the St Mark Passion, I proceeded on the assumption that the movements reconstructed by Hellmann are the best possible result from the parody theory.
Amongst these movements, Hellmann used material from the Christmas Oratorio which Bach might have been using for the Crucify-choirs.
Though it was common to parody music for poems which share the same metre, composers in Bach’s time would not reuse music composed for recitatives in prose. It would be utterly ineffective to adapt the music of similar recitatives to make it fit to another text instead of writing new recitatives. Therefore, I composed new music for the rest of the libretto. For the necessary research I teamed up with Dr. Martin Küster (Ithaca/Berlin), who is specialized in historical music theory of the 18th century, the musical declamation in particular. We discovered new insights in the theory of composing recitatives in the first half of the 18th century which I taken in account during my work.

In April 2011 the first performances of my completion of Bach's St Mark Passion took place in the Netherlands under my direction. Further performances in the Netherlands, Germany and Russia followed in the years after. The reactions were very positive; colleagues and scholars were impressed by the result, unable to distinguish Boysen's compositions from Bach's own music. They appreciated my sense of style and the convincing effect of his work on the audience. The North German Radio (NDR) paid attention to this completion and produced a radio documentary about it. The press commented: “Jörn Boysen's completion, based on Picander's text, finally offers a convincing alternative, especially to previous versions. But actually it is a serious alternative to the often performed Passion settings according to St John and St Matthew by Bach himself.”
(Kieler Nachrichten, 13.3.2012).

You can listen to a performance of the completion here on Steemit

Jörn Boysen, revised in March 2018

Running an ensemble is a rewarding but time consuming job. Chasing after grants and sponsorship is the often overlooked but important aspect of a musician's life. If our post has passed the reward period, please consider a donation or a delegation. We also accept tokens of support at the following addresses:

BTC
1Mwe6XaDcREa7o5RSLGoWfk9wSwGs6LkSA
LTC
LPcEtTsxMJykDeK713jsj3e2BsdVf32ix7
ETH
0x1bb1d830f66bdb74de45685a851c42b790587a52
Doge
DMJNS7jbNCgPdFdxgeFdEummFMmSQvAoK2
Musicoin
0x9c1fc741f0869115f8c683dc6967131ab1c40ebc

Smartcash tips accepted!

Our Musicoin artist page

Thanks for you support!

The classical music community at #classical-music and Discord.
Follow our community accounts @classical-music and @classical-radio.
Follow our curation trail (classical-radio) at SteemAuto
Community Logo by ivan.atman