Ornamentation in Recent Recordings of J.S. Bach’s Solo Sonatas and Partitas for Violin

Authors

  • Dorottya Fabian University of New South Wales Author

Keywords:

baroque music, HIP, J.S. Bach, violin

Abstract

The performance of baroque music changed enormously over the course of the twentieth century. Its history is well documented on sound recordings, and parallels the development of the so-called early music movement that has more recently been referred to as historically informed performance or HIP. Whether or not this style of performing has actual historical verisimilitude is not a concern here. What matters for the current investigation is the fact that, throughout this time, musicians dedicated to playing baroque music according to their understanding of historical sources have established many stylistic conventions that are now associated with HIP. 

Author Biography

  • Dorottya Fabian, University of New South Wales

    Dorottya Fabian is an Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. Her research is focused on the history of performing Western classical music as evidenced on sound recordings. She analyses changes in technique and interpretation in recorded performances of European concert music from the 18th- and 19th-centuries, in particular the compositions of J.S. Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin and Schumann. She published extensively on 20th-century Bach performance. She is currently on a book on the art of contemporary violinists, and editing a book on expressiveness in music performance, and writing a monograph on recent trends in recorded performances of Bach's works for solo violin. As a member of the Empirical Musicology Group at UNSW she is involved in quantitative music research combining experimental studies of music perception with software-assisted analysis of audio files. She is also interested in dramaturgy and the study of opera, and composition and performance in Central-Eastern Europe (e.g. Bartók). 

Downloads

Published

2025-01-23

Issue

Vol. 11 No. 2 (2013)

Section

Articles