Biffi, Bach, and the Violin Sonata in E Minor BWV 1023

Abstract: A fragmentary copy of an Italian cantata in the hand of J. S. Bach raises intriguing questions about the latter’s performing practices, his familiarity with contemporaneous musical fashions outside Germany, and his compositional evolution during a crucial period of his development as a composer. It also may shed light on the attributions of a number of chamber compositions of uncertain authorship. Bach’s manuscript copy of Amante moribondo by the Venetian composer Antonio Biffi (1666/7–1733) consists of a recitative and the opening section of an aria; it has no known concordances. Its basso continuo part includes unusually detailed bass figuring that constitutes, in effect, Bach’s arrangement of Biffi’s composition. Bach added the greatest number of figures in the concluding section of the recitative, where the figured bass dictates the contrapuntal elaboration of what was already a quasi-fugal arioso setting of the moralizing final verse. Bach’s initial copying of the manuscript has been dated to the period around 1708, the figures and other additions having been added several years later. Musical parallels to Bach’s own compositions from the same period have been identified; the present offering finds additional relationships to works of Bach, who might have been attracted to Biffi’s cantata not only by the chromatic harmony of the imitative passage, but also by its anonymous text, which presents a secular version of a favorite Lutheran trope. Although the manuscript is unique among Bach sources, the tablature-like bass figuration has parallels in French and German pedagogic writings of the period on figured bass realization. Bach’s figures, however, prescribe a complex accompaniment that incorporates independent contrapuntal lines. This raises the question of whether the copy represented actual performance practice as opposed to serving as a theoretical or pedagogic exercise. Younger contemporaries of Bach would discourage the type of realization implied by his figures here. But the presence of comparable indications in later works by Bach suggests that his bass figuration in the Biffi fragment represents a type of realization employed by the composer, beginning at the latest during his Weimar years (1708–1717). The Biffi fragment also provides new perspectives on certain chamber compositions from the periphery of the Bach tradition, including the cantata Amore traditori BWV 203 and several works of uncertain authorship for violin and continuo. Among the latter are the Violin Sonata in E Minor BWV 1023, the Violin Sonata in C Minor BWV 1024, and the Fugue in G Minor for Violin and Harpsichord BWV 1026, as well as related compositions from the circle of Johann Georg Pisendel (1687–1755). Drawing on writings by Joshua Rifkin, as well as recent research on the provenance of relevant sources from the circles of both Bach and Pisendel, the article considers possibilities for the authorship of a number of these works. It is accompanied by a complete transcription and realization of the Biffi fragment.