# Ovpp



## MagneticGhost (Apr 7, 2013)

I was listening to Andrew Parrott's performance of Bach's Mass in B Minor where he only uses One voice per part recently. The result is a much more low key intimate affair. Worth listening to but I think I prefer my Bach with massed forces.
Does anyone here have any info links etc to the origins of this type of performance. There is only one paragraph on wiki. 
Anyone here think it's the way forward for Bach?
Anyone with any thoughts at all.


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## ptr (Jan 22, 2013)

I first heard this way of singing Bach with *Joshua Rifkin* recordings of some Cantatas on Nonesuch & Decca in the 80's. I don't think it is "the" way ahead, but it is "one" way ahead. The sections *Rifkin and Bach* in his Wiki-Article gives some clues!

Personally I think that Rifkin's sets of Bach Cantatas are slightly barren, Minkowski, McCreesh and Pierlot has succeeded better in this approach (but are later disciples of JR).

/ptr


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## MagneticGhost (Apr 7, 2013)

Thanks for that ptr. Couldn't find that on wiki when I looked. 

It's certainly an interesting approach. Has completely passed me by up to recently.
Even my authentic music officianado friend never mentioned it.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

I prefer small choir to either massed choir or one voice per part. It brings out the polyphony without sounding like a motet, which I'm not sure is the effect Bach would have wanted if he had been able to choose!


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## quack (Oct 13, 2011)

You can find lots of fragmented details about OVPP here http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Topics/OVPP1.htm and here's an essay http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Articles/OVPPControversy.pdf‎

It was part of the general HIP movement but only proposed by Rifkin in 1981 so it is still a relatively young and controversial idea. Rifkin's ideas were dismissively called "madrigal Bach" as it connected Bach backwards towards the older, renaissance forms rather than forward to the larger scale classical and romantic era forces. In a similar way that Handel's _Messiah_ was regarded as a grand musical statement that required bigger and bigger forces to do justice to it, Bach's reputation meant that only an epic scope _Mass_ was seen as correct. It is another of these controversies that can probably never be resolved, trying to guess exactly what Bach would of wanted is probably futile anyway as he most likely used what was at his disposal, rather than his ideal.

The Mass in B minor has for some reason never been my favourite work, despite my loving his cantatas, but Rifkin's version is definitely the one I prefer. It is still not the standard style of Bach interpretation, it is used sporadically such as Koopman using it is some of his cantata cycle but not in the majority. Kuijken's cantata cycle is another OVPP interpretation and one of my favourite, highly recommended. I think it is simply one of a number of interpretive styles, no more or less wrong than any other, I welcome the variety rather than the correctness.


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