Dawn -- and the dreadful drilling machine.
The prelude of that partita is like a brass bed--all knobs. Can't seem to smooth it out. Perhaps I can blame it on this cold I've caught. Or the fumes from the dreadful machine.
This prelude is the famous example of Bach's having written out double-dotted rhythm, without double dots, but rather with ties and rests. Neumann's argument, with which I agree, for the most part, is that because Bach can clearly write this rhythm when he wants to, we have no business assuming he wants double-dotted rhythm when he has not written it. But the whole world, it seems, has embraced double-dotting, at least for the time being. So often to do so makes a terrible hash of what should be a clear rhythmic combination of sixteenths and thirty-seconds, such as in the G minor prelude, WTC II.
Hi Alison, I like your blog! It never occurred to me that the rests and ties in the French Ouverture are a way to express double dotted rhythms, but it makes perfect sense. I took out my score and checked what I did when I played it, and of course I did it "wrong". I think you should play it the way you feel is right, no matter what anyone else does. There is a lot of disagreement on the double dotted rhythms anyway.
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