When a student conductor starts to rehearse a choral/ orchestral work of J.S. Bach by announcing “we’ll skip the introduction and begin at measure . . . (where the chorus comes in),” I wince. Although this decision is pragmatic (the accompanist rarely needs to practice his/her part), eliminating the introduction is a false economy. By so doing, we overlook that element of the composition that is most critical to our understanding of the piece and, ultimately, to the choir’s ability to perform the work intelligently-the ritornello. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the enormous help that a clear understanding of this “introduction” affords choir and conductor.
Literally, the ritornello introduces not just the choral entrance, but the substance of the composition. As Christoph Wolff puts it:
The ritornello … establishes order by setting up a fixed organizational scheme with the proper sequence of musical ideas . . . their systematic connection, their correlation, and finally, their logical succession.
The ritornello is to Baroque concerted music what the exposition is to the later sonata form: the orderly presentation of the ideas that comprise the basis of the composition.
Bach first encountered this principle of composition in the music of Antonio Vivaldi, to which he was introduced by his cousin Johann Gottfried Walther during his tenure at the Weimar Court (1708-17). Bach and Walther frequently engaged in a friendly competition, involving the transcription of concertos by Vivaldi and others for keyboard. Through this process, Bach learned Vivaldi’s unique concepts of musical structure; he even admits that Vivaldi’s works “taught him how to think musically.”
Concerto composition provided an ideal vehicle for exploring and developing ways of “musical thinking,” … The concerto as a musical genre or form was a secondary consideration, and the same was true of counterpoint, thematic invention and other technical aspects of composition, including even word-tone relationships in vocal works.
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