Hearing Bach’s Passions. Daniel R. Melamed. Oxford: Oxford University Press.2005. 178. £14.99. hb. 0-19-516933-6.

The famous composers have suffered posthumously from much myth-making abouttheir lives, their thoughts and their music. Daniel R. Melamed believes that ourunderstanding of Bach’s Passions today is so different from that of the eighteenthcentury that we hear different works from Bach’s own listeners. In this shortmonograph he attempts to close some of the distance between our time and Bach’s, to‘get a little closer to Bach and to his music as it was presented in his lifetime, whichseems essential if we wish to explore what his passion music means and how we mightunderstand it’ (p.134).

To this end Melamed begins by defamiliarising the Passions, presenting a long list offactors which were different in Bach’s day. This includes everything from the numberof performers to how they were positioned, the spaces in which the music was heard,the dialect of German spoken by Bach’s performers, the musical and theologicalexpectations of Bach’s listeners, and the liturgical context in which the works wereperformed. He then delineates what we know of some of these factors in Bach’s day,notably what we can gather about Bach’s performing forces and their disposition.There is a wealth of scholarship on the Passions, and Melamed draws much of ittogether with admirable concision, creating an excellent resource for anyoneinterested in the history of those works. As a bonus, Melamed includes twofascinating chapters on the lost St Mark and apocryphal St Luke Passion.

One small irritation is the lack of clear referencing. Melamed or his publisherschose not to use footnotes, instead presenting a list of sources and further reading foreach chapter at the end of the book. This means that Melamed at times appears to bespeaking ex cathedra, and the controversial nature of some of his arguments fails tocome across. For instance, he is a believer in the theory, first posited by Joshua Rifkinin 1981, that Bach expected his church music to be sung by an ensemble of soloists(‘concertists’), with occasional reinforcement from a less expert, and equally small,group of singers (‘ripienists’). Melamed develops this argument with a brilliantly cleardescription of the ‘engineering’ of the vocal parts. Yet, while Rifkin and Melamed areprobably correct, the theory is not universally accepted among Bach scholars today,something the reader would have to search hard in Melamed’s text and references todiscover.

Another controversial aspect of Melamed’s argument is his very idea that it ispossible to get closer to Bach by historically informed performance. This cherishedmyth of historical musicology was exploded a good while back. A more reasonableformulation to defend is that historical study increases the range of options we havefor performing and hearing early music, but that our reasons for preferring, say, asmall ensemble performing Bach over a large choir owe more to our own aestheticpreferences (a modernist liking for fast tempi and light textures, to follow RichardTaruskin) than to much that we can demonstrate about Bach’s. Even if we performthe Passions following to the letter everything we think we know about how Bachperformed the work, there will still be so many unknowable variables that it will beimpossible to decide whether we are much closer to the eighteenth century than amore traditional performance of Bach, as claimed. This does not negate the value ofresearch into historical performance, but it does mean that we should be careful aboutthe weight we give to our findings in making claims to understand the music.Melamed sets up a dubious structure by firstly denying that there exists a fundamental

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essence to the Passions – our hearing is so different that we hear different works – thenconcluding that by research into historical performance practice we can recapturesuch an essence to assist our understanding (‘we can take a few steps outside ourtwenty-first-century perspective and toward this music that continues to speak to ustoday’, p.134).

In recommending this book, then, I would merely add the reservation that some ofMelamed’s conclusions about how Bach did things are more contingent and lessweighty than they might appear. But as a compendium of historical scholarship onBach’s Passions it will prove extremely valuable both to musicologists and to Bachlovers more widely.

Rebecca LloydKing’s College, London

Œuvres complètes de Voltaire. Vol.30C: Œuvres de 1746-1748 (III). Edited by JanetGodden et al. Oxford: Voltaire Foundation. 2004. xx + 377. 5 illus. £95. hb. 0-7294-0828-0.

Volume 30c of the Œuvres complètes de Voltaire, prefaced by Janet Godden, is the thirdpart of the writings dating from the years 1746-1748. In 1745 and 1746 Voltaire wasappointed at court as historiographe du roi and gentilhomme ordinaire de la chambre duroi, recognitions that he had long and ardently desired. By 1747, however, Voltairewas disappointed by the coldness of the king; his exasperation with the court finds itsoutlet in Zadig (volume 30b). Moreover, in this period, Voltaire invested much energyin the Walther edition, the first authorised edition of his writings since the Bousquetedition of 1742.

The works contained in this volume spring from different sources of Voltaire’sinspiration. The composition of the Saggio intorno ai cambiamenti avvenuti su’l globodella terra (An Essay on Changes that Have Occurred in the Globe) seems to have beenlinked to his election to the Académie française, which induced him to seek academicconnections all over Europe and especially in Italy; Jean Mayer’s introductionhighlights the fact that for Voltaire the history of the Earth was a pretext to doubtthe Universal Flood; Mayer also compares the Italian version and the French one.However, we regret the absence of a more detailed study of Voltaire’s Italian, toohastily mentioned here.

The journey to England in the years 1726-1728 seems to be the source ofDe Cromwell, although, as Mark Waddicor notices in his introduction, Voltaire’scorrespondence bears no trace of its composition. Waddicor advances the hypothesisthat this was a by-product of Voltaire’s research for Le Siècle de Louis XIV and the Essaisur les mœurs. By contrast, the five texts that follow belong to Voltaire’s activity asroyal historiographer. The introduction by Marc Serge Rivière to the Anecdotes surLouis XIV carefully lists the sources of the work, oral and written, and attributes aprominent role to the Journal de Dangeau. The author also traces out a useful profile ofthe genre of Anecdotes in France. To Ralph A. Nablow we owe the introductions to theLettre à son altesse sérénissime madame la duchesse du Maine, sur la victoire remportée parle roi à Laufelt and to the Eloge funèbre des officiers qui sont morts dans la guerre de 1741.The author notes that the cold reception of the first of these works is to be attributedto the lack of ornatus due to the writing of the history in verse. The second work,

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