For this week’s probe, I’ve decided to look at the printed manuscript of Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Six Sonatas and Partitas for Violin Solo,” written around 1720. One main contributing factor to its “messiness” is that nobody really knows when these pieces were composed, and there is little detailed information given on the manuscripts. The incomprehensibility of this work has resulted in each musical interpretation being different, from the first full recording in the 1930s, to live performances of the music today.

John Law first tells us to acknowledge the messiness of knowing. Ok – so I’ve accepted the fact that Bach didn’t really tell me how to play these pieces, and teachers and books have told me I can do what I want with them. But, this makes me question my role as a performer. Am I to be the link between the music and the composer, which would make the written music simply a vehicle for this transmission of ideas? Or, am I to interpret the music as I feel fit, not considering how the composer may have wanted it played?

With regards to the Actor-Network Theory (ANT), this manuscript is a perfect example of how the material affects the social. Law explains heterogeneous networks as ways of suggesting that society, organizations, agents and machines are all effects generated in patterned networks of diverse (not simply human) materials (Law 1992, 380). So, if our interactions within different networks are mediated through human or nonhuman objects, this book of printed music plays an important role in how one acts and behaves within the network. In this case, since Bach died in 1770 and I want to play his music today, in 2013, it is a network of both humans and objects that provides communication between a violinist today and Bach.

Iron Gall Ink

It all began with iron gall ink on large manuscript around 1720 (the same ink used by da Vinci, Van Gogh, and to write the US Constitution), to its first publication in 1843, and finally to the modern editions that can be found on the internet today. Within those objects are countless people who made decisions in the early editions: whether to change or add things, what size paper to print on, the overall look of the music, and then there are the performers who affect personal taste preferences in more modern editions. Perhaps an editor really loves one violinist’s version of Bach, and subsequently prints all of their fingerings, bowings and dynamics into their edition. Is it biased? Yes. But, are other editions also biased? Yes. Are the “original” manuscripts that were found in Saint Petersburg sixty-five years after Bach’s death biased? Perhaps. It is unknown if they are even originals, or if his wife may have made copies. From ink on a manuscript, through various forms of printing presses, to being able to find the sheet music through Google today, one can access countless formats of what machines and humans have contributed to the heterogenic patterning of the social. This has quickly turned into a huge network! What a mess.

Modern version and hand-written “original” manuscript

Now, things just continue to get messier the more I think about the lack of clarity in my probe object. In his article Thick Description, Clifford Geertz states that “the more deeply [your research] goes, the less complete it is.” This is a scary statement to come to terms with, especially since each of us is about to live with our research topic for at least the next several years. When we finally finish our dissertations, we are likely not going to feel a sense of completeness from what we just accomplished. I am sure we will all have questions and unknowns at the end of the process. The areas we have chosen to research are all messy in their own ways, and Law reassures (me, at least) that vague research is not necessarily “bad” research.

Towards the end of his article, Law describes how “some materials are more durable than others” (1992, 387), eventually saying that by performing these relations and materials, they may last longer. Printed music is meant to be embodied – no two violinists will approach the compositions in the same way (Affelder), and therefore the network and actors are continually changing and evolving over time, just as knowledge is as he explains in Making a Mess with Method.

As an example, let’s take a live recording of Gidon Kremer: Gidon Kremer – Bach. This is the third movement from the last partita of the set of six works. We don’t know whether Kremer is performing only one of the six works, or if he is in the process of playing them as a set, as scholars believe Bach intended them to be performed (Fulkerson). Judging by the sweat on Kremer’s face, it looks as if he’s been playing for awhile, which leads me to believe he has just played the five other sonatas and partitas that precede this one (which would take about two hours).

What objects and people make up this social network? There are many actors, such as the choice of edition from which Kremer learned the music, the teacher who once coached him through learning the music years prior, the audience watching this particular performance, or the tempo at which he has chosen to play the piece. But, connected to each of those actors are other networks as well. Each audience member comes in with different expectations of what they’re about to hear. Some of them will have listened to multiple versions and know their preferences, while others will be hearing it for the first time. Does Kremer take into consideration for whom he is playing? Would he perform the piece differently if he knew a particular person was in the audience? All of these factors contribute to the social network at that particular time. As a complete contrast, here’s another example of the same piece played by Gil Shaham – Bach – notice how different the tempo, volume and overall approach is compared to the first clip.

Law describes ANT as a claim that “people are who they are because they are a patterned network of heterogeneous materials” (Law 1992, 383). He goes on to explain that actors are also networks, for example, Law uses as an analogy, a machine that has various parts and roles within it. Back to my example: this would make the printed music an actor as well as a network, and if it is a network acting as one unit, it can disguise itself as a black box of sorts. One can look closely into the networks that are hidden from view (for example, the processes of transformation from hand-written manuscript to computer-processed sheet music), or they could choose to view the object as a single actor as part of a larger network.

Just like the YouTube videos: one could see it strictly as a performance playing an actor role in a social network, or one could dig deeper into the networks that make up and surround the actual performance.

This is still all very messy.

To try and sum up the mess and vagueness, I will discuss knowledge and the various forms in which it can be found. When I hold this book of music in my hand, I know what an important body of musical work it is. The weight and number of pages inside is daunting, but it gets worse when you open it up. One has the choice to either read from the edited version of the “original” manuscript, or to try and read off of the shrunken version of the “original” manuscript. There is a great deal of collaborative knowledge that went into the printing of this edition, which I now know makes things even messier because Law explains that collaborative research is messy because you never fully know what your collaborator(s) know. If I choose to read the edited version, I am consciously playing it the way that the editor (in this case, Galamian), wants me to play. But, I am unaware of what his knowledge was at the time of putting his ideas onto the music. I believe that Galamian’s way of dealing with the messiness of the situation was to include Bach’s manuscripts at the back of the book. It still appears that there is a precise system to it, but one is able to see into the messiness if they so desire. I haven’t even gotten into the argument of performance practice and whether or not Bach’s music should be played on modern instruments, or violins from the period from which the music was composed. That is another pile of mess altogether.

Music is truly a moving target. There will be future editions, and people will continue to learn from past editions. All of these are affected by live performance and recordings, which change along with the trends and what the style at the time of editing is. This shape-shifting reality, as Law puts it, makes it extremely difficult to study and document since it is so heterogeneous and widespread.

On grant applications, I will do my best to present a precise and clear description of my research, but for now and at least for the next few years, I will continue to struggle with the vague and imprecise nature of social sciences research.

Works Cited

Bach, Johann Sebastian. “6 Sonatas and Partitas for Violin Solo.” Edited by Ivan Galamian, foreword by Paul Affelder. New York: International Music Company.

Fulkerson, Gergory. “Unaccompanied Sonatas and Partitas 
of Johann Sebastian Bach.” Sheila’s Corner, 2000. Accessed 11 September, 2013. http://www.sheilascorner.com/bach.html

Geertz, Clifford. “Thick Description.” The Interpretation of cultures; selected essays. New York: Basic Books, 1973.

Law, John. “Notes on the Theory of the Actor Network: Ordering, Strategy and Heterogeneity,” Lancaster: The Centre for Science Studies, Lancaster University, 1999. Revised 2003. http://www.heterogeneities.net/publications/Law1992NotesOnTheTheoryOfTheActor-Network.pdf

__. “Making a Mess with Method.” Lancaster: The Centre for Science Studies, Lancaster University, 2003. http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/sociology/papers/Law-Making-a-mess-with-Method.pdf

Vittes, Laurence. “Titans Talk about the Bach Solo Violin Works.” All Things Strings, January 2007. http://www.allthingsstrings.com/News/Interviews-Profiles/Titans-Talk-about-the-Bach-Solo-Violin-Works/