Well, I’ve definitely learned something today and I’m grateful to see the manuscript. It’s been years since I’ve studied Bach’s chart and I didn’t remember this since my editions don’t use these markings. I suppose it should be a formal FR to have these markings added if they stem directly from Bach.
Thank you, DanMcL, for your interesting infos. The “double hook” apparantly is rather rare, but not within the JSB French Suites. I just counted 165 of them within the six suites. The fact that the Urtext Editions (Henle, Schott/Universal, Bärenreiter) use double hooks instead of appoggiaturas, without further explanations, indicates that they are not so unknown. I remeber my piano teacher told me to execute them as accented eights on the beat.
Romanos401, if we keep going on with the discussion about this little hook, maybe Daniel’s thread of patience breaks and he comes up with the good news: the next Bravura version will include the two double hooks, but STOP IT NOW!!! 
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Maybe hooks and the double hook were more familiar with previous generations of musicians. Music is interesting in that it’s a living practice for re-creating the past works, in addition to new. I’ve noticed that because of this that it seems knowledge can be lost without anybody realizing.
A fascinating example is to take a look at the ‘whole beat tempo’ movement, which I’ve become a convert of. Another I follow is the study of Partimento, which is a lost art of pedagogy to learning, practicing and creating music, that was lost with the advent of the ‘great’ European musical conservatories (I think they lost the essence of music here).
So maybe in the early twentieth century these were commonly understood notations that have since fallen off the back of the truck without anybody noticing.
It can certainly erode beyond recognition. This, it seems to me, is what happened with Gregorian plainchant. It is still a living tradition (I sang chant this morning at church, in fact), but now there are questions of interpretation relative to centuries-old manuscripts. We aren’t sure why certain neumes are used certain ways in various manuscripts; we can figure out the notes but not necessarily how they were inflected (at least not with absolute certainty). It’s all rather fascinating.
Check out the whole beat practice theory. I honestly think that over time we made a simple change with how we interpret a metronome beat, forgot how it was done before, and thus have been tortured with classical era music that is too fast and unplayable ever since.
On the other hand a lot has been done since the late 1970 years in musical research and instrument making that caused a whole new approach to old music. Music of the renaissance or the middle age hardly existed before, and when you compare baroque recordings of the sixties with historically informed perfomances from nowadays it is a whole new world. Even the gap from the first HIP recordings of Harnoncourt and Leonhardt to the highly specialised ensembles we have today, is huge. This is also the case with classical or romantic music played on reconstructed instruments.
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I am sorry; but I cannot take these suggestions of Beethoven performed at half speed seriously. There is a continuous and well-documented performance history for his works, with no break in continuity that suggests that such slow tempi were intended by Beethoven. With such tempi, the audience would be asleep or down the pub before the end of the first movement.
David
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Yes, the whole beat metronome thing has been widely debunked. If it was ever really bunked in the first place.
That having been said, a friend of mine was playing an organ piece by Kenneth Leighton when the man himself came into the cathedral.
“Lovely playing; but why are you doing it at that speed?”
“That’s what the metronome mark says.”
“Oh, I shouldn’t pay any attention to that.”
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There are plenty of examples of this. The French baritone Pierre Bernac had intimate knowledge of Francis Poulenc and his music, and the former’s book, ‘The Interpretation of French Song’ has plenty of references to the metronome markings in the editions of Poulenc’s music as being quite different from what he actually played. It’s the same with the works of Robert Schumann in the edition by Clara, whose metronome markings are quite different from his. I suspect that the differences aren’t only a matter of taste.
I’m also glad that the whole beat practice has been largely debunked, as it leads to interpretations which lack any kind of organic cohesiveness. Try singing the melody of a phrase in half tempo. If a trained professional has to breathe halfway, it’s likely the tempo is way off. Bringing up an enigmatic example of an impossibly fast metronome marking, like in the Hammerklavier Sonate, as supporting such a theory, can hardly be considered proof.
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Interesting discussion! If you read Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen there are a lot of them that must be designed.
Anyway many ornaments, even defined by Dorico, need some activity to make them play correctly. Personally I use an additional hidden staff and some muted note on the visible one.
It’s important that every occasion can be solved properly!
Debunked, without an explanation for why we have tempos that no human could play? Beethoven must have been a computer genius too in anticipating it would take a 21st century machine to play his music. Convention has no greater adherents than in music I think. Well this is all OT at any rate …
The acceptance of «authentic» metronome markings presumes a constant sense of time feeling over the times. Is our feeling of a fast tempo the same as Bach or Mozart would have felt it? Or even more so: do we have the same feeling for a certain tempo if it is played in a small room or in a big hall? Or when we’re in a stimulated or in a weary mood? What is the reason for a certain tempo? To express something in a special way, where the tempo is one of the components. I doubt this can be established with a metronome mark. They may give an idea of the tempo, like Allegro or Andante, but exact metronome markings for all times and circumstances seem problematic. It is striking, that most composers don’t give metronome marks for their works. I think Brahms was strictly against it.
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These are good points. I’ve heard Widor’s famous toccata played very fast in a dry room that was probably 40 clicks faster than the infamous recording of Widor playing it at 80+ years old in a room with 9 seconds of reverb. Weirdly, both interpretations work within their own context. I think ultimately musicians just need to make intelligent decisions in whatever situation they find themselves. As a composer, I’ve also learned that, at least to a certain extent, once you release a piece into the wild, you have to “let it go”. You have to allow people to make interpretations of it (they will whether you want them to or not) and just accept that there will be a certain degree of variability and this is ultimately OK and to be expected. It would be boring if everyone’s interpretations were the same anyway.
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Well said, Juerg! I’m reminded of a humorous anecdote of a friend and colleague of mine who plays clarinet. He woke up one morning and listened to a recording of a piece his orchestra was rehearsing. He found the performance hectic and hurried, without space to breathe. He then practiced a bit, had lunch and then rehearsed with the orchestra the whole afternoon. The then went home, had tea and then dinner, after which he listened to a different recording. This one, in contrast to the first one, was slow and plodding, and completely without verve or energy. His wife then informed him that he was actually listening to the same recording he’d heard that morning. Here we go with our objectivity!
And, as Romanos also points out, context is everything.
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In my experience, the pieces that try to ‘micro-manage’ the performance with excessive notation end up with just as many pencil markings as those with nothing but the notes – if not more…!
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It’s sad, but not even the world of historically informed performance practice is immune to the need for absolute, immutable and constant truths. There’s still an insistence on the letter of the law instead of the spirit of the law.
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It is for this very reason that I am sparse with directions in my scores, and particularly with organ works, I will just say “mp solo stop” rather than mandate it has to be a specific stop (unless there’s a particular reason for it like “tierce en taille”). I presume an intelligent performer will make it sound good on their instrument. And if they aren’t intelligent enough to do that, their performance won’t be good no matter what I put in the margins. I also sometimes get irked when certain editions even try to micromanage fingerings or which stops are on which manuals… I’ll set it up the way that works for me on this instrument, thanks very much.
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It is indeed strange that there are so many people who will not believe something obvious, because it was not mentioned by any theorist in writing! 
David
That sounds good to me. Once a piece is released “into the wild” it may have its own life. After a while other people may even have a closer relationship to the piece than the composer, which, after a while, occupied with other projects, may look at it like a composition from somebody else. Just read a text you wrote a year ago, you’ll read it like someone elses text. Sometimes even interesting
P.S. Does anyone know how build double hooks in Dorico? [haha]