DIVERGENCE OR CONTINUITY? AN INDICATIVE EXAMINATION OF NINETEENTH-CENTURY APPROACHES TO “BAROQUE” VIOLIN REPERTOIRE IN ANNOTATED EDITIONS

This dissertation will examine a selection of nineteenth-century editions of Arcangelo Corelli’s La Folia op. 5 and Johann Sebastian Bach’s Adagio in G minor BWV 1001. The purpose of conducting this textual analysis is to investigate the manner in which Baroque music was perceived and taught by musicians of the German Violin School based around the Leipzig Conservatoire in the period 1830-1920. Through close examination of their approaches towards “historical style”, the research aims to explore the notion that nineteenth-century musicians knew little about earlier performing practices. It will hopefully shed some new light upon the degree of continuity between eighteenth- and nineteenth-century performance, and this may imply possible ways of enriching the state of contemporary HIP. The research has been conducted in keeping with the substantial scholarship on restoring lost performing traditions by Clive Brown, David Milsom and George Kennaway, which has been referred to as the “Leeds School” by David Milsom in Romantic Violin Performing Practices: A Handbook (Milsom, 2020).