Form is everything, or: Sorge's Trio IX completed

Georg Andreas Sorge (1703 - 1778) wrote eleven Trios for organ. Or perhaps he wrote more, but eleven of them survived in manuscript form till today. That is to say: one of them is incomplete. Trio IX breaks of in the second half of the Trio. In bar 16 the right hand plays a new tantalizing motive for half a bar and then the music stops. Did Sorge never finish his composition? Or did he finish it, but somehow a sheet of the manuscript has gone missing? I guess we'll never know.

Here's an image of where the music breaks of:

And here is a recording of me playing this piece, right till the moment it breaks of:
https://dsound.audio/#!/@partitura/20190609t135300774z-sorge-trio-ix-fragment-1

These Trios are often used in organ education, as preparation on playing Trios of greater difficulty from composers like Bach and Krebs. My education was no exception and years ago I played all 11 of them. Even the unfinished one. And that was always a bit unsatisfying and I often wondered how this piece was supposed to end and why did Sorge (seemingly) never finish it?

As it is a nice piece it would be nice of it could be played as a complete composition, instead of just breaking of and let the music hang in midair.

So I set myself the task: complete Sorge's Trio IX. Immediately two questions arose:

• Should I write in Sorge's style as much as possible? Or should the new music be clearly discernable as not originally Sorge's?
• How long should the new music be? When is the form Sorge set out complete?

The first question could easily be the topic of several posts. In the restoration of a piece of art there is always the question to which state it should be restored and whether it should be completed or not. As such there is immediately a relation with the second question. If the aim is to stay close to the form Sorge set out to create it is perhaps strange not to mimic the style in which he wrote. If the music written to complete the piece is in a different style (to mark what is new and what was originally Sorge's) it perhaps disbalances the form originally intended by Sorge. As it is my intention to create a playable piece, and in so doing make the piece more worthwhile to play in it's intended purpose of musical eduacation, I chose to mimic Sorge's style as closely as possible.

Sorge's Trios have all but one the same structure. Each Trio consists of two halves, the first of which ends on the dominant, the second of which ends on the tonic. The musical material of the first half, returns in the second half, and the closing formula's in both halves are more often than not, the same.

The variety in length of the two halves is considerable. In some of the trios the second half is as long as the first half. In others it is longer, in one case even twice as long. The two trios that complete the collection (nrs X and XI) have a second half that is exactly as long as the first half (X) and a second half that is a few bars longer. As nr IX is in musical material and musical ambition closely related to the last two trios, I think that Sorge meant the second half to be either exactly as long as the first half, or a few bars longer.

The first half is 10 bars long. The second half breaks of in bar 16. So, for the second bar to be exactly as long as the first half, 4 and a half bars of new music needs to be written, where the last bar contains only the closing chord, as it is in the first half. As the closing formula needs to be the same, some 3 or 3 and a half bar form the end of the first half can be taken, transposed to the tonic. So, that leaves only one or one and a half bar of new music. Easy!?

Well, not so easy, as it turns out. The music breaks of when the tonal center is around G major, and it needs to return to the opning a minor. In one bar? Not so easy to make it convincing and stay in the style of Sorge. I eventually came up with this:

Which sounds like this:
https://dsound.audio/#!/@partitura/20190609t151211373z-sorge-trio-ix-fragment-2

For the second half to be a few bars longer, I need to write several bars of extra music. As I am not Sorge myself, the easiest way of staying close to his style is to again base the extra bars on bars from the first half. The music from bars 3 and 4 are very suitable for this purpose as the musical material lends itself very well for tonal transitions. That way the transition from G major to a minor can be made more fluently. I come up with this (you'll notice that I use the same closing formula as conclusion one; only 3 new bars between the music of Sorge, and the closing formula based on Sorge's first half):

Which sounds like this:
https://dsound.audio/#!/@partitura/20190609t151801695z-sorge-trio-ix-fragemnt-3

The second version sounds as the more balanced one of the two to my ears. Having halves of the same length sounds constrained to my ears, there is not enough room for the material and it feels a bit cramped. The second version has a slightly longer second half, which fits the material better. Just 3 bars extra and the form feels more balanced. I think it a save bet, that for this piece, Sorge intended the second half to be 12 or 13, maybe 14 bars long.

So, if you want to complete this piece, with the intention of making it very clear that it was not Sorge who wrote the completion, an easy way would be to keep it short, as in my first attempt, or to make it a lot longer than 14 bars.

Form is everything in music.

Here's my performance of the complete composition. I use the second completion. I think you'll agree, in hearing it in the context of the complete compisition, that it is now a nice, complete, and as-genuine-as-possible Sorge composition.

https://dsound.audio/#!/@partitura/20190609t154431975z-georg-andreas-sorge-trio-ix-completed

Score (with both versions) is available on my site: http://partitura.org/index.php/georg-andreas-sorge-trio-ix-completed

---

You can support me using Steem Basic Income

---