Studying Bach

Sight reading indeed, and very easy once you work out what key you are in!

Bit of a pain reading over a harpsichordist's shoulder while playing the bass though!

ATb from George

The movable clefs are giving me a lot of fun too.

I have a few simple goals in this :

1 - Instantly recognize each prelude and fugue in the WTC.

2 - Always know where I am in the St. Matthews Passion.

3 - Instantly recognize each movement of the Sonatas and Partitas for violin.

When that has been achieved, I can go back to Beethoven for a while.

One thing for sure; there's no rush.

Thanks for the tip, Munch :-)

quote:

I have a few simple goals in this :

Mike I admire your idea of simple

quote:

Originally posted by Geoff P:

quote:

I have a few simple goals in this :

Mike I admire your idea of simple

If you think about it, it is just what most people do with popular music. They come to recognize the music they love right away. I just want to do the same with some Bach, so that I have a feeling for him in my bones, as I do for Dr. John and The Meters :-)

In my experience there is no rushing the process of getting music into your bloodstream.

It is a lifetime's work so if you to completely comprehend the music of old JS Bach, then Ludwig van may have a long wait if you think you can do Bach in one go!

You may prove me wrong, but I have found that I can have a few weeks fairly intensive Bach study - get to know it better, get to love it more, be struct by new facets found - then move off onto Haydn [usually after Bach] and go through much the same process, and then it might be Schubert, Beethoven, Brahms or Sibelius.

Then I move off to some Twentieth C. music and rebound to Bach often rather quickly!

I doubt that I shall ever know all the secrets in Bach's music!

ATB from George

George, my goals are modest. For three works St. Matthew's Passion, WTC and Sonatas and Partitas for Violin, I wish all the themes to be familar and always recognized.

I hope 2 to 6 week sessions every so often over 2 or 3 years, I might achieve that. That leaves time open for Beethoven, Stravinsky and the local music of New Orleans.

I am trying to collect themes as if they were butterflies :-) New themes are always welcome into my mind!

Dear Mike,

Years! Now your talking! I am absolutely certainly that I would recognise every P&F from the 48, the Harpsichord Partitas, French Suites, and the English, The violin and Cello music and many of the isolated keyboard works, let alone the organ works, but I would bet that you might have to play two movements in a row [from the suites] for me to assuredly name the piece! That is afte years! I find some the 48 P&Fs to be totally fixed and some more hazy as to exactly which one it migh be - even now after many years.

My favourite one to get right are the Concerti, and there is a rather large number of them!

Don't beat yourself up about not always being to precisely name a piece you might happen to really love!

ATB from George

I figure as close as I can come, the trip will be great fun. And of course the music might come that much closer ...

The music comes closer every revisit, but let the visits have the majesty of a certain steadiness. Listen so that you enjoy it, rather than in such haste and rush to return to it that you rebound from it!

Very best wishes from George

Bach is the first composer in history, at least in my experience, to offer the modern listener an entire universe of feeling and emotion, complete and perfect in every detail, driven forward by a compelling logic that is not to be refused.

He has colored my perception to such an extent, other loved composers sound like foreign tongues. I gave a listen to Beethoven's Eroica Symphony for a diversion, long my most loved symphonic work, and I was an outsider looking in. Actually, I heard many things I hadn't noticed before. I think that is a good thing.

Talk about speaking in tongues!

Sorry, a final note.

If you look closely enough into a composer's work, you begin to feel his personality.

At this point in my life, Bach is the composer I would most like to know personally. I sense a wonderful personality.

I think his personality does begin to shine through once you get past the music's serious surface!

He was a very kind family man, though in the professional music sense was certainly a perfectionist who did not suffer fools ...

ATB from George

He was probably a very kind family man, but he lacked solicitude for his second wife, Anna Magdalena. She had to live her last ten years in deep poverty as J.S. forgot to leave her a legacy.

Best wishes

Manfred