The Well Tempered Klavier

Now that is a different point.

I like lots of things!

Too much Polish Wodka, or beer! But that does not mean that is how the Lord conceived that I should live, but I am a weak human!

But Bach certainly should be sampled in great performances on the harpsichord to really get what he was driving at.

As I said Liszt, Chopin, or Debussy would really actually require the full resources of the piano to make their intended impact.

Bach does not require as much of his keyboard and writes far more brilliant and subtle music which works most effectively on the simpler instrument.

Only opinion dear Mike, so don't hate me for once agian not really completely agreeing with you ...

ATB from George

Thanks for that, George. I'm going to go find a copy of that right away. Keep educating....

Currently deleted, it was recorded by DG in the early senties, or one might consider the EMI issued [and currently still avalable] recording from 1959/1961, which is on a less old style harpsichord but has many tremendous qualities.

Personally I would hunt out a second hand copy from Amazon of the later DG recording.

After that there are great performances from the likes of Kenneth Gilbert to investigate, though so far I have not afforded the money for this one!

ATB from George

quote:

Originally posted by GFFJ:
Only opinion dear Mike, so don't hate me for once agian not really completely agreeing with you ...
ATB from George

I'll look forward to hearing the WTC on harpsichord in future, but today I'm in the throws of new love :-) The beautiful Hewitt controls this coming weekend ...

Mike,

I know one thing, we would be a great double act!

You the lover of the sensuous depth and range of colour ofrom Titian, and me the lover of the line drawings by Durer! Thing is that in this case Bach was much closer to Durer than Titian!

We could not fail to get on!

ATB from George

Lucky me for, as George has aluded, he passed his set of 10 LP sides of Walcha playing the WTC on Harpsichord to me. I shall be weilding the TT and lowering the cartridge on them over the coming weeks to compare with Hewitts' piano.

I am a complete numnuts on musical theory but have typed up a precis of an article that appears in the book with Walcha's recordings. I have summarised a long article briefly and cut some corners which I am sure George can repair if he wishes to.

So here is the precis which I hope might be of interest:

The 'Mean Tone' tuning system was in use stretching back in musical history and linked even to Pythagorus mathematically. All Bach's earlier works are confined within the limitations of the Mean Tone system seldom having key signatures extending to many sharps or flats because of the discord that can occur stemming from incorrect semitone divisions used by the Mean Tone system.

Hence it was no surprise that In about 1700 when the discovery of the so called 'Equal Temperament'tuning became known to Bach he immediately became one of its most zealous champions.

This system of tuning, still in use today, goes a long way towards reducing discrepancies in the division of semitones that were a fact of the 'Mean Tone'tuning system. Discrepancies which arose from the practicality of trying to divide the semitones into Octaves that were physically practical to play and thus sensible to design in keyboard instruments.

Bach was obviously aware that the Equal Temperament tuning system was still a compromise though much smaller. The title "well-tempered" is very apt in that the word "well" conveys both the Even tempered tuning systems aural feasibility as well as its practical usefulness.
There were heated arguments about the new system but amid all the battle cries and theorizing, Bach provided the aural proof of the merits of the new idea, a most beautiful justifications to which no further comment need be added.

He called the work,"the Well-tempered Clavier of Preludes and Fugues utilizing all tones and semitones, also concerned with major thirds as well as minor thirds. For the benefit of, and use by, the knowledge-seeking musical youth, as well as a special pastime for those already accquainted with this field of study, this is composed and published by J. S. Bach".
Just how much this document (Part 1) meant to Bach is illustrated by the fact that 22 years later in 1744 he turned once again to the same theme, in its original form, and wrote Part 2 of the Well Tempered Klavier.

regards
geoff

Dear Geoff, Dear Mike, All you patient people,

I love this music with a sort physical strenuousness that can hurt. Sometimes as currently the inexorable requirement to spend long hours listening can make me physically tired. A sort of mental illness no doubt nowadays ...

I am not really too worried if your favourite Bach keyboard man is Gould [piano] or Gilbert [on harpsichord], Pinnock or Walcha [both harpsichord], so long as you take the life's affirmation that Bach offers!

I know what I like, and I don't think after more than thirty years looking into the subject and talking to some really grand scholars [very much etc!] that my gradual movement to the sublime harpsichord is necessarily wrong, but it is a journey we must trval with conviction as individuals rather than merely follow what one is told is right by those apparently further down the road to ward the harpsichord.

For twenty years my favoiurite recording of the "48" was the Fischer set [on the Steinway piano!], which EW rightly refered to as one of the peak achievements of the gramophone!

ATB from George

If we were closer George, there would be no vodka left wherever we landed :-)

Beautiful writeup, Geoff.

It makes you wish to hear a mean tempered tune for comparison. Then maybe you could hear the WTC the way Bach's contemporaries did.

I mentioned George's reservations about the piano to my wife, and it got her Italian blood up! She recalls that Bach was an agent for Silberman Piano at some point, and in 1747
J. S. Bach played a Silberman piano at the Prussian Court, Potsdam. He declared himself happy with the results :-)

She is currently researching a rebuttal :-)

But on a more serious note, I have read that objections to the piano in Bach's time were based on the weakness of the treble and the difficulty of the touch. The touch on harpsichord had evolved over two centuries, and no practicing musician would have welcomed learning a whole new technique, when they were already the masters of well established practice.

All of those problems have been solved.

Hewitt is alluring ... The Fazioli is sexiful ... Bach is, well, he's Bach and all the beauty that implies.

quote:

Originally posted by GFFJ:

For twenty years my favorite recording of the "48" was the Fischer set [on the Steinway piano!], which EW rightly refered to as one of the peak achievements of the gramophone!

ATB from George

I got this one on your recommendation George, and when Hewitt leaves the stage he shall enter.

Don't be such a fickle lover ...

There's time for them all!

I still love it.

I gave it a friend to get him into Bach, with complete success!

ATB from George

quote:

recalls that Bach was an agent for Silberman Piano at some point, and in 1747
J. S. Bach played a Silberman piano at the Prussian Court, Potsdam. He declared himself happy with the results :-)

..an interesting paragraph from the same article I extracted from earlier:

In literature contemporary to Bach one can come across such pieces as: "Bach of Liepzig, by virtue of his profound and unexpected modulations incorporating notes and keysignatures unused until now, makes the use of Equal Temperament tuning absolutely essential. So much so, that even the best old keyboard instruments are obsolete, including the beautiful Silbermann organs which now sound out of tune".

The famous organ builder Gottfried Silbermann and Bach were embittered opponents on this subject of tuning. Silbermann due to his preference for the acoustically correct major third tuned all his organs in accordance with the Mean Tone system.

On one occasion Bach, playing on one of these instruments, spotted Silbermann in the audience and is supposed to have said: "You temper the tuning of these organs to your taste and I shall play them in keys according to my taste". Whereupon he proceeded to play a piece in B major. The argument culminated in Silbermann leaving the church so as not to be subjected to the discord that would inevitably occur on his Mean Tone tuned organ.

This must have been somewhat earlier than 1747. Perhaps around the time of Book 1 of the WTC of 1722.

regards
geoff

Here is my wife's rebuttal. Let's call it the "Italian Revenge" :-)

From "J. S. Bach" by Albert Schweitzer :

"...The master's [Bach] attitude towards the new instrument [piano] may be given in the words of Agricola, who is our sole testimony in the matter :

"...he had praised the tone of it, indeed wondered at it ..."

Bach went on to say the treble and the action needed more work, which Silberman took to heart. The piano concert by Bach in 1747 cited earlier in this thread was on one of the improved instruments that resulted from Bach's criticism.

In "The New Grove : Bach Family" by Christoph Wolff :

"...He [Bach] took a critical interest in Silberman's building of pianofortes, proposing alterations in the mechanism, which Silberman adopted. Bach publicly praised Silberman's later pianos and helped to sell them (A reciept for one sold to Poland dated 6 May 1749 survives.)"

George, did you know Brahms was offered to have his works recorded on wax cylinder, and he refused. Who wouldn't want those recordings?

Bach was more open minded than that. He helped bring the piano into the world :-)

So in honor of Bach's tireless efforts to bring the piano to perfection, I dedicate my Hewitt listening sessions to the memory of J. S. Bach :-)

I only wish the program from Bach's piano concert were known. Who knows, it might have included parts of the WTC ...

I can enjoy Bach played on modern and period instruments, it's never been a big deal to me. Modern replica harpsichords seem to sound very nice, but I seem to recall being put off by some recordings by Karl Richter where the bloody thing sounded pretty crap. But beyond a certain level of attainment, I'm perfectly happy listening to either. I have very much been enjoying Pinnock's recordings of the keyboard concertos played on the harpsichord, along with his amazing recording of the partitas, but then again I am equally happy listening to Murray Perahia on the modern piano - to my ears by far the finest exponent of Bach on the modern concert grand before the public today. If you pass up on his recordings due to a sense of loyalty to Bach's own instruments then you'll miss something!

I really can't imagine Bach would have turned his nose up at a fine modern concert grand, although I think he'd have been impressed by some of our harpsichords too; I like them both; and as for Beethoven, if he were brought back to life today and found out people were making replicas of those rickety old hammerklaviers to perform his music when we have the Steinway, I'm convinced he'd think we were ripe for the nuthouse!

EW

Mike don't listen to the Harpsichord versions until you are sated with Hewitt's beautifull piano tone and approach to playing.
I have played the first three pairs, first by Walcha on harpsichord, and then by Hewitt. It is a little disconcerting to have such an immediate comparison. What George wrote is very relevant to how it comes to my ears.

quote:

Originally posted by GFFJ:
This evening I listened to the whole of the "48" played by Helmut Walcha on a pair of Bach period harpsichords - one for Book One and another for Book Two. One cannot fail to be struct by the wonderful dynamic quality of the music, perfectly conceived for an instrument without dynamic control at the level of how fast [or hard] one presses the keys.

A well voiced harpsichord will respond with a very nearly even response across its pitch range and a fast strike will result is a brighter rather than louder sound.

But Bach perfectly understood that with this apparent constraint he could made the sad contain the noble, and in the energetic he could project human warmth!

The more notes played per time interval the louder will the net effect be!

There is no reason to use a piano at all to realise Bach's intention. In fact it remains an almost insummountable hindrance in essential aspects.

ATB from George

..To put it another way Walcha plays, as George points out, at a continuous pace with propulsion. The notes are struck and arrive instantly with speed. By the nature of the Harpsichord individual notes don't hang around so they have virtually if not completely finsihed sounding by the time the next note arrives. The great thing that this allows is that the introduction of 'new voices', as you put it earlier, cannot be missed even though there is no slowing of tempo at all, anywhere.
As I see it Hewitt quite obviously has an awareness that piano notes hover in the air after they have been played no matter how stacato you attempt to play (and using the 'soft' pedal does you no good at all). Her approach seems to be to allow time for notes to fade at important moments in the progress as the voices appear or a change of key occurs.

Listened to straight through with no comparison there is a consistency to Hewitts' approach which holds it all together but when an individual Prelude / Fugue pair is compared with Walacha's steady tempo it seems almost as though Hewitt is 'staggering' through the music. I do not mean this in an unkind way because as I said as a complete perfromance Hewitt is very enjoyable and as you say the piano tone is beautifull.

I have not listened to Walcha's harpsichord 48 at a single sitting. It has great attack and as George says can sound quite 'loud'. This takes me a bit of getting used to. I seem drawn into the music significantly more but it builds tension over time and becomes almost a physical test to continue listening all the way through.

I will have to go into training because I enjoy the intensity of involvement that Walcha creates.

regards
Geoff

Thanks Geoff, you too George.

I have previously stated elsewhere that a note has two parts, an articulation and a sustain. The problem with fugues is that the sustain can cloud the voices. You can hear that in the Hewitt. Now here comes the harpsichord which has virtually no sustain. Problem solved.

Guess another $50 is going to fly out the window.

George, you got us all hot and bothered about the Walcha, but I can't find it on amazon. What a bummer. The height of cruelty on the forum is to induce a crack cocaine like craving for a recording that can't be obtained. I can see myself now, flying to England, lurking in an alley waiting for George to bring me a Bach fix. Oh, the shame of it!

Dear Mike,

It is avalailable on

Amazon.co.uk

I will post a link to it for you later if that is okay?

It is my favourite. but I still have a huge affection for the olf Edwin Fischer version. Very different of course, but makes sense in the music for me.

ATB from George

George, I ordered the Kenneth Gilbert. If it is good, I will get one over to you.

It is a modern recording (remastered) on an 18th century harpsichord that is well tempered.

Well tempered is not the same as even tempered, my wife tells me, and she also said there are hundreds of different well tempered tunings.

BTW, I can see you are in no mood for joking. I thought the alley meeting to get more Bach would get a rise out of you.

Fingers crossed Murray Perahia will have a crack at it at some point!

quote:

Originally posted by Earwicker:
Fingers crossed Murray Perahia will have a crack at it at some point!

It sounds like you are volunteering to get a copy and report back? :-)

Actually, I can't find this one on Amazon. You sure he's done the WTC?

He hasn't recorded it, hence I'm hoping he will... his recent Bach recordings set something of a benchmark.

quote:

Originally posted by Earwicker:
He hasn't recorded it, hence I'm hoping he will... his recent Bach recordings set something of a benchmark.

A generous benefactor sent me his english suites. They are currently in the "to listen" stack.

It isn't bad enough we are foraging for new Bach CDs, and you are throwing a non-existant one in the mix :-)

Lucky you, I had to pay for mine!

I had to pay for this one too:



Its been a while but where am I going to find the time to listen again.

quote:

Originally posted by Geoff P:
Its been a while but where am I going to find the time to listen again.

You can do it Geoff :-)

I predict it will take me three to four weeks to overdose on Bach and run screaming back to Beethoven ....

quote:

Originally posted by Geoff P:
I had to pay for this one too:



Its been a while but where am I going to find the time to listen again.

That is a marvel, I hope he'll record the other three too!