The Well Tempered Klavier

Dear Mike,

If it does not hit you in the first prelude [Book One] it is not going to. I grant that it is subtle, for though absolutely planned out and consistent it is also calculated to be like the best recreative artistry - the art that conceals art!

It is all pervasive the way that Walcha phrases using articulation rather than distorted rhythm.

Listen to the fugue voices, and see how his phrasing is by the line and not the same for al lines in the vertical sense in the score.

In other words what I mean is, as the theme [assuming the theme is multiply used as in cannon] is articulated and phrased according to its place in the theme so the most emphasised note in any given phrase is similarly articulated rather than all the articulation, vertically speaking in the score, is the same.

Perhaps I could commend that yuou listen to the Cannons from the Art Of Fugue in Walcha's recording as this makes the point I am trying to with ease.

It is, however, perhaps not a deal clincher.

Though the harpsichord is the intended instrument [with the possibility that the music fits nicely on the clavichord in many respects] it does not strike me that it is essential to use it or insist on listening to the music on it, if the listener or player would rather use or listen to the piano.

I am no lover of the piano in the harpsichord repertoire where I find all the extra things a piano can do, which a harpsichord cannot, means that the player must inevitably play the piano differently compared to the same players approach to a harpsichord, and which almost inevitably transformes the music away from what we reasonably summise must have been Bach intention when he cast the music for the harpsichord in the first place.

For one example, the great sustain of a piano allows for the E Flat minor Prelude to go at virtually half the speed that Walcha takes it on the harpsichord [in either of his recordings] with Hewitt on piano simply because the piano holds the tone of the notes for much longer ...

Bach could never have intended such a tempo, as no keyboard instrument except the pipe organ, could have maintained the necessary sustain. Not even Silbermann's forte-piano.

This would not matter except that it transforms this heroic, noble, and stoic music into a more or less funneral dirge - self pitying in a manner that simply has little to do with Bach's other personal and musical characteristic traits, or indeed the possibility of mood from the much quicker tempo that harpsichord demands.

So sustain changes the possibility of tempi, and therefore the effect of the emotion conveyed by the music.

But also another aspect of the piano has a huge transforming effect - and one that transforms away from the initial intention absolutely ineveitably.

The gentle opening of the first prelude [Book One] has a fixed potential dynamic on any given harpsichord [relative to the others, and internally] given by the number of notes played over time.

The pianist can alter the dynamic by, as you point out, changing their touch, and in doing so will certainly transform the dynamic shape of the music away from what Bach intended and expected.

Whether these things are important for any given individual will depend on several factors.

It seems to me that if you really love Bach's music and also love the potential of the piano, you may well end up enjoying performances of the music on the piano, but if you also respect the music and respect Bach's intention you will try to find what it is that caused Bach to persisist with the harpsichord inspite of knowing about the forte-piano that Silbermann made. Bach made constructive criticism of the instrument apparently, so must have been intrigued, but not so much that he abandoned his favoured harpsichords or pipe organs. And of course for the chamber, the clavichord.

But as I say there is no reason why the more conservative view such as mine or indeed not merely a few others should have the monopoly!

There is the curious phenomenon of Artur Schnabel, who played the piano in Bach with the absolute minimum of dynamic contrast, and kept the tempi as would be viable on the harpsichord. In that case I simply ask why he did not use a harpsichord as Merczislaw Horszowski did from time to time?

In fact Horszowski was a rather satisfying harpsichord player, as well as being one of the truly great pianists!

I hope you will permit me to bow out of this particualr discussion now, as I find analysis beyong a certain point does not illuminate why a specific piece of must is an artwork or genius, or merely a work that contains the very clever and sophisticated seeds of potentially being a great work without ever having that spark that allows it to soar!

And as my views on the harpsichord and piano are so clear, and so clearly the opposite to yours, there seems little point in me re-stating my view every three pages or so!

ATB from George

quote:

Originally posted by GFFJ:
Dear Mike,

If it does not hit you in the first prelude [Book One] it is not going to.


I hope you will permit me to bow out of this particular discussion now,

ATB from George

Well that certainly circumscribes the conversation ...

It didn't and I will.

I have a plan for "mapping" the F Major Prelude, Book 1.

1) Mark off all repetitions of the I-IV-V-I progression, noting the presentation of the voices.

2) Fill in the progression at each strong beat (every 4 beats).

3) Note chordal movement under trills.

I think that will give a good picture of this work.

Well, that's done.

I would like to take a minute to explain analysis to anyone reading this thread, and doesn't read music.

Pretend we are on an Arctic Cruiser, out to shoot pictures of whales in migration. Well, we catch one of those whales, kill it, and bring it down to a large chamber in the bowels of the ship. We cut it open, and systematically catalog its innards. Everything is lovingly sketched and annotated.

These documents are committed to memory.

Having passed this ritual without fault, we the chosen know the whale.

Is that the whale you watched swim?

I think a modest diet of analysis will allow you to love living breathing things for what they are, but an excess carries the danger of possibly killing the joy of life itself.

I feel a need to shun analysis for a few months or so.

That does lead to a dilemma. Being fed a diet of 19th and 20th century music, I have developed an expectation that melody will define rhythm, and that harmony is a device best used to establish mood.

But in the WTC, harmony often sets the rhythm of the moment.

So if you want to "get" that piece, you have to step lively.

Enough listens ought to fix any problems with that.

Anyone else ever reached an impasse?

quote:

Enough listens ought to fix any problems with that.

Anyone else ever reached an impasse?

Yes, and Dear mike, if you persist you get through it - no different to running on in a cross-country race right through the stitch to the painfree other side!

If I may venture to offer a little advice about this music.

Keep on nibbling away. Don't be afraid to listen to a favourite P and F perhaps ten times ina row even over a few days. Get the music in you head so you don't need to play the recording to hear it! But please don't force it. If you fancy it not today, then play some 20th C. Russian music instead!

Then attack a few more and find another one you really like. You will find you love them all in a few weeks or months that way. When you know the music intimately then is time to analyse it! ... when you feel what the technical things are doing at an emotional level. In my view, done in cold blood as it were, analysis will tell nothing other than that Bach was so clever that he was at genius level. That does not explain why we can love his music though does it?

ATB from George

quote:

I think a modest diet of analysis will allow you to love living breathing things for what they are, but an excess carries the danger of possibly killing the joy of life itself.

...Thank goodness Mike. I was begining to fear for the whale population

Seriously as a scientist I have been guilty of over analysing things especially when younger. Hours spent pressuring the grey matter can lead nowhere whereas you can wake from a nights sleep with an inspiration freed from your brain.

regards
Geoff

In some things musical, there can be no substitute for remembering everything.

So it is with Bach :-)

I have sworn off formal analysis for the time being, but there are a few musical things that I am curious about. I thought they might be of some interest to the forum.

In Bach's time, the keys were thought to have possessed specific emotional characteristics.
This stems from the times before well and equal tempers.

I have listened to two pairs of the preludes and fugues in Book 1, D minor-F Major and
A Minor-C Major. These are both pairings of the relative major and minor. What makes them relative is that they share the same key signature; i.e. number of sharps and flats. The only thing that separates them is the placement of the tonic, changing everything.

I am curious to see how similar they are in "feeling".

Results so far are inconclusive.

quote:

In Bach's time, the keys were thought to have possessed specific emotional characteristics.
This stems from the times before well and equal tempers.

The different keys have always produced different responses from different composers, so whilst it cannot be denied that different keys were [and are even today] thought to have different characters, there is nothing about the keys which makes the expectation of their natures out as Universal, either among listeners, or composers.

Therefore it does not surpirse me that in different works [albeit contained in one set of published works], which were not necessarily conceived essentially to be performed together on any particular occasion, that there should be anything predictable either in the effect of keys on Bach's composition, or more significantly, on your reaction to it.

One can think of the immense strength often found in the B minor of Bach or the dark inner terror of Mozart's D minor, but I believe that for every piece that conforms to these stereo-types it is possible to find another piece that utterly confounds the stereo-typical expectation.

ATB from George

From "Tuning" by Owen H. Joggensen :

C Major is "completely pure" - Schubert

B Flat Minor "preparation for suicide sounds in this key." Schubert.

There are many other such examples given, by numerous composers.

Before well and equal tempers, opinions on the characters of keys were frequently held and argued.

That is one of the factors that greeted the introduction of the WTC by Bach.

There are many other such examples given, by numerous composers.

And each composer will give a different response to a greater or less degree. It is not an Universal response, but a personal and unique one for each composer, and every bit as personal for every listener.

Dear Mike,

Even with the just intonation of the string band, the keys still have characters!

G and D major both are ripely powerful keys on the strings!

D flat is profoundly closed in amd muted.

The reason - as I know you will comprehend - is the harmonic series resonances of the open [unplayed] strings which create in G and D, and to some lesser extent in C and A major a braod harmic- laden rich pallet of tone whilst there is next to no open string resonance to a very flat key like D flat.

However on the keyboard we are left with the vestiges of this only as a perfectly tuned even temperamant keyboard does not have these varying degrees of instrumental difference of quality in different keys.

An example of what I mean is that say G major in Baroque pitch is likely to be about a semi-tone flat of the modern tuning.

But the G-ness of G major is just as beautiful at A = 415 Hertz as it is at A = 440 or 448 Hertz!

It is a product of the nature of the instruments rather than the exact pitch of tuning.

ATB from George

quote:

Originally posted by GFFJ:
Even with the just intonation of the string band, the keys still have characters!

G and D major both are ripely powerful keys on the strings!

D flat is profoundly closed in amd muted.

The reason - as I know you will comprehend - is the harmonic series resonances of the open [unplayed] strings which create in G and D, and to some lesser extent in C and A major a braod harmic- laden rich pallet of tone whilst there is next to no open string resonance to a very flat key like D flat.

However on the keyboard we are left with the vestiges of this only as a perfectly tuned even temperamant keyboard does not have these varying degrees of instrumental difference of quality in different keys.

An example of what I mean is that say G major in Baroque pitch is likely to be about a semi-tone flat of the modern tuning.

But the G-ness of G major is just as beautiful at A = 415 Hertz as it is at A = 440 or 448 Hertz!

It is a product of the nature of the instruments rather than the exact pitch of tuning.

ATB from George

This I did not know. I haven't devoted much attention to how strings make sound.

Food for thought.

I still think the idea of listening to the WTC in relative major-minor pairs is intriguing. At the very least, I will have drilled the sound of relative major-minor into my ear so deeply, I will never forget the sound of it.

You're not proposing we have a string band play the WTC?

Dear Mike,

I think the idea of a string quartet playing the Art Of Fugue [and it has been done on records] is not a good one.

In the "48" some of the pieces seem to lend themselves to potential arrangements, such as the Book One E Flat Minor, which Stokowski turned into a wonderfully luminous piece for string orchestra, but generally I still reckon the place for this music is on a keyboard, which for some [including me] remains the harpsichord, and for other is the piano. I am glad people enjoy this music on a piano! I am glad people enjoy this music!

But I suspect that the real interest in a relative minor within a major context is best represented not by studying pairs of P&Fs from the "48" but enjoying the A major Piano Concerto of Mozart with it remarkable slow movement in the relative minor of F Sharp.

The context and contrast is worked into the very fabric of the music - intended to be all of apiece in performance.

Really the P&Fs of the "48" are fully fledged and independent pieces, and not any of them related at all in any meaningful sense. - IMO of course.

ATB from George

I will look for the Mozart, and continue to "monkey around" with the WTC :-)

Clara Haskil made a very splendid recording of the Mozart A major for Philips, which whilst not quite a great hifi recording is about as fine as it gets in musical terms.

Solomon Cutner also made [similar vintage] recording for EMI which is every bit as fine.

I will send you an email tomorrow [though it is tomorrow already today if you see what I mean!], and say some offline things.

Best wishes from George

Postscript :

I want to make it official. The Hewitt WTC is not only beautifully played, it is the best recording of a piano I have heard. And what a piano, a 10'8" Faziloi possessed of an octave-to-octave transparency other pianos can only dream of - tuned to absolute perfection.

We will be spending time together for months to come.

quote:

I want to make it official. The Hewitt WTC is not only beautifully played, it is the best recording of a piano I have heard. And what a piano, a 10'8" Faziloi possessed of an octave-to-octave transparency other pianos can only dream of - tuned to absolute perfection.

I'm really pleased to read this Mike. I have Hewitt's first recording, and also saw her perform all of the WTC live in Manchester over two weekends last year. It was a wonderful experience - a religious one, really. But one thing that made me feel a little sick afterwards was the contrast between the bell-like purity of the live sound of Hewitt's piano, and the much cloudier sound of her recording, as played on my Naim system. At the time, I took this as a sign of the gulf between the quality of sound of live music, compared with electronic replay. But I can now console myself with the thought that a large part of the difference is attributable to the different pianos used Seriously, that is one of my most vivid memories of the concerts - the beauty of the music itself, alongside the beautiful sound of the instrument used to play it. Now you've made me want to buy the new recording - damn you!

Regards
Nigel

quote:

Originally posted by droodzilla:
Now you've made me want to buy the new recording - damn you!

Regards
Nigel

:-)

Because I'm bad.

I have been giving a close listen to the Book 1 E-flat Minor Prelude and Fugue (Hewitt, Disk 1 Tracks 15 and 16).

E-flat minor sounds like a day with a bright but weak sun, so scudding clouds and trees make cold spots in the shade.

Very beautiful :-)

Am I the only one still plowing through the WTC?

I have just recovered from adding a new piece to the system. For five days I listened to the system, which is an entirely different thing than listening to the music, over a span of 50 or so CDs and a dozen records. Exhausting!

Time to get back to the music :-)

My goal with the WTC is to be able to identify each prelude and each fugue when I hear them, within a few bars.

To achieve that, I am listening to two sets per night, repeating each group three times over three nights. For example I listened to the Book 1 E-flat Minor prelude and fugue and the Book 1 G-minor prelude and fugue tonight, did the same yesterday, and will do the same tomorrow. But Friday I will pick a different pairing.

At the same time, I am trying to spend 15 minutes at lunch each day in our Dictionary of Musical Themes, in which the primary theme of each prelude and each fugue is listed. (I kind of hum along with what I'm reading).

I think it will be time well spent.

Hope it works!

No, I don't think that you've listened to Sviatosalv Richter, from what you write here.

Better than anyone else here mentioned. Can't understand the praise given to Angela Hewitt.

G

quote:

Originally posted by graham55:
No, I don't think that you've listened to Sviatosalv Richter, from what you write here.

Better than anyone else here mentioned. Can't understand the praise given to Angela Hewitt.

G

Each of us to his own poison.

I am still reaping pleasure from the Hewitt. When that diminishes and some time passes, I may reach out for another view, but that will be another time.

Of course, the Hewitt will always be special, because I will have learned the music with her.

Still, no need to hurry :-)

An early morning trip to a used book store in the French Quarter netted a treasure :

"Analysis of J. S. Bach's Preludes and Fugues" by Riemann, which covers all of Book 1 of the Well Tempered Clavier.

I'll report on its value and usefulness next weekend :-)

Having gotten an idea or two from my reading, and being bored with my routine, I have taken to listening to all the preludes in order, Book 1 being completed this evening.

It is an altogether more vocal and joyous presentation than it is when taken together with the fugues, as occasional track slip-ups verify.

Anyone else still having fun with these?