Bach′s Well–Tempered Clavier – The 48 Preludes and Fugues

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Interestingly, they also rate the E major prelude (BWV 854) at level 4 with its companion fugue coming in at level 6. At the higher end of difficulty is the prelude in B minor (BWV 869), at level 6, and its accompanying fugue at level 7. None of either Book 1 or Book 2 is graded above a level 7 by Henle. Jean M. Perreault. The Thematic Catalogue of the Musical Works of Johann Pachelbel, p.84. Scarecrow Press, Lanham, Md. 2004. ISBN 0-8108-4970-4. This is Bach-playing to listen to every day, fresh, spry and well modulated. If spirituality is to be found in The Art of Fugue, Aimard seems to say, it will not be through slow tempi, dynamic extremes or the quasi-religious trappings arrayed by the likes of Sokolov, Kocsis, Koroliov and Nikolaieva. The tripping, French swagger of Contrapuncti 2 and 6 and the smart Italian cut of No 9 fit neatly under the fingers. Freedom is found within the interplay of voices rather than any fancy phrasing: in fact the mirror fugues and canons are so unfussily done that you’d never guess without a score to hand how much a single musician can look and sound like Mr Messy while playing them... Peter Quantrill Lehman, Bradley (2005) [2004]. Johann Sebastian Bach's tuning. LaripS.com (Report) . Retrieved 12 April 2023. Werner Güra’s narration takes a little time to warm up but by Part 2 he is in full swing with both unequivocal delivery and an impressive bravura in the unwieldy “Frohe Hirten”. Gerald Finley sings with open-hearted zeal and, despite occasional flatness, teams up touchingly with Schäfer in “Herr, dein Mitleid”. There is the odd rough edge and, inevitably, there are moments which will not be to everyone’s taste. But the unforced sweep of grandeur, complementing supple pastoral mosaics, marks out Harnoncourt’s Christmas Oratorio as a valuable and penetrating seasonal vision... Jonathan Freeman-Attwood

While John Eliot Gardiner performed his near-complete Bach sacred cantata ‘pilgrimage’ in the course of the great millennial year in 50 contrasting locations, Masaaki Suzuki’s 18-year journey has been a gradually unfolding musical voyage (a chronological rather than seasonal progression) and in the singular, luminous hallmark acoustic of the Shoin Women’s University Chapel in Kobe. Comparisons of two exceptional Bach projects are largely rendered odious by the fact that Gardiner’s work largely represents a repository of recorded concerts while Suzuki’s has been a considered, slow-burn studio project. If the early critical rhetoric of Vol 1 (Cantatas Nos 4, 150 and 196 – 6/96) was one of astonishment that a Japanese choir could sing such perfect German or that Japanese instrumentalists could comprehend ‘style’ so effortlessly, it soon became apparent that the world is smaller than we think and that Suzuki’s subtle and embedded understanding of Bach was yielding an important set of new recorded ‘texts’ in a global musical language. No complete series can deliver equal inspiration in every volume but Suzuki and BCJ have created an indelible mark on Bach’s recorded vocal landscape. The best is as good as anyone anywhere – and the whole, of the six complete cantata sets, probably the most consistent... Jonathan Freeman‑Attwood Sacred Cantatas Fantasy No. 1 with Fugue, K. 394 is one of Mozart's own compositions showing the influence the Well-Tempered Clavier had on him. [41] [42] Beethoven played the entire Well-Tempered Clavier by the time he was eleven, and produced an arrangement of BWV 867, for string quintet. [43] [44] [45] [46] [47] [48] Edward Noel Green. Chromatic Completion in the Late Vocal Music of Haydn and Mozart: A Technical, Philosophic, and Historical Study, p. 273 New York University. ISBN 978-0-549-79451-6 Each set contains 24 pairs of prelude and fugue. The first pair is in C major, the second in C minor, the third in C ♯ major, the fourth in C ♯ minor, and so on. The rising chromatic pattern continues until every key has been represented, finishing with a B minor fugue. The first set was compiled in 1722 during Bach's appointment in Köthen, the second followed 20 years later in 1742 while he was in Leipzig. Lehman, Bradley (November 2005). "The 'Bach Temperament' and the Clavichord". Clavichord International. Vol.9, no.2.

Bach Medal for Andras Schiff

John H. Baron. A 17th-Century Keyboard Tablature in Brasov, Journal of the American Musicological Society, xx (1967), pp.279–285. Open-source edition of the Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1 available in MuseScore, MusicXML, MIDI, PDF formats, released under CC0 In Eisenach, where Bach was born in 1685, an exhibition at the Bach Haus (running July 1 through November 6) allows visitors to recreate the tunings common at that time on a synthesizer.

Poetic and thoughtful, Fischer is one of th Prelude and Fugue in C-sharp major, BWV 848. Prelude also in WFB Klavierbüchlein, No. 21: Praeludium [8].

The Well-Tempered Clavier Difficulty

Whilst these may on a first glance seem to be the simpler preludes and fugues to attempt, they reveal many obscured aspects of the compositions that only surface on closer study. The intricate textures that Bach composes are never to be taken lightly and even though the keys of these pieces are by and large, more approachable, the finer points of each work should not be overlooked. Russian 19th and 20th century composers Dmitri Shostakovich, who wrote 24 preludes and fugues, and Alexander Scriabin, who also composed 24 preludes using every key and designed colors to go with them, were were heavily inspired by Bach.

Walter, Rudolf (2001). "Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer". In Sadie, Stanley; Tyrrell, John (eds.). The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (2nded.). London: Macmillan Publishers. ISBN 978-1-56159-239-5. ‎ The division of Bach’s second book into three programmes rather than two, as for the first book, reflects the longer length of the individual pieces; Shostakovich’s Preludes & Fugues also vary in length. The Preludes & Fugues of both composers have been divided between the five programmes partly to create programmes of roughly similar duration, but also, where possible, to create an appropriate conclusion to each concert. The modern German spelling for the collection is Das wohltemperierte Klavier (WTK; German pronunciation: [das ˌvoːlˌtɛmpəˈʁiːɐ̯tə klaˈviːɐ̯]). Bach gave the title Das Wohltemperirte Clavier to a book of preludes and fugues in all 24 keys, major and minor, dated 1722, composed "for the profit and use of musical youth desirous of learning, and especially for the pastime of those already skilled in this study". Some 20 years later, Bach compiled a second book of the same kind (24 pairs of preludes and fugues), which became known as The Well-Tempered Clavier, Part Two (in German: Zweyter Theil, modern spelling: Zweiter Teil).On ‘Pianotv.net’ they consider these preludes and fugues to be the five easier compositions amongst the collection. C minor (BWV 847); C major (BWV 846); D minor (BWV 851); E minor (BWV 855); and F# major (BWV 858). J S Bach (1685-1750) compiled two books of 24 Preludes and Fugues for keyboard under the title ‘The Well-tempered Clavier’. They were written at different times – the first, in Cöthen, was finished by 1722, the second, while in Leipzig, by 1744 (or possibly earlier). Bach recycled some of the preludes and fugues from earlier sources: the 1720 ‘ Klavierbüchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann Bach’ (one of his sons) contains versions of eleven of the preludes of the first book of ‘The Well-Tempered Clavier’. Informed by the spikier sound of the harpsichord, Schiff avoids the temptation to smudge Bach’s textures with the piano’s sustaining pedal. Instead, thanks to his impeccable technique and instinctive grasp of the music’s architecture, he floats the sound, spinning cantabile melodies with the fingers alone (and with a little help from ECM’s glossy recording). Contrapuntal lines are sharply etched, so that even the most highly wrought fugues sound transparent as cut glass. Alexander Siloti transcribed a piano arrangement of the early version of Prelude and Fugue in E minor ( BWV 855a), transposed into a Prelude in B minor. [ citation needed] Recordings [ edit ] The prelude and fugue (a contrapuntal technique based on melodic imitation) had been a popular pairing well before the time of Bach, but in the hands of this master reached new heights of complexity and expression. Bach’s 48 has influenced generations of composers ever since, resulting in the fugue becoming one of the most durable forms in Western musical history.