I think I read the story about the ambiguity of the intended instrumentation concerning the recording of Pierre-Laurant Aimard (on an interview or in a CD-booklet). Before that I just had known there are recordings of The Art of Fugue played by a small orchestra or a string quartett, so I was surprised by the fact that that set can be a part of piano repertoires.

Sarah, thanks for sharing your teacher's tips! I knew nothing about them. But you know... I'm afraid to say I didn't understand what is the "forward toward-the-fallboard motion"
I'll keep your second tip in mind and try to apply to practice BTW You seem to be a very analytical and scrupulous person which I'd like to be willingly

Thank you Alfonso for the score example (I think it took you not a short time, which I really appreciate) and your explicit and helpful views!

For now, you may be right, since my recent interest on Bach was mainly awaken by my frustration from the quite unsuccessful practicing of that Bach-Rach piece. I practiced and practiced, but I can hardly see any technical improvement between the recording in my last post on AR and my playing now. At first I thought I have to include some etudes in my daily practicing. But which etudes? Then it occurred to me it could be a Bach, Bach in original.
On the other side I always had a fear of Bach's music, too, after I played his partitas. For the about five years in which I worked with my teacher I could experience various composers (including JC Bach, Janacek, Berg, Sibelius and Scriabin) and I think I learned how to face a new repertoire and to find my own interpretations. But Bach was not the case. I lost myself in the theoretically endless possibilities of interpretations. I could not choose which possibility is here to apply. In this sense one of your views impressed me:

According to this, the uncountable possibilies could be wonderful stuffs which I can play with. Not the fearful things


The word "finger substitution" caught my attention! I usually use that technique to play flowing legato. In what kinds of situations could it be applied on Bach? And do you mean by "finger crossing" here just that of 4th and 5th fingers or are there another cases?


That is what I usually do. But you know, I find very often my inner clock is disturbed by the fright in front of the recorder! Once I turned on my digital metronom in "mute" (so that I can only "see" the beats") and restarted recording the same thing. And the result was much better. But somehow I felt as if I'm cheating... I don't know...


Thanks Alfonso! Frankly speaking I was thinking only about the delicious things to eat for the feast day, not about making new decisions

This reminds me....I am very interested in East Asian traditional music, and I wonder if you know anything about it. Also, happy new year!


Okay, I will try to break down what I meant here. I am really referring to the inherent musical value of everything Bach wrote. I have found that every now and then, there are a few weak bars in Bach, but I can't call to mind anything in his published keyboard works (that is, the things he published when he was alive) that is sub-par. Not a whole movement, anyway. It's all good stuff. Sometimes, we get to know these pieces from other pianists, rather than from the page, and usually it's much easier to familiarize ourselves with pieces that way, but sometimes, none of the pianists we have available manage to sell the piece to us. That doesn't mean it doesn't have that inherent value, and that we can't make something of it.


Your question actually has a great deal to do with the similarity between Chopin and Bach. Detached touch is certainly necessary to make Bach's keyboard technique work, but it is by no means the rule. Some of his technical problems simply require you to lift your hand off the keyboard and rearrange it completely, and it frequently happens in places where the passage is technically possible with a legato touch. The legato touch is simply not correct. And I'm not saying there is any rule on this you should follow - I actually prefer editions without fingerings so I can be forced to figure them out on my own, which I think is an important skill, though I have lately taken to comparing my fingerings to professional ones - but when you are practicing, it's a good idea to keep this in mind at all times. If something is awkward when legato, consider that maybe a detached touch will be better. A decent general rule is that, when there are two voices, one will be legato and the other detached. Because Bach uses invertible counterpoint, the voices will change hands, but the motives should be consistently articulated, barring occasional changes that you intentionally do for artistic reasons. When there are more than two voices, at least one of them will be detached, and at least one of them will be legato, as if you were an organist. If there are four voices, it's likely but not necessary to be 2+2, but very rarely does Bach use more than three voices intricately in keyboard music; in the 4- and 5-voice fugues, for example, the 4th and 5th voices are mostly used as harmonic filler, with rare exceptions, such as the return of the b-flat minor fugue in book II, where all four voices have the subject, quite an intricate one, at the same time (2+2 stretto, in thirds in each hand, and melodically inverted in the left).

Also, the 'detached touch' is not completely detached. For instance, you regularly find yourself in Bach with running 16ths in one voice. There are several different ways to articulate each group of 4 16ths, and it will vary depending on the piece, which works best. Connect the first two, making the final three detached? Connect the first three, making the final two detached? While sometimes there will be a mostly detached voice against a mostly legato voice, there are some times when both voices are a combination of detached and legato (for example, those fugue subjects in stretto), and the legato vs staccato effect from RH to LH is still a good general rule. It just gets a tad more complicated.

So, I find in Bach a very strange independence of my fingers from the keyboard, that I did not find without Bach. The easier Chopin pieces did not in any way prepare me for the more difficult Chopin pieces - in fact, they gave me an entirely wrong idea of how to play the more difficult pieces. I don't really think that you are struggling in this area in the same way that I am, at all, but I also find in Bach a wonderful independence of my fingers that I don't think any other composer's music has given me cause to comprehend, and I think that this value is what most pianists find in Bach.

For example: I am currently playing Chopin's 25/1 etude in A-flat. I have played it before: it was the first Chopin etude I played in public for anything (local competition). I had such an amazingly difficult time with it back then! I realize now it was because I did not know how to make my fingers fly above the keys. From the first time Chopin augments the A-flat chord on the first page of the etude, that technique was required. I played the etude without that technique before, and it was painfully difficult, and the piece did not come off so well, and never quite came close to performance tempo. Now that I have that ability, I can play the first page at performance tempo without having practiced it in the last 15 years at all, and most of my work on it will be learning the notes in the rest of the piece.


I posted that recital a while back, but I posted it on the General forum, because none of it (not even one movement!) was good enough for the audition room. (It was in this thread, but not in the first post.....the links to the recital videos are further down.) One day I will get there, but I'm pretty patient in that area. Maybe I will get some recording equipment one day and record something decent when I'm not shaking in front of the audience. You should be able to see from those videos that I am pretty challenged on piano. I'm not happy with how the recital turned out, but nevertheless, I'm proud of the progress I made. I was really in horrible shape when I returned to school.


Henle has some good notes on this question. I will type it out if necessary, but there's a chance Alf or someone knows of a digital version of the notes. Here is a tidbit for now:




IMSLP scores, the Bach-Gesellschaft edition, are the closest thing you can get to urtext for free (and you can get bound editions from Dover for very cheap). The NBA has improved upon B-G greatly in correcting errors against autographs, etc., but the keyboard editions are really not bad, and most of the errors are in the ornaments from what I gather. There was one wrong note in the allemande of the c minor partita, but it was so obviously a wrong note that I couldn't have possibly thought it was right. I haven't found any other errors yet, but I haven't looked so deeply.

I'm also going to butt in on your convo with Alf, as he's probably in bed by now and I think I know what he is talking about.


Yes! This is exactly what I meant about making it fun, and Bach being flexible. There is more room to experiment in his music than in nearly anything else, certainly more than anything else with inherent musical quality. There is more freedom to put your mark on the music.


This goes with what Chris said about thinking like an organist sometimes. It is a combination of perfect legato and clever portato that makes Bach's keyboard music interesting. I have to use finger substitution more in Bach than in anything else I play, but even that becomes part of the dance, especially in some sequential passages. One man passes his partner to another man; so one finger passes a note to another. And if we're talking about 4th and 5th fingers crossing....that is often necessary. I'm thinking right now of the last few measures of the organ passacaglia (not the fugue). Wow. It will take some practice to be able to play those few measures right.....but on a smaller scale, it is required in the harpsichord works as well.

Okay, I thought of something that is a good Bach-Chopin comparison. I have never practiced this one, but I had to analyze the d minor set from WTC-I. The prelude introduces a technique that Chopin was very fond of, because Chopin was enormously fond of functional counterpoint, but he had either a distaste for writing strict counterpoint or an insecurity complex about writing it (which would be understandable, in the face of Bach...Bach leaves the impression that any attempt on our part to do what he did with strict counterpoint would be, at best, redundant). But in this d minor prelude of Bach, there is an example of a technique that Bach used quite often, where voices that are not explicitly written are implied. I really favor the interpretation with the light, most connected version of the portato in the right hand, where the 'hidden' voices can subtly rise up out of a generally delicate fluttering. It's very similar to what Chopin did in a number of instances. Well, almost everything Chopin wrote used this 'hidden counterpoint' style, but some works are more similar to that d minor prelude than others. The 25/1 etude is one example.



The 'hidden' voice on the third note of each triplet is similar to the 'hidden' voice here in the Chopin etude, first on the 3rd and 6th notes of each sextuplet, and then on the 2nd note of each sextuplet in the 2nd measure:



Prelude #8 is another example. These two, already, are quite far removed from Bach, but they simply expand outward from Bach's premise. Chopin uses even more chromaticism, even more obscure counterpoint, even more convoluted technical problems, and all of this simply to achieve the aforementioned tapping of the percussive/expressive capabilities of the piano. Even more convoluted is Chopin's use of the false unison, in prelude 14 and in the final movement of the 2nd sonata.

Alf mentioned the WTC as didactic works, but the suites and the Goldberg variations were all published under the title Klavier-Übung, and some organ stuff as well of course. If you have a complex about the suites, though...I understand. I think I go for the suites because they are so long, and I dig that as opposed to just a prelude-fugue combo. I want my recitals to be more Bach than anything else, so that is my approach. Everyone is of course quite correct that you shouldn't perform something you don't like.

See? That’s already a good reason to avoid using it out of habit.

The metronome disorientates (and in the long time impairs!) an important component of your musical faculties, your inner sense of rhythm. The metronome doesn't know what's going on in the score, tic-toc-tic-toc, and makes your playing mechanical and your rhythm artificially stiff. Also, since you're in the delicate phase of learning a piece, that unwanted rhythmic stiffness will ingrain and you will probably never be able to recover an authentic pulse in the piece you are studying.

I've tracked down a quotation by Joseph Hofmann that I remembered reading in the past, about the use of a metronome.



But of course my killer argument against the metronome in Bach is that Bach himself avoided using it.

LOL, I trust my ability to play without mechanical rhythm when it's important. I can do it even with the metronome on, and I'm sure Chopin could as well, or he wouldn't have used it to the point of keeping it on during lessons. I will continue to practice with a metronome.

PS - I have been practicing that Chopin etude, the 25/1, with the metronome on 4 16ths per beat. Good way to learn the notes on the inner two pages and accustom myself to the polyrhythm at the same time.

The German Organ Mass, framed by the St.Anne's prelude and fugue, is the absolute pinnacle of (Baroque) organ music, containing some of the most ingenious, impressive, and challenging organ chorales ever written.

You don't want to call that some organ stuff Terez, for fear of incurring my eternal wrath

I don't know nothing about the music of other asian countries, but I've been certainly exposed to Korean traditional music. The traditional music for the courts is quite elegant. For example this kind of music is performed for international events again and again
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIYLKjD5Pzc&feature=PlayList&p=0FB243CA3581A297&index=0&playnext=1
These things are examples how the traditional instruments are used nowadays to survive (they play "western" music on those trad. instruments):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5j0EnN_RpU&feature=PlayList&p=31F6AC34B16CDF93&index=0&playnext=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3tRfOB43mzY&feature=related
Or, some bands play their own original composition:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7kKefjV3sA

Ok, now I understand what you meant!



OMG, this is really helpful! Thank you very much, Terez.


The special techique you mentioned is still unknown to me and I think it's too clear, since I never studied Bach seriously. Looking forward to the moment where it is unveiled also to me

Terez, my baby just made poo-poo, so I'll be back!

LOL, sorry Chris. I don't play organ so I've never had occasion to check it out before. Of course I got bombarded with the organ passacaglia as a listening assignment in music history, so now I've got to play it.....

Hye-Jin....I first read that as 'Terez made my baby poo-poo', lol. I'm glad it wasn't my fault! And thanks much for the links on the Korean music!

Bach possibly avoided using the metronome because Maelzel was born to invent it yet.

Anyway, as far as the variety of articulations available in Bach, one thing to consider is that neither the organ nor the harpsichord offered any form of dynamic accent -- a particular note could only be brought out through an agogic accent, which occurs by shortening the note(s) before the stressed note or lengthening the stressed note.

This becomes particularly important in such instances as a piece that starts on an anacrusis (pick up). If articulation is not adequately differentiated to help define the beats, the music can be heard as being a partial beat off -- one can get disoriented. For example, the Invention in D major, the initial notes could sound as beat one.

Articulation is also necessary to spell out syncopations and hemiola.

Though not all harpsichord / organ type articulations will work at every similar spot on a piano (indeed, there can be differences between harpsichord and organ to bring out the same piece), they can often be quite useful in certain spots and at the least inform your use of dynamic articulation on a piano.

(I know what I'm trying to say but I'm not sure that it is coming out well.)

Scott

Shhhh, Alf is trying to be funny!

The good news is that, after 1-thousand plus posts here, I can still get surprised.

I guess he'd only just been born then, and Bach decided to wait, but died before Maelzel could invented it ? Makes sense to me