Through her generosity, earsense is able to reproduce her diagrams, which, as the adage goes, are worth 1, words. A More General Perspective: Texture and Counterpoint The chief focus of earsense musical appreciation is Chamber Music, most specifically, the vital tradition of the string quartet.
Given this, it might seem odd that earsense should be so preoccupied with earlier music of the Baroque era what to speak of a very specific and singular collection of fugues. Is a detailed look at Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier just an elaborate "sidebar" to an emerging emphasis on Chamber music?
Just as the Baroque fugue requires a certain kind of cultivated listening quite outside the modern experience of popular music, so it is with Chamber music of the Classical era. One of the key aspects of composition, performance and the listening experience in Chamber music is texture, the qualities of blend and independence exhibited by an ensemble of essential and equal partners. Among other things, the string quartet is a medium par excellence for polyphonic and contrapuntal texture as realized by four stringed instruments sharing a common timbre, balanced across a broad range of pitch, and each tasked with an individual part of awesome integrity and equally awesome responsibility to ensemble.
It is not surprising to realize that string chamber music itself frequently indulges in the exacting arts of fugue and fugato, canon and imitation, just as naturally as it blends into profound, homophonic unity. As such, a study of Well-Tempered Clavier is more prerequisite than sidebar.
An alert appreciation of the techniques and resulting musical expressions of counterpoint is required to begin to unlock the treasures of all chamber music.
With prelude and fugue providing a foundation of texture, the earsense features of the string quartet can build a more elaborate presentation, focusing on the next layer of design: form and harmonic rhythm. As the string quartet represents an exquisite ensemble for contrapuntal texture, so the keyboard prelude and fugue represent a similar ensemble in miniature. With fugues in three and four parts, a single keyboard performer must assume the role of a multi-part ensemble, partitioning the fingers, the heart and the mind of a single musician into a kind of virtual chamber ensemble, a string trio or quartet transcribed for the keyboard.
While the forms and expressions of string chamber music are often quite different than a Baroque keyboard fugue, the essential spirit is not. Familiarity with and appreciation of texture in the keyboard fugue will enhance your appreciation of string chamber music, and certainly visa versa.
In the most general sense, Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier is simply great music of the highest order. Its aspects of melody, harmony, rhythm and form and its even more general affects of continuity, development, tension, release and full artistic expression apply to all music, chamber of otherwise. Bach has something to offer on all qualities of music. And the sheer aesthetic satisfaction of his music is, regardless of any didactic benefit, a supreme end in itself.
Its existence immediately raises the question of whether anyone other than Bach created such a thing: a comprehensive encyclopedia of preludes and fugues in all 24 keys, exercising all the chief technical features of counterpoint yet producing successful music as music itself, an equally comprehensive collection of diverse aesthetic experiences whose sheer range is another metric of artistic accomplishment. Any study of merit takes into account the basic principle of induction: the deepest comprehension of a subject must involve more than a single example; it must move beyond the peculiarities of a first instance and deal with a comparison and contrast to a second example.
In the case of the Well-Tempered Clavier, is this possible? Dmitri Shostakovich, a 20th century Soviet composer, wrote his own modern collection of 24 preludes and fugues on in each key which was directly inspired by Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. Written in , his Op. It is a perfect second example, full of classic contrapuntal technique, comprehensive in range and experience, conceived of as an awesome unity. In some cases, Op. In other cases, it is indisputably Shostakovich. It to is both infinitely instructive as well as a fully satisfying end in itself.
As a second chapter in the art of contrapuntal texture, it powerfully demonstrates that Bach's ancient art is viable in a modern voice. As another set of fugues, it expands the earsense exploration to 72 keyboard fugues spanning some years, a much broader view than most other extant resources provide. You will find the work of Shostakovich in the companion earsense feature, 24 Jewels.
A Final Personal Note There is something personally quite satisfying about "finishing" 48 Jewels to the extent that all 48 of the fugues from both books of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier are well-represented on earsense. For me personally, it is a kind of trophy representing the hours and the years that I have spent trying will all my faculties to absorb this supreme art of musical expression.
It is, of course, with tremendous pleasure, pride and hope that earsense offers the presentation to others, enabling them to build their own personal relationship to this great music. There is something very comforting that, within the volatile, volumnous and occasionally crass maelstrom of overwhelming content on the web, there is a place with a bit more order, a bit higher quality content, and a relevance and utility that will never diminish.
Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier is eternally enduring. One could only dream that a creative web-based presentation of Bach might endure as well. There is only one slightly nagging problem: every time I sit to listen to prelude or fugue with the intention of checking the corresponding earsense page, I always want to add something new.
Each page captures some things about a fugue, but most definitely not all things. A characteristic of great art is that it never tires and it always has something new to say. This is a supreme understatement when it comes to Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier. And this is a good thing, though, in the end, there is something downright mysterious or even mystical about it.
The inexpressible musical eloquence of the Well-Tempered Clavier gives us all space and time to enjoy it again and again, even to find something new or different with each experience. This is very much part of its charm and its challenge. While my own appreciation of the Well-Tempered Clavier has vastly grown far beyond my initial curiosity with the plain, white box of LPs from the Musical Heritage Society, I still approach the music every time with an awareness of its purity and the demand to cultivate a fresh and blank sort of beginner's mind to receive it, as though, with all of its treasures still hidden, it is still like an untouched, plain white box.
All rights reserved. Credit US-PD. James Stewart. As a composer, he is interested in many different genres of music; writing for rock bands, symphony orchestras and everything in between.
See stories by James Stewart. Related Content. There is a long history of connection between the world of music and the world of mathematics. A squared plus B squared equals C squared; that is of course…. Timeline Georg Philipp Telemann. Georg Philipp Telemann was unquestionably the most prolific composer of his generation. He wrote over 3, individual works ranging from chamber music to…. Timeline George Frideric Handel. The Baroque era to was a time of blending cultures as the European continent was becoming smaller and more connected.
A mixture of influences…. Poetic and thoughtful, Fischer is one of the most intuitive of Bach interpreters: tempos are beautifully judged — never too lugubrious nor too frenzied — and he eschews the anachronistic tendency for those grandiose, Romantic gestures that mar many early performances. The recorded sound may not compare with recent versions, but this remastering reveals a luminous tone and transparent, cleanly articulated counterpoint. In contrast to her straight-laced earlier accounts, these mature readings are pliant and free, their liberal use of rhetorical gestures and rubato informed by Baroque harpsichord technique.
Her Fazioli piano is lighter and leaner than the Steinway of the previous version, its specially adapted action lending clarity. My one caveat is that her microscopic attention to detail is sometimes just too finicky. Gustav Leonhardt harpsichord Deutsche Harmonia Mundi Leonhardt plumbs the depths of these works, both as a musician and as a scholar, and by the time he made this recording, they flowed from him as naturally as blood through his veins. Blissfully free of mannerisms or intrusive eccentricities, his readings are seigneurial.
0コメント