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A Bach Thread


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  • 1 month later...

Adding this here for future reference.

 

Too rushed but would make a killer octave study. I may try this if my wrists will take it. Age ( or bad technique) is catching up with me lately.

 

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"It doesn't have to be difficult to be cool" - Mitch Towne

 

"A great musician can bring tears to your eyes!!!

So can a auto Mechanic." - Stokes Hunt

 

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I prefer keys where the root is a natural and the 3 is sharp or flat. Those fit my hand as middle fingers stick out further than my thumb. I don't like keys where 1 and 5 are black and 3 is white.

 

I wish I had appreciated Bach more when I was taking lessons in school. There is a lot to learn with the fingering and the use of accidentals.

This post edited for speling.

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Thanx CEB, Gavrilov is a monster pianist. I still remember an old vinyl of him playing Prokofiev's 1st piano concerto.., .Angela Hewitt is a fantastic player as well. I would add Tatjana Nikolayevna, the teacher of many great Russian pianists and a fantastic interpreter of Bach's music herself.
Be grateful for what you've got - a Nord, a laptop and two hands
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Years ago, I memorized the 3rd Movement of Bach's Italian Concerto. A terrific composition with a bright melody and it was also a great left hand workout. Learning Bach's Italian Concerto had a positive influence on my playing.

 

When there a lull on stage or the crew needed a few minutes, I'd play it using the ARP 4 Voice Piano's harpsichord tone. Fun times. This thread has inspired me to find the sheet music.

Steve Coscia

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She makes some interesting points. I hate to tell her that not only does Chopin sound like doggy doo on the Polymoog but I thought Bach did too.

 

I still can't bring myself to compare Bach to Arnold Schoenberg. I don't like Schoenberg.

 

[video:youtube]

"It doesn't have to be difficult to be cool" - Mitch Towne

 

"A great musician can bring tears to your eyes!!!

So can a auto Mechanic." - Stokes Hunt

 

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I'm continuing to work through The Well Tempered Clavier and I have some thoughts and questions.

 

1) I got an opportunity to have hands on an actual Harpsichord. Dang you have to be accurate and very articulate on those things. Piano is a lot more forgiving otherwise it is a smeared up jingly mess. I've play Harpsichord patches on Keyboards. The two experiences have nothing in common. I expect the harpsichord to be an easier axe to play on. It wasn't for for me. I was out of my environment.

 

2) My copy of WTC is marked for dynamics. This was done by Carl Czerny. The Harsichord doesn't do dynamics like a piano. Is what Czerny did considered proper piano treatment? On the Preludes I tend to want to do dramatic shifts in dynamics. I guess I am a Romantic at Heart.

"It doesn't have to be difficult to be cool" - Mitch Towne

 

"A great musician can bring tears to your eyes!!!

So can a auto Mechanic." - Stokes Hunt

 

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2) My copy of WTC is marked for dynamics. This was done by Carl Czerny. The Harsichord doesn't do dynamics like a piano. Is what Czerny did considered proper piano treatment?

 

Not really. Edit: well I am no academically qualified to truly question Czerny, but you could maybe play these dynamics very subtly and it would sound fine.

 

On the Preludes I tend to want to do dramatic shifts in dynamics. I guess I am a Romantic at Heart.

 

You can do whatever makes you happy. Seriously. But know that it wasn't the composer's intent, nor at all the style of the time.

 

Dynamics in Baroque literature definitely have a place. Subtle shading and highlighting of certain melodies and phrases can give the music further dimension. But bluntly wielding FFs and PPs to maudlin excess can ruin the integrity of the music.

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Dynamics in Baroque music are always subject to debate, but much of Bach's music was actually written for clavichord, rather than harpsichord. It's similar in sound to harpsichord, but is able to produce a range of dynamics. Bach almost certainly played these pieces with dynamics himself, but leaving it up to the performer was a common practice at the time, as details like dynamics were considered more of an afterthought. So, dynamics weren't often indicated, but that doesn't mean dynamics were or should be absent. I feel like most Bach pieces sort of "play themselves" in terms of dynamics though.
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I have the Alfred's collection of Bach's 2-part Inventions. I really like that book it comes with a CD and they have nice notation on the ornamentations.

"It doesn't have to be difficult to be cool" - Mitch Towne

 

"A great musician can bring tears to your eyes!!!

So can a auto Mechanic." - Stokes Hunt

 

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Yes I can see that being the culprit. I am at home at the piano I just played through the first Prelude in WTC and Czerny has dynamics ranging from pp to ff in the score.

"It doesn't have to be difficult to be cool" - Mitch Towne

 

"A great musician can bring tears to your eyes!!!

So can a auto Mechanic." - Stokes Hunt

 

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The dynamic range of an actual clavichord is generally more like mp down to pp. It's a very quiet instrument.

 

Speaking of which this is one of the points Andras Schiff points to in this discussion on Bach.

 

[video:youtube]

 

I will not pedal.

I will not pedal.

I will not .........

"It doesn't have to be difficult to be cool" - Mitch Towne

 

"A great musician can bring tears to your eyes!!!

So can a auto Mechanic." - Stokes Hunt

 

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  • 1 month later...

You can find parts of this on YouTube but this is a full hour segment.

 

This is from a Chinese YouTube type site I don't if it can be embedded.

 

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzcxMTI1NjUy.html

 

This helps me understand the issues I had with some of Glenn Gould interpretations. I like his interpretations of major Bach works but his interpretation of a lot of the stuff that I play through I don't like. In the middle of this he explains experimentation with tempos and other aspects in minor works like inventions, preludes, fugues and gigues but would NOT think of doing that to multi movement pieces and pieces of great importance such as Concertos or Partitas. Glenn was an interesting man.

"It doesn't have to be difficult to be cool" - Mitch Towne

 

"A great musician can bring tears to your eyes!!!

So can a auto Mechanic." - Stokes Hunt

 

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  • 3 months later...
I'm getting goosebumps just sitting here and thinking of certain moments in St. Anne's Fugue. No other composer does that to me. Bach is truly sublime.

 

You have no idea how universal this is. I remember the first Bach piece I heard years ago moved me to tears - before I even knew who the composer was. And I come from a very different musical background - western music forms a very small fraction of my listening. I still can't tell one piece from another, why the key scale is mentioned, or what the heck a fugue is. And I've seen similar reactions from friends who are accomplished musicians in the Indian classical tradition - even the die-hard purists who don't listen to any western music.

 

Thanks for this thread, and the posts in it.

 

Not politically correct but I couldn't care less... JS Bach is by far the greatest western musician composer in recorded western history.

Pablo Casals says as much.

You don't have ideas, ideas have you

We see the world, not as it is, but as we are. "One mans food is another mans poison". I defend your right to speak hate. Tolerance to a point, not agreement

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I have an aged LP called "The Pocket Bach" by George Fields, the first-chair harmonica virtuoso who played for films such as "Paint Your Wagon." He sat in a walk-in closet and played Bach one line at a time into an 8-track reel-to-reel. He used about 12 different instruments, one being a large Hohner chromatic with a hefty slide on it. Like all Bach, its riveting and perfect. It highlights how you can play it on ANYthing and have it translate seamlessly.

 

I see mention of his music, but I encourage you to read one of his many biographies. Your admiration will triple when you learn of how he lost a beloved young wife and several children to illness as a younger man, had to fight to inject any creativity into what was often seen as an adjunct to worship only and wrestled politics and the demands of teaching all his life. He usually had a cadre of puckerbutts pulling him this way and that all the time. To handle so many pressures and STILL crank out reams of such works makes him seem almost supernatural. Why, the poor man didn't even have tape cassettes, much less Pro Tools. You think YOU have rehearsal hassles.... :o

 

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I have an aged LP called "The Pocket Bach" by George Fields, the first-chair harmonica virtuoso who played for films such as "Paint Your Wagon." He sat in a walk-in closet and played Bach one line at a time into an 8-track reel-to-reel. He used about 12 different instruments, one being a large Hohner chromatic with a hefty slide on it. Like all Bach, its riveting and perfect. It highlights how you can play it on ANYthing and have it translate seamlessly.

 

 

 

I see mention of his music, but I encourage you to read one of his many biographies. Your admiration will triple when you learn of how he lost a beloved young wife and several children to illness as a younger man, had to fight to inject any creativity into what was often seen as an adjunct to worship only and wrestled politics and the demands of teaching all his life. He usually had a cadre of puckerbutts pulling him this way and that all the time. To handle so many pressures and STILL crank out reams of such works makes him seem almost supernatural. Why, the poor man didn't even have tape cassettes, much less Pro Tools. You think YOU have rehearsal hassles.... :o

 

Amen to all of that work ethic and grit

Close to supernatural indeed

pablo Casals Said Bach was Divine

And again he said Bach was in his own category above all others- sorry for poor paraphrasing.

You don't have ideas, ideas have you

We see the world, not as it is, but as we are. "One mans food is another mans poison". I defend your right to speak hate. Tolerance to a point, not agreement

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I have an aged LP called "The Pocket Bach" by George Fields

 

I'd love to hear this. I found bassharp.com and read the liner notes written, amazingly enough, by Rory Guy, better known as Angus Scrimm, "The Tall Man."

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  • 2 months later...

A like the far away sound of this piano. Usually everything I do sounds close and in your face. Not sure if this was the intent or just a consequence of it being an old recording.

 

[video:youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ej5rGGTHy54

"It doesn't have to be difficult to be cool" - Mitch Towne

 

"A great musician can bring tears to your eyes!!!

So can a auto Mechanic." - Stokes Hunt

 

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  • 5 weeks later...
  • 10 months later...
My mistake! I thought 99 cents was too cheap.

 

The Complete Album

 

A regular on my iPod rotation

With a title like "Bach to the Future: Piano and Synthesizer" I was expecting to hear piano and synthesizer _together_. From what I can tell by listening to the preview snippets some tracks are piano and some tracks are synthesizer; never both together on the same track. A pity - that could have been interesting.

 

I don't know what it is but with the exception of one artist I am always disappointed by synthesized Bach. That artist is, of course, Wendy Carlos. She had the training and the talent to use the right sounds and to phrase them expressively that other interpretations seem to lack, including IMO this one. With the exception of track 14 (English Suite in A Minor) the synth tracks don't do it for me. But perhaps I need to hear the complete tracks to judge them fairly.

 

Too bad Wendy's body of work is more-or-less out of print. According to her web site, "Due to major changes in the music business, we unexpectedly lost our ESD distribution, leaving us stranded with few good options." That happened several years ago now.

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  • 7 months later...

I'm almost finished with this 3 Part Invention (or Sinfonias)

In this one there is always at least one finger held as a tie in either hand per measure (and/or into the next) . . . the 2nd page is just pure genius!

 

Really knocked my socks off this one, Bach's genius was never clearer to me. . . . It's having it's effect on all my other playing (non-classical) . . .why I love to play Bach beside the pure joy of it! This is 'back-burner' work for me, at it for a few months now....I usually eventually get through them!

 

Bach 3 Part Invention in D Minor . . .

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