I don’t blame us for preferring our rather clean, modern Bach editions to this:

But are we so confident in our own interpretations that we can throw out the likes of Hans Bischoff, Carl Czerny, Ferruccio Busoni (pictured) and Donald Francis Tovey? These heavily annotated performance editions, while, yes, they should be read alongside a ‘cleaner’ modern edition, can certainly still teach us some beautiful musicianship.

In this episode, I let Sir Donald Francis Tovey’s remarks on the g-sharp minor prelude and fugue, BWV 863, lead us through an analysis of the work.

Some more from Busoni (the previous prelude and fugue,) his footnotes and ossias are exciting:

Most of these editions are in the public domain on IMSLP. Have a look:

https://imslp.org/wiki/Das_wohltemperierte_Klavier_I,_BWV_846-869_(Bach,_Johann_Sebastian)

Finally, here is the source of confusion about the Picardy third at the end of the g-sharp minor fugue. At first glance, it certainly looks like B natural in the alto voice. (Soprano clef)

But look closer. (Sorry for the resolution.) This is not Bach’s normal natural sign. It has a slash (maybe two slashes?) through it:

Here are few of Bach’s natural signs. Upon comparison, the above sign certainly is modified with extra strokes to form a sharp:

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Concepts Covered:

An analysis of BWV 863 exploring the four-voice fugue, the two counter-subjects, the invention of the prelude with its inversions — guided by Sir Donald Francis Tovey's annotated Well-Tempered Clavier edition. We mention Busoni, Czerny, and Bartok’s edition as well. What do these historic performance editions still have to teach us? Why a modern urtext editions won’t tell the whole story, and finally the confusion at the end of the prelude and fugue: the Picardy third in the alto voice at the finale.

Happy Birthday Johann. Today, March 21st, not March 31st.

Let me repeat that for those of you feeling clever or citing google without thinking:

Happy Birthday Johann. Today, March 21st, not March 31st.

Why are people confused about this? How did this become a thing? And what extremely boring person got so frustrated with a toccata they started tampering with Bach’s wikipedia page?

There were two main calendars in Europe at the time: the Julian and the Gregorian. We are currently on the Gregorian, but it took a while to get everyone on board. Greece held out until 1923 even, and Protestant Germany was holding back in 1685, when Bach was born.

But you know, you gotta get with the times, man! Gotta catch up to the modern world! It’s gonna be 1700 pretty soon! We’re gonna have mercury thermometers and calculus… You’re living in the past! …ten days in the past!

So in 1700, Germany did indeed make the jump from Julian to Gregorian. In the year 1700, they jumped from February 18, to March 1. No one died, no one was born between Feb 18th and March 1st, 1700 in protestant Germany. (No one even used the toilet.)

Germany joined the Gregorian calendar when Bach was 15 years old, with the legal stipulation that all prior dates would remain valid. A legal stipulation, in fact, protecting the old dates from being overridden, and converted to the new calendar.

So, come on people, let’s not try to override this actual legal stipulation. (Here’s my gentle reminder that saying Bach was born on March 31st is illegal.) We can’t go about dismissing ecclesiastical records in favor of our modern abstractions just because we’re feeling smug about hybrid cars and vegan smoothies. It’s not like the Gregorian calendar represents some objective truth that the Julian calendar was failing to capture.

Bach was Born on March 21st. The next person I hear whispering in the bar, “well, technically he was born on March 31st…” is getting a mordent —to the face.

Are you that person who’s trying to switch Bach’s birthday to the 31st? Wow. Can’t wait to hang out with you on Christmas: “Actually, statistically speaking, the odds that Jesus was born on the 25th of December are practically zero! Did you know that in Judea, shepherds typically watched their flocks by night from Spring to early Autumn?” Yeah, yeah, yeah. Get a life.

Maybe you know about Shakespeare and Cervantes? That they died on the same day? Or rather, the same date. It’s the same thing: Protestant England, on the Julian calendar, and Catholic Spain, on the Gregorian. It created this beautifully poetic coincidence. The greatest writers of their generations both died on April 23, 1616— 10 days apart.

Now, we’re not going to switch the date on which Shakespeare died, are we?! No. That’d be asinine. Which is exactly what shifting Bach’s birthday to March 31st is, asinine. March 21st is also Early Music Day in Europe— for this very reason, and we’re not going to move early music day are we? No, that’d be asinine.

March 21st is also, nicely, International Poetry Day, …and World Puppetry Day, …and World Day for Glaciers— if you ask me we have too many days, but sure, why not. In fact, why not make a puppet of Bach reading a poem and dance him around on some ice cubes today.

Today is also Harmony Day in Australia, beautiful! The immortal god of harmony, that he should share Harmony Day in Australia. I pictured everyone leaning into triads and flat-nines down unda’ but this day happens to be about racial harmony, but still! Still. Let’s sing four-part chorales with everyone we know.

Bach’s birthday is March 21st. It always was March 21st. You know who was born on March 31st? Haydn. Who? Exactly. Never heard of him. If anyone wishes me a happy birthday Bach in 10 days, I’m blocking you.

Dig Out Your Inner Ear:

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I was always jealous of jazz musicians, simply learning music off recordings— no sheet music necessary. Why couldn’t I do that? Why don’t classical musicians have this skill? It seems like all musical cultures in the world learn this way, so what was I missing?

About 12 years ago I decided I wanted to be part of this tradition. After some trial and error, I hit upon a method that allowed me to learn Bach (or any other composer) by ear. And more than just being glad for having developed the skill of transcribing, the method is extremely efficient: I find that pieces are usually memorized faster than when using sheet music.

Here is the method as explained in the episode:

-Record, slowly with the score, up to 60 seconds of music (or even 10 seconds if you like.)-Put away the score and play ‘call and response’ with the recording, relying on your ears.-Once learned, re-record the music as you've heard it, now learned aurally.-Re-open the music, play the new recording, checking for inaccuracies, missing details, &c.-Repeat…

Stretch the Octave:

Now, once something is memorized, you may want to keep it memorized. So you’re up against the ol’ Ebbinghaus Forgetting Curve: the speed at which your mind forgets without conscious review. We all have our own curves, but my rule has been roughly:

Play the newly memorized music twice on the first day,Review the music on the second day,… three days after learning,… one week after learning,… two weeks after learning,… one month after learning,… three months after learning,… six months after learning,… one year after learning,…two years after learning.

You can even put dates in your calendar saying, “You learned fugue X three months ago: Review it today.” With this practice, you’re sure to have some counterpoint written into your DNA.

W.T.F. Bach wants YOU to learn a fugue by ear:

The Pakistani musician I mentioned is the immortal, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Listen to his extraordinary live concerts where he and his band achieve the heights (while sitting on the floor.) In my next life I’d like to be one of the guys in back clapping only quarter notes.

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Analysis starts at 17 minutes. Sorry, I got carried away talking about the possible peculiar paradox of being a pianist. Just before making this episode, my harpsichord forced upon me a change of interpretation, so I started thinking about how and why this happens. I spoke about the way classical musicians are ‘bred,’ asking the following questions:

How can we spend our lives playing music from the 18th century without any contact with the instruments used then? Can we know objective aspects of older music while playing on a single model of an instrument developed toward the end of the 19th century? Do pianists exist in a vacuum, where a musical interpretation is guided by a sort of subjective vision— is it even vanity or self-flattery?

Certainly there are pianists who know the Steinway’s predecessors, but on the whole, I feel there is a real ignorance of the instruments on which our repertoire is founded. Perhaps, though, we are in the midst of a revolution of touch and interpretation: I’ve recently seen more pianists playing fortepianos, owning clavichords, et al. This can only lead to a more text-based reading of the music.

But— mind you!— is that a good thing? Do we want to push the art of keyboard playing in a direction away from self expression and toward people claiming the ‘truth’ is on their side? That sounds awful! Even if pianism indeed exists a vacuum, it certainly produces rare visions of the music only accessible through such an art.

Enough musing. While playing the A-flat major Prelude BWV 862 on my double manual harpsichord, the instrument, in a word, told me about the music. There was something about the limited palette of the instrument that forced upon me a new approach. This sort of radical adjustment to one’s playing is typical of playing on historic instruments. On the modern grand piano, possibilities are endless, but on older instruments, the sound tends to constrain the range of possible interpretations.

Spread the Fugue.

The prelude BWV 862 saw some lovely revisions between the earliest conception of the piece and the version we know. For starters, take the lovely line of the concertino solo in BWV 862a:

How different is the revision!

Now bars 22-27 in the earliest version:

Revised to the more evenly shaped:

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Concepts Covered:

J.S. Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1, Das Wohltemperierte Clavier, As Dur, BWV 862, The concerto style of the prelude, between two manuals in the prelude, Fugal analysis, early versions of WTK 1, BWV 862a, and the possible ‘vacuum of pianism’ creating subjective art vs. seeking objective facts about the music. Historic instruments leading to a text-based interpretation, using knowledge of older instruments to inform modern piano playing et cetera.

“The discontent of being between two notes; the urge to break free of a single note.”-Lionel Party (Paraphrased ca. 2005)

What an opening:

In this episode we listen to at least 14 different interpreters play this expressive trill. Such a simple idea, but how many different ways this idea can be realized! At an even speed or speeding up? With a turn at the end or a turn at the beginning or no turn at all? Crescendo all the way through or perhaps even diminuendo?

Between earliest version and the fair copy, Bach seems to smooth out the rhythm in the solo voices. This is a rare case where the earliest version is rhythmically more nuanced than the revision.

Bar 6. The last beat is more varied in the early version:

It is smoothed out in revision:

Bar 9. The top two voices sing in different rhythms in the early version:

In revision, Bach makes them consistent:

Penultimate bar. Note the 64th notes in the early version:

Everything is more uniform in revision:

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As we progress through Book One of The Well-Tempered Clavier, our fugal themes become increasingly complex and chromatic. Here, the fugue’s subject is angular, modern even:

The subjects come in an memorable stretto toward the end:

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Topics Covered in this episode:J.S. Bach Well-Tempered Clavier Book One, BWV 861 prelude and fugue analysis, also Baroque ornamentation and how to play a trill, performance practice. We examine Bach’s manuscript sources in the early vs late versions of this pair. A general discussion of Baroque keyboard music, harpsichord vs piano performance, fugue structure and form, and Bach’s counterpoint.

“But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”-Politics and the English Language

Thanks for reading W.T.F. Bach?! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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G Major: Bach’s key of virtuosity, celebration, exuberance (with his occasional contented reflections on mortality.) The passion music and death in the previous prelude and fugue is conquered by this G Major set, BWV 860 from The Well-Tempered Clavier Book One. The fugue is a brilliant model of contrapuntal technique.

The three-voice fugue begins:

But after only a few bars, Bach is ready to bring in all the voices again— this time with the melodies upside down. (Inverted exposition.) N.B. The middle voice’s theme began on the previous page:

And there are stretti in this fugue, one melody interrupting another. Here’s one where the themes are rhythmically shifted to the second half of the bar:

The prelude is equally joyous. The earliest version of this prelude is a mere 15 bars long, compared to the 19 bars of the latest version. Notice, too, how Bach changed the key signature of only one (!) staff. The earliest version reads:

But later, on the top staff, Bach changes it to 24/16 (!) in the fair copy, P. 415:

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A new type of episode, Quodlibets! Quod (what) + libet (it pleases) or, ‘whatever you like,’ ‘anything at all.’ This episode centers on a beautiful chorale prelude, but first, my, Ode to the Negroni: The Meeting of Etymology and Entomology at the top, then some Bach, and finally, how Paradise Lost was written, as explained by the English scholar, John Carey.

Erbarm dich mein, o Herre Gott, BWV 721, in f-sharp minor (note the Phrygian key signature!) is an extraordinary little piece. Written around 1709, it is a profound and most elusive chord progression. Here is the first page:

The text from 1524, based on Psalm 51, was translated by the English ecclesiastical reformer Myles Coverdale. I know nothing about him but his Wiki page is fascinating!

Finally, John Milton. If, one day, you sit down to read Paradise Lost you may feel… well, lost. It was the writing of the late John Carey that led me through this beautiful poem. Spoiler alert: Milton wrote the poem between sleeping and waking, totally blind, by dictating what he was receiving from a ‘Heavenly Muse’ he thought was the same muse responsible for inspiring the Mosaic books of the bible— Wow. Reading the poem with this in mind is a completely different experience. For Milton, the poem was a purely audible experience, hence reading it aloud brings it to life. He, after all, never saw it on a page.

Got Bach?

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Concepts Covered: Bach in the Phrygian Mode, Tone III, Missing flats, missing sharps, Bach’s Key signatures, John Milton, how did Milton write Paradise Lost, Etymology and Entomology, The Origins of the Negroni Cocktail

Source quoted:Leaver, Robin A. Luther's Liturgical Music: Principles and Implications. Eerdmans, 2007.

“It’s not that Bach writes music and then sits in an armchair and thinks about God... Bach writing music is Bach thinking about God.”

Individual keys are often loaded with personal significance to the composer. To what extent was Bach thinking of the double sense of Kreuze— both as ‘cross’ and the musical sign for a sharp?

As discussed in the episode, f# minor wasn’t necessarily the key signature with three ‘crosses,’ as Bach’s f# minor looks like this on the page:

Is it more likely that Bach saw b minor as the image of Golgotha on the page? Dare we speculate further and claim that the symmetry of the C# between the two F’s is Christus between the two thieves? Speculation adds nothing of substance… but it’s fun! Bach’s b minor on the page:

In any case, Kreuze was probably never far from Bach’s mind, and f# minor was usually a key for expressing pain and suffering in the cantatas. The fugue from Book One of The Well-Tempered Clavier, BWV 859 is full of blatant passion language, seen in the weeping of the countersubject:

Does The World Need More Bach?

One question I have concerning modern editions is the tenor voice in bar 36. In the earliest version, Bach has given— as a cautionary accidental— D natural:

But in the revision, he forgets the cautionary accidental (or deems it unnecessary.) Does this omission justify D#?! I don’t think so. Both Henle and Bärenreiter suggest D#:

At the end of the episode, we explore the canon from the sonata in A Major for Violin and Harpsichord, BWV 1015. The third movement (in f# minor) is a strict canon from beginning to end. Check this out:

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Concepts Covered:

Bach and religion, composition as theological thought, the symbolic meaning of musical keys in Bach’s works, f♯ minor & b minor, Calvary or Golgotha. Kreuze in Bach studies: the double meaning of “cross” and the sharp (♯) sign in German language. f♯ minor as a key of suffering and affliction in Bach’s cantatas and keyboard works. Passion rhetoric in BWV 859 (WTC I)

Canon analysis of BWV 1015, the Sonata for Violin and Harpsichord in A major.

The Well-Tempered Clavier …what does it actually imply?

In this episode I seek (in 18 minutes) to demonstrate mathematically pure intervals, alongside ‘tempered’ intervals. The circle of fifths is in fact a spiral of fifths— it is infinite. We seek to make it a circle for convenience, but this means that the distance between what would be mathematically pure intervals must be altered (!) in order to force the spiral into a circle.

The question remains: how do we do that? Music today is heard in equal temperament, where all keys, all tonalities sound the same. Pure intervals have been forced into identical ‘impure’ ones— convenient, but this deprives us not only of a beautiful natural simplicity, but also the individual character of each key found in unequal temperaments. From the earliest European music, numerous solutions to this immortal problem have been offered. By the time Bach arrives, his solution, laid out for us in The Well-Tempered Clavier, is certainly an elegant one…but we don’t quite know exactly what it is.

The remainder of the episode analyzes the prelude and fugue, no. 13, in F-sharp major, BWV 858. A look at the opening of the prelude in earliest version offers lovely insights into Bach’s working mind:

In revision Bach changes the repeated note — a recognizable motif of the early version— into a trill, now acting as its own motif:

Particularly fascinating is the way Bach changes the harmonic rhythm from the early version here, bar 17:

Now again from measure 17 in the revision. Bach inserts two full bars, extending the harmonic length of g# minor and C# Major:

“Thank Bach for God.”

A huge thanks to Bradly Lehman for helping preparing this episode. I haven’t even scratched the surface of what his work covers, but hopefully you’ve got some idea how deep the topic of tuning can go. Lehman has some great online resources illuminating the fascinating world of temperament. For starters, try:

www.larips.com (Spiral spelled backward)

Dig deeper with this essay here, published by the Reimenschneider Bach Institute:

And finally, more Articles and Essays by Bradley Lehman

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Concepts Covered:

Pure vs tempered intervals, ‘spiral of fifths,’ vs. the circle of fifths, equal temperament, loss of key character, Bradly Lehman temperament, historical tuning systems, Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, temperament and tuning, F-sharp major Prelude and Fugue No. 13, Bach’s compositional revisions, and BWV 858