Is It Bach?

[MusingMuso]

Reminds me of the day, many years ago when I was quite naive, taking out my camera to photograph the Oude Kerk, in all innocence.

 

All the nearby 'shop windows' were rapidly obscured by curtains.  Realising my error, I beat a hasty retreat.

 

John

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=====================

 

Well that just sums up the difference between Holland and England. In Amsterdam, the tourists look at shop-windows and think of organs.

 

The Dutch listen to theirs.

 

MM

[Vox Humana]

I must apologise for lighting the blue touch paper and running away. I'd meant to reply sooner, but I've had a load of accompaniments to learn for a concert.

 

Thank you one and all for your replies. They have certainly made fascinating reading and MM's account of Alkmaar and St Bavo was most moving.

 

It's interesting that everyone has sidestepped the real question, which was "What actually is Bach's Prelude and Fugue in B minor?" (or any other piece of your choice). I guess it's unanswerable, as pcnd suggested at the outset. It seems we can only answer for what Bach (or whoever) means to us personally and I guess that's why the discussion has focussed on how people set about turning "the dots" into meaningful music.

 

Yes, performances of Bach fugues that start on a single 8' and gradually build up to full organ can be very musical and gripping, but, even when this is done incomparably movingly, to what extent is it still Bach? Such performances must surely be very far away from the taste and culture of his day. I can't help feeling that there is a point where where the notes part company with the composition - though I couldn't begin to suggest where that point is. I think the point MM was making (please do correct me if I'm wrong) amounts to advice that we each have to experience our own revelation in order to understand. Given that we can never recover Bach's own performances (and J Maslen's point about there probably not being any definitive ones was well made) I guess that's the fairest comment one can make in the circumstances.

 

(Am I being unbelievably anally retentive worrying about this? Probably! )

[Pierre Lauwers]

"It is surely very far away from the taste and culture of his day"

 

(Quote)

 

As far as we "know" the epoch and what remains of

the instruments, it seems the way Bach is played

today is different, be it on romantic or "reformed"

organs.

 

Pierre

[MusingMuso]

I must apologise for lighting the blue touch paper and running away. I'd meant to reply sooner, but I've had a load of accompaniments to learn for a concert.

 

Thank you one and all for your replies. They have certainly made fascinating reading and MM's account of Alkmaar and St Bavo was most moving.

 

It's interesting that everyone has sidestepped the real question, which was "What actually is Bach's Prelude and Fugue in B minor?" (or any other piece of your choice). I guess it's unanswerable, as pcnd suggested at the outset. It seems we can only answer for what Bach (or whoever) means to us personally and I guess that's why the discussion has focussed on how people set about turning "the dots" into meaningful music.

 

Yes, performances of Bach fugues that start on a single 8' and gradually build up to full organ can be very musical and gripping, but, even when this is done incomparably movingly, to what extent is it still Bach? Such performances must surely be very far away from the taste and culture of his day. I can't help feeling that there is a point where where the notes part company with the composition - though I couldn't begin to suggest where that point is. I think the point MM was making (please do correct me if I'm wrong) amounts to advice that we each have to experience our own revelation in order to understand. Given that we can never recover Bach's own performances (and J Maslen's point about there probably not being any definitive ones was well made) I guess that's the fairest comment one can make in the circumstances.

 

(Am I being unbelievably anally retentive worrying about this? Probably!    )

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I think the point I was making was actually slightly different.

 

Dangerously sliding away from music, but not quite the topic, what if I am a rookie fighter-pilot and read about the men who fought in WW2. I can watch the footage on film or TV, or I can read books and personal letters which try to convey the raw emotions of battle and terrors they faced daily, but this is neither war nor reality.

 

However, I win an award, and my "prize" is the opportunity to fly a Spitfire.

 

I sit in a stark, cramped metal cockpit from which there is no forward vision at all. The Rolls-Royce engine fires up with clouds of smoke; the whole airframe vibrating as the big V-12 splutters into life and flames lick out of the exhausts. I'm just a little bit nearer to undertsanding.

 

Then someone pulls the chocks away, and the Spitfire begins to move; bumping across the grass slowly on old cross-ply tyres. I open the throttle and the noise is tremendous as I sit close to the unsilenced exhaust pipes.

 

The Spitfire is slow to gather speed, but is in the air at a fraction of the speed I normally take-off at. The controls are heavy, the movements deliberate and the airspeed is not supersonic. After half-an-hour I'm beginning to understand the plane as I explore its' capabilities. Now it starts to sing and dance and respond, and I find I can do amazing things with it, as if the plane itself were part of my own body. Eventually, I forget the cramped cockpit and the discomfort, and as I turn, loop, dive and soar, I am grinning from ear to ear.....this is real flying!!

 

I cannot go back in time and it still isn't war, but I now know what those brave pilots could and could not do with those machines during the dog-fights with the enemy, and I am experiencing perhaps 75% of what they experienced all those years ago.

 

THAT is what an old organ like Alkmaar means.....to be close to the psyche of those who created it and those who made music on it; aware of what was possible and what was not possible. It is, nevertheless, 75% of the way towards going back in time.

 

There is however, one big difference. In a world of horses, carts, local bakers, corn-mills and the occasional clang of the blacksmiths hammer upon an anvil, the organ was the loudest, most spectacular thing in town; theatrical, lavish, beautiful to the eye as well as the ear, awe-inspiring and mechanically state-of-the-art.

 

Bach and his brilliant organ-playing contemporaries, were the great showmen of their day, and I feel sure, that like a veteran pilot at an air-show, they knew how to entertain and thrill a crowd!

 

Dont ask me how I know, but I just KNOW that people would listen to the B-minor P&F, eagerly anticipating that final pedal-entry. I also know that Bach would respond with the 32ft reed and a wry smile on his mush!

 

MM

 

 

 

I

[Pierre Lauwers]

Dear MM,

 

I always read you with pleasure, and share many a tought

you express with talent!

But as far as Alkmaar is concerned, just a little thing: this

is no Bach-organ at all.

The only Schnitger -and it was an Arp S., not Frans-Caspar,

Bach knew was Hamburg's while he visited.

The organs Bach knew and played belonged to a completely

different Orgellandschaft.

If anybody can read french there are already eleven pages

about that matter on Plenum.

 

http://forum.aceboard.net/18898-3405-21474...s-Bach-sait.htm

 

Best wishes,

Pierre

[pcnd5584]

Absolutely, MM!

 

I read somewhere, that apparently JSB loved to try-out a new 32p reed. The only organ that he played (as organist at the church) which had one, was at Mulhausen.

[MusingMuso]

Dear MM,

 

I always read you with pleasure, and share many a tought

you express with talent!

But as far as Alkmaar is concerned, just a little thing: this

is no Bach-organ at all.

 

====================

 

 

I was very aware of that, but thanks to Pierre for pointng this out. In fact the St Lauren's, Alkmaar organ is SO subtle compared to the organs of Arp Schnitger or even his successor Hinsz. Hamburg shouts and Alkmaar sings!

 

However, when I played Alkmaar, it was still un-restored (though sounding wonderful), and I suppose if I were to use the analogy of war-planes, it would be the equivalent to flying a Meschersmidt (sp?) rather than a Spitfire.....equal, but different.

 

The BIG difference would be in the acoustic. Whereas Alkmaar speaks into a veritable sea of reverberation, the acoustics Bach knew were smaller and more intimate; perhaps suggesting a slightly faster approach to playing the music.

 

Perhaps I should have suggested that the similarities between what Bach knew and what I was experiencing, were close enough, but subtley different.

 

MM

[Malcolm Farr]

When I bought a copy of Kevin Bowyer's "A Late Twentieth Century Edwardian Bach Recital", I thought of it as very much a "naughty treat". I mean, Bach recordings just had to be made on fine period instruments, or better modern baroque-inspired organs, didn't they?

 

KB's recording broke the rules, as I think he makes clear in his program notes. For my taste, his recording at St Mary Redcliffe, is a bit of a treasure: I listen to it as often as I do to Bach recorded on "appropriate" instruments.

 

There's no doubt - for me at least - that the H&H at St Mary Redcliffe is one of the finest instruments going. But let's move to a different class of instrument. Have you ever had the experience, as I have, that Bach played well on an indifferent, or even very poor, instrument makes it sound far better? It's as if the quality of the music lifts it up to heights that one hasn't found in it before.

 

Rgds,

MJF

[MusingMuso]

It's interesting that everyone has sidestepped the real question, which was "What actually is Bach's Prelude and Fugue in B minor?" (or any other piece of your choice). I guess it's unanswerable, as pcnd suggested at the outset. It seems we can only answer for what Bach (or whoever) means to us personally and I guess that's why the discussion has focussed on how people set about turning "the dots" into meaningful music.

 

Yes, performances of Bach fugues that start on a single 8' and gradually build up to full organ can be very musical and gripping, but, even when this is done incomparably movingly, to what extent is it still Bach? Such performances must surely be very far away from the taste and culture of his day............

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

===============

 

I quite liked this thread, and responded very much from the heart.

 

On subsequent re-reading, a further collection of thoughts came to me, which go something like the following:-

 

a) Bach is absolutely central to European (and Western) musical culture

 

Bach's music is the foundation stone of all counterpoint, and a fair amount of harmony.

 

c) A musician (rather than technician) almost certainly knows how fast or slow a piece of music should be played, even where there are no speed indications. This applies to a great many baroque compositions.

 

d) Expressive playing falls into only two real camps.....dynamic expression (romantic) and non-dynamic expression by way of phrasing and articulation.

 

e) The legacy and influence of Bach's music was not lost, and lived easily throughout the Classical period (Mozart for example), through the early romanticism of Mendelssohn and found a more heavily expressive oulet in the music of Reger: each of them students of Bach.

 

f) Scholarship is not only about "knowing" what is right, it is also about changing what some perceive to be wrong, and is thus susceptible to certain changes of fashion.

 

 

I'm sure there are other considerations which I have missed, but essentially, the interplay of these various elements are central to our understanding of anything; including the music of Bach.

 

But let's skip sideways to Shakespeare, and the words, "Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious summer by this son of York."

 

Is this spoken by a man celebrating the 'Son of York,' by a man cursing 'The Son of York' or by someone merely making a passing observation as a reporter?

 

No matter what the emotions, the essential rhythm of the words remain intact, but there would be obvious changes of word emphasis, dynamic, overall speed

and, always with a view to the type of theatre in which the words were being delivered.

 

Of course, trying to say the words in the style of 'The Elephant Man' would be stretching the parameters a little!!

 

In musical terms, it perhaps suggests that there are no absolute rights or wrongs when it comes to playing Bach, because sufficient of Bach will remain intact for the listener to recognise it and perhaps be moved by it, even under quite different circumstances and with quite different interpretations.

 

I made various points in my previous replies, about flying planes and driving Schnitger organs; neither of which are really associated with Bach especially.

Maybe the limitation of a genuine baroque organ clarifies the mind a little, for it is only THEN that one cannot do certain things, and musicianship must then be expressed quite differently. If I went through a "Road to Damascus" experience, it was more to do with the fact that the things I had read and learned suddenly fell into place, and I realised the absolute importance of structure, of tiny nuances of phrasing and the absolute necessity of linear regularity, which I would describe as panoramic counterpoint.

 

I suppose, that in the first moments of hearing a fugue subject, our musical cultural heritage enables us to anticipate the ending long before we get there!

 

Bach may not often surprise, but he never fails to astonish.

 

MM

[Vox Humana]

Nice post, MM (as always). What you say makes a great deal of sense; I particularly like the Shakespeare analogy.

 

c)   A musician (rather than technician) almost certainly knows how fast or slow a piece of music should be played, even where there are no speed indications. This applies to a great many baroque compositions.

Didn't Mendelssohn say something very similar? Broadly speaking I think this is correct, but it begs the question of where the dividing line is between a musician and a technician. That's always going to be a matter of opinion on the parts of both the performer and the listener. Speeds generally seem to me to be on the increase. I'm sure Bach is played faster on average than it was when I was a teenager. Unsurprisingly, I find today's speeds too fast; those brought up with them probably won't. I think I've mentioned before that, at the Last Night of the Proms, "Jerusalem" has been taken faster by each successive conductor since Flash Harry. Last year it very nearly achieved waltz status. Changes of fashion apply here too!

[MusingMuso]

I'm sure Bach is played faster on average than it was when I was a teenager. Unsurprisingly, I find today's speeds too fast; those brought up with them probably won't.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

==============

 

I had the reverse experience at Groningen 18 months ago, when I heard a truly leisurely performance of the Gigue Fuge (whoever wrote it!)

 

I was anticipating sailors on the poop-deck or young-blades kicking pewterware off long-tables, but what we actually got, was a discrete dance by ladies and gentlemen, with just a hint of white ankle-socks for excitement.

 

It was sooooooo elegant and refined: so transparent and ever so beautiful.

 

I never play this work fast nowadays. Instead, I think of standing at the top of a long, sweeping staircase and making an entry. I gaze at the assembled company,

descend two steps, then unexpectedly throw a leg over the banister-rail and gently slide down to appreciative applause.

 

It's all about style.

 

MM

[Vox Humana]

I read somewhere, that apparently JSB loved to try-out a new 32p reed. The only organ that he played (as organist at the church) which had one, was at Mulhausen.

I wonder what he would have made of this. Bizarre, but I couldn't help admiring it. My ears are still hurting though!

 

And the Fugue.

[Guest Barry Williams]

==============

 

I had the reverse experience at Groningen 18 months ago, when I heard a truly leisurely performance of the Gigue Fuge (whoever wrote it!)

 

I was anticipating sailors on the poop-deck or young-blades kicking pewterware off long-tables, but what we actually got, was a discrete dance by ladies and gentlemen, with just a hint of white ankle-socks for excitement.

 

It was sooooooo elegant and refined: so transparent and ever so beautiful.

 

I never play this work fast nowadays. Instead, I think of standing at the top of a long, sweeping staircase and making an entry. I gaze at the assembled company,

descend two steps, then unexpectedly throw a leg over the banister-rail and gently slide down to appreciative applause.

 

It's all about style.

 

MM

 

 

This question of speed is interesting. I used to play the Scherzo from Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream (Rachmaninov's arrangment) at a great lick until I courted a ballet dancer. She made me play it at the speed it can be danced to, as was intended. Only Klemperer's recorded version is at this tempo and one can certainly hear all the notes!

 

As is so often the case, the slower speed is not merely much more musical, it is, of course, more difficult.

 

Barry Williams

[Vox Humana]

[MichaelDavidson]

 

Oh, dear ....

 

... try this instead:

 

[Guest Barry Williams]

Oh, dear ....

 

... try this instead:

 

 

 

Thank you. It is a most beautiful and utterly musical performance - such a contrast to the other one.

 

Barry Williams

[gazman]

Oh, dear ....

 

... try this instead:

 

 

Thank you. That was a delightful way to finish my evening before going to bed.

[Vox Humana]

Thank you. It is a most beautiful and utterly musical performance - such a contract to the other one.

 

Barry Williams

Both approaches work in their own ways, though I am not over-impressed with either performance; I have heard more convincing ones of both pieces. The point I was making of course - and I have made it before - is that there is never one right way to play something and, if we want to be musicians, we owe it to ourselves to explore as many possibilities as we can discover. I confess, though, that Horowitz's dynamics are too wayward for me; I've tried, but I can't find the musicianship in them; it just sounds as thought the wind keeps violently changing direction. A failing on my part, I'm sure. Personally I find this version far superior: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Cl15IUYHYU. Not that I think it has much point of contact with Bach, other than the correct succession of relative frequencies, and I certainly wouldn't want to play it that way on the organ - but it is very musical.

[Vox Humana]

Both approaches work in their own ways, though I am not over-impressed with either performance; I have heard more convincing ones of both pieces.

Incidentally, does anyone know: am I right in thinking that the speed of this arrangement of Nun freut euch is stipulated by Busoni?

[James Goldrick]

Incidentally, does anyone know: am I right in thinking that the speed of this arrangement of Nun freut euch is stipulated by Busoni?

 

It would seem so: The Nun Freut euch transcription is one of the handful of acoustic recordings that Busoni recorded and survive today*. It's probably faster than most other piano performances, but to me, it is far less robotic than other pianists.

 

Here's the mp3:Bach 'Nun Freut' BWV 734 - Ferruccio Busoni

 

My own favourite original version is Andre Fleury's:Bach - 'Nun Freut' Bwv 734 - Andre Fleury

It's definitely on the brisk side, but nowhere near the typical transcription tempo.

 

Cheers

James Goldrick

 

*Busoni also recorded the entire Liszt Sonata and Hammerklavier as well as other large-scale works... all lost in a factory fire. One can only imagine.