At the risk of coming across as a toadying bottom-kissing lick-spittle, I'm going to recommend to anyone who can to go to the Wigmore Hall tonight to see Richard Egarr play Book 1 of the Well Tempered Clavier.  Those who know I often play for AAM will know Richard's my boss, but I genuinely think it will be a concert well worth seeing.  Alas I cannot be there myself - evening rehearsal with another group.

If anyone goes, I really look forward to reading your opinions on his particular style of crackpottery here.

The A minor Prelude from his Second Book (rapid-share / send-space) is another of Bach's inventions in two parts. It begins with the chromatic descent of a bass-line - always a good sign! - but again we hear that sinister tone present also in the A minor Prelude of the First Book. Tovey calls this one "a rich outpouring of lyric melody and chromatic two-part harmony"; well, we consider at least three parts are really needed to make harmony rich or interesting. The work is divided into two halves, and at the beginning of the second half we hear a) the bass from the first half transposed to the treble and played upside-down, and b) the treble from the first half transposed to the bass and also played upside-down (together with that bass). The question is, is that the sort of thing the auditors wish to hear? It may well be that the first part - the first inspiration probably - is more beautiful or effective than the second, and Bach might have done better to elaborate or decorate the music of the first part rather than entirely to pull it apart as he does. We are not sure; what do other members think?

Tovey also gives us a timely warning about "the danger of the kind of bickering perkiness which still passes for Bach-scholarship among the superstitious."

Here is Wanda's version and we hear no bickering perkiness there; however it is very strange how the volume comes and goes, exactly as though she had an assistant standing by her harpsichord and opening or closing the lid in obedience to her instructions. What sort of volume control does a harpsichord actually have? Or it could perhaps have been done by her original recording engineers; but the effect is rather off-putting.

Wanda follows our anonymous crackpot in ignoring totally Bach's two repeat-marks.

1) Tovey (whom we used for Book II) prints an F natural; Wanda was presumably using a rival edition.


2) E natural-D sharp does indeed stand in our Tovey edition for notes 7 and 8, but as the Member points out the Urtext has E flat-D natural. Note that later in bar 30 (note 12) there is another E which remains E natural in Tovey and E flat in the Urtext; in other words three notes differ.


3) Sorry about that; the Member remains incomparably sharp in his detection (but he means LH not RH does not he?) To our cloth-ears it all sounds the same sometimes.

4) There is however at least one further difference of which the Member should be aware: in the bass line of bar 26 Tovey has the final note as a D sharp (i.e. the accidental earlier in the bar still applies), whereas the Urtext has a specific D natural. We suspect that both Wanda and we got that one right by good judgement or pure chance.

To-morrow: Bach in the style of Birtwistle.

We have long held Silbury Hill to be the most significant object in Britain, so top marks to Sir Harrison for his idea of writing a Silbury Idyll, even though it turned out to be so short. But what is more worrying is that his work is not about what he understands, but as he says "about the things that we don't understand."

Here is his pellucid explanation of a tachometric technique called "metric modulation" that he uses in the course of the work:

"It's what is called technically 'metric modulation'; that you take a value, and divide it, like an inch, so that is, if you think of the inch as being like a tempo, if you dividing [sic] the inch by three, yeah, you can then take three-quarters of that value and divide that by three, so that the music is by increment going that degree faster or slower; so by making a chart I find there's a way through the various tempos, of the piece; but they never get faster or slower, by graduation, they always are sudden. There's no gradual change of tempo from fast or slow; it's always to do with this modulation of the metre. We usually talk about modulation as changing keys, yeah well, this is modulation of metre."

Not content with that name for it he has a second: "the pulse labyrinth." But it was all anticipated two hundred and fifty years ago by Bach; for instance in this A minor Fugue in three parts from Book II (rapid-share / send-space).

First we hear a motto in crotchets; then we hear it in quavers. Why does Bach not go on to repeat it in semi-quavers, demi-semi-quavers, or even in minims? Why did he refrain from such procedures? We know he did not shrink from extremes, so probably he thought it a good thing to repeat something once, but that to do so again and again would be to sink into a distasteful groove, and no longer be extreme at all.

As comparison we present Schwyatozluff; we were hoping he might bring something of the spirit of Rachmanninoff to the work but that does not seem to have been his intention.

If we may in haste anticipate Mr. Baziron: something sounds wrong in bar seven! It is probably the G natural printed in Tovey's edition, as opposed to the G sharp in the Urtext. Here is Tovey (that thirteenth note of the middle part is definitely a G natural is not it):


and here is the Urtext, with just as definitely a G sharp:

What worries us even more is the final chord! In getting somewhat "carried away" by the apparent gravitas of this fairly pompous fugue, editors and performers (including even dear Gustav) head relentlessly towards a final chord of A Minor. But one cannot help wondering, therefore, why the Urtext edition has a major chord at the end (which, presumably, everybody decides to ignore).

The answer is, of course, because that is what Bach wrote!...



What is good enough for Bach really should be good enough for us I think.

Baz

It was interesting to hear Mdm Evans plucking her way through the Ciaccona on her Clavicembalo. ("Clavicembalo", always having been a generic term for instruments generally that might include harpsichords, virginals and spinets collectively, is probably the best term to describe the instrument she is using - judged by its sound - which at some points sounds like a harpsichord, and at others a virginals.)

I know absolutely nothing (yet) about her research, and will be interested in catching up with it all. It seems to be based (in a healthy way) upon a lifetime's work studying Bach's own multifarious transcriptions and his methods of embellishment and expansion. This could, if needed, be usefully condensed (from the standpoint of a dilettante) into a single piece - his transcription for organ of Vivaldi's Concerto for 2 violins in A Minor. There one can savour all those little 'extras' he added in a way that deprives the original of nothing while adding his own signature of approval.

But one curious aspect struck us immediately (and no doubt has a perfectly sound rationale somewhere in her research): unlike any other example we know of that transcribes a piece of his own from one medium to another, this one remains untransposed. Given that her box of wires is pitched only fractionally below A440, it is clear that the keyboard 'result' retains the key of D Minor (as in the Violin version).

Usually there is a notated pitch differential of 1 tone - and we have often supposed that this curiosity had a purely practical purpose: it perhaps respected the then-current pitch differential between Kammerton pitch and Chorton pitch. This would have allowed the main instrument (say the harpsichord) to have been used in either context without the cumbersome and difficult need completely to retune it to another pitch (which might have made the instrument unstable, and even inflicted damage upon it). Even though such a transposition would not be in any way necessary for a piece where a solo violin is being replaced by a solo harpsichord, we still feel the practice to have been so ingrained in Bach's psyche as to speculate upon differing outcomes from that offered.

Indeed, the piece might work extremely well transposed up a tone into E Minor! Recalling that wonderful opening to the E Minor keyboard Partita, perhaps one's instinct then might have been to make this Ciaccona more brilliant and dynamic (even bearing in mind Member Sudden's pleas for a faster tempo). It might also have envisaged greater flair in the addition of arpeggiated embellishments possibly.

As it stands, we have a rather slow and 'mournful' rendition that - at will - changes speed and direction. But this does not in any way diminish its interest, and more of her efforts will need to be studied before further views are formed.

Baz

This is an image of Samuel when, in 1959, he agonised over some details of the A Minor Prelude and Fugue (Book 2)...



...It is believed by some that he was at the time puzzled by the F-natural at bar 25 of the Prelude, but others are thought to believe that the ultimate expression of resignation in his face was the weight of Tovey's opinion (perhaps more slithy than his own) that the final chord of the Fugue should be minor instead of major. We are not in a position to verify either proposition (both of which seem, we feel, to be of equal probability). At any rate, we can certainly verify that "Tovey won".

It is Mr Baziron who was not old enough to meet Dr Tovey incidentally! That would probably have changed the course of his (Baziron's!) life.

Baz