Bravo, Baz Dude! That's pretty cool, indeed. All you need to do now is ween your drummer off those puny woodblocks. 

 

Perhaps the ultimate in crackpottery is this G minor Fugue from Bach's second didactic book (rapid-share / send-space). Members will already know that the number seven has a special significance in music theory, because we established some time ago that it was possible to categorise composers into seven grades or ratings. And in the initial unaccompanied statement of the subject of this Fugue Bach repeats middle C exactly seven times in a row. Schoenberg's rows consisted of a set of precisely twelve notes - not eleven, not thirteen, it had to be twelve exactly, and repetition was not allowed; they all had to have different names, even. Bach's rows are quite different: his seven notes are all exactly the same.

Yet as Tovey tells us "this Subject and its Countersubject are in an all-comprehending Double Counterpoint in the octave, tenth and twelfth." We hope Members will ponder for a moment that expression "all-comprehending."

A little later in his commentary Tovey suggests we should consult Weingartner's book "How to Conduct Beethoven's Symphonies" if we wish to find a good hint about phrasing. But regrettably this particular book does not appear to be available on the Inter-Net, although two others are ("On Conducting" and The Symphony since Beethoven). Weingartner wrote seven symphonies himself, yet the admirable Mr. Lebrecht refers to him as one of the "scribbling conductors," like Klemperer, Furtwängler, de Sabata, Walter, Mahler, and Strauss.

Ebenezer Prout calls this Fugue "one of the finest in the whole collection."

Riemann describes those seven repeated notes as having "a tense, an indeed somewhat stubborn nature."

Actually it is the harmonies foreshadowing Wagner at the end of bar forty-eight and the beginning of bar forty-nine which for us constitute the most striking feature of the work. And we certainly do not recommend there the Czerny edition which removes all the dots from the upper line of bar forty-eight and turns it into six simple quavers!

Curious Members may welcome these two points of comparison: here Svyatozluff gives what we find quite a satisfactory rendition; while Wanda makes an excellent start but becomes increasingly erratic, and well before the end suffers not one but two complete nervous breaks-down. There is an odd phrase in her commentary: "When Bach takes possession of a certain rhythm, he does not let go," she writes. So why is it that she herself does, and so strikingly?

With regard to Wanda, we sometimes sense our continuing inability in what we write to "get through"!

When John Harrison - the famous English clock maker - built his time-pieces completely from wood, admirers marvelled at one obvious fact: they never had any need whatsoever to be lubricated (the natural oils in the wood being quite able - as the old codger obviously knew all along - to self-lubricate the mechanism for ever!). To a great extent it was the same with harpsichords and spinets (built around the same time). They were reliable, kept themselves in good tune, and needed minimal maintenance. BUT...

...up pops Pleyel! Having decided that it is possible to "improve" matters by building metal frames, metal jacks, heavier metal strings (more resembling railway lines than musical strings), he produced extremely RIGID instruments with little resonance wherein the owner/player must spend approximately 75% of the time maintaining the bastard (!) and only 25% of the remaining time actually playing it!

Wanda, in her quest for ultimate authenticity, inherited one of these monsters (and we shall continue to regard it merely as a cumbersome knitting machine). It must therefore stand to reason we think that after playing only a short section of a piece such as the current G Minor fugue, Wanda needs to apply some "maintenance" to her machine (she probably has liberal supplies of machine oil at the ready).

In this performance she seems we think to have "cheated" a little: it is clear to us that those moments when she appears to be (as Mr Grew observes) "having a nervous breakdown", she has already enlisted the services of an assistant who - oil-can at the ready - pours into the monster the required lubrication (at Wanda's command) in order for her to be able (in at least a fashion) to complete the movement. The signal she gives - it seems - is to grind almost to a standstill (and we can imagine her visual gestures to the "fall guy" when she indicates the specific piece of the machine that needs "freeing up" so as to allow her to proceed).

Under these extreme conditions we feel she manages very well - though we feel if only (like Gustav) she could resist the temptation of actually needing to use both manuals in every piece she plays she might well have saved quite a lot of wear and tear, and also needed far less lubrication in each piece.

Baz

Don't cry Baz, he'll be back 

Although we cannot for the moment find Felix's book "How to Conduct Beethoven's Symphonies" (to which reference is made in reply 542) Members may at least wish to see what is probably the next best thing his face at the time he wrote it.

Ha! We had until now been entirely unaware of that article, but it is indeed curiously pertinent is not it!

In our remarks about authenticity we relied purely upon our cultivated æsthetic sense - we unlike the Member have found both the Prelude and the Fugue quite uncharacteristically tiresome after several repetitions - and it is interesting to learn that Bach was hesitant about their incorporation into the collection.

Is it possible we wonder that there were a primitive Prelude and a Fugue, originally by this Hurlebusch, which Bach was for some reason ordered by his superiors to use in the collection, but which like Beethoven he first altered beyond recognition, doing a Diabelli upon them as it were. (We know he often arranged the work of other composers on his off days.) Perhaps one of those German lords had a son or favourite for whose use the collection was in part put together, and this lord happened to be a Hurlebusch enthusiast . . . That would explain a) the Member's remark quoted above, b) the Hurdlebusch connection, and c) the fact that they appear in Bach's hand-writing.

As for the Lutheran aspect it is bound to come up again and again as we go through the set. But the question which will concern the Members more urgently now is, How do the four Duets fit in? What is their logical place within the collection? Indeed some editions leave them out do not they but with what justification?

Well that is indeed a big question we feel! There is no reason to leave them out (since Bach definitely put them in!). But their purpose (id est within the scheme of the collection) seems both clear yet elusive.

If we look at the title page, Bach specifies that "other chorales" are included. Since the only items that do not bear a chorale (or other melodic) title are the opening Prelude and closing Fugue, together with the 4 duetti, we should perhaps look to these.

Since we now know that the Prelude and Fugue indeed are based upon a chorale melody (as indicated in my earlier posting), we should not be surprised to find that these duetti are also. But identifying them is quite another matter (and the exercise has some long way to go).

HOWEVER let us cheekily make a suggestion for one of them! Perhaps the Member might care to examine Duetto number 2 (i.e. the one in F major), and then compare it with the chorale melody Wachet auf (noticing in particular the way the two ideas in the "subject" present a concatenated statement of phrases 1 and 2 of the chorale melody). We do not ever bet (on the horses, the wretched football, or even the rip-off Lottery), but if we did we think our money would be very safely invested in a musical connection between this piece and its supposed chorale derivative!

"Give it a try!" we urge. Who knows - before this thread runs out we may have solved the problem of these 4 duetti and their chorale derivations!

Baz

We were of course not entirely sure exactly how to spell "who-dun-its" and ended up getting it wrong (as we so often do over such matters of vernacular syntax). So we are grateful to the Member for showing us the (now-blatantly-obvious) correct spelling. It is funny - is not it - how silly we are over such small things. But I suspect we all are from time to time.

On the matter of Duetto II and my suggestion (for suggestion it was only!) of a latent connection with Wachet auf, we are all 'novelists' at heart - though few of us manage to hang them together with sufficient conviction, persuasion or tightness for them to 'work'. But what we had in mind was this (and let us imagine the key of the chorale to be the same as that of the Duetto):

The Duetto (as we can hear from the crackpot version just submitted) begins as follows:

F A C Bb A Bb C D E F C F A G F E D C...

If we now align these to the salient notes of the chorale we obtain the following concordance:

CHORALE: F A C [C C C  D C]     C F C FGA G F E D C

DUETTO:  F A C [Bb A Bb C D E]    F C F  A G F E D C


The square brackets indicate only how we view a possible free joining of phrases 1 and 2 of the chorale melody (which are here separated by a few extra spaces). The extent to which (if at all) this story might (or might not) unfold would require more in-depth analysis of the piece we feel.

Baz