In case you didn’t know (and I certainly didn’t) batophobia is fear of sky-scrapers. If you suffer from that particular perfectly sensible irrational terror, don’t ever, ever, ever come to Kuala Lumpur – the place is chock-a-block with the bloody things! There are a few architectural remnants of the old colonial days: the British […]
Tag Archives: Well-tempered Klavier
Having started our course with the first Prelude & Fugue in Book I, it seems only right to finish with last in Book II. You can listen to the b Fugue by clicking on the audio link below; and the score – split into its three separate voices – is available under ‘Course materials’ just beneath it. In […]
In the header image of this blog (‘signed’ portraits of Bach and Wagner) you can see that the older composer is holding a piece of paper, unsurprisingly this turns out to be manuscript paper; even closer inspection (see below) reveals that it contains the music of the six part triple canon BWV1076. The middle voice (circled […]
‘When Bach writes of sorrow, it never crushes us. Perhaps because there is no trace of bitterness. ’ Wanda Landowska ‘Contemplative’, ‘remotely beautiful’, ‘a calm and floating unearthliness’ – descriptions of the f# Prelude from Book 2 vie with one another in a futile attempt to capture an emotional world that exists in music, and only in music. And […]
This week it’s the turn of the brilliant G Prelude and Fugue from Book II. Here’s the exposition of the fugue: The articulations (staccatos, mezzo-staccatos, slurs, tenutos, etc.) are, of course, mine and serve to illustrate some of the sort of decisions (other than tempo) that interpreters have to make when approaching these pieces. The […]
Here’s the beginning of Book II of the Well-Tempered Clavier (the second Prelude in C) and below it you can listen to a performance of these three bars (or thereabouts) by seven of the most famous Bach interpreters: Here’s Bach for every taste from high romance to strict puritanism. Which do you prefer? Come along on […]
We are, I hope, by now getting familiar with fugue-speak – ‘statements’, ‘answers’ (real or tonal), ‘episodes’, ‘inversions’, ‘strettos’ (or ‘i’ if you prefer) and so on, are all grist to our mill. So the time has come, I reckon, to examine that most recondite of fugues in that most recondite of keys, No. 8 in d-sharp. It’s […]
