Sony CD players & French CD's

Therefore, the ideal of playing it "as it was meant to be heard" is unattainable because we the listeners have changed from the original audience.


Dear PeteH
This is a dangerous point of view.
Fx: We are accustomed to view colourfilms nowadays. Shall we colourize all old black-white films to make them more "expressive" and more "eatable" to the modern
public? No, because the black-white film uses other means of expression than colourfilm, black-white film stresses especially form and contrast, elements you should not
understand in the intended way if the film was coloured.
It is the same with Bachs music. You really miss something important when his harpsichordmusic is played on piano, and when I want to be most positive I think of pianorenderings of Bachs music as arrangements, good or bad, but never preferable.
Cheers

 

That doesn't change the fact that to me and many others the piano renderings are preferable. An arrangement would be something like the Bach-Busoni things. Bach was not averse himself to playing something written for one instrument on another, or pinching something from one place and putting it somewhere else. He would not have minded at all the music being played on the piano I am sure.
Your analogy re film is slighty offbeat I feel, as the whole point of music is that the medium is the performer not the composer. With the film the medium is the film itself. The only interpretation that goes on is that of the viewer.

 

Dear Lordsummit
Well, arrangement or transcription if you want, the boundaries may be flowing.
But my point, which you missed, is that if you change some important component in a given whole, you will percieve that whole in another way, and perhaps not be able to se the whole
as it was ment to. What excactly happens when Bachs harpsichord music is "coloured" with pianosound and pianistic means of expression.
To prevent misunderstanding: I am not discussing if Bachs harpsichordmusic MAY or MAY NOT be played on piano. I am discussing if it CAN be played on piano without severe loss
of the message.
Cheers

 

The answer to that then must be yes, and with the added ability to phrase, add dynamics, and distinguish between different strands, the musical nature of the piece can only be increased. After all they are pieces of music are they not, not museum pieces?

 

I'm completely with His Lordship on this. This is music for eternity, with meaning for each generation, not a museum piece to be respectfully dusted off from time to time. I've never been a complete afficianado of the "original instrument" school, although I agree that it's worth doing and it does throw light on pieces. However, Bach on piano to me is just as valid as on the harpsichord. To use pe-zulu's terminology, it may convey a different message, but that message is just as valid to me as the original message, whatever that is.

We really need RdS here, he being a harpsichordist to the point of actually owning one (which is probably why we never hear from him any more - he can't tear himself away from the thing!)

 

I just find some 'original' performances so academic and unmusical. On the other hand some of them can be absolutely awesome. It's not the instruments that matter its the soul behind the performance that counts.
Have you heard the Harnoncourt Mozart Requiem Tones?

 

No, I haven't, m'Lud, got Gardiner's. Speaking of Gardiner brings up an interesting point relating to what you just said. When the B Minor Mass from Archiv came out, one critic said that this recording was just so right that it made totally irrelevant the distinction between original instrument and modern instrument recordings that was then being made. As you say, it's the soul of the performance, not the nature of the instruments playing it.

 

It's not one you can argue with though.

I think you're setting up a false dichotomy with this analogy, ie. "if we can't get exactly what the composer intended then any and all manglings of the original can be considered on equal terms", which clearly isn't the case. In any case the analogy with film isn't really relevant as lordsummit pointed out earlier.

I don't think you've quite grasped my point yourself, even though you apparently make it yourself:

Of course - but think about what happens if the "important component" we change is the entire musical understanding, experience and preconceptions of the listener. You simply cannot separate the reception and understanding of a work of art from its social and cultural context, so - as I said above - at a strictly logical and philosophical level it is impossible to recreate the work as it was originally "heard" even if we were able to play back a perfect recording of its premiere.

To take another very crude example to illustrate the point further, consider that when it was first written Bach's music was of course brand-new and cutting edge. In those days musical households would possess a harpsichord and music enthusiasts would play the harpsichord every day - this was the everyday sound of modern music at the time. Nowadays, however, we can't help but hear the harpsichord in an antiquarian sense, so anything we hear played on the harpsichord inevitably has a degree of the old-fashioned to our ears.

Noone should question anybody's personal preferences with regard to supposedly "authentic" performance practices, and if you prefer Bach played on the harpsichord that's fine - as it happens I usually do too - but you can't say a priori that hearing it on the harpsichord brings you closer to Bach's intentions except at a very facile level.

 

For authenticity reasons: many Bach pieces such as the great C minor "harpsichord" concerto shouldn't be listened at all... since Bach wrote them originally for different instrument, in that case violin.
Never listen to that concerto - it will destroy your brain! Be authentic!

 

Dear PeteH
There are certainly good harpsichordists and bad harpsichordists just as there are good pianists and bad pianists. Of course I
prefer a good pianist to a bad harpsichordist. But a good musician should play Bach observing the stylistic limits, and that includes the use of a harpsichord. I am sad to hear you say that the harpsichord sounds oldfashioned in your ears, and this is perhaps the real problem. But if you make the effort to listen a lot to it, you may be accustomed to it - perhaps even addicted to it. And then perhaps understand me better. Bachs music is about structure, counterpoint and illustation of affects, and it IS possible to elucidate these things to some extent on a piano, but the natural medium is the harpsichord.
My analogy with film served to explain the sort of colouring which
the piano invites to, and which probably is the reason for some to prefer piano, they expect Bach to be played with "modern" expressive means. But to reject the harpsichord from that reason is to throw the baby out with the bath.
Cheers

 

Dear Bat
I suppose you think of the d-minor concerto BWV 1052.
This version was authorized by Bach, and every theory about its origin is pure speculation. And note: Bach did not arrange it for an instrument he didnt know but for the harpsichord, an instument he liked and which he considered capable of the job.
Cheers

 

I don't think anyone would rationally agree that stylistic conventions of the day should be ignored, but on the other hands why should all that wonderful music be restrained by an instrument. Should viola players not be allowed to play the Cello suites even though there is documentary evidence suggesting Bach himself played those suites on the viola in private. Authentic performance at its worst is akin to the Luddites and negates all that is good about music. At its best it can be uplifting. Playing Bach on the piano does not lessen the music any more than playing it on the harpsichord improves it. It's like comparing apples and oranges beyond saying that they're different you cannot prove comclusively that one is better, but one can have a preference.

 

To your taste, fine. Globally, no, you can't say that.

You're not reading what I wrote properly, or at least you're reading it at a very simplistic black-and-white level. The example about the harpsichord was to try to illustrate what I meant about how we necessarily hear things differently nowadays. Try as we might, we can't get past our knowledge that the harpsichord was the keyboard instrument of choice three hundred years ago or so, and that it has since become less popular than the piano in general usage, and that Beethoven wrote his great series of sonatas for piano, and so on and so forth. With our extra centuries' worth of music to look back on and our completely different cultural surroundings we absolutely cannot replicate exactly how Bach's music was originally received! To put it another way, the harpsichord necessarily sounds old-fashioned to you as well, whether you realise it or not - or at the very least, you can't possibly hear it the same way as Bach's original audiences did. This is just the way it is, and not something you can get round. The classic recognition of this specifically with respect to the harpsichord, I suppose, is in Poulenc's Concert champetre (no circumflexes on here as far as I'm aware ), where the massively heavy writing for modern orchestral forces is juxtaposed with the "old-world" sound of the harpsichord specifically for incongruous effect.

As I said before, this does not in any way violate your preference or anyone else's, but you cannot claim to be getting closer to Bach's intended effect just because you're listening to a harpsichord!

I'm not at all rejecting the harpsichord, just trying to explain why musicological thinkers have moved on from the "authentic" ideal.

 

Dear Lordsummit
Of course violaplayers should be allowed to play the cellosuites.
And of course I prefer authentic style instruments, violas as well (and informed style).
But the modern piano is an instrument which is in many ways alien to the style of Bach and baroquemusic as well.
Cheers

 

Dear PeteH
The point is not whether I am able to listen to a harpsichord with "autentic" ears or not.
As a boy I took piano lessons, and played all the usual "Bach"pieces for beginners, the inventions, and some of the WCl. My teacher was wery fond of R Tureck and I heard a lot of her recordings and heard her at concert. And I heard a lot of respected Bachrecordings: E Fischer,Serkin,Kempff,Lipatti,and much G Gould. But I always had a feeling of incompatibility between Bachs polyphony and very structured music and the actual pianosound. At that time I had never heard about a harpsichord. It was not the same feeling with later composers e.g. Beethoven and Bartok, rather the contrary with Bartoks very percussive pianistic music. And when I first heard a harpsichord, it was at once clear to me, that this was the appropiate instrument for Bach, a sort of stringed parallel to the organ -
I talk about baroque organs or neobaroque organs.
And I did not care a second for your postulated archaic sound
of the harpsichord, that aspect was totally irrelevant.
So that is how I look upon that question.
Cheers

 

Well, that seemed to be exactly the point for about your first five posts in this thread. If we're now talking about preferences then that's fine.

Please don't get hung up on that, it was just a very crude example to illustrate the point I was trying to make. After all, the mere fact that you know what a piano is is rather a decisive difference between yourself and the original audiences and can't help but colour your perceptions when listening to keyboard music.

As I said before though I do agree with you - insofar as I tend to listen to Bach's keyboard music at all, I would tend to favour harpsichord over piano.

 

Dear pe-zulu,
according to scholar and pianist Rosalyn Tureck the keyboard concertos were not composed for harpsichord either but for piano (sic) and according to most scholars BWV 1052 is probably transcribed for the piano from a lost violin concerto.

Bach expert RdS says in earlier post than he doesn't like the Goldbergs much... maybe there is something wrong in even the best harpsichord versions and it sounds better after all on the piano, or banjo or whatever.

 

There's an awful lot of very precious stuff here about the harpsichord. If you really want Bach's preference, then it should all be played on the clavichord (despite the derision it received above), as we have documentary evidence from Bach's son (WF IIRC) that he himself preferred playing his music on the clavichord rather than on the harpsichord, as he preferred its softer more intimate sound than the strident tones of the harpsichord, but the latter was required for public performance.

Then there are the pieces where it was clear that he was quite happy to be played on different combinations of instruments. The Art of Fugue is the most famous example, where the instrumentation is unspecified. Also there are the various concerti where it is clear the choice of solo instrument was a moveable feast, and his rapacious acquisition of others' (and his own) pieces for different arrangements. So, of all the composers, it would seem that Bach is one of the least appropriate to get so precious about in choice of instruments.

As for my preferences, I prefer some Bach on harpsichord and some on piano. Schiff does seem to make it work excellently.

 

Dear Bat
Forget about R Tureck. She is absolutely on thin ice. Sheer conjecture.
Nor do I like the Goldbergs much, but you have to look upon them as a strong artistic statement, which means that I respect them more than I like them. Stately as they are, they cannot compete with Clavierübung I,III,WCl,Kunst der Fuge etc etc.
Cheers

 

Dear GrahamN
The usual opinion among scolars today is, that it was PhilEmBach
who through Forkel (the first Bachbiographer who lived early enough to interview PhilEmBach) propagated the view that JS Bach was very fond of the clavichord just as PhilEmBach was himself. In fact I find that wery little of JS Bachs known Claviermusic is suited to the clavichord.While the opposite is true of the Claviermusic of PhilEmBach.
Cheers