Tuesday, July 9, 2019

Bach / The Well Tempered Clavier

Johann Sebastian Bach
Poster by T.A.

Bach

BIOGRAPHY

The Well Tempered Clavier

January 5, 2019

Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier of 24 preludes and fugues have set a historic precedent for keyboard composition and technique. Exploring every major and minor key in an exhaustive manner, it was initially extremely innovative and has stood the test of time.

“More than any other of Bach’s works composed before 1722, the preludes and fugues of The Well-Tempered Clavier manifests his resolve to leave nothing untried, even if it meant exploring avenues where no one had gone before. In demonstrating that the tonal system could be expanded to twenty four keys not just theoretically but practically, Bach set a milestone in the history of music whose overall implications for chromatic harmony would take another century to be fully realized.

He set the stage by exploiting fully the chromatic and enharmonic potential of the keys, especially in pieces such as the fugues in C-sharp minor (BWV 849/2), E minor (BWV 855/2), F minor (BWV 857/2), F-sharp minor (BWV 859/2), and B minor (BWV 869/2). Each individual piece, whether prelude or fugue, helped push the limits of musical composition, resulting in twenty-four diverse yet internally unified structures of musical logic. Simultaneously, standards of musical performance were brought to a new high if only in the necessary and uncompromising application of all ten fingers of the keyboard player.

Bach also decided to add a second part to the Cöthen Well-Tempered Clavier, in many ways his most revolutionary keyboard work so far. The compositions, including reworkings and transcriptions of some extant preludes and fugues, took place during the late 1730’s. The most complete original source we have, belongs to the years 1738-42, but it neither constitutes the earliest trace of the work nor does it mark the endpoint of Bach’s pursuit of this project. In its external dimensions, part II exceeds its forerunner of two decades by about a quarter, and in its stylistic orientation, it reflects a rapprochement with the preferences and needs of a younger musical generation.

Imagining Bach’s impatience as he anticipated the promising appointment as Cöthen capellmeister, soon after his return from Dresden, he made some demand – for an early dismissal, perhaps, or something else related to his imminent departure – that embroiled him in a situation where he lost his temper. Whether he managed to enrage Duke Wilhelm Ernst or only a high official in the Wilhelmsburg, nothing could apparently save him from serious trouble; an intervention of his protector Duke Ernst August, could have made matters even worse.

As a result of the incident, ‘on November 6, quondam [erstwhile] concertmaster and organist Bach was confined to the County Judge’s place of detention for too stubbornly forcing the issue of his dismissal and finally on December 2 was freed from arrest with notice of his unfavorable discharge.’ Apparently for no other reason than a show of anger, the Cöthen capellmeister-designate was kept in jail for nearly four weeks, a period which marked the absolute low point in Bach’s professional life.

Understandably, the episode is not reported in the Obituary nor in any other biographical source, although a useful hint is provided by Ernst Ludwig Gerber (whose father, Heinrich Nicolaus Gerber, studied with Bach in Leipzig during the 1720’s) when he relates that Bach wrote the Well-Tempered Clavier, Part I, ‘in a place where ennui, boredom, and the absence of any kind of musical instrument forced him to resort to this pastime.’ Though we cannot take this to mean the work was begun and completed during Bach’s imprisonment, a substantial portion of of the twenty-four preludes and fugues may well have originated in this unhappy venue.”

Christoph Wolff; Johann Sebastian Bach, The Learned Musician – pages 184, 230, 373

Prelude & Fugue BWV 849 – Andrei Gavrilov