| << Front page | Arts | October 5, 2007 |
Oberlin Campus Saturated with the Music of J. S. Bach
Floating around in space somewhere is the Voyager 1 spacecraft. If an extraterrestrial life form were to come in contact with this craft, one of its first experiences of human society would be J. S. Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier. A recording of the prelude and fugue in C major is part of the information it carries.
Those of us at Oberlin have a chance to hear this music here on earth. There are three performances scheduled by visiting pianists this school year. Patrick Connolly, OC ’05, performs the first book of The Well-Tempered Clavier October 12, Peter Vinograde performs the Goldberg Variations November 6 and next semester, Angela Hewitt plays both April 4 and 6 to perform both books of The Well-Tempered Clavier.
Bach completed the first book of The Well-Tempered Clavier in 1722, when he was 37 years old. It contains a prelude and fugue for every major and minor key. This idea was new in the 18th century, as earlier composers confined themselves to certain keys due to the way instruments of the time were tuned. In typically systematic fashion, Bach showed that music could be written for all keys.
Scholars still debate over the exact temperament (tuning system) that Bach used, but it is known that it was a system that allowed every key to be used, and, therefore, was fairly close to our modern piano’s even temperament. Bach completed a second volume of 24 preludes and fugues in 1744, now considered Book II of The Well-Tempered Clavier.
What makes these preludes and fugues so engaging is that the style varies so much from piece to piece, and range from two to five voices. Some of the fugues are Italianate and seem to take their cue from the dramatic entries found in works by Vivaldi, while others showcase intense, angular chromaticism. Others defy classification and are purely Bachian in their quirkiness. The preludes offer equal variety, ranging from the elegant yet infinitely rich C major (Book I) with its unchanging arpeggio pattern, to the plaintive C-sharp minor (Book I).
Also interesting to note in some works is the change in Bach’s style between the first and second books. Perhaps most striking is the F minor prelude in the second book. This is perhaps the least typically Bachian of any in the collection. One can clearly hear the end of the Baroque style — particularly in the sigh-motives — and the beginning of the more emotive style that Bach’s sons and other composers such as Haydn would later pursue.
The Well-Tempered Clavier has been a model for composers and a central part of the keyboard repertoire almost since the time it was written. Beethoven, Chopin and Schumann, to name just a few, played The Well-Tempered Clavier practically every day of their lives. Beethoven’s first professional success was as a teenage pianist performing this collection. A 12-year-old Franz Liszt also garnered praise for his renditions of The Well-Tempered Clavier. Chopin completed his collection of 24 preludes, each in a different key, on the island of Majorca in 1839 with a copy of Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier at his side.
The Goldberg Variations is another example of Bach’s systematic approach to composition, in this case composed for the midnight entertainment of an insomniac Count. Rather than cycle through each key, this time Bach uses the harmonic pattern of the opening piece (Aria) as a framework for every variation that follows. He further challenges himself by writing a canon (an exceedingly difficult compositional method in which the opening voice is imitated exactly by the other voices that enter later) at every interval from the unison to the ninth while still remaining in the same harmonic framework.
Other variations are freer in terms of their surface content and many are virtuosic, even involving hand crossings. The last piece of the collection overlays several folk melodies with each other in contrapuntal fashion, which Bach likely intended as a humorous melding of serious compositional techniques with common ale-house tunes. The beauty of the Goldberg Variations lies in Bach’s ability to write profound and complex music that is still elegant and engaging. It is difficult to walk away from a performance of this music without trying to whistle what you just heard
Bach completed the first book of The Well-Tempered Clavier in 1722, when he was 37 years old. It contains a prelude and fugue for every major and minor key. This idea was new in the 18th century, as earlier composers confined themselves to certain keys due to the way instruments of the time were tuned. In typically systematic fashion, Bach showed that music could be written for all keys.
Scholars still debate over the exact temperament (tuning system) that Bach used, but it is known that it was a system that allowed every key to be used, and, therefore, was fairly close to our modern piano’s even temperament. Bach completed a second volume of 24 preludes and fugues in 1744, now considered Book II of The Well-Tempered Clavier.
What makes these preludes and fugues so engaging is that the style varies so much from piece to piece, and range from two to five voices. Some of the fugues are Italianate and seem to take their cue from the dramatic entries found in works by Vivaldi, while others showcase intense, angular chromaticism. Others defy classification and are purely Bachian in their quirkiness. The preludes offer equal variety, ranging from the elegant yet infinitely rich C major (Book I) with its unchanging arpeggio pattern, to the plaintive C-sharp minor (Book I).
Also interesting to note in some works is the change in Bach’s style between the first and second books. Perhaps most striking is the F minor prelude in the second book. This is perhaps the least typically Bachian of any in the collection. One can clearly hear the end of the Baroque style — particularly in the sigh-motives — and the beginning of the more emotive style that Bach’s sons and other composers such as Haydn would later pursue.
The Well-Tempered Clavier has been a model for composers and a central part of the keyboard repertoire almost since the time it was written. Beethoven, Chopin and Schumann, to name just a few, played The Well-Tempered Clavier practically every day of their lives. Beethoven’s first professional success was as a teenage pianist performing this collection. A 12-year-old Franz Liszt also garnered praise for his renditions of The Well-Tempered Clavier. Chopin completed his collection of 24 preludes, each in a different key, on the island of Majorca in 1839 with a copy of Bach’s The Well-Tempered Clavier at his side.
The Goldberg Variations is another example of Bach’s systematic approach to composition, in this case composed for the midnight entertainment of an insomniac Count. Rather than cycle through each key, this time Bach uses the harmonic pattern of the opening piece (Aria) as a framework for every variation that follows. He further challenges himself by writing a canon (an exceedingly difficult compositional method in which the opening voice is imitated exactly by the other voices that enter later) at every interval from the unison to the ninth while still remaining in the same harmonic framework.
Other variations are freer in terms of their surface content and many are virtuosic, even involving hand crossings. The last piece of the collection overlays several folk melodies with each other in contrapuntal fashion, which Bach likely intended as a humorous melding of serious compositional techniques with common ale-house tunes. The beauty of the Goldberg Variations lies in Bach’s ability to write profound and complex music that is still elegant and engaging. It is difficult to walk away from a performance of this music without trying to whistle what you just heard
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