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Tuesday, September 09, 2014

THE other LOVE OF MY LIFE



I posted here earlier about my undying admiration for both the pianist Glenn Gould and the music of J.S. Bach, what and how he played it on this wonderful instrument - even a book was written about his own Steinway piano and his "personal tuner".
Today I post here again about the free availability of the Well Tempered Clavier (Wohltemperierte Klavier) composed by Bach and the magnificent and educated interpretation done by Glenn Gould, whose playing was put inside the Voyager sent to the depth of the universe in hope to be received by extraterrestrial intelligence to be a representation of the human knowledge and its development.
Musically, the structural regularities of the Well-Tempered Clavier encompass an extraordinarily wide range of styles, more so than most pieces in the literature. The Preludes are formally free, although many individual numbers exhibit typical Baroque melodic forms, often coupled to an extended free coda (e.g. Book I preludes in C minor, D Major, and B-flat major).
Each fugue is marked with the number of voices, from two to five. Most are three- and four-voiced fugues. The fugues employ a full range of contrapuntal devices (fugal exposition, thematic inversion, stretto, etc.), but are generally more compact than Bach's fugues for organ.
The best-known piece from either book is the first prelude of Book I, a simple progression of arpeggiated chords. The technical simplicity of this C Major prelude has made it one of the most commonly studied piano pieces for students completing their introductory training. This prelude also served as the basis for the Ave Maria of Charles Gounod.

Later significance and influence

Although the Well-Tempered Clavier was not the first pantonal (using all keys) composition, it was by far the most influential. The very nature of the piece (as implied by its title page) established a tuning requirement for harmonies, which were to become the basis for all Western music developed through the early 20th century. The Well-Tempered Clavier does not include very remote modulations, but instead demonstrates the ability of a single instrument in tempered tuning to play in all 24 keys without having to be tuned to new fundamentals. Beethoven, who made remote modulations central to his music, was heavily influenced by the Well-Tempered Clavier, since performing it in concerts in his youth was part of his star attraction and reputation. Further reaching modulations to remote harmonic regions were mostly associated with later Romantic and post-Romantic music, ultimately leading to the functional extension in jazz harmony. The atonal system of the 20th century, although still taking the 12-tone chromatic scale (that Bach used) as a foundation, effectively did away with musical keys altogether.
In addition to its use of all keys, the Well-Tempered Clavier was unusual in the very wide range of techniques and modes of expression used by Bach in the fugues. No other composer had produced such vividly characterized and compelling pieces in the fugal form, which was often regarded as a theoretical exercise.
A very good site is the one of dr. Phillip Goeth (2) that I put here below and that I invite you to extensively read and explore, then - of course - Youtube has all the video-recordings of my hero Glenn Gould (3) playing this monument of piano solo music that has given joys and satisfaction to thousands of listeners for centuries already and is going to continue to do so I think forever.
Once again I ask for one or two $ donation for making this easily available in my blog.


  1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Well-Tempered_Clavier
  2. http://www.bachwelltemperedclavier.org/
  3. https://www.youtube.com/results?q=Glenn+Gould+plays+Bach%3A+The+Well-Tempered+Clavier+Book+I+%26+II

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