AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |
Back to Blog
In the preludes, he gave free rein to his imagination, and demonstrated mathematical tours de force in the fugues. In each of the two parts of the Wohltemperirte Clavier, he brought together the musical couple prelude and fugue 24 times twelve in minor keys and twelve in major. This is confirmed by the bold three-part fugue that follows, which really blows away all your troubles: it will pass, and anyhow I’m full of revolutionary new plans! Is this what Bach wanted to say in this prelude and fugue? That might just be the case.Ĭomposing 48 keyboard pieces in all 24 keys was the sort of challenge Bach enjoyed. Continuing this ‘psychological’ interpretation, this could mean that Bach did not blame himself. It is as if you are assailed by a tricky problem: could I have handled it differently? What follows is a contemplative piece of self-examination, which results in the return of the same repeated motif, but now with a mostly descending, resigned line. A short motif of eight notes, which always has a rising, questioning end, is repeated about fifteen times in every key, so to speak. In the prelude in three sections, at least, an interesting question appears to be raised. The Prelude and fugue in E-flat major could be interpreted in this way. The question arises of whether there are compositions in the Well-Tempered Clavier in which you can hear Bach’s frustration about his time in prison. That would date this 1722 collection, or at least parts of it, at least five years earlier. He suggests that Bach composed the first part of the Wohltemperirte Clavier ‘at a place where boredom, frustration and the absence of any musical instrument forced him to find a pastime’. Music lexicographer Gerber, whose father studied with Bach in the 1720s, hints at this episode in guarded terms. Bach only received his (dishonourable) dismissal four weeks after he had been put in prison for being ‘too obstinate in requesting his dismissal’. His new job in Köthen, for instance, caused considerable differences of opinion in his employers in Weimar. In his younger years, Bach was rather a hot-head.
0 Comments
Read More
Leave a Reply. |