Holy Dread

There was an article in The New Yorker about Bach's "holy dread." For me, holy dread is why I love Bach so much, especially his harpsichord and organ music. I also love that Bach can make even secular dance music overflow with this feeling, like this jig, which is so bizarre, upbeat and catchy but dripping in apocalyptic fury.

Harpsichord and Temperaments

I recently moved my harpsichord to my apartment. It has been about ten years since I had it on hand to play daily. I have spent much of the time tuning it. With the changing season and the alternating dry/wet and hot/cold, it goes out of tune almost every day.

In my most recent tunings, I've tuned it to 1/3 comma meantone, which is a tuning that goes back to the Renaissance. Its defining characteristic is minor thirds at the pure 6:5 ratio, which makes music in minor keys sound startlingly sweet and serene. As one goes around to more distant keys, though, there are some very sour intervals, and then there's a "wolf" interval that sounds absolutely horrendous. I can't even find an example of how it sounds on harpsichord, but on Sound Cloud I found a synthesized version of 19-tone equal temperament, which is more or less 1/3 comma meantone extended to 19 keys per octave (hard to describe in non-technical terms; just listen).

"Seigneur Dieu ta pitié" by Guillaume Costeley. I found this piece while looking for information on 1/3 comma meantone and 19-tone equal temperament. Costeley, who lived in the 16th Century, apparently was the first to theorize this tuning. I wish I could find a recording of this piece sung by a choir.

One of Bach's most beautiful harpsichord pieces

I am biased because the "French Suites" are how I first fell in love with Bach's harpsichord works, and yet we often find in life that where we started out is where we tend to return...

This is the Sarabande from the suite in d minor. I just love how it builds and lifts and then releases in an outpouring of passion.

Christophe Rousset is an amazing harpsichordist.

Klavierbüchlein for Wilhelm Friedemann

J.S. Bach made a keyboard music book for his eldest son, the Klavierbüchlein for Wilhelm Friedemann Bach. In it are several early versions of preludes found in the Well-Tempered Clavier. The first prelude, in C major, is one of Bach's most famous pieces, and the piece that initially attracted me to harpsichord music when I was a teenager. The early version found here, performed by Christophe Rousset, is dreamy and mesmerizing, and seems to end abruptly if you're used to the later version. I can't get enough. And then there's the prelude in c minor which follows it, and the transition couldn't be more jolting. This is harpsichord performance at its most expressive. A masterpiece.

Too bad some of Christophe Rousset's CDs are in the $40-$50 range.

Upbeat and Apocalyptic

On the way to work, I listened on repeat to the prelude and fugue in f minor from Bach's Well Tempered Clavier, Book II. If I recall correctly, during the Baroque era, f minor was considered the most somber key. As Wikipedia has it: "Schubart described this key as 'Deep depression, funereal lament, groans of misery and longing for the grave.'" I don't know who Schubart is, but I like his description.

Bach's prelude and fugue in f minor elicit complex emotions in me. The pieces are upbeat, playful, and - with the prelude - almost silly. And yet I have the impression of impending or actual Doom.

The prelude, as I imagine it, portrays the eve of the end of the world. Two birds perched on a power line tweet at each other under an evil sky. The subject suffers bouts of denial and merry delusions interspersed with awakening realizations of immanent doom. As the prelude reaches its end, the subject gradually comes to face and accept his fate.

The fugue is the apocalypse itself. Each angel pours out his bowl of wrath in turn. Fire rains from heaven; oceans boil; the parched earth ignites; the bowels of the earth spew molten rock. God has brought his judgment and wrath upon the wicked world. Yet, there is a catharsis as the anticipated doom of the prelude actualizes. The end has come. The worst has arrived. The judgment has been delivered. The subject receives the privilege of seeing the world and his wicked self through the eyes and wisdom of God, and declares that God is just.

The theme of this piece, as it speaks to me, is the recognition of sin and evil within oneself and the wrath incurred, and the celebration of God's judgment and victory over evil. It is a call to repentance and sobriety, a call to acceptjust punishment due to one's evil actions.

Music on my mind

This has been on my mind for a few days now. I wake up and it is already playing in my head. I love the combination of this prelude from the Well Tempered Clavier with one of the French Suites.

Nouvelles suites de pièces de clavecin

Live performance of Jean-Philippe Rameau's Nouvelles suites de pièces de clavecin by Blandine Rannou

Impressions of Froberger

Gosh, I love Froberger. So majestic. So whimsical. So creepy.

Another:

Early Music VI: Cat's Fugue

Domenico Scarlatti, Fuga (K. 30)
Toyohiko Satoh, Lute

This fugue in g minor is popularly known as the Cat Fugue, though Scarlatti did not use this name.

La de Juigné

I've spent the last week immersed in Jacques Duphly's music. After a while, much of it sounds the same. I would not put him on a level of genius with a J.S. Bach. Yet, his music has a way of making a harpsichord sound fantastic. Duphly's genius is in making the most of the acoustic qualities of this instrument, bringing out its charms as well as its dark sides. One has the sense, almost, that the instrument was made to play his music, rather than the other way around.

Here's one piece as an example "La de Juigné". This one uses the Alberti bass (common also in Mozart's music).

Early Music IV: Jacques Duphly

Jacques Duphly (Du Phly), Allemande en ré mineur

One of the last great French harpsichordists, Duphly died the day after the storming of the Bastille.

Early Music (III) Les Bergeries

France was undoubtedly the place where both harpsichord construction and harpsichord composition reached its apogee. France was faithful to the harpsichord several decades longer than the rest of Europe, which embraced the piano, an instrument developed from the simpler Italian harpsichord.

In the 20th Century, the harpsichord was revived. The early period of its revival is called the revival period. Revival harpsichords tended to be constructed similarly to pianos, with heavy, iron frames, and thick, steel wire for strings. The belief was that the piano was a technological advancement over the harpsichord, and thus harpsichords would benefit from being constructed similarly. The resulting revival harpsichords had  a rather harsh, tinny sound, which many people still associate with harpsichords. In spite of this, revival period harpsichord music has a charm of its own. Most often, the pieces were performed with Romantic influence, and thus very dramatic.

Here is a recording, from 1966, of Les bergeries, a piece by François Couperin (1668-1733), performed on a revival harpsichord in the revival manner, by Zuzana Růžičková.

Following the revival period, harpsichord builders and performers tended to look back at surviving original harpsichords from the 16th-18th Centuries rather than taking cues from modern piano contruction. These historic instruments were constructed much more lightly, out of wood and glue only, and had much thinner, agile, soft iron and brass strings. The resulting sound is wonderfully rich, penetrating, organic. This is as close as we get to the harpsichord in all its splendor, as the last French harpsichord composers would have had in mind. Alongside interest in historic instruments was a revival of historically-informed performance. Pieces from this new period look back to Baroque sources for interpreting a piece, rather than 19th and 20th Century Romantic influences.

For contrast, here is the same piece, performed on a copy of a historic instrument, in a historically-informed performance style. 

Early Music (II) - La Portugaise

Pièces de Viole Composées par Mr Forqueray le Père Mises en Pièces de Clavecin - 1ère Suite - La Portugaise
Antoine Forqueray arr. Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Forqueray

Gustav Leonhardt (Harpsichord Hemsch 1751)

Early Music

G.F. Handel, Harpsichord Suite no. 5 in E major (including "The Harmonious Blacksmith")

Chantal Perrier-Layec, Harpsichord

Prelude 0:00

Allemande 1:57

Courante 4:42

Air and 5 variations The Harmonious Blacksmith 5:49