Tonebase Bach Stage
This thread is dedicated to J.S. Bach keyboard music. We would like to renew the inspiring spirit of the old thread "Group-Journey through J.S. Bach" based on the inventions and extend to the entire Bach repertoire: inventions, preludes, fugues, toccatas, dances of the Suites and Partitas...
This is for everyone who wants to join!
We can enjoy Bach music together and motivate each other in the process of learning and practicing it!
"I begin every day with Bach - usually for about an hour. I used to torture myself with Czerny, which of course wasn't exactly stimulating for the mind. On the other hand, it teaches you the fingering for a B flat major scale, chromatic thirds, and so on. The daily grind of learning. Later, I discovered that I could get my 'training' under way better with Bach - a refreshment for the body, soul and spirit". (András Schiff, Music Comes Out of Silence, p. 21)
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Happy New Year! Here is the little piece I’ve been working on from the Anna Magdalena Notebook. Thanks for creating this forum, Juan Carlos ! It’s such a joy to check in on everyone playing Bach.
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Michelle R beautiful playing, Michelle! Great.job!
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Juan Carlos Olite Natalie Peh Thank you!
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Happy New Year to all. What better way to start fresh than by opening to page 1 of the Well Tempered Clavier? Here's my take on the Prelude in C Major from Book 1. I've added some commentary in the YouTube comments for those interested in such stuff. If you have any thoughts on the points raised there, I'd love to hear your thoughts please feel free to share, either here or there!
And here is the Fugue, again with some (un)learned commentary:
BTW there is a great Tonebase lesson on this pair by Evan Shinners, with some of his points referred to in a few places in my comments.
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AND... while we're at it, what better way to close the book on last year than with the final Prelude and Fugue from Book 2?
Here's the B minor Prelude, again with some interminable commentary for you to ponder:
And what's a Prelude without a Fugue to follow?
https://youtube.com/shorts/q7388Vc_sLA
In my trek through the WTC, I'm working my way inward from the perimeters, while also stopping occasionally to pick one from the middle. F# minor from book 2 coming next soon.
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Peter Golemme One of my favorites! Great playing.
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Peter Golemme Wow! Great to hear your playing and thanks for keeping this thread alive with multiple Preludes and Fugues at once! Happy New Year, Peter!
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Vidhya Bashyam Thank you Vidhya. Interesting to hear that it's one of your favorites. You always focus in on and select some of the most interesting pieces to work on, & I've learned a lot from your Tonebase offerings. Some commentators have expressed disappointment that Bach did not end Book 2 with a large-scale all-encompassing work like the B minor of Book 1. But I think of this as almost an encore, following all the deep learned-ness that has preceded it. , Fun, bright, lively, and yet still a dazzling display of compositional technique, showing off how he can even use "faulty" contrapuntal techniques to create a perfectly contstructed fugue.
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Andrea Buckland Thank you Andrea, both for your comments and for listening. I love this thread (thanks again JCO for setting it up!) and check it almost daily for inspiration. I'm aware that I've talked a lot about my WTC journey but have not had much to post so far! I'm optimistic about 2025, that I'm going to have much more time for music, as my day job is winding down into full retirement... I have revisited your lovely, lyrical F# Major Fugue on this thread several times. I've read through that one and worked out most of the fingering, and can't wait to learn it myself in earnest, when my pilgramge gets me to that site. The F# Major from Book 2 is also beautiful and amazing (but really, are there any in the WTC that are not so?), and it might be interesting to do those as a pair.
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Peter Golemme Gorgeous playing in these Preludes and Fugues, Peter! I like the steadily sense of rhythm and the beautiful clarity of the voicing lines, it's an extraordinary way of playing Bach. Thank you so much for sharing them and, as Andrea said, keeping this thread alive
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Juan Carlos Olite Thank you Juan Carlos. I'm glad to hear some of that might be coming through! I certainly struggle achieve it.
I continue to find illuminating things in your Goldberg variations, in addition to amazement at the steady stream of material you are churning out, as well as deepening awe and wonder about JSB. Even within this single piece (the Goldberg V's) he is encyclopediac and all encompassing in his approach to composition.
And yes, we've got to keep this thread alive! For one reason, I've got 90 more pieces to get through before I'm done with the WTC! and I continue to learn something from every single person's postings.
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