Tonebase Bach Stage

Peter Golemme Great job Peter! Very clean and commanding playing of this prelude and fugue. You have great attention to articulation and rhythmic vitality. My favourite moment in the prelude was mm. 23-27; a very charming change of dynamic here with some lovely ornaments. The fugue subjects were all very well stated. I really liked the approach to and entry of the bass subject at m. 48. Some fine ornaments in the fugue as well. Bravo - you've clearly worked hard on this piece!

Dustin Anderson dear Dustin, thank you so much for giving a close listen to this piece and sharing your feedback, which draws upon such a deep well of knowledge and experience as a teacher.  I learn something new from virtually every one of your posts. 

Re: the oranments in the Prelude -- I'm so glad you liked them. I made them up myself! I've always believed that these pieces -especially the Preludes -- derive from an improvisational tradition and that ornamentation can be used to evoke that in modern performances.  In this case, the hand shape and fingers bouncing over the black keys in that particular run inspired those little turns which fit nicely under the fingers.  I'm always willing to try something like this if I can fit it into the flow, even though I fear that sometimes I might cross over the line into bad taste. 

Re: M. 48 of the Fugue:  it is around here that you start to realize that the little 4 note scale fragment (would you call it a tetrachord?) - both upward and downward -is not just a series of scale steps to get from point A to point B, but is actually a motif that asserts itself with ever more prominence from here through to the end of the piece. In mm.45-47 alone, we hear it 3 times upward and twice downward , and those little ornaments (in addition to fitting well on the fingers) are a way of calling attention to that motif.

Thanks again for listening!

Peter Golemme This is beautiful, Peter! I felt "safe in your hands" while you were playing - meaning, I could settle back into my chair, close my eyes, and know that we'd arrive safely at the end still in one piece. Thank you for sharing.

Peter Golemme Yes you could call a four note scale fragment a tetrachord. Its 'older' meaning typically referred to a series of steps that spanned a perfect fourth but its used more loosely now to just mean any four note segment of a scale / tone collection.

It's a great little gesture that is easy and effective to sequence! My favourite prelude and fugue is the G minor from WTC Book 1 and the best moment of the fugue is an episode near the end that does this same thing using the same type of figure (but leads into a stretto rather than a bass entry of the subject) =)

Michelle R Thank you so much Michelle.  It took a LOT of work (as Dustin Anderson surmised) to get this pair secure enough so that I could play them with some assurance, as opposed to holding my breath throughout while hoping to get to the end without any major mistakes.  I thought I had it ready for the May concert but the performance proved otherwise.  It took 6 more weeks of concentrated analysis, rememorization and multiple recordings to get it to this point. It could really benefit from some additional months of focus, but I am extremely impatient to move on to get through as many of the 48 as I can while I still can!

Dustin Anderson Ah, yes, I see what you are referring to in the G minor!  I count at least 12 of these 'tetrachords' overlapping in the episodic mm 24-27, leading into that climactic stretto.  And 2 more if you are willing to count the ones where he drops a 5th on the final (4th) note of the figure, rather than ascend one step upward.  Though less dense, there is a flurry of them in mm 73-80 of the above B Major (which are prefigured by the 16th note versions in mm 68-70). And they feature prominently (in pairs of 3rds no less) in the final climactic entry of the subject and the closing cadence.  Once I noticed them I started seeing them everywhere in this Fugue, until it finally dawned on me that "Hello!, this is not just a coincidence"!

I didn't know that the term 'tetrachord' was originally defined with reference to a perfect fourth but that makes a lot of sense.  I had thought of the term as defining the bottom half and top half of a scale, each of which features  a leading tone before the 4th note (and each of which of course in a major scale spans a perfect 4th).

The figures in this B Major fugue were reminiscent of that feeling of a rising or descending resolution to a definte end point  even where they don't literally state the specific upper- or lower- half of a scale.  In the B Major Fugue the figure generally lands on a significant chord tone even if not necessarily the tonic or the subdominant. The resolution can be momentary, since just when you think you've landed safely in a particular key, JSB immediately pulls you into a different key, but, nonetheless, it's this feeling of resolution or arrival that, to my ear, defines this figure for me, making it something that needs a special name, rather than just being thought of as 4 scale tones. 

Hence, I was hoping that the term 'tetrachord' actually applied here, even if stretching the original textbook definition somewhat.  It really helped in my memorization to be able to put a name to it -- as in "OK here comes another one of those tetrachords" !

Juan Carlos Olite Thank you so much Juan Carlos. My piano -- and the close-mic recording - is very unforgiving when it comes to articulation, and I work SO hard to achieve some degree of it, whereas my more natural inclination as an unreformed "barroom piano player " would be to blur all the edges with a lot of pedal.  So I'm glad some sense of that comes through this performance. When I hear the refined articulation of pianists such as you, Ursina Boehm Kerstin Judy Kuan Gail Ravin Starr  Katrina Wei (just to name a few among so many others on these threads), I realize that there is much more I could be paying attention to, once I am able to execute the notes.

It's the same with the expressivity.  There is so much to pay attention to in Bach, that I tend to let the expression find its own way by instinct.  Listening to others I realize again that there is a lot more that could be done with it by taking a more mindful approach.