Today we get to watch a musicologist in action; that is, we shall read his comments and ourselves comment upon them. This is taken from page 558 of Peter Williams' "The Organ Music of J. S. Bach." Commenting upon the prelude and fugue in G minor, he writes of the prelude:
"Only on paper could evidence be found for regarding this movement as an "Italian Courante' (Dietrich, 1931); neither the form (A B A B) nor the figuration (one harmony per bar, decorated) is typical of any courante. Clearly the conventional cadence formulae have been well learnt (bb 16, 22, 36) and the last might easily have been a phrygian half-close had it been conventional for prelude to en in this way. As elsewhere in the Eight, simple one-bar sequences above a basso continuo are so prominent as almost to suggest that their composer was consciously creating a series of samples."
Indeed.
The first comment, about the "Italian Courante" is directed at a previous scholar (one Dietrich, whose book dates from 1931, which should enable us to find it if we like and read his argument for ourselves). I have no idea what an Italian courante actually is. I have played a number of courantes, but I believe they are french, and though there are two distinct types (corrente and courante, one more active and the other more stately) I do not know about the Italian version, so I can't comment. His observation about the "one harmony per bar, decorated" is what is useful to our purpose.
Williams is pointing to the student-like nature of this piece. It is basically a series of root position chords (he makes that point elsewhere) filled in. What this means is that any reasonably competent music student, given a pattern of harmonies (and these really only follow the circle of fifths), could fill in the harmonies with arpeggiation--thus, it takes no genius to write something like this. The cadences, he notes, are well learned formulas. In fact, the paint-by-number compositional approach is so prevalent here (not badly done, in fact quite competent, just not very imaginative) that he thinks that the composer was creating "a series of samples." Samples?
This, oddly, is probably the one thing that could point us to Bach's authorship. The idea here being that the composer was simply trying to show simple technique in composition, i.e. providing a recipe to show students how to make a workmanlike prelude. I was recently reading a book by another musicologist who suggested the the famous C major prelude from the first book of the Well-Tempered Clavier, itself consisting entirely of a long chain of arrpegiated harmonies, was also intended as a student exercise.
But there is a major difference in quality between the two. Bach's C major prelude contains a number of very interesting voice leadings within those inner voices. Treating the entire measure of notes as one block chord (in fact, in the manuscript that's how they were written after the first five bars) one finds that there is a quite melodic nature of each of the individual voices within the chords, real counterpoint-- now one part moving up a note, now another down, to create a web of really ingenious harmonies. Within that web are a number of dissonances, for, as the notes move, they jostle against one another and create temporary disturbances. This is much more characteristic of a great musical mind; someone composing "by the book" will avoid things that "don't sound good" because they will not be thinking in large units of propulsion, but only of the actual musical moment before them.
In fact, I read once of someone using a computer to track the number of dissonances in known works of Bach and they found that there were a great many more than in any of his lesser known contemporaries. I believe the idea was to help in determining whether Bach actually wrote some of the pieces whose authorship is being debated.
Showing posts with label 8 little preludes and fugues. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 8 little preludes and fugues. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 4, 2015
Wednesday, January 28, 2015
Who wrote the 8 little preludes and fugues? (part five)
It's been a while since I've been to the library and apparently my skills are rusty. It takes me too long to find what I want, and ultimately I zero in on one source. But that is plenty material for one blog. For one thing, it is historiographical and thus discusses the work of several other scholars. It also begins by listing the known sources, the available manuscripts for the pieces. Namely:
"no autograph MS; complete source P 281; a lost complete source used for Peters VIII (1852); not known in BG 38 (1891)."
I'll break that down in a minute.
I started my investigation on the internet some time ago. There mention was made of the preface to an edition of the Eight by Alfred Durr. My first trip to the library was to find this edition, and copy the preface. The preface contained what all scholarly works should contain: citations. Mr. Durr identified five musicologists who had worked on the problem of authorship, and listed, in the footnotes, what their works were. The first principle of scholarly investigation is to follow the footnotes.
Since three of them were in German I decided to wait on them--you can't check out old journals from the library, and my German reading is pretty slow. One of the other sources was apparently not available. Most of this scholarship dates from the 1930s to 1950s, which means it is probably outdated, superseded by new evidence; or, at least it is likely that a more recent source will sum up the conclusions of earlier scholars.
This is certainly the case with the source I found, a book by Peter Williams called "The Organ Music of J. S. Bach" (Cambridge University Press, 1980, rev. 2003). It is in three volumes--or was. I think it is in one enormous volume now, but I can't recall whether the 2003 revision split or joined the volumes. In any case, I copied the relevant pages to take home and digest. They are from the 2003 edition.
The section begins by listing what we have. There is no copy of these works in Bach's handwriting. There is a complete manuscript known as P 281, which is presumably a cataloging system for identifying manuscripts in a particular collection, though I know no more about it than that, and it is not explained here. There was also one other manuscript which is now lost, but was consulted for an edition of Bach's works brought out by the publishing firm Peters in 1852 ( the "Eight" must be in volume VIII). The Bach-Geselleshaft, which published the first "complete" edition of Bach's works (and took most of Brahms's lifetime to do it, I seem to recall), did not include these pieces.
What follows are two pages of discussion about what previous scholars have had to say, and what Mr. Williams thinks about their conclusions. It is too long to quote here. It is quite dense, and includes the names of several composers that only music students with advanced degrees would know (such as myself) and a few that I've never heard of either. This is followed by entries on all eight preludes and fugues in turn, of about a page each (for prelude + fugue). I think I'll choose one of these entries to discuss in detail next week.
"no autograph MS; complete source P 281; a lost complete source used for Peters VIII (1852); not known in BG 38 (1891)."
I'll break that down in a minute.
I started my investigation on the internet some time ago. There mention was made of the preface to an edition of the Eight by Alfred Durr. My first trip to the library was to find this edition, and copy the preface. The preface contained what all scholarly works should contain: citations. Mr. Durr identified five musicologists who had worked on the problem of authorship, and listed, in the footnotes, what their works were. The first principle of scholarly investigation is to follow the footnotes.
Since three of them were in German I decided to wait on them--you can't check out old journals from the library, and my German reading is pretty slow. One of the other sources was apparently not available. Most of this scholarship dates from the 1930s to 1950s, which means it is probably outdated, superseded by new evidence; or, at least it is likely that a more recent source will sum up the conclusions of earlier scholars.
This is certainly the case with the source I found, a book by Peter Williams called "The Organ Music of J. S. Bach" (Cambridge University Press, 1980, rev. 2003). It is in three volumes--or was. I think it is in one enormous volume now, but I can't recall whether the 2003 revision split or joined the volumes. In any case, I copied the relevant pages to take home and digest. They are from the 2003 edition.
The section begins by listing what we have. There is no copy of these works in Bach's handwriting. There is a complete manuscript known as P 281, which is presumably a cataloging system for identifying manuscripts in a particular collection, though I know no more about it than that, and it is not explained here. There was also one other manuscript which is now lost, but was consulted for an edition of Bach's works brought out by the publishing firm Peters in 1852 ( the "Eight" must be in volume VIII). The Bach-Geselleshaft, which published the first "complete" edition of Bach's works (and took most of Brahms's lifetime to do it, I seem to recall), did not include these pieces.
What follows are two pages of discussion about what previous scholars have had to say, and what Mr. Williams thinks about their conclusions. It is too long to quote here. It is quite dense, and includes the names of several composers that only music students with advanced degrees would know (such as myself) and a few that I've never heard of either. This is followed by entries on all eight preludes and fugues in turn, of about a page each (for prelude + fugue). I think I'll choose one of these entries to discuss in detail next week.
Wednesday, January 21, 2015
Who really wrote the 8 Little Preludes and fugues (part four)
Last week I finally made a trip to the library to do some research into the problem of the 8 Little preludes and fugues and to find out why there is a debate over their authorship. Before I did that, I examined why many of us don't want to do our own research or consider the positions of those professionals who spend appreciable portions of their lives tracking down sources and considering styles when those positions conflict with what we think we already know. Being challenged does not go down easily in the human psychology, particularly when one's tools are unchanging certainty and little sense of how someone else even came to a different conclusion in the first place--in other words, lacking an understanding of research methods and a thorough acquaintance with musical styles of the time, it is not easy for the average music maker to get his or her head around the idea that some composer they've never heard of might have written pieces they love instead of a composer they so revere.
Of course, this doesn't automatically mean that the experts are always right, either. In this case, there seem to be quite a lot of differences of opinion, even if they are sometimes (and only sometimes) grounded in a lot of erudition. There does, however, seem to be broad agreement that the one person who probably did NOT write these pieces is Johann Sebastian Bach. Why?
Basically, there are two reasons. There are a lot of faults and imperfections in these pieces--this was my argument a couple of installments ago, and it seems to be in the musicological literature as well--and so a mature Bach would probably not commit them to paper. For one thing, the voice writing is often not independent--the pedals double the left hand in several places, for instance, or there are places that may not actually be parallel octaves or fifths but which come pretty close and would qualify as clumsy and unclear. The master of counterpoint doesn't seem to have been at work here--at least in the fugues. And the short motives in the preludes are developed in a pretty predictable, paint-by-numbers kind of way much of the time, which doesn't suggest that a musical genius was at work on those, either. On the other hand, proposing a young Bach as author has its problems as well.
I had already suggested in passing that perhaps Bach might have been very young when he wrote these, in which case those inelegant passages might be explained. He may have been Bach, but he still had to learn his craft. But in that case we have a problem of style--namely, that the Vivaldi-esque sounding sequences and short repeated figures--an Italian influence--would have been unknown to Bach until (and this can be pinpointed rather accurately) the middle of 1718. But even more problematic is that the galant style of many of these preludes (C and F in particular) seem much more likely to be the product of the generation after Bach--his son's generation.
This is the broad canvas; I'll paint on it more specifically next week as I describe my trip to the library and get into some of the research in more depth.
Of course, this doesn't automatically mean that the experts are always right, either. In this case, there seem to be quite a lot of differences of opinion, even if they are sometimes (and only sometimes) grounded in a lot of erudition. There does, however, seem to be broad agreement that the one person who probably did NOT write these pieces is Johann Sebastian Bach. Why?
Basically, there are two reasons. There are a lot of faults and imperfections in these pieces--this was my argument a couple of installments ago, and it seems to be in the musicological literature as well--and so a mature Bach would probably not commit them to paper. For one thing, the voice writing is often not independent--the pedals double the left hand in several places, for instance, or there are places that may not actually be parallel octaves or fifths but which come pretty close and would qualify as clumsy and unclear. The master of counterpoint doesn't seem to have been at work here--at least in the fugues. And the short motives in the preludes are developed in a pretty predictable, paint-by-numbers kind of way much of the time, which doesn't suggest that a musical genius was at work on those, either. On the other hand, proposing a young Bach as author has its problems as well.
I had already suggested in passing that perhaps Bach might have been very young when he wrote these, in which case those inelegant passages might be explained. He may have been Bach, but he still had to learn his craft. But in that case we have a problem of style--namely, that the Vivaldi-esque sounding sequences and short repeated figures--an Italian influence--would have been unknown to Bach until (and this can be pinpointed rather accurately) the middle of 1718. But even more problematic is that the galant style of many of these preludes (C and F in particular) seem much more likely to be the product of the generation after Bach--his son's generation.
This is the broad canvas; I'll paint on it more specifically next week as I describe my trip to the library and get into some of the research in more depth.
Monday, June 2, 2014
Who really wrote the 8 short preludes and fugues? (part three)
Youtube can be a nasty place. Most of you already know this, and my pointing it out is rather like telling you that dogs have been known to bite people. People can bite people, too, in the comments section.
People get easily frustrated with other people who don't see things their way, particularly when they badly want something to be true and someone tells them that it isn't. As it happens, I've finally gotten around to finishing the 8 short preludes and fugues that I started recording back in the fall. It was a purely extracurricular activity fighting for time and space in and around other obligations and desires, so it got sidetracked for a while, but last week I got around to the last two. The last one's a charming little piece, even if the fugue needs a little help to make it go.
As I sometimes do, after, and only after, I had recorded my own version, I went online to see what someone else's version sounded like. This is where I ran into the Youtube wars. Anytime someone posts one of these pieces someone has to point out that there are people who believe J. S. Bach didn't write them. Usually this is done simply as a statement of (apparent) fact. This is then met with angry comments about musicologists, the dogmatism of the comment posters, and various other things.
I mentioned last fall (when I promised another installment a week later!) that I, also, am a heretic, in that I think it is unlikely that Bach wrote these pieces. Having not played these pieces for almost three decades, since I was a teenage organist, I've only come to that opinion recently, and I don't hold it as a matter of unshakeable belief. I am willing to listen to argument, and I am particularly interested to read what scholars have had to say about this, though as of yet I still haven't gotten around to the library to do some research into the matter. I have, of course, already let fly with some of the thoughts I've had while playing the pieces and what leads me in the direction of Krebs', rather than Bach's, authorship.
I think it is important to note that I am not dismissive of those who spend their lives studying these sorts of things (musicologists) and that I don't believe being an expert makes you an idiot whom any regular person could best with superior logic (ie, common sense). Nevertheless, musicologists are not gods, either, and they do have biases and do make mistakes, sometimes even egregious ones. I will want to know what they are saying.
For now, it is easy to see what uninformed people on Youtube are saying, because their comments are available without going to the library or signing on to read a journal article. Here is one--it is typical. One of the commenters, one David White, had to point out that musicologists believe Bach didn't write the piece being played in the video, to which another person responded with attempted sarcasm:
This is some comment. Not on its merits, however. While I can sympathize with the emotional state of ccoraxfan, I think that it is mostly emotion that speaks here, rather than knowledge. ccoraxfan doesn't like it at all that David White has suggested that Bach is not the composer, (without, I should add, saying anything to back it up) and, when challenged, as many of us do, lets fly with what he or she thinks is a pretty fine example of logic. But let's take the clauses one at a time. There are a lot of incorrect assumptions here, all clustered together. ccoraxfan and I are a long way apart in the way we see the universe. My 42 year old self who is writing to you and my teenage self who first played (and enjoyed) some of these pieces are also at a great distance from each other. Maybe there is a chance to bridge some of it. There are risks associated with my strategy. Of course, when you don't agree with someone you can shout at them, which makes you a jerk, or you can patiently try to explain things to them, which may make you seem patronizing. Also a jerk, perhaps. In which case, I apologize. At least I tried.
"Another musical genius lived in the time of Bach, and we've never heard of him..."
Actually, quite a few other composers lived in the time of Bach, and people who study music in this time period, as well as top rank musicians performing this music, have heard of them. Persons who are not expert in this area often have not. When a professional academic challenges the authorship of someone they usually have in mind someone else who could have been the author, based on a close comparison of stylistic traits in the known music of the author and the unknown piece. This is what led to the theory that it was Johann Ludwig Krebs (or his father Tobias) who actually wrote these pieces. There is no manuscript in Bach's writing, either, and the works do exist among Krebs papers. That doesn't make them automatically his, though. Composers did copy one another's works for study by hand. It is mainly the stylistic characteristics of the pieces that make the case for this lesser known composer. Now if it makes you feel any better, ccoraxfan, other than the name, I myself knew next to nothing about Johann Ludwig Krebs until about a year ago, when I played some of his music and saw for myself that there were some similarities between those pieces and the 8 little preludes and fugues. I do not consider this opinion fully formed--I am not an expert on this--but it was enough to peak my interest and to consider his authorship might make sense. As to him being a musical genius, that is actually part of the point. I don't consider these pieces to be works of genius; I don't consider Krebs to be a genius, either, so we have a match. You may feel otherwise, which is where we will have to leave the matter.
"...and yet we have his music and it comes to us ascribed to J. S. Bach and sounds like his music..."
In fairness to ccoraxfan this music was once thought to have been the music of Bach himself. By at least one expert. But then, early Bach biographers did tend to make mistakes, most embarrassingly in the case of Phillip Spitta, who showed how superior certain pieces which Bach had written were to the inferior efforts of some of his contemporaries. It later turned out that some of those pieces which were too good to have been written by those lesser composers actually were the work of said lesser composers.
But when ccoraxfan asserts that the music "comes to us ascribed to J. S. Bach" what he's apparently unaware of is that that was then. There has been more research and more thinking on the subject since then. Sometimes "we" (collectively) change our minds. That is confusing for the population at large, who grew up being taught to walk against traffic and then somebody comes along and says you should walk with traffic and then they change their minds again, or a glass of wine a day turns out to be good for your heart but then it can lead to various forms of cancer....
I sympathize. I also realize that musicological journals are not distributed to everybody, and that we can't all possibly know the latest findings in all branches of knowledge. On the other hand, most of us probably wouldn't pay attention even if these things were readily available in snack-sized broadcasts on our favorite media outlet. And having an attitude of contempt toward all those "pinheads" who come forth with challenges to what we thought we knew doesn't make it likely we're going to care either. It would be nice it people were kinder toward musicologists and the musicologists tried harder to disseminate and explain their findings. As it is, it is like most things. Lack of understanding and lack of good will breeds wars. But at least nobody is getting shot over it, that I know of.
Then ccoraxfan claims that it "sounds like Bach" which is also at issue. Of course it doesn't sound like Sondheim. It sounds like music written in the Baroque period by a German. It has the stamp of the time and place on it. But it does not necessarily have Bach's individual character in it. Someone else in his time and place, say a student of his, perhaps (which is exactly what Krebs was) could have written it. But unless you know the "Bach circle"--and most non-experts won't have heard of most of their names--you will certainly feel it sounds like Bach, particularly if you can't think of anyone else whose music sounds at all similar. Once you know the contemporaries of, say, Mozart, you realize that a lot of what Mozart was doing is not unique to him; it is part of how composers in general worked at the time in his part of the world. Could you tell, for instance, if I played you some Salieri? So with Bach, and other people who were not J. S. Bach but lived at the same time and wrote similar music.
"...yet somehow we KNOW it wasn't Bach?"
The final part of this sentiment is designed to paint ccoraxfan's opponents as inflexible dogmatists who are just SO CERTAIN of themselves, when, as far as I can tell, we aren't. Maybe some people are. I am not. Scholars tend not to be, because they are particularly aware of how a change in evidence can produce a change in results. But it shows that a person whose certainty is challenged often accuses others of that very thing. And, quite often, it is the other person's burden to prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that they are correct in their assertion, namely that Bach did not write those pieces, because otherwise, without needing any proof of it themselves, they will assume that he did. As I have stated, the critical assumption here in the minds of the frustrated comment-leavers is that Bach is great, these pieces are great, and to deny Bach's authorship is basically to cast aspersions on great pieces. One really cannot win against an ironclad belief like that.
It is not, however, my intention to win, but simply to try to explain what kinds of things musicologists know about music that other people frequently do not, and why they might come to the strange conclusions that seem to upset everybody.
What to read more? On to part four....
People get easily frustrated with other people who don't see things their way, particularly when they badly want something to be true and someone tells them that it isn't. As it happens, I've finally gotten around to finishing the 8 short preludes and fugues that I started recording back in the fall. It was a purely extracurricular activity fighting for time and space in and around other obligations and desires, so it got sidetracked for a while, but last week I got around to the last two. The last one's a charming little piece, even if the fugue needs a little help to make it go.
As I sometimes do, after, and only after, I had recorded my own version, I went online to see what someone else's version sounded like. This is where I ran into the Youtube wars. Anytime someone posts one of these pieces someone has to point out that there are people who believe J. S. Bach didn't write them. Usually this is done simply as a statement of (apparent) fact. This is then met with angry comments about musicologists, the dogmatism of the comment posters, and various other things.
I mentioned last fall (when I promised another installment a week later!) that I, also, am a heretic, in that I think it is unlikely that Bach wrote these pieces. Having not played these pieces for almost three decades, since I was a teenage organist, I've only come to that opinion recently, and I don't hold it as a matter of unshakeable belief. I am willing to listen to argument, and I am particularly interested to read what scholars have had to say about this, though as of yet I still haven't gotten around to the library to do some research into the matter. I have, of course, already let fly with some of the thoughts I've had while playing the pieces and what leads me in the direction of Krebs', rather than Bach's, authorship.
I think it is important to note that I am not dismissive of those who spend their lives studying these sorts of things (musicologists) and that I don't believe being an expert makes you an idiot whom any regular person could best with superior logic (ie, common sense). Nevertheless, musicologists are not gods, either, and they do have biases and do make mistakes, sometimes even egregious ones. I will want to know what they are saying.
For now, it is easy to see what uninformed people on Youtube are saying, because their comments are available without going to the library or signing on to read a journal article. Here is one--it is typical. One of the commenters, one David White, had to point out that musicologists believe Bach didn't write the piece being played in the video, to which another person responded with attempted sarcasm:
This is some comment. Not on its merits, however. While I can sympathize with the emotional state of ccoraxfan, I think that it is mostly emotion that speaks here, rather than knowledge. ccoraxfan doesn't like it at all that David White has suggested that Bach is not the composer, (without, I should add, saying anything to back it up) and, when challenged, as many of us do, lets fly with what he or she thinks is a pretty fine example of logic. But let's take the clauses one at a time. There are a lot of incorrect assumptions here, all clustered together. ccoraxfan and I are a long way apart in the way we see the universe. My 42 year old self who is writing to you and my teenage self who first played (and enjoyed) some of these pieces are also at a great distance from each other. Maybe there is a chance to bridge some of it. There are risks associated with my strategy. Of course, when you don't agree with someone you can shout at them, which makes you a jerk, or you can patiently try to explain things to them, which may make you seem patronizing. Also a jerk, perhaps. In which case, I apologize. At least I tried.
"Another musical genius lived in the time of Bach, and we've never heard of him..."
Actually, quite a few other composers lived in the time of Bach, and people who study music in this time period, as well as top rank musicians performing this music, have heard of them. Persons who are not expert in this area often have not. When a professional academic challenges the authorship of someone they usually have in mind someone else who could have been the author, based on a close comparison of stylistic traits in the known music of the author and the unknown piece. This is what led to the theory that it was Johann Ludwig Krebs (or his father Tobias) who actually wrote these pieces. There is no manuscript in Bach's writing, either, and the works do exist among Krebs papers. That doesn't make them automatically his, though. Composers did copy one another's works for study by hand. It is mainly the stylistic characteristics of the pieces that make the case for this lesser known composer. Now if it makes you feel any better, ccoraxfan, other than the name, I myself knew next to nothing about Johann Ludwig Krebs until about a year ago, when I played some of his music and saw for myself that there were some similarities between those pieces and the 8 little preludes and fugues. I do not consider this opinion fully formed--I am not an expert on this--but it was enough to peak my interest and to consider his authorship might make sense. As to him being a musical genius, that is actually part of the point. I don't consider these pieces to be works of genius; I don't consider Krebs to be a genius, either, so we have a match. You may feel otherwise, which is where we will have to leave the matter.
"...and yet we have his music and it comes to us ascribed to J. S. Bach and sounds like his music..."
In fairness to ccoraxfan this music was once thought to have been the music of Bach himself. By at least one expert. But then, early Bach biographers did tend to make mistakes, most embarrassingly in the case of Phillip Spitta, who showed how superior certain pieces which Bach had written were to the inferior efforts of some of his contemporaries. It later turned out that some of those pieces which were too good to have been written by those lesser composers actually were the work of said lesser composers.
But when ccoraxfan asserts that the music "comes to us ascribed to J. S. Bach" what he's apparently unaware of is that that was then. There has been more research and more thinking on the subject since then. Sometimes "we" (collectively) change our minds. That is confusing for the population at large, who grew up being taught to walk against traffic and then somebody comes along and says you should walk with traffic and then they change their minds again, or a glass of wine a day turns out to be good for your heart but then it can lead to various forms of cancer....
I sympathize. I also realize that musicological journals are not distributed to everybody, and that we can't all possibly know the latest findings in all branches of knowledge. On the other hand, most of us probably wouldn't pay attention even if these things were readily available in snack-sized broadcasts on our favorite media outlet. And having an attitude of contempt toward all those "pinheads" who come forth with challenges to what we thought we knew doesn't make it likely we're going to care either. It would be nice it people were kinder toward musicologists and the musicologists tried harder to disseminate and explain their findings. As it is, it is like most things. Lack of understanding and lack of good will breeds wars. But at least nobody is getting shot over it, that I know of.
Then ccoraxfan claims that it "sounds like Bach" which is also at issue. Of course it doesn't sound like Sondheim. It sounds like music written in the Baroque period by a German. It has the stamp of the time and place on it. But it does not necessarily have Bach's individual character in it. Someone else in his time and place, say a student of his, perhaps (which is exactly what Krebs was) could have written it. But unless you know the "Bach circle"--and most non-experts won't have heard of most of their names--you will certainly feel it sounds like Bach, particularly if you can't think of anyone else whose music sounds at all similar. Once you know the contemporaries of, say, Mozart, you realize that a lot of what Mozart was doing is not unique to him; it is part of how composers in general worked at the time in his part of the world. Could you tell, for instance, if I played you some Salieri? So with Bach, and other people who were not J. S. Bach but lived at the same time and wrote similar music.
"...yet somehow we KNOW it wasn't Bach?"
The final part of this sentiment is designed to paint ccoraxfan's opponents as inflexible dogmatists who are just SO CERTAIN of themselves, when, as far as I can tell, we aren't. Maybe some people are. I am not. Scholars tend not to be, because they are particularly aware of how a change in evidence can produce a change in results. But it shows that a person whose certainty is challenged often accuses others of that very thing. And, quite often, it is the other person's burden to prove beyond any shadow of a doubt that they are correct in their assertion, namely that Bach did not write those pieces, because otherwise, without needing any proof of it themselves, they will assume that he did. As I have stated, the critical assumption here in the minds of the frustrated comment-leavers is that Bach is great, these pieces are great, and to deny Bach's authorship is basically to cast aspersions on great pieces. One really cannot win against an ironclad belief like that.
It is not, however, my intention to win, but simply to try to explain what kinds of things musicologists know about music that other people frequently do not, and why they might come to the strange conclusions that seem to upset everybody.
What to read more? On to part four....
Monday, October 28, 2013
Who really wrote the 8 little preludes and fugues? (part two)
Last week I said I would furnish some support for my contention that J. S. Bach did not write the "8 little preludes and fugues" that were (or are) sometimes attributed to him. This plan of action is none too popular with some musicians, I've noticed. Whenever scholars make some sort of pronouncement about the authenticity of pieces of music, some folks like to simply roll their eyes and mutter under their breath. I think it shows more maturity and intellectual growth to read the arguments and consider what they've said rather than stubbornly cling to whatever we'd like to be right without informing ourselves of what they've said.
At the moment, however, I haven't read any of the literature yet, either, and I don't expect to get a chance in the very near future. I am, instead, offering my own thoughts on the matter, and, later, I can find out whether some of the people who have written scholarly articles on the subject have come to the same conclusions I have, or have things I haven't yet considered, or both.
As I wrote last week, part of the issue seems tied to the question of quality. If you think highly of these works you want them to have been written by Bach, particularly if you are an amateur organist, because these pieces are much easier to play than practically everything else that we can certainly attribute to Bach, and that way you can feel you are playing something by the great J. S. On the other hand, if you don't think much of these pieces, you might be willing to suggest, or even want to suggest, that someone else wrote the pieces. A large part of my argument today is the point out flaws in the compositions, to unpack what someone might mean when they suggest that the pieces are not of high quality. If you disagree, you may need a strong stomach for this one. I'm sorry to poke holes in your musical favorites, although I will say that growing as a musician often requires reassessing our most cherished opinions, and questioning what we know.
There is the matter of counterpoint. These pieces do not contain any parallel fifths or octaves that I can think of; however, there is often weak counterpoint nonetheless. For example, the opening of the G major prelude contains this passage in which the tenor voice gives out an A to G, and this is followed immediately by the alto voice, also with an A to G. The octaves are staggered: they do not occur at the same time. But they still sound like the independence of the two voices has been compromised, which is what is at the heart of the prohibition of parallel octaves and fifth. The counterpoint is less full and less rich because of it.
listen
When you listen to it it actually sounds like the same voice repeating itself because with various stops drawn each note is sounding at its own octave and the octave above, so it is harder to distinguish between the voices. This counterpoint doesn't help that any. It is not an example of a technical "theory class" infraction, but it is weak writing nevertheless.
Something that occurs toward the end of the same prelude is a very short dominant pedal point. This, to me, seems very abrupt, and I have a hard time believing that Bach, who was able to stretch such periods of tension before the final release to incredible lengths at times, would write a dominant pedal that has barely begun before it is over.
listen
These are two different kinds of defects, one related to the quality of the counterpoint, another to the handling of compositional structure. There are many places where the harmony is left incomplete so that one voice may double something that is in another voice, unnecessarily. I would list them but I seem to have left my scores on the organ. Can you trust me?
There are, of course, places in the same pieces where the counterpoint is stronger, and also where the structure is not so perfunctory. I am reminded of a long pedal point at the end of the A minor fugue, which, together with its prelude, is currently my favorite of the set, and may well be the best, from a compositional point of view as well. It also brings up the possibility that not all 8 necessarily came from the same source. Could Bach have written some but not others? Although I still am not sure I would assign the A minor prelude to Bach, it might be first in line if I changed my mind.
A large part of a musicologist's argument often tracks not whether the ideas a composer has are any good but what the composer does with them. This is often the difference between composers of genius and those who simply aren't half bad. Whether this kind of argument takes hold in you or not will depend on your ability to appreciate the working out of ideas rather than to just enjoy the presentation of the ideas themselves. I will state baldly that I have gone from one side to the other as I have grown in my musical ability, and so, I imagine, would anyone else. In other words, it takes a more developed person to appreciate arguments, whether in words or in music, that are well developed, and not simply to enjoy the tang of a catchy musical idea which is repeated many times with little development, as happens in most popular music.
For instance, as ebullient as the C major prelude is, the sequence of chords that follow the opening measures and get us into the new key are only impressive if you haven't heard them from any number of other sources (Vivaldi himself has given us several hundred examples!). It is a very quick and efficient way of getting us to G major, which is the necessary structural point of this sort of composition, but the chords, which, by the way, would furnish a simple example for a theory class learning secondary dominants to label for homework, don't go outside of this Baroque/classical cliche. It's pretty, says Kipling's devil, but is it art?
listen
One thing that those ready-made sequences suggest (other than that he could have gotten them from IKEA) is that this composer was not in command of a rich, abundant harmonic palette. Just as Shakespeare had an enormous vocabulary of over 600,000 words (many of which he created himself), Bach usually does quite a bit more than hand us a chord progression that could have been written by just about any composer, and not do anything unique with it. And that is the point: it is present here at the start of the F major prelude as well:
listen
It sounds to me as if part of the spirit of these pieces belong really to the generation after Bach, when simple harmonic outlines, short and elegant phrases, and less contrapuntal involvement were on the rise. It was a simpler time. Could that thought point us in the direction of who might have actually written the pieces? The two questions are related, though it should not be necessary for us to be certain who DID write the pieces even if we feel that Bach did not. Krebs, after all, was a student of Bach's, and much younger. Our scant Wikipedia research suggests he was stylistically attached to Bach and that his counterpoint was thought to be almost as good. All I can say to that at present is hmmm. I don't really buy it.
But the hour is growing late, and I have more rehearsals to run off to. Shall we carry this discussion over 'till next Monday?
At the moment, however, I haven't read any of the literature yet, either, and I don't expect to get a chance in the very near future. I am, instead, offering my own thoughts on the matter, and, later, I can find out whether some of the people who have written scholarly articles on the subject have come to the same conclusions I have, or have things I haven't yet considered, or both.
As I wrote last week, part of the issue seems tied to the question of quality. If you think highly of these works you want them to have been written by Bach, particularly if you are an amateur organist, because these pieces are much easier to play than practically everything else that we can certainly attribute to Bach, and that way you can feel you are playing something by the great J. S. On the other hand, if you don't think much of these pieces, you might be willing to suggest, or even want to suggest, that someone else wrote the pieces. A large part of my argument today is the point out flaws in the compositions, to unpack what someone might mean when they suggest that the pieces are not of high quality. If you disagree, you may need a strong stomach for this one. I'm sorry to poke holes in your musical favorites, although I will say that growing as a musician often requires reassessing our most cherished opinions, and questioning what we know.
There is the matter of counterpoint. These pieces do not contain any parallel fifths or octaves that I can think of; however, there is often weak counterpoint nonetheless. For example, the opening of the G major prelude contains this passage in which the tenor voice gives out an A to G, and this is followed immediately by the alto voice, also with an A to G. The octaves are staggered: they do not occur at the same time. But they still sound like the independence of the two voices has been compromised, which is what is at the heart of the prohibition of parallel octaves and fifth. The counterpoint is less full and less rich because of it.
listen
When you listen to it it actually sounds like the same voice repeating itself because with various stops drawn each note is sounding at its own octave and the octave above, so it is harder to distinguish between the voices. This counterpoint doesn't help that any. It is not an example of a technical "theory class" infraction, but it is weak writing nevertheless.
Something that occurs toward the end of the same prelude is a very short dominant pedal point. This, to me, seems very abrupt, and I have a hard time believing that Bach, who was able to stretch such periods of tension before the final release to incredible lengths at times, would write a dominant pedal that has barely begun before it is over.
listen
These are two different kinds of defects, one related to the quality of the counterpoint, another to the handling of compositional structure. There are many places where the harmony is left incomplete so that one voice may double something that is in another voice, unnecessarily. I would list them but I seem to have left my scores on the organ. Can you trust me?
There are, of course, places in the same pieces where the counterpoint is stronger, and also where the structure is not so perfunctory. I am reminded of a long pedal point at the end of the A minor fugue, which, together with its prelude, is currently my favorite of the set, and may well be the best, from a compositional point of view as well. It also brings up the possibility that not all 8 necessarily came from the same source. Could Bach have written some but not others? Although I still am not sure I would assign the A minor prelude to Bach, it might be first in line if I changed my mind.
A large part of a musicologist's argument often tracks not whether the ideas a composer has are any good but what the composer does with them. This is often the difference between composers of genius and those who simply aren't half bad. Whether this kind of argument takes hold in you or not will depend on your ability to appreciate the working out of ideas rather than to just enjoy the presentation of the ideas themselves. I will state baldly that I have gone from one side to the other as I have grown in my musical ability, and so, I imagine, would anyone else. In other words, it takes a more developed person to appreciate arguments, whether in words or in music, that are well developed, and not simply to enjoy the tang of a catchy musical idea which is repeated many times with little development, as happens in most popular music.
For instance, as ebullient as the C major prelude is, the sequence of chords that follow the opening measures and get us into the new key are only impressive if you haven't heard them from any number of other sources (Vivaldi himself has given us several hundred examples!). It is a very quick and efficient way of getting us to G major, which is the necessary structural point of this sort of composition, but the chords, which, by the way, would furnish a simple example for a theory class learning secondary dominants to label for homework, don't go outside of this Baroque/classical cliche. It's pretty, says Kipling's devil, but is it art?
listen
One thing that those ready-made sequences suggest (other than that he could have gotten them from IKEA) is that this composer was not in command of a rich, abundant harmonic palette. Just as Shakespeare had an enormous vocabulary of over 600,000 words (many of which he created himself), Bach usually does quite a bit more than hand us a chord progression that could have been written by just about any composer, and not do anything unique with it. And that is the point: it is present here at the start of the F major prelude as well:
listen
It sounds to me as if part of the spirit of these pieces belong really to the generation after Bach, when simple harmonic outlines, short and elegant phrases, and less contrapuntal involvement were on the rise. It was a simpler time. Could that thought point us in the direction of who might have actually written the pieces? The two questions are related, though it should not be necessary for us to be certain who DID write the pieces even if we feel that Bach did not. Krebs, after all, was a student of Bach's, and much younger. Our scant Wikipedia research suggests he was stylistically attached to Bach and that his counterpoint was thought to be almost as good. All I can say to that at present is hmmm. I don't really buy it.
But the hour is growing late, and I have more rehearsals to run off to. Shall we carry this discussion over 'till next Monday?
Monday, October 21, 2013
Who really wrote the 8 short preludes and fugues?
I've been having an interesting stroll down memory lane this month. Something fellow blogger Vidas Pinkevicius wrote about the 300th anniversary of the birth of Johann Ludwig Krebs this month started a little investigation into the man's work because I'm a curious person who hadn't played any of his music before and I thought: why not play some of his music this month in church? The pastors are talking about stewardship, anyhow, which doesn't, so far as I know, lend itself to a lot of great organ music.
In the process, I wound up revisiting the "8 short preludes and fugues;" pieces that I hadn't played since I was a teenager, and then probably not well, and certainly not all of them, preludes and fugues together. I've gotten a whole lot more disciplined since then, with a better technical arsenal, and more time to spend at the organ as well. So it feels like at last I'm finishing something I started almost three decades ago, long before I learned to play the major Bach works of the past several years.
But this also brings with it a musicological question. Who wrote these pieces? When I first encountered them, at the age of 13, they were attributed (in my book) to J. S. Bach. I didn't know Bach's style very well, so I just went along with it. It was in a book, after all, so they must be right! Since then, I've changed my mind. Which is why, this weekend at church I'll play two of the pieces as part of my three week birthday celebration of Mr. Krebs. It would be a shame if I was celebrated the man's birthday with music he didn't actually write. But I'm pretty confident in my attribution.
Once I heard about the controversy, though, I wanted to find out about it. I'm pretty short on time these days, however, so all I've managed to do so far is go to Wikipedia. The article there was pretty biased in favor of Mr. Bach being the author. Why do I say that? Because all they will tell me is that there "used to be" "some" who thought that Krebs was the composer. Notice they don't name anybody. But now, they say, Bach is again thought to be the composer, and this time they list three scholars who are inclined to that opinion. [update: the article has undergone significant editing since this blog was written]
The only reason the article will give that Bach's authorship was challenged was that an unnamed somebody thought that the pieces didn't work well for the organ. Once another scholar pointed out that maybe they weren't written for the organ that apparently solved the entire problem. I have a hard time buying that. I'm going with Krebs' authorship not simply on instrumental grounds, but on stylistic grounds also.
Before I get to the stylistic grounds, though, I don't want to entirely gloss over the instrument argument. I've recently played several of Krebs' Chorale Preludes and noticed something. These pieces, all based on Lutheran Chorales, and presumably meant for the church, would, one might imagine, have been written for the organ. And yet they had no pedal parts at all. And they include rather un-organistic things like rolled chords and strange octave doublings, all things that apparently were noted when Bach's authorship of the "Eight" was challenged. Now Mr. Krebs, also according to Wikipedia, had trouble getting a church job for a while. Why does this matter? Because it makes it unlikely that he had regular access to an organ. If you don't have regular access to an organ, how effectively are you likely to write for one? And if you aren't connected to a church, it isn't likely that you are going to have an organ at home. Persons like Bach often had pedal harpsichords at home, but then, one's economic situation had to permit it. Even the "Eight" have very simple pedal parts. The a minor fugue contains only one pedal entrance toward the end. In the F major prelude, the pedal doubles the bass line, playing only the first beat of the bar. In the C major, the pedal nearly always moves with the other voices. In the fugue it shows independence, but the fugue is awfully short. This has always made the "Eight" useful for young organists who are still learning to use the pedals, but it makes it hard to mount an argument for Bach's authorship. Bach stuck out from other composers because he makes extensive use of the pedal. It is an integral part of his organ compositions, and it is one reason most of them are so difficult. Not to mention a more thorough working out of the material.
And that's the other thing. Whoever wrote these pieces kept the fugues pretty short. It's almost as if they were glad to get them over with. Bach seemingly loved the fugue. His fugues are generally pretty long and pretty involved. It just doesn't smell right.
Ok, he could, very occasionally, write a short fugue (the C# major in Book II of WTC, for instance). And it is possible that he was writing these pieces for a student, like one of his sons. But even there it seems odd. Even Bach's known student pieces, like the French Suites or the 2-part inventions, are pretty tricky stuff. These preludes and fugues are easier than those (particularly if you don't include pedal coordination issues), and they seem to be much less contrapuntally intricate than what Bach tended to write. Some of them, like the preludes in F major and g minor, mainly outline chords and behave in a much more style galant manner about them (which is basically accusing them of belonging to musical ideas that were in the air in the generation that came after Bach and that Bach resisted). Sure, there are the preludes in C and c minor (WTC I), but they explore harmony much more subtly, and delve into far more sophisticated regions than the I-IV-V/V-V kind of stuff you get in the F major prelude.
It isn't just pieces like the famous C Major prelude that show what kinds of harmonies Bach could come up with--the Piece d'Orgue has a nearly ridiculous ending where, over a very prolonged pedal note, Bach just keeps it up with harmony after harmony, on and on, thinking of one more and then one more and then one more. By contrast, the few chords that adorn pedal points in these works (and then mostly I and V) are quite pedestrian.
Maybe I'm being unfair by comparing these pieces to mature Bach. If I were trying to make a case for Bach's authorship of these pieces, I think I would place them quite early, alongside the Neumeister Chorales which Bach is said to have written as a teenager. These have less involved pedal, or no pedal, and are generally simpler to play. I don't know them very well; perhaps I should make a study of them and get back to you on this point.
In the end, though, it isn't merely the details that make me doubt that Bach wrote these pieces. It is the cumulative effect of these details. For instance, there are at least two pedal solos in the pieces, passages for the pedal alone, one in the G major and one in the Bb major prelude (I've only played 6 of them so far). While that seems to gainsay some of what I've said about the scant use of the pedal, these are still the only times the pedal has a very tricky or involved part--when it is playing completely alone, without commentary from the manuals. And the Bb prelude solo in particular, though it might pose some technical challenge, is pretty stiff. Repetitive, harmonically static, it sounds more like a pedal exercise than part of the musical argument. The Bb one reminds me of a paler version of the pedal solo in the Toccata Adagio and Fugue. Now a student of Bach might be expected to pick up some of the master's traits, namely a significant use of the pedal. But he would likely not be able to fully integrate that idea until much later, if at all.
A great many of these arguments, pro and con, cluster around one basic assumption. Just as I wrote when I discussed the possible Bach authorship of the famous Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, if one holds a high opinion of these pieces, one tends to assume they must have been written by the great Bach. If one is less enthusiastic about the pieces, it is easy to assign them to some lesser light of the Baroque era. I personally find them less appealing than I did as a youth. That was a time when the short, arresting ideas present in the A Minor Prelude were far more important to me than the working out (or lack) of those ideas, when the bounce and zest of the F major, and the ease of playing it, charmed, and the limited harmonic variation did not bother, when the rich sound of the C major prelude and the grave tone of the g minor seemed to capture something of my spirit in tones, and the awkwardness of construction did not give me pause. But as I've grown musically, the undeveloped totality of the pieces has come to my attention; I simply cannot appreciate them as much as I did in the days when the D Minor Toccata was interesting and the C Minor Passacaglia was too dense for me. Now it is the other way around: I understand and appreciate--no, love, many a piece written by a great composer later in life, when their craft was more fully developed. That is more likely to happen when a listener is also more fully developed. I still find these pieces charming, but they are not as they once were. Pity, I suppose, but then, a whole new musical ocean has opened up, much deeper than the shallow pool I left.
In order to give you some idea of what I mean, next week I'll offer several details about places in the "Eight" where I think Bach would have improved the music as it now stands, places that are testament to a composer who had some fine ideas and some charming means of working them out, but also stumbled occasionally. Either because the composer was not Bach, or was, as I've also suggested, a very young version of the eventual master, who would have learned from his own work as well as that of others, constantly improving his art, these items should give us some insight into what may separate a really fine composition from a merely good composition. The aim is not to denigrate the pieces, or to cast aspersions on Krebs, or whomever wrote them. The idea is to see what we can learn along the way in order to sharpen our own apprehension of the musical process. See you back here next week?
In the process, I wound up revisiting the "8 short preludes and fugues;" pieces that I hadn't played since I was a teenager, and then probably not well, and certainly not all of them, preludes and fugues together. I've gotten a whole lot more disciplined since then, with a better technical arsenal, and more time to spend at the organ as well. So it feels like at last I'm finishing something I started almost three decades ago, long before I learned to play the major Bach works of the past several years.
But this also brings with it a musicological question. Who wrote these pieces? When I first encountered them, at the age of 13, they were attributed (in my book) to J. S. Bach. I didn't know Bach's style very well, so I just went along with it. It was in a book, after all, so they must be right! Since then, I've changed my mind. Which is why, this weekend at church I'll play two of the pieces as part of my three week birthday celebration of Mr. Krebs. It would be a shame if I was celebrated the man's birthday with music he didn't actually write. But I'm pretty confident in my attribution.
Once I heard about the controversy, though, I wanted to find out about it. I'm pretty short on time these days, however, so all I've managed to do so far is go to Wikipedia. The article there was pretty biased in favor of Mr. Bach being the author. Why do I say that? Because all they will tell me is that there "used to be" "some" who thought that Krebs was the composer. Notice they don't name anybody. But now, they say, Bach is again thought to be the composer, and this time they list three scholars who are inclined to that opinion. [update: the article has undergone significant editing since this blog was written]
The only reason the article will give that Bach's authorship was challenged was that an unnamed somebody thought that the pieces didn't work well for the organ. Once another scholar pointed out that maybe they weren't written for the organ that apparently solved the entire problem. I have a hard time buying that. I'm going with Krebs' authorship not simply on instrumental grounds, but on stylistic grounds also.
Before I get to the stylistic grounds, though, I don't want to entirely gloss over the instrument argument. I've recently played several of Krebs' Chorale Preludes and noticed something. These pieces, all based on Lutheran Chorales, and presumably meant for the church, would, one might imagine, have been written for the organ. And yet they had no pedal parts at all. And they include rather un-organistic things like rolled chords and strange octave doublings, all things that apparently were noted when Bach's authorship of the "Eight" was challenged. Now Mr. Krebs, also according to Wikipedia, had trouble getting a church job for a while. Why does this matter? Because it makes it unlikely that he had regular access to an organ. If you don't have regular access to an organ, how effectively are you likely to write for one? And if you aren't connected to a church, it isn't likely that you are going to have an organ at home. Persons like Bach often had pedal harpsichords at home, but then, one's economic situation had to permit it. Even the "Eight" have very simple pedal parts. The a minor fugue contains only one pedal entrance toward the end. In the F major prelude, the pedal doubles the bass line, playing only the first beat of the bar. In the C major, the pedal nearly always moves with the other voices. In the fugue it shows independence, but the fugue is awfully short. This has always made the "Eight" useful for young organists who are still learning to use the pedals, but it makes it hard to mount an argument for Bach's authorship. Bach stuck out from other composers because he makes extensive use of the pedal. It is an integral part of his organ compositions, and it is one reason most of them are so difficult. Not to mention a more thorough working out of the material.
And that's the other thing. Whoever wrote these pieces kept the fugues pretty short. It's almost as if they were glad to get them over with. Bach seemingly loved the fugue. His fugues are generally pretty long and pretty involved. It just doesn't smell right.
Ok, he could, very occasionally, write a short fugue (the C# major in Book II of WTC, for instance). And it is possible that he was writing these pieces for a student, like one of his sons. But even there it seems odd. Even Bach's known student pieces, like the French Suites or the 2-part inventions, are pretty tricky stuff. These preludes and fugues are easier than those (particularly if you don't include pedal coordination issues), and they seem to be much less contrapuntally intricate than what Bach tended to write. Some of them, like the preludes in F major and g minor, mainly outline chords and behave in a much more style galant manner about them (which is basically accusing them of belonging to musical ideas that were in the air in the generation that came after Bach and that Bach resisted). Sure, there are the preludes in C and c minor (WTC I), but they explore harmony much more subtly, and delve into far more sophisticated regions than the I-IV-V/V-V kind of stuff you get in the F major prelude.
It isn't just pieces like the famous C Major prelude that show what kinds of harmonies Bach could come up with--the Piece d'Orgue has a nearly ridiculous ending where, over a very prolonged pedal note, Bach just keeps it up with harmony after harmony, on and on, thinking of one more and then one more and then one more. By contrast, the few chords that adorn pedal points in these works (and then mostly I and V) are quite pedestrian.
Maybe I'm being unfair by comparing these pieces to mature Bach. If I were trying to make a case for Bach's authorship of these pieces, I think I would place them quite early, alongside the Neumeister Chorales which Bach is said to have written as a teenager. These have less involved pedal, or no pedal, and are generally simpler to play. I don't know them very well; perhaps I should make a study of them and get back to you on this point.
In the end, though, it isn't merely the details that make me doubt that Bach wrote these pieces. It is the cumulative effect of these details. For instance, there are at least two pedal solos in the pieces, passages for the pedal alone, one in the G major and one in the Bb major prelude (I've only played 6 of them so far). While that seems to gainsay some of what I've said about the scant use of the pedal, these are still the only times the pedal has a very tricky or involved part--when it is playing completely alone, without commentary from the manuals. And the Bb prelude solo in particular, though it might pose some technical challenge, is pretty stiff. Repetitive, harmonically static, it sounds more like a pedal exercise than part of the musical argument. The Bb one reminds me of a paler version of the pedal solo in the Toccata Adagio and Fugue. Now a student of Bach might be expected to pick up some of the master's traits, namely a significant use of the pedal. But he would likely not be able to fully integrate that idea until much later, if at all.
A great many of these arguments, pro and con, cluster around one basic assumption. Just as I wrote when I discussed the possible Bach authorship of the famous Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, if one holds a high opinion of these pieces, one tends to assume they must have been written by the great Bach. If one is less enthusiastic about the pieces, it is easy to assign them to some lesser light of the Baroque era. I personally find them less appealing than I did as a youth. That was a time when the short, arresting ideas present in the A Minor Prelude were far more important to me than the working out (or lack) of those ideas, when the bounce and zest of the F major, and the ease of playing it, charmed, and the limited harmonic variation did not bother, when the rich sound of the C major prelude and the grave tone of the g minor seemed to capture something of my spirit in tones, and the awkwardness of construction did not give me pause. But as I've grown musically, the undeveloped totality of the pieces has come to my attention; I simply cannot appreciate them as much as I did in the days when the D Minor Toccata was interesting and the C Minor Passacaglia was too dense for me. Now it is the other way around: I understand and appreciate--no, love, many a piece written by a great composer later in life, when their craft was more fully developed. That is more likely to happen when a listener is also more fully developed. I still find these pieces charming, but they are not as they once were. Pity, I suppose, but then, a whole new musical ocean has opened up, much deeper than the shallow pool I left.
In order to give you some idea of what I mean, next week I'll offer several details about places in the "Eight" where I think Bach would have improved the music as it now stands, places that are testament to a composer who had some fine ideas and some charming means of working them out, but also stumbled occasionally. Either because the composer was not Bach, or was, as I've also suggested, a very young version of the eventual master, who would have learned from his own work as well as that of others, constantly improving his art, these items should give us some insight into what may separate a really fine composition from a merely good composition. The aim is not to denigrate the pieces, or to cast aspersions on Krebs, or whomever wrote them. The idea is to see what we can learn along the way in order to sharpen our own apprehension of the musical process. See you back here next week?
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