I think the time has come for a board (read: ghetto) dedicated to posts about these damned two etudes.  Would you people please go open up the Well-Tempered Clavier for a change?  Or just sit at home and read a book.

Walter Ramsey

Let's all discuss the WTC.  It's a great work, yet how many of us listent to it or discuss it?  I think it doesn't have the same competitive edge to it that the Chopin Etudes have--who can be more intimidating by playing it 3 notches faster on the metronome.

I have a good topic for discussing these.  We can talk about them from the  standpoint of the Affections, the Baroque idea that each piece of music embodies one basic emotion.  So, which is your favorite part of the WTC and which affection do you think it embodies. 

Feel free to discuss which is hardest, flashiest, whatever if you wish.

pianistimo, people have told me what you said also.

For some reason, I find the WTC to hold intense emotions.  The D major Prelude.....can't remember which book....sounds intensely joyful to me.  C major book 1 sounds so peaceful and serene.

Bach touches me emotionally.  Others don't find it so.....but whatever.  Personally, I struggle most with the Romantics.  It's a weakness I wish I didn't have....what does it say about me?  Who knows.

One evening a couple weeks ago I put on Samuil Feinberg's recording of the WTC and listened all the way through until the wee hours of the morning, 846 to 893, in one sitting.
Life altering.

I wish I were a poet so I could express in words, experiences with these creations in harmony with the universe. In this regard, there is Bach and there is late Beethoven (and late Schubert...my, my the G major Quartet!) to which everything else is a planet or a moon. (I can't get this to make sense! And there's much more for me in this category placed on par with the universe...I should leave it.)

I think I'll listen in the same way to Richter's Innsbruck performance when I have time...It's refreshment for the soul.

I don't understand people who can't take Bach. It doesn't mean I don't like them; I only don't understand them.

(thinking of F minor bk1 as I type)

Dave

Bach was the most Romantic composer

Interesting opinion. I agree, bach is very emotional.

From the whole wtc i like the c# minor fugue from the first book most. I listened to it many hundred times and i'm still not even a second bored.

i guess to express why i seem to not have these 'affectations' might be that i see bach in more a mathematical construct.  he defined boundaries and did not cross them (or so we think).  he might have actually changed more about them from time to time when he played them.  to me, that would be the excitement - to see what varied types of sounds and ideas like a kaleidescope will come from them.  instead of 'feelings' -for me - i get a picture in my head of a sparling chandalier, or intensity to registers (i notice registers the most in bach).  personally, to be moved tremendously would take a lot from me because i'd rather hear all the voices sung by different vocal registers to give them umph.  or different instruments.  you have so much going on in such tight quarters.  most of it gets lost on the listener.  also, in some preludes we have an awful lot of just one note.  how to make that one note sound interesting?!  dynamics, i guess - but tone is something else.  have you ever heard a bach prelude/fugue sound flat?  like there's no interest to it.  part of it is -we are not violins.  therefore - we cannot play towards 'up' when we go up and play towards 'down' when we go down.  therefore - for ultimate 'affectations' - we're stuck.

On the topic:

I love the slow Fugues most. My favourite Fugue is C# Minor from WTC I. Perhaps that's a consequence of my lethargic nature    

This is my personal experience:  Bach fugues are more like mathematical constructs or architecture--a human-made wonder. 

I wonder, where this mathematical view of Bach's music comes from. If you hear the music - and even more if you play it - there are no mathematics but pure music. But is has to be played in a very free way to reveal the music in it. If you play it very strict, it will not begin to live. It will make the impression as it is fossilized or frozen music - not as something that comes from a person, that stood in the center of full life. If you have difficulties of "understanding" Bach - listen to his Cantatas and read their texts!

perhaps as counterpoint is saying - presentation is everything.  i mean, if you don't grow up in germany - you're missing some of the fine undertones that may belong to the german language itself.  agreed that understanding everything about a composer helps.  in fact, just to listen to people speak and sing.  and, to understand the culture and times. 

it seems 'longwinded' to us today - and we need patience to sit through it at times.  but, if you imagine yourself in a court with nothing better to do - and a composer at your beck and call to play for you - and you just talk and carry on (and eat grapes) while they play - that's living it up!

the ornateness turns some people off, too.  but, when it's done properly and consistent - it is so beautiful.  perhaps the difficulty of bach turns off people as well.

i remember first attempting the preludes and fugues of bach as a youngster of maybe 12-13.  i just didn't like it.  i can't say why.  perhaps i was struggling with math at the same time and figured bach was just like a math teacher.  explaining everything the hard way.  no short cuts for him!  and practice it over and over, miss turtle.  i began to want to bite things.

bach is one composer that you kinda need to practice the same fingerings with so you don't run out of fingers, so to speak.

That's so true!
One  runs out of fingers all the time. Some parts are practically impossible to play as they are notated.

also, these things sound 100% better on the organ.

No 

I wonder, where this mathematical view of Bach's music comes from. If you hear the music - and even more if you play it - there are no mathematics but pure music. But is has to be played in a very free way to reveal the music in it. If you play it very strict, it will not begin to live. It will make the impression as it is fossilized or frozen music - not as something that comes from a person, that stood in the center of full life. If you have difficulties of "understanding" Bach - listen to his Cantatas and read their texts!

I don't think you got my gist.  I'm not talking about mathematics as dry or fossilized, but as a dynamic and beautiful description of the universe.  I am not a mathematician, and I don't pretend to have achieved appreciation of the sublimity of mathematics on a gut level, but I do understand that on that level it has much in common with the fugues of Bach.  

Read "Godel, Escher, Bach" for a rather long and roundabout discussion of the recursive nature of number theory and Bach fugues (and to boot, Escher's art).  As an interesting aside, Godel's theorem states that for the real number system, there will always be some statement that is unprovable within the system.  While that may sound like gibberish, it stirs within mathematicians emotions not unlike those stirred in us while marveling at the way a Bach fugue may transcend the note-by-note reality and emerge as a profound manifestation of universal reality.

Teresa

a Bach fugue may transcend the note-by-note reality and emerge as a profound manifestation of universal reality.

How very true!

worth a qoute, but there's no chars left in my signature :/

click on 'sound clips'  to hear fred j. cooper memorial pipe organ at the kimmel center.
http://www.kimmelcenter.org/facilities/organ/media.php

thank you for giving a reason and not just saying "no."

It's not the sound of the organ, but its the total lack of touch sensitivity. You can't emphasize the themes sufficiently. Every instrument with touch sensitivity is better for fugues than an organ.

How very true!

worth a qoute, but there's no chars left in my signature :/

Thanks! 
Teresa

I dont like the WTC much, too boring for me. I prefer the French and English suites much more 

In the past, I did not like WTC. However after listening to Gould's WTC book 1, I was totally hooked. I just could not believe how beautiful each Prelude and Fugue.

Those who do not like WTC really should listen to Gould's. If you still cannot hear the beauty, you may want to stop playing piano.

Bach is harder to play great than any other composer. Gould was amazing a true master of playing Bach.