Characteristics of a well-interpreted JS Bach ?

[m19834]

I am interested in your thoughts, if you feel you can put them into words, about what characteristics you think make a "good" interpretation of a Bach piece.  Maybe that is too general or broad, but I think that people do tend to think about interpretation by composer or even by era, and also by compositional form/style (counterpoint, sonata, etc.).  I would think though that perhaps you have favorite pieces, or favorite performers for Bach, or some sort of idea along those lines, that you think are the essence of representing Bach's music.  I would like to know what that is for you .

[alessandro]

I'm in fact also interested in (new) interpretations...   When one comes to interpret Bach, let's say for instance in competition, there is often suspense, tension in the air...  Often due to the presence of the jury (often old so called 'wise' people) and tension from the performer him- or herself.  I read that Yevgeni Kissin said in an interview that he gave a few months ago that he never performs Bach in public.  He doesn't feel 'ready' (!) for it, he felt a sort of awe for Bach and a sort of fear of not doing justice to his music although he was extremely fond of Bach and even considered his music one of his favourites.   So, with 'Kissin' I can give a first meaning on the playing of Bach music; it is - for me- technically demanding, and one mistake is, probably due to the 'mathematical', architectural shape of his compositions -more 'unforgiven' than let's say in - well let's try to be funny - Sorabji.  On the other hand, as one would probably agree, the technical issue won't be a problem particularly for Kissin, so that brings us to the interpretation.   How to play it ? What should one try to achieve ? I think it is such a pity that it is often taught or written in prefaces of the different editions of the sheetmusic, that one should approach for example the WTC with respect, not overdo with emotions.  I tend to say - to hell with that.  Another thing I don't agree with, and that is often used to give more credit to that 'respectful' approach, is that WTC or Goldbergvariations (or a prelude and the according fugue) should be seen as a whole.  I also tend to say to that approach - to hell with it.  I can get total satisfaction from one preludium and not necessarily the fuga, let stand the entire book.  So, I play Bach, romantically and poppy, I often play the more joyful preludes and I'm yes still fond of the first prealudium.   I play it lightly, not quickly, with a little insisting smooth ground tone at every two bars, and often conversation-like, with changes, with louds and softs, different colors, a rather steady tempo but not over the whole line.  This prelude makes me happy and sad at the same time.  A thing that I do for example is in the end of bar 17 to pedal to absorb the sol in the left hand of bar 18.  It could be considered sentimental, but I like it that way.  I also slow down a little in the end of bar 30.  I'm fond of this piece, sometimes it leaves me totally indifferent and sometimes I'm very satisfied with my playing.
I think Gould did very, very nice things in his late recordings with the WTC for Sony.  I really don't like his early recordings.   I also think that Richter did very, very nice profound, totally detached things, with the preludes, full of air and slowness, without pretention. I hear him on an 'In Memoriam - Richter - Live recordings' double-CD.   I also like the fury of Martha Argerich in for example the Partita's, she makes really hard rock of it, and sometimes (this is no joke) one can hear some jazz in it.  Well, that's the interpretation of Bach I like : first, faultless and for the rest risky, personal, very modern, new, eccentric.  Unfortunately, I think I could say a little more of it but I have to get back to work now.
Read you.
Kindly.

[m19834]

Thanks Alessandro for your post and for your thoughts.  Something you said in there reminded me of something I once heard a person say as he was giving a masterclass on Bach.  He was talking about Bach and the Lutheran religion (apparently Johann was Lutheran), and how the general thought in Lutheranism has to do with a direct relationship that we would each have with God, and the religion itself is full of fire and brimstone (I don't personally really know).  He contrasted this with other religious thoughts and ideas, where we must go through another person (the Pope in Catholicism, for example) or so to have some relation with God, or that God is hidden from us or that we are hidden from God.  Aside from whatever my own religious views are, I found this to be an interesting snippet, since it had to do with Bach and how one might view his music.

This man went on to say that the music would be something that is straight from the heart, and is something that is like the essence or raw and unhidden kind of relation with life, in contrast to the idea of something like the Classical period where people are enshroud beneath powders and wigs and even masks.

I couldn't name anybody or any piece, at this point in my experience, that speaks particularly of this (because I am not so familiar still in comparison with the body of works and artists), but this particular thought has stayed with me over the years and I find it interesting at least.  What that kind of direct relationship to life would mean when it comes to interpreting music, I guess that would be personal of course to a large degree, but it seems that people often think Bach's music must be devoid of emotion since it is so mathematical and intellectually pleasing as well.  Perhaps there is some kind of perfect balance between head and heart ...

[cmg]

For me, no other composer was better able to depict in music the essence of JOY than J.S. Bach.  I look for that element in all of his works, even in places where joy seems only to be latent.  Bach bubbles over with the rapture of all his convoluted, flying lines.  Bach, in fact, IS joy. 

If the performance is dry and bogged down by intellectual excursions into "tasteful" performance-practice notions, I just nod off.  What I want to hear is joy, and whatever it takes to bring that to life in the performance, I want to hear it.  Bang on empty cat-food cans for all I care.  Just be joyous.

No rules.  No requirements.  Just joy.  Damnit.

[alessandro]

He was talking about Bach and the Lutheran religion (apparently Johann was Lutheran), and how the general thought in Lutheranism has to do with a direct relationship that we would each have with God, and the religion itself is full of fire and brimstone (I don't personally really know). 

Yes, right, that is so interesting in Bach and in the period he lived in.  In his early years he lived in an era where there was devotion.  In his case, I most certainly tend that he was 'christian' but I'm definitely more certain of the fact that he was very intelligent, that he knew a lot about music (that is an understatement, he was probably what we can call a genius) and that his devotion was "Work".  Working, working, working.  More than one biographer agree about that aspect, Bach was a worker and I think that his christian thinking never overwhelmed or took the overhand, he never became tutorial though his music served and was mainly created in order to sing and to celebrate God and Jesus...
 

  Just joy.  Damnit.

Yes, mainly joy.  But strangely, if I can make a small sidestep to a solo-violin work, the sonata nr. 2 in A minor BWV 1003, especially the beginning, the 'grave', that tears the heart in pieces (is that understandable "tears", not 'breaks' the heart, but really "heart shredding", damn, can't find the word for it. ) That sonate is not "joy" for me, that is pure undiluted sadness.  Not the sobbing, weeping kind of sadness, but the dry deep tristesse, that supphocates, that grabs me by the throat...   One may never forget that Bach also lost his wife I think, one or two children, the Vienna where he lived in, was not a golden Vienna but a dark grey, rainy one with mud in the streets.  He sometimes worked for a little money, and for a sack of wheat and some wine.  He lost also his brother I think and he his latest son was also a source of worry for him, he was most probably a sort of barfly-gambler...

Now, that belief is a big part of the story.  And, though, I myself I'm not yet totally delivered or free of some concern for God, I'm on my way to leave God for once and for ever behind me, I do think that Bach also had his doubts about 'God'.   In the Austrian empire where he lived in, he was witness of a kind of dramatic switch in emperor.  And, exactly in the same period, France and Italy came up with a 'philosophy' of... joy.   Rationalism and pleasure, that was what France and Italy stood for.  And there we had Bach, that already was making for years contrapunctual music, psalms, directed choirs, played the organ etcetera and in France, people where having sex, all dressed up, make up, while there was music purely made for the senses, for the pleasure of the ear.  Austria was getting in war with France, was losing, and at the same time the Emperor Franz Joseph liked a lot of that French way of living.  Bach was at the end of his life, and experienced how the society, in awe of God, was fading out or collapsing, in favor of a more Epicurian or Hedonian way of living.  Romanticism and a lighter life came slipping in.   One of Bachs last works was the Musical Offer, an venonymous offer for the Emperor.  I think Bach was truly underestimated in during his lifetime (of course he knew some succes, was often asked to organise and lead stuff that was not always funny), but his genius was underestimated.  Even in the years after his death I think there was too long a silence...  I took maybe hundred years to pick up the music he left and to see and experience the genuine originality of his work and life.   There's no other thing like Bach music, isn't it ?
It is for me impossible to truly get back to the religious context of the era where Bach lived in, I don't feel much for analysing his cantates etcetera and I don't feel frustrated for that.  The music itself is more than fantastic.

Finally, I'm actually reading a book by Marie-Louise Mallet "La musique en respect", can't find a decent translation "The music in all due respect" and it speaks of the often distant relation of philophy versus music.  It tries to find the reason why philosophers do not talk about music, or not often and when they do, they do it in an uncomfortable, poor way.
It is a little difficult to read, I have this book now for more than one year and it's too erudite for me, but it is interesting at the same time.  There's a lot of darkness and madness in music, and it's interesting, just as you incited me to do so, Karli, to try - even if words fail - to put our feelings towards and thoughts on music into words.
Cheers.

[m19834]

hmmm ... I need to be very quick before I could count myself as being naughty now in typing rather than practicing, but I just had to add a thing.

I suppose to some degree it is impossible to go back through the books and so on, and try to find out who the man JS Bach was -- I mean, he was a human who loved, who had devotions, who lived in the world ....  Yes, his music is enough, I suppose, and of course it will just reflect him as a person.  For me though, there is some sort of order in it that makes me attracted to it, yet it seems to have all of the humanity of a very deep-feeling heart and character.  hee hee ... my head resists to learn it, but once I get past that, my heart is very happy that I have .

But, now I go let my fingers do the talking on the piano and get that much closer to a date when I will finally record a Bach work and post it here . 

And thanks for your post, Alessandro !!!!

[landru]

..  One may never forget that Bach also lost his wife I think, one or two children, the Vienna where he lived in, was not a golden Vienna but a dark grey, rainy one with mud in the streets....
...In the Austrian empire where he lived in, he was witness of a kind of dramatic switch in emperor. 

I liked your post, but I have to nitpick - Bach didn't live in Vienna, mostly in Leipzig and always in Protestant areas. Vienna has historically been Catholic while Bach was Lutheran to the core.

[alessandro]

You're of course absolutely right Landru.   I typed this post too confident in my fantasy, that I mixed up Prussia with Austria with Vienna etcetera...  It is of course more what we now call Germany he lived in.  I just wanted to make a point that the period, and the life he led was not one of 'golden trumpets', 'silk' and 'dancing balls' like we can sometimes see in pictures and movies, but it was more one of grey, cold, damp, muddy streets and cities and often a harsh and sometimes even pennyless living.
Thanks Landru !     

[lostinidlewonder]

Although Bach's music is very clear as to what notes has to be played he leaves the pianist with a freedom as how to play it. However this also can be applied to other music too, that we are open to interpretation. However Bach wrote pretty much on Clavichord, Harpsichord and Organ. Could he really imagine the modern piano of today? As exponents of the modern piano we have to make intelligent decisions as to how to musically express Bach.

Let me paraphrase 48 Prelude and Fugues (Tovey and Sameul)
"..One thing is certain, before anything "pianistic" is attempted the student should have thoroughly mastered Bach's exact part-writing as written, should be able to express its climaxes distinctly without adding or altering a note.

... our appreciation of Bach loses more than it gains from the occasional bursts of pianistic effectiveness accidentally possible in passages which may not be climaxes at all.

JS Bach is fond crowding all the harmony he could into both hands; not until we have learnt to achieve Bach's part-writing with our fingers can we venture to translate him into any pianoforte style which produces volume at the expense of part-writing.

... it may be taken as an axiom that when a phrasing or touch represents a "pianistic" mannerism that would sound ugly on the harpsichord, that phrasing will misconstrue Bach's language and tell us nothing interesting about the pianoforte. If players think it "natural" they are mistaken, however habitually they may do it. They are merely applying a small part of the pianoforte technique of 1806 to the clavichord and harpsichord music of 1730.

There are very simple ways of detecting what is unnatural in the interpretation of most of Bach's themes; and, if the test sometimes fails to answer directly, it certainly never misleads. It is summed up in two words, Sing it.

If the phrase proves singable at all, the attempt to sing it will almost certainly reveal natural types of expression easily perfectible on the pianoforte and incomparably better than any result of the natural behavior of the pianists hands. Even in matters that at first seem to be merely instrumental, the vocal test reveals much.

Organists who play fugues more often than most people, do not find it necessary, when the subject enters in the inner parts, to pick it out with the thumb or another manual. They and their listeners enjoy the polyphony because the inner parts can neither stick out nor fail to balance within the harmony, so long as the notes are played at all. On the pianoforte however constant care is needed to prevent failure of tone, and certainly the subject of a fugue should not be liable to such failure. But never should the counterpoints, indeed the less heard clearly (e.g: the clinching third countersubject of the F minor Fugues in Bk1) Most of Bach's counterpoint actually sounds best when the parts are evenly balanced. It is never a mere combinations of melodies, but always a mass of harmony stated in terms of a combination of melodies.

When Bach combines melodies, the combination forms full harmony as soon as two parts are present. (Even a solitary part will be a melody which is its own bass.) Each additional part adds new harmonic meaning, as well as its own melody and rhythm, and all are in transparent contrast with each other at every point. No part needs bringing out at the expense of others, but on the pianoforte care is most needed for that part which is most in danger of failure of tone.