essay on the true art of keyboard playing

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Essay on the true art of playing keyboard instruments

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Uploaded by station35.cebu on March 29, 2022

Essay on the true art of playing keyboard instruments

By carl philipp emanuel bach and wolfgang. horn.

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Keyboard Pedagogue; ESSAY ON THE TRUE ART OF PLAYING KEYBOARD. INSTRUMENTS. By Cad Philipp Emanuel Bach. Translated from the German and edited by William J. Mitchell. 445 pp. New York: W. W. Norton & Co. $6.

By H. George Laurence.

• March 13, 1949

THE synthesis of pedagogue and artist is rarely found in the history of music. A composer often lacks the inclination to explain to others not only what he has fully absorbed, but are what he is using to develop new, intensely personal modes of expression. View Full Article in Timesmachine »

Flexibility and beauty

"The exact tuning of his instruments as well as of the whole orchestra had his greatest attention. No one could tune and quill his instruments to please him. He did everything himself." (1774, New Bach Reader , #394)

"Nobody could install the quill-plectrums of his harpsichord to his satisfaction; he always did it himself. He also tuned both his harpsichord and his clavichord himself, and was so practised in the operation that it never cost him above a quarter of an hour. But then, when he played from his fancy, all the 24 keys were in his power; he did with them what he pleased. He connected the most remote as easily and as naturally together as the nearest; the hearer believed he had only modulated within the compass of a single key. He knew nothing of harshness in modulation; even his transitions in the chromatic style were as soft and flowing as if he had wholly confined himself to the diatonic scale. His Chromatic Fantasy , which is now published, may prove what I here state. All his extempore fantasies are said to have been of a similar description, but frequently even much more free, brilliant, and expressive." (1802, New Bach Reader , p436. English translation by Kollmann, 1820.)

Dynamics due to harmonic tension and surprise

I have a further hypothesis that the 1722 Bach temperament, or at least something with the same shape (may we call it the "brook" shape?), remained CPE Bach's career temperament: and was also the ordinary temperament at the royal court during his tenure there. In his own treatise he remarked that only "most of" the fifths are tempered in his ordinary practice (and eight or nine of twelve is "most"), and more importantly, his musical examples in the book (and his broader keyboard oeuvre ) work beautifully in this tuning. The flute treatise by Quantz confirms this court hypothesis. Quantz in his Versuch einer Anweisung die Flöte traversiere zu spielen (1752) presented an exemplary Adagio (pp257-8 of Reilly's translation into English): to teach the keyboard accompanist how to play dynamics expressively by the harmonic tendencies of dissonances and consonance, listening to the sound of every moment. Quantz's piece includes 77 dynamic markings in its 45 bars! I have played this piece using Bach's tuning and noticed that the dissonant/consonant content of the harmony matches his dynamic scheme, with regard to the treatment of tension, resolution, and surprise. Readers are invited to explore this same exercise, to hear the dynamic effects as they derive directly from the quality of intonation, the temperament's subtle irregularities. In more equalized temperaments than Bach's, or in regular 1/6 comma, these directional tendencies in the sound are minimized and Quantz's notated dynamics can seem artificial and overdone. Quantz himself worked directly with at least three former pupils of JS Bach (Johann Friedrich Agricola, Christoph Nichelmann, and CPE Bach), giving him plenty of opportunity to learn and play with the Bach temperament.

Chorton/Cammerton

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CPE Bach - essay on the true art of playing keyboard instruments

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Post by violineroazul » Mon Apr 04, 2016 7:56 pm

Re: CPE Bach - essay on the true art of playing keyboard instruments

Post by cypressdome » Wed Apr 06, 2016 11:46 am

Post by Ali » Tue Dec 13, 2016 6:10 pm

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