CAL PERFORMANCES PRESENTS PROGRAM

Sunday, November 13, 2011, 3pm No. 4 in E-flat major, BWV 815 Hertz Hall Davitt Moroney, Air Menuet J. S. Bach: The Complete

Suite No. 5 in G major, BWV 816 PROGRAM Allemande Courante Sarabande (1685–1750) The Six French Suites, BWV 812–17 Gavotte (c.1722–1725) Bourrée Loure Gigue Suite No. 1 in D minor, BWV 812 Allemande Courante Suite No. 6 in E major, BWV 817 Sarabande Allemande Menuets I & II Courante Gigue Sarabande Gavotte Menuet polonais Suite No. 2 in C minor, BWV 813 Bourrée Allemande Petit menuet Courante Gigue Sarabande Air Menuets I & II The three heard today were built by John Phillips (Berkeley) in 1995, 1998, and 2010. They Gigue are based on three famous antiques: (1) Andreas Ruckers (Antwerp, 1646), François-Étienne Blanchet (Paris, 1756) and Pascal Taskin (Paris, 1780); (2) Nicolas Dumont (Paris, 1707); and (3) Johann Heinrich Gräbner (Dresden, 1722). Suite No. 3 in B minor, BWV 814 Allemande Special thanks to Peter and Cynthia Hibbert for generously lending the harpsichord based on the 1722 Courante instrument by Johann Heinrich Gräbner. Sarabande Anglaise Menuets I & II Gigue Cal Performances’ 2011–2012 season is sponsored by Wells Fargo. INTERMISSION

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Johann Sebastian Bach he was appointed to an important municipal his students; and that teaching centered around the small segments of bird quill that actually The Six French Suites, BWV 812–17 post in the old university town of Leipzig. The beautiful ornamentation and beautiful touch. pluck the strings. Together, these two elements French Suites seem to reflect the serenity in his This was what François Couperin in 1716 have enabled modern audiences to experience congenial musical life in Anhalt-Cöthen, before called L’Art de toucher le Clavecin (“The Art of a variety of nuances on the finer instruments, he six so-called French Suites have he embarked on a grueling first five years of hard Playing the Harpsichord”). Couperin referred and to rediscover the expressive range of the Talways been among Bach’s most popular labor in Leipzig, dedicated largely to compos- to it more than once as the art of “giving a soul” harpsichord. It is, of course, a relatively narrow works. They are assumed to have been composed ing vast quantities of sacred music (hundreds of to the otherwise relatively inexpressive harpsi- range, but it can nevertheless be highly effec- during the years 1717 to 1723, when he was cantatas and two great settings of the Passion). chord. The variety of nuance possible on a harp- tive, in the way a black and white photograph happily employed as principal composer and Bach was always a voracious autodidact. sichord when the French technique is used can by Ansel Adams can be as expressive as a color Capellmeister at the court of the music-loving In his youth, with characteristic seriousness he be extraordinary, resulting in a distinct impres- photograph; colors are suggested through varied Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cöthen. The earliest taught himself a great deal about the various sion of dynamic phrasing and expressive ten- shades of gray, without ever using a red, a blue, manuscript source is the first “notebook” Bach French musical styles. By the time he was 25, he sion. (By contrast, its absence can easily turn a green, or a yellow. If, however, the harpsichord gave to his second wife, Anna Magdalena, in had thoroughly mastered them. (He then moved music played on the instrument into a series of quills are not well cut, even the fingers of a Bach 1722, shortly after their marriage. The suites are on to Italian styles, starting in about 1713, by dreary, mechanical plinks and plunks.) or a Couperin would be incapable of “giving a there copied out in his own handwriting. This digesting the music of Vivaldi in a comparably All his life, Bach used the harpsichord as soul” to the harpsichord. Not surprisingly, Bach is the only autograph manuscript for the pieces, serious manner.) His youthful exposure to, and a means of communicating musical thoughts never allowed anyone else to quill, maintain, or but there are many other copies made by people fascination with, French music had been in- of the utmost expressiveness, so it is logical to tune his own instruments. in Bach’s circle, notably his students and his son- tense, partly under the sympathetic guidance of assume he found the instrument capable of The musical styles of Couperin, Marchand in-law. Since only the first five suites are included his first important organ teacher, Georg Böhm expressing such thoughts, otherwise he would and the distinguished French school of harpsi- in Bach’s 1722 copy, the sixth is thought to have (1661–1733). The young Bach copied out music have reworked those musical ideas in terms of chordists and organists of the late 17th century, been composed shortly afterwards. by Jean Henry d’Anglebert (whose elaborate violin, , flute, oboe, or voice. Yet so much offered Bach a strongly characterized model The traditional title French Suites is probably and complex system of ornamentation he ad- of his music was written for harpsichord and whose refined and elegant writing and expres- not Bach’s own name for these works. During opted wholeheartedly) and François Couperin organ, two instruments whose playing tech- sive art of playing had a profound influence the 30 years after his death, they circulated (with whom he was said to have corresponded, niques, if misunderstood or misapplied, can kill on him in the years 1700 to 1720. When this widely in manuscripts and were referred to as but the letters are lost), as well as Dieupart, musical expression. Writers of the period such French musical language was wedded to his “French” to distinguish them from the set of Nicolas de Grigny, André Raison, and several as Rameau, curiously, insist that the best harp- own fundamentally contrapuntal nature, the six (confusingly, these are written other less eminent French composers of the sichord technique is identical to the best way result was a keyboard language of unique force. in the French style as well, but were later said previous generation. to play organs. This technique is only possible Many people think of the French baroque style to have been composed for an English gentle- When Bach was 18 and finishing his school on organs where the keyboard action is fully as overly ornate and somewhat mannered. Yet man). Bach also wrote another set of even more education in L�ü��������������������������neburg,�������������������������� he had direct con- mechanical, rather than using modern electri- when Bach adopted it, the result was a limpid complex suites, the six harpsichord Partitas, the tact with the nearby French-speaking German cal connections, or on harpsichords where the and direct musical language which has made the only ones he published. During his lifetime, the court of Celle, where the princess, Eléonore strings are plucked by genuine bird quill, rather French Suites favorites of players and audiences French Suites seem to have been known simply as d’Olbreuse, was French—as were most of the than the ubiquitous modern plastic substitute. for nearly 300 years. the “Little Suites,” perhaps because they do not musicians. His admiration for French music and Electricity and plastic are inimical to good or- Bach no doubt partly intended the French start with long preludes, as do the English Suites players can be seen in works composed at all pe- gans and good harpsichords. Suites to be played by members of his fam- and the Partitas. riods of his life. In September 1717, during a vis- Bach seems to have shared Couperin’s per- ily: Anna Magdalena was an excellent singer The French Suites date from Bach’s mid-30s, it to the Dresden Court, he personally met the ception of the “soul” of the instrument, and as well as a good amateur keyboard player; and from the same extraordinary period when he great Louis Marchand, organist to Louis XIV’s many modern players and builders spend a Wilhelm Friedemann (his eldest son by his first finalized a great deal of secular chamber mu- court at Versailles and one of the finest of French great deal of time talking and thinking about it. wife) was already a talented twelve-year old who sic, notably the (1721), harpsichord masters. Bach played Marchand’s Audiences have also now become more aware of had been playing the keyboard for nearly three the first volume ofThe Well-Tempered Clavier highly intricate harpsichord music to his stu- it, to the extent of being able to recognize and years. But by this time Bach’s reputation as a (1722), and the two-part Inventions and three- dents as models of “French Suites.” According hear the differences (even if they don’t always teacher had become very solid, and he also had a part Sinfonie (1723). He would later refer nostal- to his second son, Carl Philipp Emanuel, Bach quite understand the details behind it). Players widening circle of pupils. gically to his Anhalt-Cöthen years: “There I had always expressed the greatest respect for the are learning to exert minute finger control over Several of these pupils copied out the French a gracious Prince, who both loved and knew mu- Frenchman and “very willingly gave Marchand the speed of attack for each and every note, to Suites during their period of study with him. sic, and in his service I intended to spend the rest credit for a very beautiful and very correct style allow it to have its own color (and even its own One such student, after Bach moved to Leipzig of my life.” However, his career took a different of playing.” This beautiful style of French play- volume) relative to its neighbors; and builders in 1723, was Heinrich Nikolaus Gerber (1702– (and ultimately less happy) turn in 1723, when ing was something that Bach apparently taught are learning to cut and trim with great precision 1775), who had the good fortune to study with

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Bach from 1724 to 1727, while he (Gerber) was harpsichord suite. Gerber’s profusion of elabo- of the moment, and partly because—and this was increased when it was copied, still naked, studying at Leipzig University. Gerber copied rate ornaments in the French style, notated un- is important—he, like most other composers of by his son-in-law Altnikol (the manuscript is in out all the French Suites in 1725. (Incidentally, der Bach’s supervision, must surely be the direct the period, would not have wished them to be the Library of Congress, and is one of the most his copy includes two extra works, so there are embodiment of part of Bach’s teaching. notated (and thereby fixed) because such an act important Bach sources in the United States). eight suites in all; for odd historical reasons, the The apparent difference between Bach’s of notation, of noting down, would inhibit the A misplaced veneration for this unornamented two extras have never been thought of as part own manuscripts (unornamented) and those pleasure and spontaneity of freshly reinventing version has lead to Bach’s and Altnikol’s ver- of the set of French Suites; I included these fine of his students (which are often highly orna- them each time the work was played. He knew sions being used as the basis for most modern additional works on my recording of the French mented) can be reconciled without difficulty. how to improvise such ornaments; if they were editions. I say “misplaced veneration” because Suites for Virgin Classics.) Many German and American scholars of the not written down, he could more easily reinvent playing Bach’s text as it stands would almost Any player who seeks to understand what 20th century took the view that the “purity” a fresh ornamental clothing for the music each certainly have been considered by him as the limits Bach imposed on his students and what of Bach’s lines does not need ornamentation, time he played it. least satisfactory way of performing these pieces, artistic freedoms he taught them to explore can and that the ornamented later copies were evi- Like his contemporaries, Bach eventually a way that is at the least inadequate, and pos- learn a great deal from studying Gerber’s manu- dence of a more debased style, more frivolous, had to change his approach, as his keyboard sibly just plain ignorant; it is no longer possible scripts. They include much extra ornamentation, less noble. This is essentially a reworking of the music was being disseminated more and more to imagine that either Bach or Altinkol would sometimes written in Bach’s own handwriting cultural antithesis between more sober North through printed editions rather than hand-writ- have intended players to perform from these un- (having no doubt been added during lessons). European Protestantism and more flamboyant ten copies made by students who had learned the published manuscript sources without adding Studying such versions brings modern players Latin gestural expression. Any rejection of an pieces under their supervision. Once a copy is appropriate ornamentation. On the other hand, face to face with direct evidence of some of the individual exuberance in favor of the essentialist printed, it goes out unprotected into the world, we also have the manuscript copies of students things that Bach covered when he was teach- view of a restrained, uniform “purity” is perhaps and people who have not been taught how to like Gerber. If we play Gerber’s version, it is very ing. Such study is liberating. Far from limiting enough to give us all pause for thought. But it is play it could end up playing it wrongly. So Bach’s different, but at least it is reassuring to know modern musicians by locking us into a suppos- a false antithesis. All musicians who adopted the printed works contain more elaborately notated we are playing something closer to what Bach edly “musicological” approach to the works, it French and Italian styles, which were the two ornamentation, and in the 1730s he was roundly taught and approved. Yet ornamentation was a can free us—through the musicology itself—by predominant musical languages of the 17th cen- criticized for doing this. But the French Suites free, living, improvised art. Playing Gerber’s no- opening up a wide range of expressive possibili- tury, understood that appropriate ornamenta- were never printed. It is always important to un- tated ornaments because this is somehow better ties that are rarely imagined by most modern tion was as much a part of music as it is of dress, derstand whether we were playing works whose “performance practice” for such music is also a players of Bach’s music (and perhaps even more of food, of picture frames and of architecture. final texts he prepared for public consumption dangerous path to take. In ’s rarely taught by keyboard teachers). The cultural period when ornamentation through publication (such as the harpsichord provocative phrase, “It is when we are trying to When versions of works from several of was most repressed or rejected dates from the Partitas, and the , the Musical be the most authentic that we are in fact the least Bach’s students survive, each text is usually a first half of the 20th century, not Bach’s lifetime. Offering, The Art of ), or works that survive authentic.” Studiously playing Gerber’s orna- little different. The differences bring into focus That modern period has given us the modern only in manuscripts (such as the French Suites, ments ossifies the ornamental process by giving which aspects of the text Bach seems to have standardized, black, unornamented, functional the English Suites, the Toccatas, the Inventions textual permanence to something that was just wanted his students to treat with strict respect, object that is the piano. It is a highly effective and Sinfonie, or The Well-Tempered Clavier.) one possible manifestation of an impermanent, and which parts he apparently allowed them representation of that aesthetic. We no longer By contrast, the students who notated the evanescent art. to approach with considerable liberty, allow- even recognize it as being typically “1930s” as an ornaments in their lessons, under his supervi- Since Bach wrote in different ornaments ing each student to change certain things in an object (and quite unlike pianos from even just sion, needed to do so because they were still in the manuscripts of different students, it fol- individual way. Bach’s whole teaching method 30 years earlier). By contrast, the three harpsi- learning the art of playing the harpsichord. lows that the ornaments themselves are not to was based on such contrasts. He had no single chords on stage today, each with a different ap- Like students in classes today, they could not al- be seen as “absolute” either in their nature or in method that was applied to all students indis- proach to ornamentation, can serve as visual im- ways remember everything and therefore “took the manner of their realization. Nevertheless, criminately. He apparently used a different ages of the significance of sober and appropriate notes.” When Bach wrote down ornamentation the principle that in French-style music there approach for each student. With some he was ornamentation in an earlier age. in their manuscripts for them, it was almost like should be some French ornaments would have “hard as wood,” whereas with others he was The absence of ornaments in Bach’s manu- a modern professor’s handout in a class; an ex- been viewed at the time as rather more absolute; much more flexible. His first biographer, Forkel scripts of the French Suites is not a sign that he ample was being provided that the student could a failure to observe this rule would have been an (in 1802), stressed not only his “strictness” as a did not want ornaments to be played, or that take away and study afterwards. offense against taste, against decorum. teacher but also the fact that “he allowed his pu- ornamentation would destroy the purity of his The paradoxical upshot of all this for the So modern performers are invited to take pils, in other respects, great liberties.” lines. Appropriate ornamentation is essential to French Suites is exhilarating, both intellectu- up the exhilarating, if dangerous, challenge. We Bach seems to have encouraged his students accentuate the contours and stresses of the lines. ally and musically. On the one hand, we have can decide to play neither Bach’s nor Altnikol’s to embrace this artistic freedom most of all in The ornaments are not there partly because Bach’s own text of the French Suites (without text (since they are inappropriately naked), and one particular style of music: that of the French Bach was capable of inventing them on the spur ornamentation); the authority of this naked text we can decide not to play his student’s fixed

8 CAL PERFORMANCES CAL PERFORMANCES 9 PROGRAM NOTES PROGRAM NOTES version of what should be spontaneous orna- through the addition of personalized ornaments temperament favors the more standard keys (in- mentation. Instead, we can play something that are unique to the player and to the particu- volving few sharps or flats in the key signature). that is derived from the ornamental practice he lar performance. A different temperament is heard for Suites 2 taught, something found in no manuscripts of The Theory of Forms can also, perhaps and 4 (in C minor and E-flat major), and it is the period. This is akin to deciding to impro- not surprisingly, help us appreciate the musi- designed to favor keys with more flats in the vise a cadenza to a Mozart piano concerto even cal forms found in these works. All six French key signature. Suites 3 and 6 (in B minor and when a cadenza survives that was composed Suites contain a similar sequence of movements E major) use a third temperament, favoring keys by Mozart himself or one of his pupils, yet we based on the rhythms of traditional French with several sharps in the key signature. This have the temerity (but also, hopefully, the skill) courtly dances. The sequence (which is all the approach is designed to enable each suite to be to put it aside. For Bach’s French Suites, we can word “suite” means) always contains the four more in tune than it would be in modern equal understand the art of French ornamentation essential ones, Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, temperament, and brings out many expressive and know how he taught it; we can therefore and Gigue, but others can be interpolated before nuances in Bach’s harmonies. Since such harp- learn to invent new ornamental clothing for his the Gigue. On paper, this unity of construction sichord indulgence is not possible on most oc- melodies in that same spirit, and change these makes the suites look similar to each other (es- casions, this is an ephemeral pleasure to be ex- ornaments each time we play the Suites. (This pecially when laid out in a concert program), perienced here in Berkeley and then allowed to practice only applies in this particular form to and the thought of hearing six such sequences of dissolve into our memories. Concerts are always his French music, and would hardly apply to the the same dances might seem daunting. Yet para- ephemeral experiments, moments, attempts to of The Well-Tempered Clavier.) doxically, it is by hearing all the suites together answer afresh the ever-present question: What Such an approach frees players’ imagina- that attentive listeners can more easily notice the can this beautiful music become today, here in this tions to express themselves in a personal way. characteristics that identify each movement’s es- room, for this audience? We can take certain aspects of Bach’s notated sential form, its “substance.” Just as six circles text simply as a point of departure. Some mod- can be different yet share the common identity Davitt Moroney ern players like to learn these works by imagin- based on circularity, and six rectangles can be ing what he might have said if, like Gerber, they different yet share rectangularity, so by listening had had the good fortune to go to Bach’s house to six different individual (the “ac- for a lesson. Presumably we can, like Gerber, en- cidental” manifestations of abstract Allemande joy breaking free from the exact text of Bach’s Form), we can better perceive the unifying sub- notes, as printed in the modern edition. We stance, “Allemande,” that underlies them all, the can enjoy taking liberties in those precise areas Idea behind all allemandes. that Bach encouraged Gerber to take. But this At another level, hearing them all together is where the task is not easy. Freedom is not a also enables the player and the listeners to ap- free-for-all. We first have to learn the param- preciate the internal differences between the six eters of freedom. allemandes, the great variety to be found in the If this line of argument sounds rather like six , and so on. Each suite does have old wine in new bottles, it is because I am its own inner character, and here the richness of consciously writing against the background of Bach’s imagination can be appreciated. Bringing Plato’s classic Theory of Forms, as it might ap- out these distinct characters within the overall ply to a musical text. Using the Platonic and concept of unity is, I feel, one of the principal Aristotelian concepts of essential “substance” responsibilities of the performer. and particular “accidents,” Bach’s unornament- The use of three different harpsichords (a ed text of the French Suites in Anna Magdalena’s luxury available in very few places in the world) book may thus be seen as closer to the “sub- helps with this task by enabling me to accentu- stance” of the work, something essentially ate the characters by tuning the three instru- abstract but never actually to be heard in that ments slightly differently, each one in a different form, yet lying behind all practical realizations “well tempered” tuning (quite distinct from the of the pieces in any performance. Performances, modern “equal tempered” keyboard tuning). by contrast (like the shadows on Plato’s cave Tonight you will hear three temperaments. For wall), are “accidental,” living ephemerally Suites 1 and 5 (in D minor and G major), the

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, the complete sonatas for flute and harpsichord, and for violin and harp- sichord, as well as (a work he has recorded twice; the first recording received a Gramophone Award). He has also recorded Byrd’s complete keyboard works (127 pieces, on seven CDs, using six instruments), and the complete harpsichord and organ music of Louis Couperin (seven CDs, using four instruments). His re- cordings have been awarded the French Grand Prix du Disque (1996), the German Preis der Deutschen Schallplatenkritik (2000), and three British Gramophone Awards (1986, 1991, 2000). For his services to music he was named Chevalier dans l’Ordre du mérite culturel by Prince Rainier of Monaco (1987) and Officier des arts et des let- tres by the French government (2000). In 2000, he also published Bach, An Extraordinary Life, a monograph that has since Scott Hewitt been translated into five languages. His recently avitt moroney was born in England in published research articles have been studies of D1950. He studied organ, , and the music of Alessandro Striggio (in the Journal harpsichord with Susi Jeans, Kenneth Gilbert, of the American Musicological Society), of François and Gustav Leonhardt. After studies in musicol- Couperin, and of Parisian women composers ogy with Thurston Dart and Howard M. Brown under the Ancien Régime. In spring 2009, he was at King’s College (University of London), he en- visiting director of a research seminar in Paris at tered the doctoral program at UC Berkeley in the Sorbonne’s École pratique des hautes études. 1975. Five years later, he completed his Ph.D. In 2005, after tracking it down for 18 years, with a thesis under the guidance of Joseph he identified one of the lost masterpieces of the Kerman and Philip Brett on the music of Thomas Italian Renaissance, Alessandro Striggio’s Mass Tallis and William Byrd for the Anglican in 40 and 60 Parts, dating from 1565–1566, the Reformation. In August 2001, he returned to source for which had been lost since 1724. He Berkeley as a faculty member and is a Professor conducted the first modern performance of this of Music as well as University Organist. massive work at London’s Royal Albert Hall in For 21 years he was based in Paris, working July 2007 (to an audience of 7,500 people, and a primarily as a freelance recitalist in many coun- live radio audience of many millions of listen- tries. He has made nearly 60 CDs, especially ers) and conducted two performances at the of music by Bach, Byrd, and Couperin. Many Berkeley Early Music Festival in June 2008. Two of these recordings feature historic 17th- and further Berkeley performances will take place on 18th-century harpsichords and organs. They February 3 and 4, 2012, for Cal Performances, include Bach’s French Suites (two CDs, for and will include some first performances since Virgin Classics, shortlisted for the Gramophone the 16th century of other newly restored “mega- Award), The Well-Tempered Clavier (four CDs), works” by Striggio’s contemporaries.

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