JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH The Well-tempered Clavier I LUCA GUGLIELMI Harpsichord JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH (1685-1750) Das Wohltemperirte Clavier Band I / The Well-Tempered Clavier Book I – PRELUDES & FUGUES No. 1 in C major BWV 846 No. 7 in E flat major BWV 852 No. 13 in F sharp major BWV 858 No. 19 in A major BWV 864 1 Prelude 02:28 13 Prelude 04:25 25 Prelude 01:44 37 Prelude 01:17 2 Fugue I à 4 02:02 14 Fugue VII à 02:01 26 Fugue XIII à 3 01:51 38 Fugue XIV à 3 02:40 No. 2 in C minor BWV 847 No. 8 in E flat minor BWV 853 No. 14 in F sharp minor BWV 859 No. 20 in A minor BWV 865 3 Prelude [without tempo indication] 15 Prelude (lute stop) 03:03 27 Prelude 01:36 39 Prelude 01:17 presto – adagio – allegro 01:43 16 Fugue VIII à 3 04:57 28 Fugue XIV à 4 02:57 40 Fugue XX à 4 05:34 4 Fugue II à 3 01:51 No. 9 in E major BWV 854 No. 15 in G major BWV 860 No. 21 in B flat major BWV 866 No. 3 in C sharp major BWV 848 17 Prelude 01:39 29 Prelude 01:04 41 Prelude 01:26 5 Prelude 01:44 18 Fugue IX à 3 01:27 30 Fugue XV à 3 03:08 42 Fugue XXI à 3 02:03 6 Fugue III à 3 02:41 No. 10 in E minor BWV 855 No. 16 in G minor BWV 861 No. 22 in B flat minor BWV 867 No. 4 in C sharp minor BWV 849 19 Prelude 02:19 31 Prelude 02:04 43 Prelude 02:41 7 Prelude 03:01 20 Fugue X à 2 01:41 32 Fugue XVI à 4 01:57 44 Fugue XXII à 5 02:32 8 Fugue IV à 5 03:27 No. 11 in F major BWV 856 No. 17 in A flat major BWV 862 No. 23 in B major BWV 868 No. 5 in D major BWV 850 21 Prelude 01:43 33 Prelude 01:26 45 Prelude 01:19 9 Prelude 01:31 22 Fugue XI à 3 01:44 34 Fugue XVII à 4 02:32 46 Fugue XXIII à 4 02:15 10 Fugue V à 4 02:00 No. 12 in F minor BWV 857 No. 18 in G sharp minor BWV 863 No. 24 in B minor BWV 869 No. 6 in D minor BWV 851 23 Prelude 02:06 35 Prelude 01:54 47 Prelude Andante 02:27 11 Prelude 02:32 24 Fugue XII à 4 04:02 36 Fugue XVIII à 4 02:40 48 Fugue XXIV à 4 Largo 06:29 12 Fugue VI à 3 02:21 Total Time 1:55:47 Recording: May 2017, Museu de la Musica, Edifici L’Auditori, Barcelona (Catalunya) Spain Recording Producer & Balance Engineer: Davide Ficco · Sound Engineer & Digital Editing: Roberto Chinellato Tuning & Maintenance of the Zell Harpsichord: Paul Poletti (A= Hz 415 Temperament Neidhart Kleine Stadt 1724/Grosse Stadt 1732) g 2017 Luca Guglielmi, exclusively licensed to Avi-Service for music P 2021 Avi-Service for music, Cologne/Germany 42 6008553993 2 · Made in Germany · All rights reserved · LC 15080 · STEREO · DDD · Publisher: Bärenreiter Photos: Guglielmi g Marco Borggreve, instruments © Museu de la Música, Barcelona Translations: Stanley Hanks · Design: www.BABELgum.de www.avi-music.de · www.lucaguglielmi.com DAS WOHLTEMPERIERTE CLAVIER At the first lesson he set his Inventions before him. Given that we are in the presence of a “beautiful manuscript copy”, we can calmly state that When he had studied these through to Bach’s satisfaction, there followed a series of the interpreter has privilege of access to an absolutely “definitive” version, and that the suites, then The Well-Tempered Clavier. scholar is also freed from having to deal with the quandary of several different musicological This latter work Bach played altogether three times through for him with his unmatchable art, exegeses. Nonetheless, the entire creative process through which Bach achieved this masterpiece and my father counted these among his happiest hours, can be clearly reconstructed: he adapted, revised, and expanded several of his previous works when Bach, under the pretext of not feeling in the mood to teach, (the preludes in C, c, d, D, e, E, F, C#, c#, eb, f, contained, for example, in frühere Fassungen sat himself at one of his splendid instruments and thus turned these hours into minutes. in the Clavierbüchlein für Wilhelm Friedemann, from 1720). Furthermore, although we regard this autograph manuscript in its last form dated 1722 as “definitive”, Bach himself did not see Ernst Ludwig Gerber about his father’s* musical apprentiship with Bach, in 1724 it that way. He kept it – literally – as an “open manuscript” on the rack of his harpsichord *Heinrich Nicolaus Gerber (1702-1775) up to his death, using it as a “textbook” for the lessons he gave to his students and/or Historisch-Biografisches Lexicon der Tonkünstler […], Leipzig, 1790 [Bach-Dokumente III, nr. 950] boarders, never ceasing to insert a series of corrections, reworkings, improvements, small variants, ornaments here and there, even performance instructions! [cf. the illustration from BWV Das Wohltemperirte Clavier, a collection of preludes and fugues in all major and minor keys 852]. The latest source studies have uncovered four different strata, ranging over a period from completed by Johann Sebastian Bach in 1722, was clearly modelled along the lines of Ariadne 1722 to 1750, the year of Bach’s death. More than two centuries prior to Umberto Eco’s concept Musica by Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer (1662-1746, Kapellmeister in Baden from 1715 to of the “open work” and two centuries after Michelangelo’s “unfinished” approach to art, Bach’s 1746) – an organ music anthology published for the first time in 1702 and probably known hands-on approach to his work in progress proves just who modern he actually was and remains. by Bach in its second 1715 edition. Bach took Fischer’s original layout of 20 keys and expanded it to a total of 24, thereby creating the first self-contained collection of music The perennial (and, if one so will, futile) question regarding which “temperament” Bach written for the entire corpus of existing keys. envisaged for performing these pieces (while a certain branch of musicology continues to affirm that they are to be exclusively performed in equal temperament) has been resolved, Bach, who, on the handwritten title page of the beautiful copy now preserved in the Berlin and remains at the same time unresolved. In view of the (fortunately!) human impossibility Staatsbibliothek (Mus. Ms. P 415), signed as Hochf. Anhalt-Cöthenischen Capel-Meistern und of achieving equal temperament without the aid of an electronic tuning instrument (meanwhile, Directore derer Cammer Musiquen, clearly indicated his purpose in composing this incomparable a number of professional organ and piano tuners continue to assert that more “equable collection: “for the profit of musical youth desirous of learning, and especially for the temperaments” are possible, while most highly regarding whatever tuning variant they pastime of those already skilled in this study.” have invented themselves…!), we can calmly certify that “Wohltemperirt” (well-tempered) 4 stands for any variety of subtly unequal temperament of the kind postulated in Bach’s time of fugues. Johann Philipp Kirnberger (1720-1783, a pupil of Bach’s in the years 1739-41) by theoreticians such as Werckmeister and Neidhart (who had Bach’s full esteem, since remarked in the learned preface to his collection Recueil d’Airs de danse Caractéristiques (1777) the composer recommended that the Naumburg organ, built by Zacharias Hildebrandt in that fugues were all composed on the basis of well-determined dance rhythms and figures. 1746 and tested by him, should be tuned “following Neidhart”). The crux of the matter is In the harshest of terms, he deplored the total ignorance and disinterest he observed whether today’s performers, scholars and listeners (who, in any case, have spent decades regarding that subject: “Above all, it is impossible to compose or to perform a fugue well if one listening to the Wohltemperirtes Clavier on the modern piano tuned with equal temperament) does not know every type of rhythm, and therefore, because this study is neglected today, music has can accept the fact that in Bach’s day several keys were considered to belong to a special fallen from its ancient dignity and fugues are not appreciated as they once were, because through “palette” of sound: like colors in a painting, they could be graded by a series of subtle miserable performance which does not know how to differentiate the variety of phrases and semiphrases, nuances, variations, and hues. The Affektenlehre (theory of affects) in music was closely or more or less accented beats, can only generate nothing else than a mere chaos of notes”. We have connected with the particular character ascribed to each key, the attributes of which still therefore attempted to do justice to Kirnberger’s reflections on fugues by applying, as much caused a great deal of disagreement among theoreticians. as possible, the step or rhetorical gesture of the corresponding dance. In this sense, even an “extreme” proposal of temperament such as Bradley Lehman’s interpretation The result is undoubtedly fascinating, since it achieves an objectivity of rhythmic accentuation of the ornament featured on the frontispiece can find its raison-d’être if it is viewed as a valid that enriches our perception of the ancient tactus on which every form of composition and alternative to the various unequal temperaments applied until now in the performance of performance was based.