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Post by Dulciana on Apr 16, 2008 22:45:26 GMT
I was working at a Bach Partita with a pupil tonight, and found myself unable to answer one of his questions. It would be simplest if I described the top two parts in a half of a bar. The rhythm of the soprano line is as follows: dotted quaver/semiquaver/dotted quaver/semiquaver and the alto: semiquaver rest/semiquaver/semiquaver/semiquaver rest. What I was trying to get him to do was to articulate the parts so that they actually sounded like two parts rather than simply four semiquavers in a row, but he wanted to know why he should bother, since, as he put it "the instruments of the day wouldn't have sustained the dotted quaver for its full duation anyway, so surely it would just have sounded like a series of semiquavers?" Any suggestions as to how I should have answered him?
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Post by Steve Hopwood on Apr 16, 2008 23:08:57 GMT
YAP. Anacrusis and Harpsdoc will answer the 'could not sustain' bit with regard to the harpsichord. So far as playing the repertoire on the piano is concerned, remind the student that he is doing exactly that. Perhaps suggest that making the most of the instrument he is actually playing is more useful than trying to imagine he is playing something else. That is what I do anyhow, when faced by a smart-arse trying to be lazy about articulation and phrasing in Baroque music, and using the different instrument as an excuse. Hats off to the student though. When I was at music college in the early '70's, we were only vaguely aware that Bach's keyboard music was not written for the piano. He is way ahead of us lot in these stakes.
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Post by Dulciana on Apr 16, 2008 23:15:35 GMT
YAP. So far as playing the repertoire on the piano is concerned, remind the student that he is doing exactly that. Perhaps suggest that making the most of the instrument he is actually playing is more useful than trying to imagine he is playing something else. I never thought of that.
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Post by YetAnotherKlavierist on Apr 16, 2008 23:58:39 GMT
Which Partita and which movement? I have the Bärenreiter 'Bach Neue Ausgabe' edition of the Sechs Partiten, so if you could point me in the right direction I'll have a look and see what I'd do in that situation on piano (factoring in what would be done historically also).
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Post by Dulciana on Apr 17, 2008 8:10:22 GMT
I'll reply on Monday; I'm away for a few days now and am just taking a quick look in here before I go - just in case you think I've gone and left your question, dangling in mid-air for no good reason!
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Post by chocolatedog on Apr 17, 2008 8:19:53 GMT
*Thinks* Must go and dig out my old performance practice notes from uni once junior goes down for his afternoon nap....... (If they're not relegated to the attic, that is...... )
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Post by Dulciana on Apr 22, 2008 8:33:41 GMT
ppppo again! It's the Allemande from no.1 in Bb, BMV 825.
The question was a general one too, though. How discernable (audibly) are separate voices in this type of example when played on one of Bach's instruments? I see Steve's point that we should make the most of the instrument that we have at our disposal, but have never been fortunate enough to go to a performance on a harpsichord in order to really listen to something that I'm familiar with, as it would have sounded to the composer. I will do my best to get this pupil to articulate the parts on the piano, but his question made me wonder how it would have been done on an early instrument. I've played Bach on the organ, but surely that must be different again, as the notes are fully sustained for their duration - making the task at hand (as I see it!) even easier than the piano, assuming that the musician is able to achieve precision.
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Post by anacrusis on Apr 23, 2008 14:35:38 GMT
The separate lines can be articulated so you hear them as such - and given that Bach's music so often is an incredible lacework of interdependent lines, I really do think that the music you describe can be played to pick this out, and indeed would be. A lot of Bach's keyboard music can be played on a clavichord, but some really needs a big harpsichord, with two manuals - and with such an instrument, it would be possible to do as organists do and use contrasting voices to make this clear - Bach's Goldberg Variations might be a case in point. Where a double-manual instrument is not available, then a clever set of fingers could well pick out two lines by using differing articulation. As for the argument that harpsichords don't sustain....hmm. Why then do the jacks have dampers attached to them? That argument simply won't wash - sure, the only way of making really long notes continue over several bars is to trill them, but that would apply equally to the piano; harpsichord strings are damped when the key is released, and there is no doubt at all that you can tell the difference between legato and detached playing on the instrument.
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Post by Dulciana on Apr 23, 2008 16:14:09 GMT
there is no doubt at all that you can tell the difference between legato and detached playing on the instrument. That's what I wasn't really sure about. I thought the plucking action meant that it didn't make much difference how long the key was depressed. You're going to have to forgive my ignorance in this forum, but I am keen to learn! What about dynamics on a harpsichord?
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Post by anacrusis on Apr 23, 2008 17:15:34 GMT
Dynamics are largely a matter of skill and illusion - I love being in the museum where my husband works, when a visitor surreptitiously reaches out and presses a key, eeeeever so slooooowly and caaaaarefully, only for it to go PING! The way it works is this - a standard instrument will probably have at least two courses of strings, and you can play one set, or both together; a lever engages the jacks to do this, but it's impossible to change this arrangement mid-phrase, so you generally choose your combination and stick to it until you get to a double bar or a new movement. On a double-manual instrument, there will probably be a third set of half-length strings, for a four-foot stop; on some, this can be played alone, on others only in combination with one or both of the eight-foot courses. The more courses of strings engaged, the bigger the noise - but if you then want to play quietly, having engaged them all, you have to do so by articulation - play more staccato. The other thing about having the two sets of eight-foot strings is that they sound different from each other; the jacks, which contain the little slivers of bird quill which actually pluck the strings, sit in rows one behind the other, and one quill therefore plucks, say, an A, about an inch closer to the tuning pin than the other, which gives a more nasal sound - the further away one makes a more ringing sound. So there are different textures to be exploited too; our instrument also has in it a batten of wood with small blocks of leather on it - these can damp strings so that the harpsichord sounds very lute-like . I will admit that you can't get the length of sustain you could by lifting the dampers on a piano, but you can get some; the skill of the pianist lies in their touch, of the harpsichordist in the way they take their fingers off the keys - a gross oversimplification, but broadly true . That means that your student could reasonably make the most of what the piano has to offer in interpreting his piece, but to understand the music as Bach will have written it, there's certainly something to be said for hearing a harpsichordist play it, at least. ...and on a well-tuned and well-voiced harpsichord, at that ;D.
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Post by AnotherPianist on Apr 23, 2008 22:44:42 GMT
*Thinks* Must go and dig out my old performance practice notes from uni once junior goes down for his afternoon nap....... (If they're not relegated to the attic, that is...... ) Did you find them, or is junior testing you to the limits by still not having gone to sleep yet . To pick up on the point of making the most of the instrument one has, I agree to a certain extent, but there's also a lot of the technique used on the earlier instruments that can be brought to use in the more mordern instruments. It would be a shame, for example, not to pay as much attention to detail of articulaition because one has dynamics, when one can pay that much attention to articulation and make use of the dynamics. I think most harpsichordists would put more in to the articulation, even though pianists can do just as much in addition to the other things they can do. It's just that the pianists don't focus as much on this aspect as they've got other things that make it less 'necessary', that said if one does take the harpsichordists approach to articulation on a piano the result is very good indeed.
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Post by Dulciana on Apr 23, 2008 23:40:16 GMT
I must admit that I'm quite fussy about articulation - although I wouldn't have thought so till I realised how unparticular others can be - and get away with it. I wonder if standards are slipping with regard to this; certainly, any official cds I've heard of higher grade Baroque exam pieces are less precise in this respect than I'd have imagined they should be. This is one of my reasons for helping push for a forum of this kind, because it could happen that over the course of time there would be no one left who cared about how to - or knew how to - produce a performance of real value beyond getting the notes and timing right with some appropriate dynamics. Sometimes it's clear to me how things should be phrased and it's clear how to achieve the desired effect - but sometimes it isn't, and there are very few people out there to ask! When I was having lessons from a cathedral organist I suggested that we should think more about phrasing in a Bach piece (just a 'little prelude and fugue') and his response was simply that I was 'already doing it right'. But I wasn't. Even I knew that, but he was the cathedral organist. I hope we don't reach the stage at which nobody knows! An appropriate general touch and strong sense of pulse can cover a lot of sins.
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